fandomtownies | J, GoB - Saturday afternoon

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J, GoB - Saturday afternoon

Annie had more or less made peace with the fact that she was going to be here for awhile, and that this was more in the vein of an unpaid internship than an actual job. And, honestly, she was okay with that - she liked it in Fandom, and she knew better than most that any kind of boost to her resumé would help if she ever wanted to get into The Seven.

Far, far less okay with the new status quo was Annie's mother.

Annie had been on the phone with Donna for the better part of an hour when she finally said she had to go ("On a save?" Donna had asked hopefully) and turned into the bakery.

"I want every kind of donut you have with cream in the middle," she decided at the counter. That was how she ended up curled up at a table with a half-dozen different donuts in front of her, and a lukewarm cup of coffee she was mostly ignoring.

Good luck!!!!! came in a text, just as she sat down, followed by a series of emojis. (Sparkle, star, halo face, prayer hands, sparkle, sparkle, sparkle.)

Annie sighed and turned her phone face-down, then took a bite out of a chocolate-glazed donut and let out the kind of happy noise that most people reserved for privacy.

She wasn't really planning on finishing all the donuts in front of her in one sitting, here, but she wasn't ruling it out at the moment.

[Open!]

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Summer had needed to swing by to drop off a special order for...something for tomorrow, and maybe to pick up a little something else for herself in the meantime while she was there. And once that was taking care of...

"Oooh, new face!"

Eventually that would...probably die down, right? But for now, Summer was making her way over with a smile. "Hey. I'm Summer."

Annie was at least used to it, by now, even if she did pray for another new person to show up just so she wouldn't be the newest anymore.

"I love how friendly you guys are here," she declared, grinning. "Hey, Summer - I'm Annie. I would shake your hand, but - "

She waved, instead, and added, "Little sticky."

Stress-eating and all.

"Yeaaaah," Summer's grin grew a little. "I'd have offered a hand, but yours seemed a little...preoccupied. Good to finally put a face to your name, though, after hearing it on radio.

"Which, of course," she added, "then leads me to ask where exactly you're at on your whole 'settling into Fandom' experience with regards to the fact that this place is overrun with gossipy rodents who can somehow write."

Up to and including the potential of having no idea what Sumemr was talking about, but that one was pretty rare at this point.

"Okay, so it's not just me? It's weird that they're squirrels?" Annie checked. "Because, like, no one talks about that." Were they some kind of experiment? Like that book with the smart rats who escaped from a lab?

"And," she added with a laugh, "I'm about there, settling-in-wise. Accepted that squirrels can write, accepted that everything I do can and will be reported on - but I think it's weird as hell. And you can just - like, expand that to the whole island, you know?" Which seemed, you know, pretty fair to her.

"I always feel a person's level of receptiveness to the squirrels is a good guage of how they're feeling about everything else about this place," Summer admitted, "or at least a good place to start, so it sounds like you're doing pretty good so far! I mean, obviously, that also depends a lot on where you're coming from and stuff like that, but, y'know. Seems like a good place you're in, though, and you've probably had, like, a ton of people already offering help if you need it, but feel free to add my name to that list, too."

"Denial didn't seem like a viable long-term strategy," Annie admitted. She had tried for a minute, though! "Have you been here for awhile, then? Because this place is way weirder than where I'm from, and I'd love to eventually get to where I can just be like 'oh, yeah, the squirrels' to a new person."

Edited 2020-10-10 20:34 (UTC)

"Oh, you'll get there," Summer nodded confidently. "Just the fact that you want to get there and aren't stubbornly still gawking," ahem, some people, "says a lot. And I've been here on-and-off for a while now, ever since I was seventeen." Which was...not nearly as long ago as she might try to make it out to have been. "Started as a student here and...my version of Earth was taken over by a hostile intergalactic government at the time, so I was mostly just glad we had food here that wasn't strictly in pill format, and I really took to it pretty quickly."

And continued to actually make all the old hats WTF at what she could add to the table, which was a bit of a point of pride at this point.

She nodded to one of the chairs at Annie's table. "Mind if I join you for a bit? Or are you doing a whole 'it's really better if I'm left with all these doughnuts by myself' thing?"

No judgement! Who hadn't been there?

Edited 2020-10-10 20:35 (UTC)

"Oh, no, by all means. You can even get in on this action, if you want." She gestured, both to the donuts and to the empty chair. "This was a slight overestimation of how much I can eat, I think."

A pause as she took in the rest of what Summer had said. "Hostile intergalactic government sounds...intense," she added, and Annie was kind of proud of how mildly she said that. "Are things okay now?"

"Oh, yeah," Summer waved her hand dismissively as she pulled out a chair and plopped down and considered the doughnuts and whether or not she should take Annie up on the offer. They did look pretty good, though. "That was totally cleared up by the end of the summer. This whole big thing with busting my grampa out of space prison and then he essentially just collapsed their economy by changing a one to a zero and the utter chaos that ensued ended up destroying them from within."

Summer was...not proud of how mildly she said that, just because she was not even really aware of how utterly and completely casual she was. Her focus was definitely mostly on the doughnuts.

"You sure you don't mind?" she asked, one hand already on its way to hovering toward her chosen victim. "Like, no judgement if you're about to plow through these all yourself; it'll just mean I'll have to kind of hate you a little for apparently having one of the multiverse's best metabolisms ever."

"Go for it," Annie assured her, laughing. "For my totally-normal metabolism's sake. And like, okay, I get why you're cool with this place if all that's on the table." She considered for a moment, pulling apart the donut she'd been working on when Summer had first approached. "We don't have space prison where I'm from."

To start.

"They might, but you just don't know about it yet," Summer pointed out, plucking out her new treat and getting comfortable as she started to pick at it. "Back home, aliens really didn't bother much with Earth until they sort of had a good reason to." Or they sort of brought the attention to themselves, but, y'know...

She shrugged a little. "So where are you coming from?" she ventured. "And what brought you here? If, I mean, you don't mind me asking. You don't really seem like the whole 'clinging to a mysterious backstory' type."

Which was the best way to pull off clinging to a mysterious backstory, of course, but...

"Feels like I should make one up, now," Annie said, rolling her eyes thoughtfully. "But no, nothing too mysterious. I transferred here for work a couple weeks ago, but it turns out you guys don't actually need a hero on the island because there's like, a thousand already, and also no crime. So now I'm a bartender."

It wasn't even an especially uncommon backstory for Fandom, honestly.

It really wasn't.

"Oh, hey," Summer grinned. "I'm bartending, too. Over at Caritas, on Wednesday. I take it you're over at the DN, then?"

No one called it that, Summer.

She would like to point out that no one called it that yet, thank you.

"I'm at...the DN on Mondays," Annie confirmed, wondering if that was what she should have called the bar this whole time. It did sound cooler. "Caritas has karaoke, right? I didn't see anyone go up when I stopped in for the tequila thing last week, which is - honestly, you'd kind of think there would have been a lot of singing, now that I think about it."

It was only because she was still new that Annie herself hadn't sung, let's be real.

"But potentially having to listen to drunk karaoke was a real motivation for interviewing at the other bar, admittedly."

"Ohmygod," Summer made a disgrunted noise, rolling her eyes a little, as she leaned forward comfortably on her elbows on the table, "the karaoke stage is a total tragedy for how little it gets used. Like, I totally get that the band is zombies? But they're actually really good and sanitary, so I honestly do not get why more people don't do it. I even tried to tie a jello shot special in with it, like, free shot if you sing a song, but only a few people really picked up on it, so it just kind of went," she lifted a thumb and turned it upside down, "ppttthht. Fun while it lasted, though."

And now, of course, that meant she had to turn a somewhat crooked grin at Annie, eyes bright and eager. She'd have probably clasped her hands together hopefully in front of her if she wasn't holding a doughnut. "Although this totally means you have to stop in one of these weeks and do a few songs now."

"Sure," Annie agreed easily, nodding. Honestly, she probably would have gotten there eventually even without Summer's plea. "But only if I can get a jello shot. I...have actually never had one."

Also a tragedy.

"Okay," said Summer, once she was able to get after the sheer shock of it all, "you are definitely coming by Caritas and I am hooking you up with jello shots and you are going to tear up that stage. I almost feel bad, though, because if you're starting with my jello shots, like, so many other jello shots are just going to pale in comparrison. Fair warning. I don't mess around with my jello. It's kinda my thing, but at least you know you will be in super good hands."

"From what I understand from movies and stuff, I'm pretty late to the jello shot thing. Like, in my life," Annie noted lightly. "So I might as well start with the best, right?"

"And," she added, as though in confidence, "I'm a former pageant kid, so, like, tearing up stages is - okay, not gonna go so far as to say my thing, but a thing."

"Pageants?" asked Summer, brows lifting. "Seriously?"

Like she wouldn't have totally loved being a pagaent kid herself.

But after taking a moment to get another good look in at Annie? She could definitely see that.

"Now I am really expecting you to bring it," she warned Annie with an eager grin. "Only, like, not next week, it'll have to be the week after. Tomorrow starts the school trip, and I'm a teacher at the school, too, so I'll be chaperoning." Her grin softened a bit. "If you think this place is quiet now, just wait until next week almost everyone's gone.

"I assume," she added, after a pause, "I've actually only ever been on the school trip or not been here if I wasn't..."

"Pageants, seriously," Annie told her, smiling a little. "Not that I especially loved it," and in fact, she would really say the opposite, "but you're looking at Little Miss Hero 2006, right here. But I like singing, at least. And I can tap dance, but I'm probably not getting that drunk."

Not ever, no.

"And chaperoning sounds...fun?" she added, unable to not make that sound like a question. "Where are you guys going?"

Edited 2020-10-10 22:37 (UTC)

"Maybe we can work up to the tap dance," said Summer, who was definitely going to try to work up to the tap dancing now, Annie.

"And it actually is fun. This place doesn't skimp on trips. This year's a tour around all of Europe's finest amusement parks."

"That's a way better trip than anything I did in school," Annie sighed. "We went to Adventureland for senior year, but, like, that's just one park."

With, like, less than five roller coasters. Come on.

"What do you teach?" she asked curiously. Partly because she was just sort of generally fascinated by the school and its classes, and partly because Summer seemed kind of young to be a teacher already, no offense.

Well, she was easily the youngest faculty member at the moment, at least unless Liam picked up a class again...

"My old school before this one didn't even do school trips," she offered, helpfully. "And this semester, it's economics, but I've also done cooking classes and, like, classes on the multiverse experience? For lack of a better term, I guess. Oh, and one class on outdated dating advice, because the moose in the office thinks he's hilarious sometimes."

There was a pause.

"They have a very...open kind of curriculum here."

"No kidding," Annie noted dryly. "Man, I would have loved to go here as a kid. Like, all those classes sound so much more useful to my life than algebra has been. And honestly, I feel like I still could use a class on the multiverse thing, as it is."

She'd had the whole alternate-dimensions thing explained to her, a couple times, in simple terms. It was just...kind of a big idea to grasp.

"Maybe I could figure out one as a community centre class," Summer mused, her head tilting. "I've done one of those, too, about helping old farts and the technologically displaced figure out cell phones. The results were...mixed."

As were all of her multidimensional classes, too...

...and her cooking classes...

...pretty much most of what she did, really.

"I would totally take it," Annie decided. "Mixed results or not. People keep telling me I have to take portals to places in the multiverse, and it's like - okay, how do I do that and make sure all of me ends up where it's supposed to go?"

She was not-so-secretly worried about a foot ending up one dimension over, or something like that.

"Like, I took one to Brooklyn a couple weeks back, but I was super not in charge of setting it up - I just hopped through and ta-da." It could not possibly always be that easy.

Edited 2020-10-11 13:25 (UTC)

"And usually?" said Summer. "It's really not even that hard, if everything's good with Portalocity. Which not everything is, I have a friend who can't get home through them after even, like, four years or something, but we're working around that, I'm about to have my own portal gun so I can better circumnavigate some of that stuff, but if you're good with Portalocity? Stick with them. The guns tend to be a little unreliable and, like, for emergencies and when Portalocity is being a bitch.

"It can be kind of a crapshoot sometimes, though," she admitted, "but the odds are usually good."

"I know a guy who said he can't get home, either," Annie winced in sympathy. "He said it was an island thing more than a portal thing, though. Like the island just stops him from leaving, somehow." Maybe it was all connected?

"And - okay, cool. Portalocity," Annie repeated. "This sounds dumb even to me, but they...like, have an app or something, right?"

Again, it could not be that easy. And yet.

It wasn't for some people!

And then there was...

"Ohmygod," Summer gushed, already pulling out her phone to better show Annie, "the app is so great. It makes it, like, super easy, especially if you just want to make a quick jaunt somewhere or if you need to make a few stops. And don't even get ne started on how convenient that is when you've got to make a few stops from space. Dimension hopping from space is literally one of my favourite things in the entire multiverse."

"Is it more fun to...dimension hop in space?" Annie asked, completely clueless as she leaned over to peer at Summer's phone. "Or is it just that the alternative is like, way incredibly not fun?"

She had never been to space, so.

"The first one," Summer clarified. "Dimension hopping not from space is fun, too, but there's nothing quite like gunning a spaceship through the void to catch a perfectly timed portal and coming out the other side somewhere completely different.

"I could totally show you sometime!" she added, because she could never NOT ignore a chance to potentially show off her spaceship, dammit.

"You have a spaceship?" Annie was wide-eyed but honestly, was that any weirder than anything else she'd run into? (And Summer wasn't even the only spaceship-haver that Annie had met; she just didn't know it.) "I mean - sure! That would be so cool. I've never been to space."

You don't say, Annie.

"Where I'm from," she elaborated, "that's kind of - you know, mostly astronauts. And Supes who can breathe in space, I guess, but I think they still need clearance?"

"It's super rare for people to have their own spaceships where I'm from, too," Summer offered, a little consolingly, "although this is my second one. They've both been picked up way elsewhere. It's super cute, though, she's kind of my pride and joy, I helped put her together with the help of a friend from a real junker, and I totally know some really awesome places around a couple of galaxies, we'll totally have to make a thing out of it! Do you like spas?"

Annie seemed like a gal who could appreciate a good space spa.

"I love spas." Not that she'd done much more than get a mani/pedi from time to time, but yeah - Annie could totally appreciate a good spa, space or otherwise. "Like, get-your-nails-done-and-maybe-a-facial kind of spas, right? It doesn't mean something different in space?"

It seemed like the possibilities were pretty endless, so she felt like she should check.

"I mean," said Summer, "I'm sure it means something way different on a few planets and in a few galaxies, but the place I'm thinking about is definitely, like, get-your-nails-done-and-maybe-a-facial kind of a spa, but, like, amped up in one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been and their mud baths smell like strawberries. And their massueses have six hands, I am telling you, you have not lived until...!"

"Summer," Annie said seriously, though a smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth. "I think you legitimately might be the most welcoming person I've met here, and that bar is pretty high. Jello shots and a spaceship ride to a...spa planet or whatever? Like, girl, you're at the top of the helpful list, now."

"Awwww." Summer's hands folded on her chest, shoulders lifting a little with her beatific, glowing, flattered smile. "Thank you. I do try to do what I can! We'll totally figure something out once I get back from the trip. Maybe over the aforementioned jello shots."

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J, GoB - Saturday afternoon

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