fandomtownies | Atlas Gym, Monday (2/8)

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Atlas Gym, Monday (2/8)

So apparently somebody, and Beau had no idea who, had a bunch of promotional protein shaker bottles they wanted to have distributed -- as she discovered when an apathetic looking delivery person showed up first thing in the morning to have her sign for them.

"Dude, I'm not fuckin' signing for something I don't know anything about," she objected, glaring at the guy.

"That's not my problem," he informed her in a bored tone.

Beau ended up making him let her rip open the little plastic pouch on the outside of the box to look at the invoice, just to find out what was in the box, before she finally (grudgingly) signed for it.

So now the front desk had a bunch of bottles lined up all around the edge, all of them advertising something called Acme, and a sign taped underneath them that said TAKE THESE OFF MY HANDS (this is not an endorsement). Also Beau, behind the desk at her computer, furiously researching what the hell this Acme company was.

Results were maddeningly inconclusive; you could tell by the way she occasionally made a frustrated noise, shut the laptop, and went over to beat the hell out of a punching bag for a little bit before she went back to her attempted sleuthing.

[OOC: It's my WFH week and I have even less of a concept of time than usual. Whoops.]

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Look, all Travis was looking for here was a good place to work out that wasn't the depressing fire station or the cold outdoors.

"Um," he said at the clear frustration going on here. "Hi. Do you guys do memberships or anything?"

"Sure," replied Beau, looking up from the computer. It took a moment for the scowl on her face to fade back to... about its normal degree, but she indicated the sign that --

Oh wait.

With a loud sigh, she picked the sign with the membership information on it out from behind the stupid bottles and held it up so he could see.

"Yeah, sorry about the mess today. I'm working on it."

"It's fine," Travis said, more reflex than anything else. "Hey, at least you're somewhere you can work out your frustrations easily?"

Beau snorted, but with clear amusement. "I know, right? It's kind of the perfect normal-people job for me."

As opposed to her weird-itinerant-adventurer-people job. You know.

"Anyway, those are your options there," she said, quickly running over the various membership levels and their respective amenities. "New around here, huh?"

"Coming up on two weeks," Travis confirmed. "I'm Travis Montgomery, your new local firefighter." He held up a hand. "Yes, you have a fire station. And yes, I'm aware that I'm likely to be...very bored here."

Beau's obnoxious-frat-boy laugh somehow managed to sound vaguely sympathetic.

"'sup. I'm Beau." She didn't hold a hand out or anything, but she did give him a nod of acknowledgment. "I was aware of the fire station. Not sure it's seen a whole lot of action outside of whenever they wake us or the dorms or whatever up at ass o'clock in the morning for a fire drill, though. Did Liam or one of the dudes at the Trooper Station warn you about that?"

Travis sighed. "Of course they didn't. How often do those happen?"

"I'm pretty sure someone thinks they should happen way more often than they do," Beau said, not sounding like she actually minded if they didn't. "So yeah, that's a thing that happens. I was more wondering if they warned you about the boredom, actually. I might not have been clear about that."

Most people would have said 'sorry,' but she still had trouble with that word sometimes.

Travis shrugged. "Then yeah, they did. And the people at the bar. And random people on the street. Kind of everyone I've spoken to in the last two weeks, actually."

Beau nodded. And made a little bit of a face.

"It's kind of freaky, right? How helpful everybody is? It's like... it's weird, man. Not bad? But pretty fucking unsettling."

Travis nodded slowly. "Yeah, that's not what I'd call 'unsettling' around here."

Magic pools, Beau.

Oh, pfft, magic.

"I think," Beau said after a moment, because she'd had to actively squash her impulse to be a smartass about it, "everybody here has a really different idea of what's unsettling, depending on where they're from."

And hers was people being nice more often than not, go figure.

She started arranging some of the shaker bottles into a sort of platform to put the membership info sign on, and asked, "So like, what is it that's fuckin' weird for you?"

"People spending a week and a half hinting about things being weird without going into detail," Travis said. "Looking all knowing or smug, but never actually explaining anything. And then inviting you to a party with a magic pool made of chalk."

"Yeah, that tracks," Beau noted. "Within the first week of me being here there was a whole day where everything was like a super buggy video game. I got chased by super angry chickens out of nowhere, among other things."

She grinned very briefly. "Sounds kind of like a friend of mine, she's got these magic paints that can make things real. I'm gonna guess magic isn't a thing where you're from?"

"Met one or two people who can make things look super real out of paint, but--no. Literal actual magic, if it's real, is not being used for surprise birthday parties." He frowned, shaking his head. "Or....glitchy, angry chickens."

"Yeah, that's Fandom for you," Beau said, rolling her eyes (but indulgently). "I gave up on trying to make it make sense after about two months here. As far as I can tell, this place doesn't make any sense by the standards of any world with magic, either."

She paused to rearrange some more of the bottles and then chuckled.

"My friend mostly uses her own magic to play pranks on people. Her god is like some kind of trickster, so I think it may literally be her sacred duty... but never mind that. To be totally honest, I'm not sure there's a way to get introduced to the level of completely fucking weird in this place that doesn't involve getting thrown into the deep end somehow."

Travis nodded a little. He could see where trying to tell him about the magic chalk pool wouldn't have done any good.

"....Could we rewind to the part about--multiple worlds?"

"Oh shit, nobody covered that with you?" Pardon Beau while she sounded mildly scandalized. "Didn't want to give the new guy too much culture shock or something, I guess, but that's kind of a key thing around here."

"O--kayyyyyyy. I'm definitely going to regret bringing this up, but key to what?"

"I am so not the best person to be explaining multiversal theory," Beau began, "I just wanna mention that, but like... most people here come from somewhere else, right? So maybe there's someone here from the same city or state or whatever that you are, but their version has magic, or people with superpowers, or... zombies, I don't know. Same basic location, totally different conditions. Or, like, some people -- like me -- are from totally different worlds where Earth isn't even a thing."

She paused. "I know. It's a lot. Like... a lot."

Yeah, Travis was just kind of gaping at her.

"I know, right?" Beau at least had the grace to sound slightly sympathetic. Honestly, she'd have been shocked if it had gone over well.

“So you’re....an alien?”

Beau snorted. "No, that's my girlfriend. Though I mean, technically, I kind of am? Not from Earth and all that shit. I'm human, though."

Despite the continued explosions in his brain, Travis brightened just a little at Beau mentioning a girlfriend. He just wouldn’t look to closely at the implication that said girlfriend wasn’t human.

“So...if you’re not from Earth, where are you from?”

"World's called Exandria," Beau told him. "We're a couple of centuries back from this place technology-wise, but it's not just humans there. There's like --" and she'd read enough genre books here to know how many tropes you could check off in Exandria -- "dwarves, orcs, gnomes, elves, all that shit people here thought was fantasy."

She paused.

"Sorry if I just liquefied whatever was left of your brain with that. You've got that shocked newbie look going on."

Travis took a deep breath and let it out as a resigned sigh.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’re messing with the new guy.”

Beau looked genuinely apologetic this time, if a little bit awkward about it.

"Yeah, sorry. Not gonna lie, I totally would have done something like this to fuck with someone before, but..." She was trying not to be so much of an asshole any more. "Legitimate heads-up this time. This place is weird enough when you already know what to expect."

"Suppose I should be glad," Travis said. "If it means I don't have to be running into fires all the time."

He was definitely going to miss running into fires all the time.

Yeah, Beau was wondering about that.

"Are you, like, cool with that, though? It's your job, and like... you're not gonna get a whole lot of opportunities to do it."

Travis tilted his head with the faintest of smiles. "It's the job that killed my husband, too," he said. "People not needing to be saved is a good thing."

He was going to keep telling himself that as much as possible.

Beau winced visibly. "Ah, fuck, man, I didn't mean to bring that up." Not that she'd known or anything, and she was still bad at sympathy so it sounded a little bit stilted, but she was trying here. "Sorry to hear it, though."

Travis shook his head. "You didn't know. And hey, if I'm honest....I'm probably going to miss doing it anyway. Just not the parts where people die."

"Is that why you came here?" Beau wondered. "Or was that for unrelated reasons?"

Travis snorted. "I came here because I was offered a promotion. Should have known that was too good to be true."

Beau grimaced. "Seriously? Was someone fucking with you?"

"Well, technically I did get promoted." Travis gave a long suffering look at the ceiling. "Raccoon stole my bars, though."

What did it say that Beau didn't even blink at that explanation?

"Yeah, you get used to saying that shit around here, but, uh, congratulations?" She really dragged that word out, and the way it pitched up sharply on the last couple of syllables more than adequately conveyed how dubious a compliment she thought it was.

"Wow, I really hope I don't," Tavis said.

"Good luck with that," Beau told him, a touch sarcastically but... actually kind of sincerely.

She figured if he stuck around long enough he'd get used to it anyway.

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Atlas Gym, Monday (2/8)

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