Trooper Station, ...Friday?

[firstofitskind]

Liam's first indication that something was wrong (you know, besides the ominous new island addition, and the gunshots, and the fact that Steve and Danny had gotten into a rickshaw chase, etc etc etc) was that the mice woke him up performing the exact same ritual as they had the day before.

Which was not, in his experience, something that had ever happened before. Sure, there had been plenty of multi-day rituals and celebrations, but there had always been differences between day one and day two, three, four... you get the picture. But this had been identical.

And then he'd gone outside and there was marshmallow snow.

"What day is it?" he demanded, upon coming in to the Station. Diego was, as far as he knew, still a cat, so he'd been more or less planning on coming in anyway, even before things had started to go all once-a-semester-y yesterday.

"Morning to you too, boss," Ralph replied sarcastically.

"What. Day. Is. It."

"Friday." The 'Duh' was left unspoken.

Sure enough, the newspaper, the computer calendar, his Global... they all claimed it was Friday. What the hell was going on?

Comments

[defenderofdesmoines]

So, after hanging at the Perk for awhile and learning that 'time loop' was totally the applicable term here, Annie figured that the best course of action was going to be seeing whether they had any answers down at the trooper station.

And when she saw Liam, she paused, a whole spectrum of thoughts clearly crossing her face -- confusion, something like pity, hesitation -- for a moment. "Hey, Liam," she said carefully. "What are you doing in today?"

She still didn't really know what would happen if she had to alert someone to them being in a time loop, but it sort of felt like a sleepwalking thing? Like, maybe you shouldn't wake those people up? It was her first time loop, okay.

[firstofitskind]

“Well,” Liam said, “Originally, I was coming in because I hadn’t heard anything about Diego no longer being a cat, and I wanted to make sure his shift was covered. But apparently, it’s not Saturday today after all.”

“It’s Friday!!” chorused the Troopers, clearly visibly annoyed at having to have this argument again.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Oh, thank God," Annie sighed, clearly relieved. "No, it's Friday, but I'm so glad you know it's supposed to be Saturday so I don't have to, like, explain that or argue about it or whatever. Do you know what's going on?"

A pause, and, almost an afterthought: "And yeah, Diego's still a cat."

And Annie hadn't really voiced this to anyone since she'd shifted into Hero Mode upon realizing something was wrong, but: she really, really missed him, especially now that weird shit was happening.

[firstofitskind]

"We've got visitors," Liam said. "With guns. Steve and Danny went to check it out yesterday, but I haven't gotten their full report yet." Because Steve had ended up a little bit dead. But it was fine, because he got better.

He frowned.

"Shit. If they think it's Friday, I won't get that report." Because it won't have happened for them and all.

For some reason, he just naturally assumed that they'd both be either affected or unaffected by what was going on.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"If they think it's Friday," Annie said, nodding. "But they might not? I haven't figured out, like, whether there's a common denominator between the people who know they're in a loop or not." Though yeah, Annie was also totally also assuming that whatever happened to Danny and Steve would be a shared experience. "But -- wait, is that gunfire I've been hearing? There's people with guns causing this? That's...weird. Like almost kind of, like, mundane."

Look, 'time loops' felt like the kind of thing where, like, if you could cause them, you could probably do magic or bend space or something. Weird that whoever this was still needed guns!

[firstofitskind]

Liam nodded. "Actual gunfire. Not even energy weapons. Definitely weird, I agree."

[grenadesandohana]

"There is some weird shit going on," Steve said, stomping into the station.

[firstofitskind]

"Yeah, no kidding," Liam agreed. "I'm blaming our new little piece of real estate." Because nothing good could come of a chunk of land just suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Particularly one as ominous-looking as that. "You and Danny find out anything useful yesterday?" Which was absolutely Friday and not Thursday, thank you.

[grenadesandohana]

"We found two people shooting at each other on the top of the buildings," Steve said. "One male, one female. I didn't catch any names before I, um, got shot and fell of the building."

But he was fine today!

[firstofitskind]

"You got what?" Liam demanded.

Steve, you did not look like someone who had gotten shot and fallen off a building.

Though- if time had, apparently, reset itself, then that actually made a certain amount of sense.

"Well. I guess time loops are good for something."

[grenadesandohana]

"I will definitely not being going out without armor today."

He could be taught!

[hatesparadise]

"What the hell is this about you getting shot?" Danny demanded. Because he would have freakin' remembered that.

[grenadesandohana]

"But I'm good now!" Steve said. "And I will definitely put on my armor before we head out to investigate what's going on."

So he didn't die again. Because embarrassing.

[hatesparadise]

"...what." Steve, explain all your strange behavior on this perfectly normal Friday.

[grenadesandohana]

"What what?" Steve hedged.

[hatesparadise]

It was a pretty normal Friday, Liam. Well, normal for here at least. Even if radio had been a little weird.

Okay, very weird.

But Danny was there, assuming, hoping really, that it was just this place messing with them again.

[firstofitskind]

Was it though? Fridays... or "Fridays", either way... weren't Danny's usual day at the station, and yet here he was.

"Morning," he greeted. "Bit of a rough day yesterday, huh?"

[hatesparadise]

...it was definitely a Friday. And, okay, he might have followed a strange acting Steve into the office. But it was still Friday.

"With the whole... Carol of the Bells thing?" You know. Thursday being yesterday and all.

[firstofitskind]

"No," Liam pinched the bridge of his nose. "That was the day before yesterday. Yesterday was 'ominous-looking chunk of real estate appears out of nowhere' and 'gunshots all over the island'." And Steve being shot! Apparently!

[hatesparadise]

"I'm sorry the what?" Because, uh, no. Yesterday was definitely dumb Christmas music everywhere.

[firstofitskind]

And oh look, here were two Troopers, escorting a clearly distraught young woman into the Station, past Liam and anyone else who happened to be there at the moment, and into one of the cells.

[firstofitskind]

"What the hell?" Liam frowned. He'd never met the young woman in question, but he'd seen her around town. This wasn't one of the newcomers, this was a Fandom resident.

"What's going on?" he demanded of the Troopers.

"This woman just burned down the fire station," one of them replied, tone of voice betraying no opinion one way or the other regarding the irony of that particular building being the one to burn.

[flamesburned]

Liz barely registered anything that was happening, this was not her first arrest … in fact she had been arrested four months ago in pretty much similar circumstances.

She never thought she’d be arrested in Fandom.

She sat numbly in her cell, rocking back and forth slightly, blinking back a fresh wave of tears that had started to form.

[firstofitskind]

The Troopers had not been very forthcoming with details, so Liam supposed it was up to him to figure out what the hell was going on.

"It's Liz, isn't it?" He asked. Yeah, he had seen her file. But something about the way she was acting... he'd met criminals, met killers, before. Nothing about her screamed someone who hurt people on purpose.

[flamesburned]

Liz somehow managed to force herself to nod, and not break down into tears.

“It’s Liz,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper and shivered, she wrapped her arms around her and hugged herself tightly to try and stop shivering.