The Junkyard, Wednesday

[canondisasterbi]

Well, it had been a few days now, and Michael and his trailer had not mysteriously ended up back in Roswell, so it looked like the portal that had brought them here might not recur any time soon. And he was not yet having any luck convincing the -- the freaking literal gnomes at the portal travel office in town to let him go back that way, either.

He'd gotten one return message from Isobel so far asking how drunk he was. Which . . . was fair. He sent her one back saying he wasn't nearly drunk enough yet, but if being here meant he could learn about portals and maybe figure out how to get them back to their home planet, then what the hell, might as well make the best of it, right?

"We're literally aliens, Iz," he hissed. "Portals and time travel aren't that much of a stretch!"

Well. If he was going to be stuck in this junkyard, he might as well make the best of it. He hung a sign on the gate and started setting about sorting some of this scrap out.

Cheap copper!
Assuming you can dig any out of this heap

Just wait until he found the chomp-y things.

[open!]

Comments

[somethingwithturquoise]

Summer had heard that people (okay, person) were just showing up at the junkyard, so, once she got her jello prepped and setting for her bar shift that evening, she figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to swing by the place to make sure that nothing weird had happened to her ship in the meantime.

And spotted Michael on the way in.

"Oh, hey," she said. "Are you the junkyard person?"

It could be a new junkyard person! Maybe there was going to be a whole thing about the junkyard coming up soon! Maybe it was just happenstance that he was in the junkyard! But she was probably about to find out!

[canondisasterbi]

"Some folks'd say it's my natural habitat, yeah," Michael said, tipping his hat up a little with a smirk. "Michael Guerin, how's it going?"

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Well, yee-haw," said Summer, who, having no hat to tip, just nodded her head a little with a smirk of her own. "Summer Smith, nice to meet you. I heard people," well, person, "were showing up at the junkyard, so I figured I better swing by and check on my ship, make sure nothing weird's happening to it, because you never can tell with this sort of thing."

[canondisasterbi]

"Dunno about 'people'," Michael said, not quite doing finger-quotes, but somehow managing to imply them anyway. "But yeah, I got dropped off here sometime on Saturday. One of these hunks of junk is a ship?"

He hadn't looked closely at the "hunks of junk" yet, no.

"Oh, hey, wait. Summer! You're the girl with the portal gun!"

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Hey, now--" said Summer, immediately about to protest that anyone would call her ship a hunk of junk (forget the fact that it literally had been scrap when she and Hera started putting it together), but was very easily deflected, her attention snagged and shifted.

"Yeah," she said, almost instantly squaring her shoulders with a proud little grin, "that's right. It's great when you don't want to deal with Portalocity bullshit, but it's not...perfect, so if you're trapped here, that might take some doing, but if you ever just need a quick jaunt somewhere or help moving a piano, it's great."

[canondisasterbi]

Michael nodded almost absently. "Yeah, I heard that too. But it can do time too? Not just space? So . . . theoretically it could maybe zap me back to Roswell in 2017?"

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Generally?" Summer admitted, her nose wrinkling with an apologetic expression. "I don't really fuck with time stuff, if I can help it? It starts to get way too complicated, and half the time, each dimension has its own weird idea of time passing anyway, that you could shoot for 2017, and wind up....wherever that dimension decided to be at that moment. Does that make sense? Like, different dimensions are moving at different speeds, you know, so let's say you left your dimension on...when did you say? Saturday? Okay, so Saturday. Bloop, you're in Fandom, it's Saturday. It was probably Saturday when you left, too, or maybe not, I don't know your life, but, for the purposes of this explanation, it was Saturday when you left. But if your dimension is moving at a different rate than this dimension, you could try to go back by next Saturday, but instead of only a week passing, you find out it's been a year, and it's actually 2018 instead. You know? So still close, but getting it exact can be a little trickier than just space."

[canondisasterbi]

Michael nodded slowly. "Gives a whole new meaning to the whole 'time is relative' cliche," he mused. "Good to know. Don't suppose you know how that gun of yours actually operates?"

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Not a clue!" Summer admitted cheerfully. "But my boyfriend does. He's the one who made it for me."

Good luck trying to find him, though!

Summer then tilted her head thoughtfully at Michael. "This some kind of professional interest, or more of just a 'I'm in a different time and place and would really like to figure out how and why' sort of deal?"

[canondisasterbi]

Michael wobbled his hand in the air. "Six of one, half-dozen of the other. I'd like to figure out how to get back home, but I am also very interested in the physics of moving through space and time like that."

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Oh," said Summer, emphatically, "I am sure Barry would love to talk your ear off about it if given half a chance. The real trick is being able to catch him. He's got a lab over in the warehouse district, but he's constantly in and out dealing with super genius brainiac stuff."

[canondisasterbi]

"There's a crap for that?" Michael asked. "Damn, I've been slacking."

Or, you know, super focused on trying to rebuild his family's downed spaceship out of scraps found out in the desert. One of those.

[alwaysonguard]

At some point later in the day, Dwight swung by the junkyard. There was a two-fold reason for the visit. One, he needed to get some scrap pieces for a project back at the shop. And two, he had something for Michael and figured now was as good a time as any.

"So... how cheap are we talking?" he asked with a smirk and nod back towards the sign.

[canondisasterbi]

"It's open to negotiation," Michael drawled easily. "Take a look around, see what you can find."

[alwaysonguard]

"I can work with that. Been needing some copper among other things" Dwight said nodding to the utility cart he had brought with him. "I'll load her up and we can haggle." Yeah, he was a bit of a regular here.

[canondisasterbi]

“Sounds good. Holler if you need a hand hauling anything out.”

He could always work a little subtle TK if necessary!

[alwaysonguard]

"Will do. But first got something for ya" Dwight said as he reached into the cart and pulled out a bottle of totally handwaved wine and held it out. "The offer for a round of drinks at the bar still stands. But figured a welcome to the island gift was also in order considering."

Ah the Fandom classic- sorry you are stuck here with us lot housewarming gift.

[canondisasterbi]

“Huh!” Michael took the wine only a little awkwardly. “That’s — I have never gotten a housewarming gift before. Or anything other than ‘oh it’s you, third bed from the left.’”

[somethingwithturquoise]

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," Summer said reassuringly. "He's a total try-hard over-acheiving workaholic. Anyone would look like a slacker next to him."

Said, of course, with nothing but the utmost adoration and maybe a little bit of fawning.

"But Roswell, huh?" she then asked, switching gears as smooth as anything. "So are you more in the 'oh, god, please don't ask about the aliens' camp, or the 'oh, god! please! Ask me about the aliens' side? Oooh! Or a rare, sincere," the sincere was important here, "'what are aliens?' type?"

He was interested in the logistical side of portals, so she doubted it was the last one, but hey! You never knew!

[alwaysonguard]

"Well first time for everything. Hopefully, the start to better things for you- here on the island and back home once you get there."

[canondisasterbi]

“‘Try-hard’, ‘over-achiever’, and ‘workaholic’ are all words that have never applied to me,” Michael said with a cheerful shrug. “I’m more of a ‘laid-back’, ‘under-achiever’, ‘wasted potential’ type.”

He tugged on his hat brim at the question. “Um, where does ‘I made out with a guy in front of the alien autopsy exhibit in high school but the tourists drive me crazy’ fall on that spectrum?”

[canondisasterbi]

“That would be an unexpectedly pleasant change of pace,” Michael said, and started working on cracking open that bottle.

Would Dwight be offended if he just shoved the cork in i stead of trying to find a corkscrew?

[somethingwithturquoise]

".....depends," said Summer, after a moment of thinking about it. "Was the exhibit a catalyst for the make-out sesh, or just coincidental?"

[alwaysonguard]

Dwight wasn't a big wine drinker himself, but that didn't mean he hadn't needed to open a bottle or two without a corkscrew himself over the years.

"Never know, the island has a way of surprising ya at times. I came here to get away from things back home. Hadn't really planned on sticking around, but... things worked out for the better and here I am still," he said with a grin.

[canondisasterbi]

Now there was a question. "Incidental. If he worked somewhere else, we probably would have made out there instead."