Fandom High Hallways, Saturday early evening [and also 1995]

[heroic_jawline]

There were two men - if you wanted to call them that - sitting in this empty room. One wore a funny hat and a matching costume; the other, a Christmas sweater with the Mont St. Michel skyline on it, beleaguered by red-nosed reindeer, and a dark green tweet jacket. It made him look like a faintly out-of-touch schoolteacher, trying to be cool at a school rager.

Of course, none of Fandom's finest would be able to tell just yet. After all, they were out in the hallway.

	Huzzah, your gambit has worked! In a flash of thematically appropriate light, you have reappeared back in time…not far from where you started. The school hallway looks almost-- but not quite-- like the one in 2022, bar the old paint job, the lightly faded New Kids on the Block poster hanging on the wall, and the faint whiff of hasn’t-been-destroyed-by-aliens-yet. There are rows and rows of doors to classrooms before you. One of the doors is cracked open.
	Steve was pretty sure Tony had made up how big the legs of jeans had been in 1995, and the shell necklace...thing...was extremely silly, but if it meant he could pass through the hallways unnoticed, he was okay with it. "Right," he said, pointing to the open door. "Do we think it's gonna be this easy?"
	Given the state of the galaxy, many of Ahsoka's lessons had been as much about learning to blend as the Force, so Chelli had looked over her options and decided that "grunge" look had been the most practical, and accordingly was wearing combat boots, faded, ripped jeans, a plaid flannel shirt tied around her waist to help hide her lightsaber... and a bright neon HypercolorTM tank top. Look, she'd tried. "Well, not now you'd said that," she replied dryly. "But the Force is with us."
	"Well, we had to travel through time for it, so... no?" Jane ventured, very definitely rocking grunge chic. Over the armor. It was A Look.
	A great look if you asked Chelli, since she was dedicated the lost ideals of the Jedi (more or less) and restoring freedom to the galaxy, not blind.
	"Of course it won't be easy," Gradyn, dressed in a look last seen on Jonathan Taylor Thomas, scoffed. "But we cannot fail." And obviously they would not, with him on their side.
	Yeeeeah. Which was why Jane was side-eyeing him with a worried little expression. On the plus side; at least he wouldn't pass out during this?
	Michael, wearing basically what he did every day but with somewhat baggier jeans — what? The western look was timeless — shrugged. “Nothing for it but to check; right?” He sauntered over to the door.
	Steve held up a finger as footsteps came racing down the hallway and past them as Bailey Salinger sped towards the dorms. He didn't even glance at them, which clearly meant their outfits were normal. Or something was invading. One of those. "Okay, now open the door."
	"Okay, I'm ready," Jane said, hefting Mjolnir for a better grip in case a fight broke out. And she could smash some stuff. Please let her smash some stuff, guys. Please?
	Michael had frozen in place in a not at all suspicious manner as pretty boy ran by. At Steve’s signal; he nodded. “Roger that.” (Pun not at all intended.) He crept up to the door sideways and peered in.
	Almost all the tables and chairs in this classroom have been cleaned up and stacked up in the edges of the room. Near the window, though, sit these two men-like creatures. The Toymaker is looking at the door. His apparent friend... is not.
	"I've got a hammer for you!" Jane said, totally looking very threatening and tough before making a face at the slogan. Because no. No, it wasn't working.
	Gradyn sighed at the amateurishness on display and drew his sword. Because surely violence was the answer, right? "We're here to put things right," he explained.
	“And apparently not being sneaky about it,” Michael said with a sigh and a shrug. He had no weapon to brandish. His weapon was his brain.
	"Hi," Steve added with a wave to the two men-like creatures. They would've needed different people for sneaky to work, really. It was a bonus Steve wasn't dressed like a giant flag this time.
	Chelli kept her hand near her lightsaber but didn't draw it yet. "We'd just like to talk," she said. Not that you needed the Force to tell that wouldn't work, but you had to at least try.
	"Ah, I see our guests have arrived," said the Toymaker, unbothered by the various weapons on display. "I didn't expect them to take this long." He looked up, past the other figure. "Hello," he said. The other man-like creature reached into one of his pockets. ""Well, long, short, everything's relative."
	“Yeah, yeah, blah blah villain monologue,” Michael said. “We don’t care. Just stop screwing with time.”
	"What he said," Jane added, hefting Mjolnir as it crackled with lightning. "It...really just raises more questions about the logic of time travel."
	"And our lives are complicated enough without having to keep re-fighting dead enemies," Steve said, crossing his arms over his '90s smedium henley and giving his very best Disappointed in You look.
	"Besides," Chelli said, making a small, subtle gesture with her hand. "You want to listen to us. You don't actually think this is a good idea." When in doubt try the old mind trick.
	"Honestly, it's one of the worst plans I've ever heard," Gradyn, a helper, said helpfully. "I'm not really sure what you meant to accomplish with it."
	"How dare you. I am a God--" began the Toymaker, but he was swiftly interrupted by his companion. The man-shaped creature gestured at him with one hand as he rose to his feet, and produced... something... from his jacket."There's this old friend of mine who has a habit of popping up at signs of trouble," he said. "She-- or he, I suppose-- liked this place." He half-turned, considering his audience with a dry look. "But none of you look clever enough to be her. Pity. So much future effort, wasted. Or not anymore, I suppose." The Toymaker looked... alarmed. "This isn't what we agreed upon--" "Oh, do shut up, the idiots and I are talking," said the Master, raising the object in his hand and clicking. The Toymaker disappeared. Or... no. There was a little figurine, sitting exactly where he'd sat.
	"You turned him into an action figure?" Steve asked. Steve had been an action figure with a drawer full of removable hands once. It had been creepy as hell.
	Gradyn was a little busy internally dealing with Pride, which was quite insulted by the suggestion that they didn't look clever. Sins were ridiculous. But he did think to ask, "Do we need to turn him back?" He was much less trouble this way, although they still had the other asshole to deal with.
	Yeah, no. Jane was going to take that as a go ahead to go at this bad guy with her hammer. "Figure it out later," she shouted, trying to bring Mjolnir down on him. Would it work? Ehhhh.
	It might distract the guy long enough for Michael’s gambit, flicking the clicker thing out of the guy’s hand with his telekinesis, to work? Maybe? Ooo, he’d been called worse than “idiot” in his time but disarming this guy seemed like the most pressing issue to him.
	Meanwhile, Chelli went for the bigger target, flinging her hand out and shoving at the guy with the Force.
	All of which had the incredible result of shoving the Master out of the way of the hammer without him having to do anything. Oh, his weapon clattered down to the floor - thanks, Michael - but as the Master peeled himself away from the wall, he let out a sigh and a clack of his tongue. "Really?" he said. "Really." He shook his head. "I'd been saving this one for a more whimsical occasion, but if that's how you're going to be..." He snapped his fingers. A series of metal drones decloaked from the ceiling. They pulled free, one homing in on each assailant. And... their wings opened to reveal large black speakers... The Master clapped his hands. And they attacked with the mighty roar of: "If it hadn't been for Cotton-Eye Joe I'd been married long time ago Where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?!"
	"Ahsoka never mentioned clankers doing that," Chelli remarked dryly as she ignited her lightsaber and leaped towards the nearest drone, slashing at its wing.
	"It's catchy, though," Steve said, missing his shield right now. The handy desk chair would have to do as he hoisted it effortlessly over his head and threw it at the drone heading for him. "Who else needs help?"
	Yes, encourage that teamwork, Steve. They needed it. "Are you being serious about the music?" Jane asked, tossing Mjolnir through a drone to silence the ballad of Joseph. "Is he being serious?"
	"I don't get it," Michael said, idly TKing his droid into a wall. "Is this song an old people thing?" Sorry folks, he hatched from his pod two years after the year they'd traveled to. Maybe they could 'okay boomer' this guy into submission!
	"It's tacky," Gradyn complained. Good thing he already had his sword out to stab this droid with! There might have been some sparks. "Couldn't we at least get some Mariah Carey?" Totally a normal amount of remembering the '90s for a teenager here, truly.
	Were they complaining about the music? The Master hardly noticed. He was doing an odd little jig, rolling his shoulders, bringing one knee up, then the other, to touch them each time. He dropped his shoulders back and really waved his arms all around. One drone lost a wing and did a weird little pirouette downwards firing... skeets...? at Aphra. One drone was struck by a desk chair and flipped over flying backwards at the superhero who had thrown it. One drone lost its entire middle section to a flying hammer, but its wings didn't lose momentum on their trajectory towards the sort-of-Asgardian. One drone bounced off the wall, hit the floor, and shot across it, straight at the alien's feet. One drone sparked and kept sparking and sparked-- so hard it sent a rain of hot led flying at a prideful thing. And the Master kept dancing.
	Michael skipped back away from the skidding drone, in a manner a little bit too much like the asshole's little jig for his own liking. "Um!" he said, looking towards the armored lady with the hammer. "We maybe need a new plan. Or like. Any plan at all!"
	"I'm open to suggestions!" Steve said, snagging his drone out of the air and throwing it--hard at parts of Jane's. "Just don't take your eyes off of the jigging fella, either. That's always when they run away."
	"He better not," Jane said, recalling the hammer back to her hand. "Can you guys maybe stop him with the--" Waving your hand like a Jedi mind trick explained very little, Jane "--so we can hit him?"
	Slicing through the skeets with a broad sweep of her lightsaber, Chelli threw out her free hand, attempting to grab the Master with the Force. More specifically his legs. "Little help," she called out to Michael.
	“Gotcha,” Michael said, frowning and holding up his hand because tv loves a visual language. He was quite powerful, though not the most focused, so it’d be a little like a giant invisible fist closing around the asshole’s upper half.
	"Has anyone here heard of talking?" the Master yelled, as his back hit the ground due to the rather,ah, unexpected interruption of a very nice jig. He helpfully grabbed for his weapon as soon as he found himself on the floor.
	Oh, you were getting the most judgemental look Chelli was capable of for that little comment, and she could be pretty judgey. "No one here's stopping you," she said, doing her best to keep her Force grip on his legs.
	"We can talk once you fix whatever you did here," Jane suggested, tossing Mjolnir past the weapon doo-hicky and recalling it to move it back toward the group without hopefully smashing it.
	"And we tried talking," Steve said, frowning as he squared off against remaining drones. "You turned your partner into a toy, which isn't friendly."
	"He literally just spent the past four days here torturing teenagers with puppets," the Master sighed. "Besides, he's a God. He'll be fine." He tried to wriggle a little as two damaged droids swept at Steve and whoever happened to be standing closest. "And I haven't done anything yet."
	"Funny thing about time... yes you have," Jane replied.
	“Also, drone things,” Michael said, shrugging. “Kinda gave the impression you didn’t want to talk.”
	Speaking of the drone things, one of them was moving toward Gradyn as best it could, so he was just going to stab it and give a pointed, disappointed look to the Master. "You want to talk, talk," he said. Gotta love a good villain monologue. "Or do you need to do a silly little dance first?" Maybe it was the way of his people.
	The Master looked up at Michael and just stared for a minute. For effect, mostly. "You threw a hammer at me," he pointed out. "And as lovely as this has been, really, my entire plan sort of hinged on someone else to come to your rescue. Since that hasn't happened..." He raised his hand with the weapon in it-- and zapped the Toymaker miniature. It turned back into a tall, confused-and-enraged man. "HOW DARE YOU--"
	"I definitely didn't," Michael felt the need to point out. He was being glared at, here!
	"That was me!" Jane added helpfully.
	"And not to be blame-gamey," Steve said, "but you started it by showing up in the first place." He nodded at the not-a-toy-again man. God? "Welcome back. Don't reincarnate people and send them to the island again."
	"Silence," said the God, irritably. "I will leave you be for now because you have convinced this traitor to return me to my form." He stood up. "He will not bother you again. We will have words." And with a wave of his hand... ... they were both gone.
	"Did we... did we win?"
	Michael mentally unclenched and rubbed the back of his neck. "Seems a little . . . easy. But I guess?"
	Why would you say that, Michael?! ... because this was definitely when the ceiling started to rumble. A few chunks of... was that metal? ...broke off and hit the ground right next to Jane.
	"...You know what? That's my bad." He threw up a mental shield to help keep those metal chunks from hitting anybody. "Exit please!"
	"Strategic retreat time," Steve agreed. "Let's go back and see if everything's back to what passes as normal." Hopefully the Wham song had stopped playing, too.
	Jane patted Michael on the arm to let him know she'd only jumped a little bit at the falling bit of building. Look at all that team work they kind of managed!
	"And we won't have to see these fashions again," Chelli remarked, blissfully unaware of the nostalgia cycle.

[OOC: Time is a weird soup, especially in a time travel plot and also around the holidays. Please continue playing in the afternoon before the finale. I just have Holiday Shit To Do in RL!]