Schrödinger: I'm not entirely sure how this chapter will turn out.
Remember the chapter that talked about the September 10 server? Yeahhh... Magnus' birthday is in NOVEMBER. To be honest, I was thinking of Joe Perry from Aerosmith at the time, but that's got nothing to do with what that was actually supposed to mean. I wanted to put 'Arnold Palmer', seeing as I love the combination of lemonade and iced tea, but I thought that'd be a little too obvious. Still, I was REALLY thinking about this Gaia website. If you've been there, you'd totally get it. In fact, that's kinda why Bob even exists. Sushi Server error, Cheese Server error...oh LORD, the laughs I had. Just search 'sushi server gaia', and I think you'll get the idea.
Anyway, here goes nothing...
"When I first met you I thought you were gay."
"Why? 'Cos I'm English?"
"Uh-uh. Because you seemed to know so many people who were dead."
"... That's not funny."
"No. It's not, is it?"
Guenevere and Hob, in SANDMAN #73, epilogue to "The Wake"
\\But there's no sense crying over every mistake,
You just keep on trying 'till you run out of cake...\\
"I'm supposed to kill you."
Those words shook Sportacus to his very core. He took a step back, mouth opening and closing like a dying fish. When he finally managed to regain his composure, he could only repeat the statement in a question- "You're supposed to kill me?"
"Technically, I was just told to take the crystal. But that would kill you. Seeing as I have strong morals, I refuse to. But- if I don't, then I get killed. And you still get killed, probably." Robbie counted the possibilities on his fingers, "So...I would suggest you leave, unless you have a death wish. And want me dead as well."
Sportacus clenched his hands into fists at his sides, staring at Robbie's shoes as if he intended to melt them with his very eyes. "You're lying. Nobody would want this thing. It's just a piece of Icelandic Spar. A sunstone. It's practically worthless, except for monetary value."
"You're an idiot." Robbie lamented, looking to the ceiling for comfort, "Do you really think you'd be alive without that stone? Do you even remember your dreams? How do you know you're not just half a person without it?"
A look of surprise. "You mean I'm supposed to be able to remember them?" the Sports Elf looked up at him with a small bit of fear growing in the pit of his stomach. This was all too confusing.
The lithe man kneaded a particularly tense part of his head. He had forgotten himself in the drama, and if the elf had too much info, he'd be in worse trouble than he was now. "Look, never mind. I told you, Sportakook, to forget all this stuff! And you still pester me! Go on, get out! This isn't a dorm room- scat!" He demanded, trying to shove him back up the pipe by shoving on the man's over-muscular ass. It was quite a hilarious sight to behold.
Sportacus found himself wandering back to the airship alone and confused and scared and lonely, feelings he had never had to confront before. All the ingredients for a good old-fashioned case of paranoia.
The airship was eerily cool and dry, like a night in the desert without water, stale air unmoving in the confined craft. It didn't bode well on his frayed nerves, and he begged that perhaps something simple, like exercise, would take his mind off things.
"Computer, start training program!" He spoke, a little too sternly. No reply.
"Computer..." He tried again, only to be cut off by the computer, which was acting oddly. It spoke differently, and its speech was less like Majel Roddenberry Barrett, and more like...he didn't know.
"The Enrichment Center is committed to the well-being of all participants. Cake and Grief Counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test. Thank you for helping us help you help us all."
Sportacus backed into a corner, scared out of his wits. His first thought was to check the airship's brain. He was almost compelled to throw up when he found a rather large knife lodged in it, one with a decoration of an odd cube with a heart in the middle on the handle. "Oh God. Who- What...I'm gonna die, aren't I?"
"Well, that wouldn't be fair, now would it?" A foreign voice spoke, one youthful, foreign, and sounding like knives cutting through air. Despite the cheeriness of the voice and its strange familiarity, it sent shivers up his spine. He turned to meet slightly darker melancholy pools of blue, ones that matched the colors of a stormy, cloudy sky right before the rain fell in great droplets and lightning bolts hurdled towards the ground.
"Hiiii~..." the owner of the eyes and the voice waved, vaguely reminiscent of a younger version of him, only gone horribly wrong. "I gave your computer a bit of a...'facelift'. You see, she was very angry with me."
Sportacus only stared at the young man, wondering if he was going insane. "Are you real? I'm not seeing things, am I?"
The man tilted his head, the scarf he was wearing shifting in a nonexistent breeze. "Well, that all depends if ghosts exist. If ghosts don't exist, then you've gone insane, and should probably get help immediately. If they do, then you'd need to be able to see them..."
"STOP BABBLING AND JUST ANSWER!"
His head shifted to the side. "Forceful...I like it. I'm dead. So...I wasn't just created by your mind out of pure delusion, no. But it was so BORING in that stuffy room of a crossroads that I decided I'd visit. Not that I REALLY know you or anything, was just floating by, and found myself here. Speaking of that, I don't really know your name."
Sportacus circled the being, only now noticing that it was hovering. And that most everything from the waist down was vaguely transparent. The scarf was the most solid thing about him. "I'm Sportacus. And in my opinion, you don't look like a very good copy of me." He gave a small, uneasy smile at the ghost, hands clasped nervously behind his back.
"That's not a name, you ass! Even I've got the sense to know that we're not clones! My, you are really stupider than you look on TV."
The Sports Elf only narrowed his eyes in warning. "'ON TV?' What does that mean!? If you're so special, then what's your name?"
"Don't have one. I was the reject baby. Dad left when mom was pregnant. Mom left me in the woods. So when they found me, I had no name at all. They tried to give me all sorts of stupid names, but I was never properly given a name I deserved. Some genius tried to name me Lysander. He didn't last too long..."
A threatening, impatient stare told him to make it short.
"FINE, have it your way then! I go by the nickname Sharpie. You HAPPY now?" The boy sat on the floor, sulking. He pulled the scarf up over his nose and mouth.
"None of that was true, was it..." Sportacus stated, looking down at the boy with mixed feelings.
Sharpie looked up at him once more, quite the picture of rage, automatically drawing one of his many knives and gripping the hilt tightly for comfort. "WHY THE FUCK WOULD I LIE, YOU MORON?!"
Well, NOW Sportacus felt like crap. "How could someone's life be so terrible?" He implored, his demeanor changing.
"Perhaps it started when I was born. Some people are just born at the wrong place at the wrong time, you know?"
Sportacus froze. "Wait, when is your birthday? Mine's November 10."
"See, we're not the same at all. I was born the day of the Gunpowder Treason." He waved a hand around proudly, humming a tune in his head.
"What is a Gunpowder Treason?"
Sharpie sighed, his hand freezing mid-motion. "You don't remember the poem? 'Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I see for no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.' You don't remember that?"
"Oh." He lied, nodding. He had no clue what the kid was talking about, but at least he actually knew what day it was now. "So...you like knives?"
"The only decent family I ever had taught me all I know about knives. They actually did call me Sharpie. I think they liked it because it sounded like the word sharp. I just picked the name from the marker brand. I love those things. Usually I paint my nails with them, see?" he showed Sportacus his decorated nails.
"Can you be invisible?" The sports elf asked, quite off-topic.
"I-I think so, why?" Sharpie looked at him oddly.
"Good. If I tell you where you can go watch a horror movie, will you go away and leave me alone?"
Sharpie burst out laughing. "You sounded just like Robbie. I already know the kids are watching a horror movie. I just came to make sure that you stopped harassing the poor guy because he's lazy."
"Harassing?" Sportacus jumped up, "He's been harassing me! He said that he was sent to this town to kill me, and that's why I should leave!"
The boy's eyes went wide. "BOB- where are you, Bob? I think we landed in the wrong dimension!"
A young teen in tight purple jeans, winged grey hightops, and a T-shirt that said EMO on it soon appeared, carrying a book. "Did you know that guy's a librarian? Apparently he doesn't even belong in this franchise! I probably should have been him, but he wound up here instead. Look at this book, Sharpie. He said some girl he knows wrote a bunch of stories about us...CHILDRENS BOOKS, no doubt, then turned it into an adult series- HOLY CRAP."
Sharpie looked from Bob's shocked face to the elf he had been talking to for a good twenty minutes. "Oh. Don't mind him, he's weird. He thinks his name is Sportacus."
"My God, he's even got a stripper name! Where did they dig up this- this Chippendales dancer- for a kid's show? At least he's not as bad as the drag queen freak with the high-waisted male cameltoe I was talking to earlier, but COME ON! HOW OLD is this guy, and he's running around in a damned overglorified UNITARD and VEST! And I actually thought I was gay. I THOUGHT I WAS AS GAY AS ANYONE COULD POSSIBLY GET. But seeing these people up close puts the icing on the ca-"
Eventually, Bob got on Sportacus's last nerve, and ended up getting punched halfway across the room. Not a good idea when someone else in the room has a bunch of knives, and bloody KNOWS how to use them. Sportacus wound up with a dagger dangerously close to slitting his throat, threatening to confine him to a similar fate. Sharpie only sighed through his nose, holstering the knife and attending to poor Bob, who now had a bloody nose.
"What's with you two, anyway?"
They both looked at the sports elf like deer caught in headlights. Then they looked at each other, waiting for some hint from the other as to what they were. The longer both waited, the sadder they became.
"ANY TIME NOW..."
"GAY." Bob finally blurted out, turning to the elf, shocked out of his reverie. Sharpie perked up, kinda panicking. "D-DON'T BE SO STRAIGHTFORWARD!"
"I'll get you cake if you both leave IMMEDIATELY!" Sportacus burst out, pointing at Bob, flustered. What was the world coming to?
Sharpie perked up immediately, looking in the elf's direction. "CAAAAKE~! YAY~!" He rejoiced with strangling Bob with much needed hugs, the boy with the dark hair and blood caked on his lip strangely less enthusiastic. "You're trying to bribe and/or medicate us with food. Great. Still, free food...score!"
Sportacus raised an eyebrow. "You don't have diabetes, either, Sharpie?"
Sharpie chuckled. "Goodness, no! I love sweets! No, I just have HIV. Now, where's my cake?"
Sportacus handed him enough money to buy a refrigerated cake at the grocery store. "HERE. Send Bob. He looks less suspicious."
As the ghosts ran off with the money that quite possibly came from nowhere, as Sportacus lived in an airship and didn't have a normal human job...
Sportacus collapsed to the floor, putting a hand to his head. He had a really bad headache. One that would possibly never go away. He had much to do, which included fixing the ship, correcting the course it had swerved into, making sure everything was programmed correctly and that nothing was permanently damaged- including his sanity- and check on the kids. Too much for one day.
-Groceries!-
Pala found herself shopping, as she had been doing most of the cooking since moving in with Corinne. Corinne was, of course, in the makeup aisle looking for the next great shade of lip gloss. Pala couldn't decide if she was going to get a strawberry shortcake for herself or not, as she never could finish a full cake. She soon noticed a pale pair of hands reaching for a very, VERY chocolate angel-food cake, white only on the fluffy cake inside, which was separated by layer upon decadent layer of chocolate icings, and finally topped with chocolate-covered strawberries, with a really big plop of chocolate icing holding the center one in place. She followed the hands, to see a boy almost her age, with dark brown hair and gray eyes. She recognized him immediately.
"Bob, what's a small-timer like you doing here? And with such a pretty cake that should belong to the likes of me?"
Bob shuddered. "Uh, hey Paul. Your- uh- You- um- blast it all. Boobs."
"Thank you for noticing, but I'm not Paul, silly. I just like him so much that I stole his name and his slang!" She poked him on the nose.
"Oh. So you finally blossomed, then, Mary? Not like I care, for obvious reasons- or is this the part where I'm supposed to shout out FABULOUS in a loud and obnoxious manner, and then drag you kicking and screaming to the hair salon?" He questioned, walking with her to the checkout. She giggled.
"Those things don't make you gay, Robert Crowley. I still wonder to this day why the crossroads dumped you in our hospital when you never were there when you were alive." She spoke a bit cryptically, hoping he would get it.
"Yeah, I still didn't get the dimension-hopping thing. I guess because you were here...?" he smiled, paying the man for his cake.
Pala nodded. "That's probably it. See you later." she waved as Bob left, carrying the cake to the figure in the shadows.
Was it just his imagination, or was it getting dark?
Was that- the moon?
Where did the sun go?
Shit, Sharpie was being cornered by a police officer.
-Wait, now Sharpie was hugging the police officer.
HOLY BALLS- The police officer was L from Death Note.
"Bob, get over here! It's totally the great L-sama! Look!"
The policeman looked pissed. "MY NAME IS LOLLI LOGGA, NOT- Is that cake?"
Bob grinned wickedly. "Oh, but your name is Lolli. We were looking for someone who's usually called L, or perhaps Ryuzaki..."
"Fine. My name is L for the purposes of getting some of that cake. If I don't, I can see that your friend goes to prison. I do not appreciate people hugging me."
"Oh, good enough." Sharpie sighed, cutting the cake into thirds. "You only get one third of the cake, though. The rest is ours."
"Perhaps we shouldn't be outside with the cake. It is rather messy eating a cake outside." he suggested, leading them to his house, a nearby apartment that was rather small. Immediately, the policeman took off his cap, to reveal that it either was L, or someone who looked exactly like him. Same slouch, but at least he wore shoes and had the dignity to dress properly. Most of the furniture consisted of old antiques and paintings of monsters named Baku, some sort of cross between an elephant and tiger that ate dreams. Lolli immediately busied himself with finding plates and making tea. When he finally finished, the cake was cut, and he finally sat down on the chair opposite the two boys, looking at them very intently.
When he finally spoke, they were both shocked.
"I want to know why you two came here. You're damaging the containment field. How many else made it through the barrier, into this private dreaming skerry between dreaming and waking?"
Oh shoot. It wasn't L, it was Morpheus. Or maybe it was L. Or maybe it was both. But still, Morpheus. Still Alive.
And probably going to destroy them both.
\\...And the Science gets done, and you make a neat gun,
For the people who are still alive...\\
Song: 'Still Alive' by Jonathan Coulton.
AUTHOR NOTES:
CAAAAAAAAKE.
I know what you're thinking. I just wanted to write an entire chapter about cake. You'd be right about that. Portal cake. It actually kinda looks like the cake I described, too. Only, with little white icing things or something. The cake is not a lie.
Cake.
Anyway, Sharpie loves cake. Dunno why.
No, Bob did not give him HIV. Either he got someone else's blood in one of his cuts or- well, his childhood was crappy, ok? Bound to happen eventually in that kinda life. Okay, so I just pulled his character from The Night Listener. Sue me.
Ok, please don't sue me.
Morpheus. L.
LOOK IT UP. IT EXISTS AND THERE IS PROOF.
Boobs.
I MEAN CAKE.
Oh, and BONUS: Chapter's not done. Read below for the rest. Just a small bit, but kinda an Easter egg for those who read my author notes.
While the two other-worlders panicked, Lolli helped himself to their cake as well. Cake was good. Especially this cake. The two ghost boys had good taste in cake. He pushed the fork down into the cake with three fingers, tipping the fork slightly at an angle to pick the cake piece up to his mouth. It melted in his mouth in the same way that Orpheus's songs melted your heart. It made him wonder how his son was doing. He wasn't allowed to see- that was against the rules. When your time was up as an Endless, you were stuffed into the most obscure of places, never to be heard from again. As if you didn't exist. You weren't supposed to.
The same thing had happened to the other pieces of him. Spread across places of obscurity that would not interfere with his new life or his old, pieces he had purposefully spread out in obscure places in the hopes that if this did happen, he would have the chance of changing his mind.
Strangely, that all changed when he realized that the Sunstone had fallen into the hands of John Lennon. He actually hoped, at one point, that Lennon would take over. That was a stupid idea. The man died before he did- the poor sap was only human. Unfortunately, this left him with another Daniel-type on his hands. He had no idea how it happened- well, he had an idea, but he wasn't sure it was possible until it happened.
There was a woman who lived in the Dreaming. To tell the truth, she was one of the women that Dream felt he owed a boon to- it was his fault that she was homeless and poor, and he offered her a place in a dreaming so she would have a place. The story was supposed to end there.
Until Lennon decided to sleep with her during his visit to the dreaming.
She became pregnant, all because John was the one who held the Icelandic spar dreamstone in his possession. The child couldn't be raised entirely in the dreaming- it would die. Same thing if it was raised in the waking world. It was finally decided that he would create a secret skerry between the dreaming and waking worlds, deep in the heart of Iceland where myths and faery tales lived. Things were complicated- things had to be shipped there, it became a sort of myth in itself, and nobody went there unless they had to. The child was not brought up to know his father, or his real name, or even that he could die if he left the skerry. It was Lennon's idea that he live in an airship, one that matched the ridiculousness of the yellow submarine that he used in the dreaming, but the poor boy was never told about any of this. He just went to the small school there, only in attendance with perhaps three or four other children, played sports, and lived a rather sheltered life. His real first name was used so little that he had forgotten it in lieu of his nickname...
"HEY! I want my cake, you arsehole! You ARE L, you probably just made up all that nonsense from reading myths and stuff! I wouldn't put it past you, with your intelligence!" Sharpie demanded, slamming his fists on the table, a shade bluer with rage, knives clasped tightly in each hand. Lolli merely smiled warmly, tilting his head to the side.
"I'm sorry, you caught me. But I do get 2/3rds now, because you're both stupid." He had finished one-third of the cake already, and was moving on to the second third. "If it were true, though, what would you say? It is an interesting concept, when you think about it, living between sleep and the living."
Bob stood up at that point in protest. "Well, there's the problem right there! You leave a big opening for all the freshly dead and wandering souls to put up their feet! Because here, not only are they technically not dead, they're technically not alive either. That's the definition of ghost right there, and it leaves a big gap for any person who's supposed to be dead to move right in, settle down, and have a family even!" By now Robert was screaming, hopefully the walls were thick enough. "That's probably why you got Paul Morlock and Mary Jensen sharing occupancy in this shitty town under the misnomer 'Pala', and probably some other name I haven't discovered yet! Not only are they OLD and DEAD, they should not be around the other children because they are detrimental to their health psychologically!"
Lolli only stared blankly at Bob. "Well, there is certainly no need to shout over a hypothetical question. I'm beginning to think that you are immature. However, you two probably shouldn't leave the apartment now, so I'll try to fix up some beds, or something."
"We can't leave?" Sharpie probed, wondering, "Why?"
Lolli only pointed to the window that now had multiple faces squashed up against it. An elf that they had seen before, a tall man in a catsuit, a girl with brown hair and dark pink clothes, and several other people who couldn't mind their own danged business. Which of course meant that Bessie- I MEAN STINA was right up front, her large face squashed up so close that she looked like Miss Piggy.
Robert stared at the window wide-eyed, then whirled around. "Okay, where's your futons? Is there some sort of blow-up bed or something? Hell, I'll sleep on a bean bag chair if that's all you got. Anything but going out there to confront the teeming pappers out there."
"PAPPERS?" Sharpie stared at him like he was out of his mind. "That word is older than Paul!"
"Hey, I was up late watching TMZ, and the paparazzi had gotten a hold of Regis. The old fart used that old-arsed word to refer to them, and it kinda caught on." He explained, looking around.
Lolli had come back with a large sleeping bag and a blanket. "You'll have to make due." He spoke, then plopped his policeman cap back on, picking up his baton and walking to the window. Some skittered back right away, to those who didn't get the %#$! clue, he waved his baton at them through the window threateningly. The rest fled like ants from a flaming anthill.
Let them eat cake...
And NOW you can stop reading. I kinda submitted this late because I'm kinda formulating a Powerpuff Z fanfic in my head.
Sorry.
CAKE TO MY REVIEWERS!