quack quack

[forsometimenow]

Who: The crew of the Wonderduck and any visitors
Broadcast: N/A
Action: SS Wonderduck
When: The latter half of May

[IT'S A MINGLE, SWEET DUCKS. What're you all up to?]

Comments

[feathery]

[He catches the credit and rolls his eyes right back, propping himself against the bed frame again.]

Poor you, looking like a Buffy reject only some of the time.

[Unlike Davesprite, who is a full-time bird employee. Always gotta be beeping.]

The embarrassment from such a declaration would be lethal for sure. Like a dagger to the heart and also probably some electrocution on the side.

i wanna be where the people are...

[frigidaire]

[ What a beeping beeper. Isaac rolls his eyes at Davesprite. ]

You are so dramatic but it's true. You'd just drop, and no one would mourn you because of your hot werewolf friend. Too distracted by my good looks.

[ He flops back again, throwing the second credit up at Davesprite. ]

smh

[feathery]

I'm pretty sure those words you just said don't actually mean anything.

[He catches the credit again.]

Like they're all real words and separately they have meaning, but strung together it's just fucking nonsensical.

rude.

[frigidaire]

You're the one that doesn't make sense sometimes. I mean, you say things sometimes and it literally just sounds like words. Sometimes not even that.

[ Isaac leans onto the bed again, head resting on his folded arms. ]

I'm sorry you can't be a Buffy knock-off werewolf or something. I know you're heart broken.

[feathery]

Obviously. I already said it was like a dagger to the heart. Or was that you telling people you're my best friend. Same difference.

[Davesprite is so rude. ]

I'll trade you the wings for a day and you can see how you like lugging them around.

[frigidaire]

Wow, yeah, I'm glad we're friends, too, dude. [ Isaac doesn't even act offended, doesn't even sound bothered, he just sounds so bored. ]

I think I'll pass, but wings do seem pretty cool. At least you can fly.

[ But he knows the downsides already -- he's watched Davesprite try to sit in a normal chair. No less Isaac's been hit in the face by them on accident a good number of times. (Read: all the time). ]

[feathery]

We've been over this before. The wings have got nothing to do with whether I can fly or not. They're just kinda...there.

[He sighs at the ceiling, before he sits up.]

Though between the whole face thing and you getting locked up for three days, I gotta pass on the werewolf thing in good conscience.

[frigidaire]

Yeah, I know, but you could still use them to fly if you had to. That's what wings do.

[ Isaac rolls his eyes, shrugs his shoulders. He considers Davesprite, and for once looks a little sheepish. ]

Thanks, though. I mean -- again. Pretty cool of you to do that for me.

[feathery]

[Isaac gets a Look—does he think penguins and ostriches fly with their wings?—but Davesprite doesn't actually care so he lets it go. He frowns a little, just a small downward tick at the corners of his mouth, and shrugs back.]

Well, I mean—what else was I gonna do. You needed someone to keep an eye out for any velociraptor behavior rearing up in your wolfy shenanigans. Left to your own devices, you could have figured out how to open doors.

[frigidaire]

[ Isaac might actually think those birds fly with their wings just fine. He's not the most intuitive kid in the whole world, after all. ]

I'm a werewolf, not a velociraptor. They're pretty different, I think. I mean unless all of science is just wrong. [ He snorts though. ] I wouldn't have bothered learning to open the doors. I'd probably just kick them down or something. Maybe. I don't actually know.

[feathery]

Dude, you are being way too literal right now. That's like half the point. That you kept trying to kick down doors.

[He doesn't sound fazed at all by this, though, and boredly tosses both credits back at Isaac in succession.]

[frigidaire]

Oh.

[ Isaac should look more surprised, but he doesn't. He catches the credits instead. ]

I mean, I do break down doors pretty well. Sometimes. It kind of depends. It works sometimes and sometimes it really doesn't. Like, got stuck in a broom closet once and couldn't get that door open at all.

[feathery]

You're shitting me. Who got the brilliant idea to hang out in a broom closet? You're not secretly a wizard too, are you.

[If he sounds vaguely amused (and also confused), it's because Davesprite's mental image of Isaac trapped in a broom closet is significantly funnier than the reality.]

[frigidaire]

[ He actually hesitates, like his brain brings the flapping of his mouth to a halt. ] Uh, we got detention.

[ Isaac's shoulders scrunch up to his ears, everything about him reading uncomfortable for a moment before they drop back down. ] And no, I'm not like Harry Potter or whatever. I've seen the movies, you know.

[feathery]

[Oh shit, did he make things weird again. He looks half ready to say something, awkward, when Isaac keeps talking.]

Yeah, I kind of. Actually worked for Harry Potter. Which is weird in retrospect, I dunno. I never even saw all the movies, just read the books 'cause Rose was all about wizards.

[Basically, his incentive was entirely "can I use this to annoy Rose? let's do it."]

[frigidaire]

Wait. You worked for Harry Potter, like the dude with the scar?

[ Sorry he's just gonna stare for a second. ] You've been holding out on me. You have weird bird kid powers, shadow powers, and you know Harry Potter?

[feathery]

[Davesprite at least finds this whole thing way less weird than he could, what with the Jedi and other culturally relevant icons in residence. He's always gonna be kind of concerned about the memory fuckery, though.]

I knew Draco better, actually, 'cause he was Jade's boyfriend. But yeah, that was a thing.

[He's just gonna awkwardly shrug here.]

[frigidaire]

Draco dated Jade?

[ Isaac can't quite believe it, but he at least knows his friend is telling the truth. So bizarre. ]

Asgard was way weirder than I thought.

[feathery]

It's all pretty weird. Just look around here. Sometimes I wonder how the hell it works, you know. Like.

[He starts to make a pile out of the wrappers.]

Does Atroma or whoever just open up some old books they got lying around and think, "hey, these assholes sound funny," and. I don't know. Port us in? Like they've got our whole timeline there in front of them and they know damn well what happens to all of us, and it's just a big game they set up to watch us squirm over weird existential issues while they giggle.

[frigidaire]

Yeah I kind of wonder how they decide who comes and goes, too.

[ Isaac frowns a little. ] Especially if they can see what's going to happen to us. I know some people are here after a lot of bad things happened. I guess they have a really stupid sense of humor.

[feathery]

Yeah, Jade's from the future, too. Almost everyone was, back in Asgard. Or maybe I was just that out of the loop. Kind of embarrassing, when that's supposed to be my deal, but it's not like I was time traveling anymore. Or wanted to.

[There's something unhappy about the way he stares at the candy wrappers.]

Knowing the future sucks.

[frigidaire]

That's weird, that they're from the future and you're not. [ He can't wrap his head around that completely. Stiles was from his future, after all, but it seems so strange. ]

Yeah, it does. [ He doesn't know a whole lot of his own, but what he does know about his friends? Well, it's pretty lousy. ] Sometimes not knowing can be just as bad, too.

[feathery]

Nah. There's truth to that bullshit saying; ignorance really is fucking bliss. There's no good that can come from knowing the future. You can try to fight it or deny it all you want, but all you're doing is painting yourself into a corner. Creating inevitabilities you have to rehearse and enact, or face death for yourself or everyone you know. And sometimes facing death is the very inevitability you have to rehearse. And then you wait and wait, knowing it's coming and knowing it has to happen—

[He cuts off.]

Maybe it isn't like that for you; maybe time doesn't work that way in werewolf country. It's not like I've heard about other realities where the future gets a perverse glee from stomping out alt timelines. [He vaguely remembers Rose explaining it to him once, that doomed timelines were like any lifeform, failed attempts so one of them could succeed. And maybe that was tolerable when they didn't know there were other worlds out there, ones that didn't have to obey such horseshit fucking rules, but now Davesprite knows and nothing paradox space has to offer him is good enough anymore.] I knew a dude whose alt timeline son teamed up with a bunch of time travelers to forcibly change things and succeeded. And they all just. Kept living their lives in that timeline.

sobs 5ever!!!

[frigidaire]

Whoa.

[ He isn't sure what to say at first, confused and uncertain as Davesprite continues to talk. But he has a point -- knowing what could happen would just mean living in the shadow of that. Especially if none of it could be changed. ]

I guess that kid forcing his way into a new timeline or whatever probably wasn't a good thing though. Like doesn't that... break the time continuum or something? [ He's seen movies, he's heard things. ]

laughs 5ever

[feathery]

No, I mean—I don't know what happened to everyone else who got left behind. Maybe that whole timeline was doomed in the first place. [It unsettles him, thinking about what happens to rewritten timelines. He never gave too many shits about Sburb's NPCs, hated Calsprite too much to think about what happened to them when he repaired the timeline, but he had to leave Rose behind. He speculated she might remember somehow, keep persisting in a gamble more Light player than Time, and it worked, but he's still not sure if the cost was worth it.

Had to happen, though, right?]

But I guess things went better and everyone from the alt timeline just. Got to keep existing alongside everyone else.

[He sideswipes the wrappers off the sheets and flops backwards so his head hangs over the edge of the bed.]

...Sometimes I get stuck on how unfair it is, that there are all of these different realities and somehow my friends and I ended up in one that fucking sucks. Like I'm not fucking stupid, I know there are more crapsack universes out there than I can count and I don't even know how many of my alt dimension friends come from apocalyptic wastelands. But sometimes I still think...it'd be better, maybe.

[He stares up at the ceiling for a second before he rolls onto his side with an indistinct, annoyed sound.]

It's dumb to think about. It's not like I can change anything about it; I'm just the maintenance guy. Or I was. I'm not even that much anymore, I just get to sit on the sidelines and think about how everyone I fucking know is dead or going to die and somehow I'm still alive, even though I'm the one with the fucking expiration date.