fandomhigh | Summer Shenanigans, Wednesday mid-morning

Anakin was still not a cat! And he had ~~stolen~~ requisitioned the slip 'n slides from Paintball yesterday and set them up in roughly a triangle shape.

With bases between them. Because Anakin also still didn't know how baseball worked.

The bad news? The slip 'n slides were covered in baby oil and mudslide cocktail mix (because his order for mud had been misinterpreted. Watch out for the squirrels who'd definitely been licking the slip 'n slides.)

The good news? Your teams are in costumes made to protect you as you slide!

Well. Sort of. Anakin had gotten into the Japanese mascots again.

"Today we shall be playing slip 'n slide kickball!" Anakin told the unfortunates caught in the park this morning. "Listen for your names!"

Team Uesama (a hyperrealistic head on legs who promotes Sof’ ice cream.)
Quinn (pitcher)
Luma
Henry of Skalitz
Lydia
Rey
Vi
Remy
Steve R

Team Jumball the Third, King of the Watermelons (the mascot of Nyuzen Town, Japan.)
Stark (pitcher)
Belle
Isabella
Eleanor
Flint
Steve M
Thor
Raiden

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"Well, there's no getting out of it if it is Hell, is there?" Henry mused.

"Pretty much what I was thinking," Quinn said. "I'm not religious or anything --" religious extremism had played a not-insignificant part in her trauma, so even if she had been before, she wasn't now, "-- but I'm pretty sure Hell wasn't one of the places people are supposed to just be able to bounce out of."

On the other hand? So was the state of Pennsylvania, but she'd managed to somehow "bounce" from there to here, so who knew.

"It isn't," Henry agreed. "I suppose there is that other place. A priest told me about it once. An in-between place? I believe it's called Crimbo?" He rubbed his chin. "Then again, I think that may be in Prague..."

“You’ve been to Prague?” Quinn asked, impressed despite herself.

Don’t get attached, Quinn. Attachments get people hurt. Or killed.

That was harder to remember, the longer she went without people even talking about the massacres.

"... No, but I've heard stories about it," Henry said. He looked at Quinn. "Ah, I'm Henry," he added. "From 1403 or thereabouts, in a little village a day's ride from Prague. I think? I don't know. I've never owned a horse, I don't know how fast they go exactly."

Henry, stop talking.

"Oh." Quinn had heard about people from other times, but this was certainly the person from longest ago she'd met. "Wow. Good to know. I'm Quinn." She didn't manage a smile, but her face was definitely less vaguely-neutral. "I'm from . . . places that weren't invented when you were from. I mean, the place existed, but it wasn't, like. A town. Or even a village. Or colony or whatever. It was probably woods? Or plains." Kettle Springs was definitely plains back then. "It's mostly corn now. Do you -- they didn't have corn in Europe then, did they?"

"Can't say I'd heard of it," Henry said, somewhat chipper. "But that goes for a great many things 'round here."

"You're not missing much."

He was, but she had a thing about corn these days.

"If it helps, I definitely know basically nothing about where and when you're from, either."

"Skalitz," Henry offered. "Ah. That's where I'm from. Skalitz, and now Rattay. Well-- now here, I suppose."

It was fine, his tone didn't lose some of that desperate cheer halfway into that sentence or anything.

That sounded like a story. Asking for stories was definitely a way to end up attached.

"Yep," she said. "I don't know anything about either of those places. I barely know anything about here, and I've been here for months now."

"So what's it called?" Henry asked, because he certainly hadn't heard any rules about getting attached or anything. "Your home that isn't your home yet, but will be your home in the future? And is apparently full of this corn thing."

"It exists now. I think. I'm from now-ish." She took a long breath and let it out.

(She didn't like the thought of Kettle Springs not being there. Could picture it too easily in ruins, like New Kettle Springs had been.)

"Kettle Springs, Missouri. It became a place in, like. I want to say the 1930s? So it didn't exist when you're from. But, uh. Yeah. Still full of corn. Very . . . farmy."

That was a word. Sure.

It sounded like a perfectly normal word to Henry, who nodded. "Your family was farmers then?" he inquired.

Quinn snorted on the urge to laugh. “No. My dad’s a doctor.” A beat. “Was a doctor. He stopped practicing.”

Being kidnapped and forced to do emergency medicine for a bunch of psycho killers could do that to a guy.

"Oh, I see." She was a fancy one, then. "Did he teach you anything?" Henry inquired. "Seems like a handy set of skills to pass on. My father i-- was a blacksmith, and I was meant to take over the family forge eventually."

Oh. Quinn was pretty sure his change in tenses was for a different reason than hers.

She was already getting too involved here.

“I know some basics,” she said, coolly off-handed. “Bandaging, mostly. Blacksmithing, that would be cool to know.”

She could make her own weapons!

"Doesn't seem like a lot of people around here need anything made that way," Henry admitted. "I haven't even seen any horses."

“Probably not,” Quinn admitted. “But you’d probably kill on Instagram.”

Cole’s influence was showing.

“Not literally kill. People would be interested.”

Summer Shenanigans, Wednesday mid-morning

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