fandomhigh | BWI Airport, Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

Entry tags:

!event: newbie shuttle

BWI Airport, Portalocity Lounge, Saturday morning

Billie perched on top of a pile of luggage that looked suspiciously like it could have come out of the back of an upscale garage band's van. (It . . . kind of had. She'd managed to pack a few non-musincal essentials, but they were all shoved into the corners of the various road cases. She had her priorities, okay?) She had her phone out, scrolling through her latest playlist, when a video call request came in and she grinned.

"T!" she greeted.

"B!" said Thea from the phone. "You landed!"

"I landed!" Billie agreed. "I am so totally in Baltimore, dude!"

"You're so totally in Baltimore!"

They proceeded to run through everything that had happened to each of them since they last talked -- about an hour ago, before Billie's flight landed.

"I know it's totally too early to call," Thea admitted eventually.

"Dude, I was so totally going to call you." Billie grinned. "How cool is it that we're both on our own epic adventures?"

"It is most, most egregiously nonbogus," Thea said. "Oh! That's the opening bugle. I gotta go!"

"Yo, I cannot believe you moved to the Alaskan military school."

"That's the Alaskan musical conservatory, thank you!"

Billie laughed and nodded. "Right, right, excellent!" They both gave each other a one-handed air guitar. Which anyone walking by would somehow be able to hear.

You're welcome, passersby.

"Talk to you later, T!"

"Talk to you later, B!"

Billie deflated slightly as she hung up with her ~~soulmate~~ ~~other half~~ best friend, then went back to tooling around on her playlist, one ear of her massive, audiophile headphones slid back so she could hear if/when anyone else came to join her in the lounge. Or when the shuttle eventually arrived.

"Righteous," she muttered, bopping along to the music on her headphones. "First day of grad school playlist complete." She kept bopping, then looked around at her stack of luggage in the otherwise empty lounge. ". . . Now what do I do?"

[open! And a little earlier than normal, perhaps, because I managed to completely forget that I have an event tonight. :P]

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Billie snorted. It was fine. She’d heard worse from her granddad before he ended up in Hell with them.

“No way. Thea and I prefer to get high on music.”

She would not speak to the dads’ drinking or drug habits, though. From what he’d told her about his near future selves, Ted had totally gone a bit boozy after Princess Elizabeth left him.

Erasmus was just assuming there had still been some illicit herbs or something involved. "Right," he said. "Probably safer."

Probably.

“But what about you, dude?” Billie asked, realizing she was bragging. “What do like to do?”

"Uh, well." Don't say 'raise the dead,' don't say 'raise the dead,' she's not going to think it's funny. "Raise the dead?" No!

Billie bobbed her head while she processed that.

“Cool,” she said finally. “I totally thought Death was the only one who could do that.”

"No, it's--it's kind of a common necromancer thing." Although not all necromancers could do it. Randomized power set is randomized.

“And I didn’t even know necromancers were a thing!” Billie said, full of the joy of new facts. “I’m surprised Death never mentioned them. He’s kind of a name dropper.”

"Death?" Erasmus repeated. "You know someone named Death but you don't know about necromancers? I--those two things aren't really connected, are they? Sorry." Granted, what most people knew about necromancers was, 'Their own fathers don't want them, they deal with the dead and most of them are crazy, stay away from them,' so he was fine with Billie not knowing that! He was just confused.

“I know Death, dude. He’s why I’m not still in Hell.”

She said that very matter-of-factly.

"...Michigan?"

Look, he was pretty sure the Christian place wasn't real, from what he'd heard from souls. Not that he'd ever tell his Momma that. She could believe whatever she wanted to.

“Underworld,” Billie said. “It’s actually not as bad as they say. Mostly digging.”

She was there for like. Ten minutes.

"Oh, I--I didn't think that was real."

Maybe he just needed to raise worse souls?

“Sure is! Heaven, too. I haven’t been there, but my dad has!”

He was alive and well back in San Dimas. She should probably mention that out loud.

Ah well.

“I sound most egotistical right now. So! You’re a necromancer!”

"I am a necromancer," Erasmus confirmed. He did not sound thrilled about it. "And you're a--musician?" Deflecting. Badly, maybe.

“Me?” Billie looked surprised. “No. I’m more like . . . a music producer. Not for money or anything, I just really love it. How’d you get into necromancy?”

"Well, I was born a necromancer," Erasmus said awkwardly, because seriously, he'd never had to explain this before, "so...didn't really have a choice there."

“Woah,” Billie said. “I get that. Like, if Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan weren’t my dad, would I even be into music?”

Honey, you are in no way disabusing this boy of the notion you are stoned.

"I mean, my Pops is a warlock," Erasmus told her. "But that is sort of how it works."

Billie frowned. “Wait. Where are you from?”

"Southern Mississippi," Erasmus told her, amazed she couldn't get at least the general area from hearing him talk. "Pascagoula, if you've ever heard of it." She might have. There was a song.

“The squirrel that went berserk!” Billie said excitedly. (The narrative appreciates the heads up.) She shook her head. “So you’re from an Earth then. I think maybe we’re just not from the same one.”

"A different Earth?" Erasmus repeated, confused.

Yeah, since his father was staying out of this no one had told him about the multiverse component.

“Uh huh. Per the multi-universal theory — not to be confused with the multi-dimensional theory, though that is a common mistake — there are an infinite number of Earths in an infinite diversity of universes. One where ‘necromancer’ is apparently a heritable title — or perhaps even a genetic status? — and one in which the anthropomorphic representation of mortality is a most excellent bass player.”

"It's more like a birth defect," Erasmus muttered before he could stop himself. "Are you sure you didn't take some, uh, questionable herbs this morning?" Maybe to calm her nerves for the flight?

“Yep, sure didn’t.” Billie frowned again. “How is raising the dead a birth defect? Oh! Do you do it uncontrollably?”

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