Hyperion Hotel, Los Angeles, Wesley's World, Friday Afternoon Fandom Time
Hours later, Wesley, Tara, Susan, Alex, Loki and Angel were still in the lobby with their books and not having a tremendous amount of luck.
And then Wesley's tall, green, colorfully-dressed demon friend arrived to help them out. So that was good news!
Lorne
Useless research going well, guys? Would the only guy who actually knew what was going on help?
Well, good, because here was Lorne, returning from whatever 'club business' he'd had to take care of and taking off his sunglasses at the sight of the study group. "Hey, where'd the munchkins come from?"
Loki
"Nowhere to concern you, demon," Loki drawled, not looking up from the book he was reading. Look, someone should haven kept him away from books he could use for evil less than good things.
Lorne
"Ex-cuse me?"
Yeah, that's right, Loki. You'd provoked sass. Better watch out now.
Loki
Oooooh noooo. Not the sass!
"None of your business," Loki tried again with a bright sort of cheer. "Oh, I am terribly sorry. Are you unfamiliar with such phrases? I must admit, my knowledge of common colloquialisms is still woefully lacking."
Angel
Lorne opened his mouth to share a retort -- a terribly helpful one, probably -- before Angel cut him off.
"Lorne," he said firmly, then turned to Loki and... didn't actually know his name. "And -- Wes's... short friend. Can we not, right now?"
Tara
"He's got a point," Tara chimed in. (And no, it was never going to not be weird that she was siding with demons.) "We have ... lots and lots of books to get through, guys."
Lots, and lots, and lots. Tara closed her eyes, then opened them and gave Lorne a hopeful look. "Do you know h-how you opened a portal to get here in the first place? Maybe we could do that but ... in reverse."
Lorne
Lorne huffed, made a face at Loki that would not have been out of place on a five-year-old, and then turned his attention to Tara with a sigh. "I didn't," he said.
So... that was helpful.
Tara
"Oh," Tara said, and frowned. "So ... what really happened?"
Lorne
Aaaand now there was more huffing. "Look," he said. "It's no secret that I hate Pylea."
"Pylea?" Wesley repeated, tilting his head.
"My home dimension," Lorne clarified dully with a shudder. "Back when I lived there, I would have done anything to get out. Anything! So one day, five years ago, I'm in the woods when suddenly right in front of me, out of nowhere, a portal appears. It-- it was like my prayers had finally been answered!"
Thanks, drama queen.
Susan
Susan raised a skeptical eyebrow. "A strange portal opens up in the woods and you simply walked through it without any idea of where it went? You were lucky your prayers were answered by a god who didn't see fit to reward that sort of behavior."
There were smarter ways to do things, Lorne. There just were.
Lorne
"Hey!" Lorne objected. "Listen. At first I didn't know what the heck it was." Because that made it so much better? "But when I went to take a closer look, the forest goes all bendy, big flashy light and whoosh! Through the portal and bang -- I'm in another dimension. This dimension, which I love and adore and will never, never, never never leave."
Four nevers, guys. This was serious.
Loki
"Then we must make certain that you return," Loki replied sweetly.
Angel
Lorne started forward -- more out of indignation than anything else; Lorne was about as likely to be threatening as Loki was to be polite -- but Angel threw out an arm just to be thorough.
Also, he shot Loki a look that was clearly meant to deter any further provocation. Because that would help.
"We're getting off-topic," he told Lorne. "Who--" he snapped his fingers -- "opened the portal?"
Lorne
Lorne held up his hand as though it were a sock puppet. "Gift horse," he declared, and then snapped his hand shut. "Mouth."
So helpful, Lorne. Really.
Wesley
"Alright," said Wesley, interjecting before any further antagonizing could happen between Team Maturity over there. "So -- where in this dimension did you end up?"
Lorne
"In an abandoned building," said Lorne. "Unlike any building I'd ever seen. And that's when I realized that I'd been delivered from hell." Drama queeeen. "I created Caritas in that very spot."
No, the other one.
Angel
"So you're saying that Pylea is a hell dimension," Angel summarized. "That Cordy and Kennedy are stuck in hell."
...and that place had produced Lorne?
Loki
"He's not a terribly smart vampire."
Whoever could have said that?
Wesley
"Loki," Wesley chastised under his breath. "Would you mind?"
Well, yes, obviously he would.
Lorne
"Oh, not literally," Lorne clarified, pointedly ignoring Loki's helpful comment. "But it runs a close second."
Angel
"I find that hard to believe," Angel remarked.
Listen, he'd spent over a hundred years in one. He was entitled to be a hipster about it.
Lorne
"Do you?" Lorne challenged. "Well, try this: they have no music there. It doesn't exist. Do you know what that's like? No lullabies, no love songs. All my life I thought I was crazy, that I had ghosts in my head or something, simply because I could hear music.
"Of course I didn't know it was music. All I knew was that it was something beautiful and -- and painful, and right. And I was the only one who could hear it. Then I wound up here and heard Aretha for the fist time... well." He laughed, then shrugged his shoulders, sombering. "Don't kid yourselves. Cordy and Kennedy are in a very bad place."
Angel
Wesley... had only half been paying attention to that, to be honest. It was just that his book was being so helpful, so it was only natural that he'd been focusing on that, and it was just at the end of Lorne's speech that he synthesized what he'd been reading and came to a shocking realization.
"It's cold!"
Yes, thank you, Wesley.
Angel
"Put on a sweater," Angel advised idly.
Look, he hadn't been paying attention either, but really now.
Wesley
"No, no, no," Wesley said quickly, running a finger down the page in the book he'd just been looking at. "The hotspot is cold. The place where the portal was cast!" He stood up abruptly, pacing. "Certain geographical areas are rife with psychic energy. These areas tend to function as -- dimensional hotspots, natural gateways between worlds. Fandom is one, for instance. I'm guessing Caritas is one such spot. But the catch is -- creating a portal tends to deplete a hotspot of its psychic energy. And since we already opened one, the hotspot is cold. That's why you couldn't open a second portal!"
Shh, Wesley. Calm down. Caaaalm.
Lorne
"Oh, why not just wait till the portal recharges?" Lorne suggested. Very hopefully, yes. Because that would give him time to fleeeee.
"Because we've already wasted enough time," Angel objected. "We have to find another hotspot, and fast."
Tara
"But we can't just -- rush up to a portal and jump through," Tara protested, running a hand back through her hair. "There's this whole thing where if we go through a portal as, um, separate bodies, we'll ... all separate even more. We wouldn't all end up in the same place. Thousands of miles apart, even."
She scowled down at her book. "There has to be a way around that one."
Wesley
"...blast."
That was an unexpected hurdle.
"We'll keep looking," Wesley said, reluctantly sinking back into his seat. "We'll need to find some sort of -- means of binding us all together as we go through."
SIGH.
"Would someone pass me that book, please?"
So back to square one they went. For hours. And hours. Without caffeinated beverages. It was torture.
Wesley
This was probably book twelve or thirteen that Wesley had gone through and he was exhausted. Wesley's exhaustion meant bad ideas. "I don't suppose anyone's thought of -- GPS so far?" he offered vaguely. "Some sort of -- technological tool to help us find each other?"
Tara
Tara yawned and rested her head on her arms. "We should have asked one of the Stark Repairs people," she offered vaguely. "I don't speak technology."
Loki
Loki was on book... well, it was best not to count. Someone had a large appetite for knowledge. "I have a Stark phone!" he offered, not looking away for the conversation.
Susan
Susan looked up over her book, eyeing him. "We're all better off for knowing that," she said, just a touch dryly.
"I'm afraid I'm not much use when it comes to technology, either," said Susan to the group at large. "I'm not even sure of everything you have here."
Wesley
"Right," Wesley said, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Yeah, his ideas were not so good anymore. Sleep was necessary, guys. "Anyone have anything else?"
Alex
"Well, I could call Nicholas," Alex offered from the other side of the room from Loki, like anyone else here was going to know who Nicholas was. "If we're looking for GPS that will work in another dimension or whatever, he probably has it if anyone does. But he doesn't just loan that stuff out." He looked at the book in front of him, then admitted, "Other than that, no."
Susan
"Well, apparently," Susan said in a tone meant to say 'hey look at me, I found something,' "all we really need is some sort of four-sided metal enclosure so we can all travel through the portal together. Does anyone have one handy?"
Tara
"Somebody has to make really big metal shipping containers," Tara mused. "Or we could take a big cardboard box and -- and cover it with tin foil."
Wesley
"Or -- Angel has a car," Wesley volunteered. "That is to say, ah. That's always an option."
And now he felt a little sheepish, because getting in a car? So not what he'd thought he'd be dealing with, and calling in a team of Fandomites to come in and assist with that was... really kind of foolish.
"Er," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "Sorry for the, ah. Trouble. I expected -- well. I'd be happy to arrange all of your portal back, or..."
Susan
Susan knew that it was very definitely not her responsibility to go rushing off through strange portals, especially without a very tall being with a scythe telling her not to.
But at all points in time, Susan also thought she was the only person around who truly had common sense, which was something that would probably be needed in this situation.
Sigh.
"I doubt that will be necessary," she said.
Wesley
Wesley blinked. "I'm sorry?"
The truth was that he hadn't really expected anyone to want to stick around -- and if he had expected anyone to, he certainly wouldn't have expected it to be Susan. Seeing as how she was, you know, Susan and all.
Susan
She barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "We all know how this goes. You say we can go home, we argue in whatever fashion that we're going anyway, we win the argument and do what needs to be done and everyone's happy. It's a tried and true method of doing things and it's much more efficient to just skip the unnecessary steps."
Tara
Tara bit her lip so she wouldn't smile.
"I think Susan's, um, kind of got a point?" she offered. "We came all this way. We can't just ... go home and not know what happens. I think we're here to the end."
Which involved portaling to a potential hell dimension. Whelp. Worse ways to spend an evening.
Loki
"I promise to mourn for you all if you die in horrific ways," Loki chimed in, possibly stealing a book for later use while everyone was suitably distracted by their heroics.
Alex
Somehow, Alex seriously doubted that was true. At all. "Put the book back," he hissed at Loki. "Look," he told Wesley, "Practically none of you even have any superpowers." It was sad, really, was what it was. "So you're stuck with us. So let's just get over that part and move along to the part where we all cram into a car. Dibs on not by Loki."
That might not work out so well, since they were the two smallest of the party.
Wesley
Well... two teacup gods, Death's granddaughter and a reasonably talented witch? A squad could be a lot worse.
"I suppose if you're all certain, there's no harm," Wesley said tentatively, totally missing the book thing, oops. "Provided you're -- careful, and listen to Angel, and you carry weapons... I'll go clear it with Angel and then we'll be off, then?"
Susan
Susan arched an eyebrow. Way, way up. "Careful?"
Loki
"Listen to the vampire?" The odds of Loki doing that were slim.
Alex
"And only if we carry weapons, huh?" The odds of that not happening were even slimmer than the odds of Alex listening to the vampire.
Tara
"I can follow the rules," Tara promised, looking at the others. "Kennedy's ... special. We owe her at least trying. Her and Cordy."
She considered it. "Except ... do we have to listen to Angel if he gets kind of, um, no offense, vampire-y?"
Wesley
And thaaat was why Tara had been the one Wesley had actually consulted for this mission. Way to be a good teammate, Tara.
"It's unlikely he'll be much worse to deal with than he's been up until now," Wesley said after a brief moment to consider that. "But if he's -- sharp with you, it's probably best to, er, listen, to stave off further shouting."
Aaand as for everyone else...
"Just -- behave, then?" he suggested to the group at large. Very, very hopefully.
Seriously, guys. At least pretend to be less of a crack team of reckless teenagers.
...and Tara.
[[Preplayed with: wesleynotponcy, life_inshadow, inaskinnyway. Follows this.]
And then Wesley's tall, green, colorfully-dressed demon friend arrived to help them out. So that was good news!
Lorne
Useless research going well, guys? Would the only guy who actually knew what was going on help?
Well, good, because here was Lorne, returning from whatever 'club business' he'd had to take care of and taking off his sunglasses at the sight of the study group. "Hey, where'd the munchkins come from?"
Loki
"Nowhere to concern you, demon," Loki drawled, not looking up from the book he was reading. Look, someone should haven kept him away from books he could use for evil less than good things.
Lorne
"Ex-cuse me?"
Yeah, that's right, Loki. You'd provoked sass. Better watch out now.
Loki
Oooooh noooo. Not the sass!
"None of your business," Loki tried again with a bright sort of cheer. "Oh, I am terribly sorry. Are you unfamiliar with such phrases? I must admit, my knowledge of common colloquialisms is still woefully lacking."
Angel
Lorne opened his mouth to share a retort -- a terribly helpful one, probably -- before Angel cut him off.
"Lorne," he said firmly, then turned to Loki and... didn't actually know his name. "And -- Wes's... short friend. Can we not, right now?"
Tara
"He's got a point," Tara chimed in. (And no, it was never going to not be weird that she was siding with demons.) "We have ... lots and lots of books to get through, guys."
Lots, and lots, and lots. Tara closed her eyes, then opened them and gave Lorne a hopeful look. "Do you know h-how you opened a portal to get here in the first place? Maybe we could do that but ... in reverse."
Lorne
Lorne huffed, made a face at Loki that would not have been out of place on a five-year-old, and then turned his attention to Tara with a sigh. "I didn't," he said.
So... that was helpful.
Tara
"Oh," Tara said, and frowned. "So ... what really happened?"
Lorne
Aaaand now there was more huffing. "Look," he said. "It's no secret that I hate Pylea."
"Pylea?" Wesley repeated, tilting his head.
"My home dimension," Lorne clarified dully with a shudder. "Back when I lived there, I would have done anything to get out. Anything! So one day, five years ago, I'm in the woods when suddenly right in front of me, out of nowhere, a portal appears. It-- it was like my prayers had finally been answered!"
Thanks, drama queen.
Susan
Susan raised a skeptical eyebrow. "A strange portal opens up in the woods and you simply walked through it without any idea of where it went? You were lucky your prayers were answered by a god who didn't see fit to reward that sort of behavior."
There were smarter ways to do things, Lorne. There just were.
Lorne
"Hey!" Lorne objected. "Listen. At first I didn't know what the heck it was." Because that made it so much better? "But when I went to take a closer look, the forest goes all bendy, big flashy light and whoosh! Through the portal and bang -- I'm in another dimension. This dimension, which I love and adore and will never, never, never never leave."
Four nevers, guys. This was serious.
Loki
"Then we must make certain that you return," Loki replied sweetly.
Angel
Lorne started forward -- more out of indignation than anything else; Lorne was about as likely to be threatening as Loki was to be polite -- but Angel threw out an arm just to be thorough.
Also, he shot Loki a look that was clearly meant to deter any further provocation. Because that would help.
"We're getting off-topic," he told Lorne. "Who--" he snapped his fingers -- "opened the portal?"
Lorne
Lorne held up his hand as though it were a sock puppet. "Gift horse," he declared, and then snapped his hand shut. "Mouth."
So helpful, Lorne. Really.
Wesley
"Alright," said Wesley, interjecting before any further antagonizing could happen between Team Maturity over there. "So -- where in this dimension did you end up?"
Lorne
"In an abandoned building," said Lorne. "Unlike any building I'd ever seen. And that's when I realized that I'd been delivered from hell." Drama queeeen. "I created Caritas in that very spot."
No, the other one.
Angel
"So you're saying that Pylea is a hell dimension," Angel summarized. "That Cordy and Kennedy are stuck in hell."
...and that place had produced Lorne?
Loki
"He's not a terribly smart vampire."
Whoever could have said that?
Wesley
"Loki," Wesley chastised under his breath. "Would you mind?"
Well, yes, obviously he would.
Lorne
"Oh, not literally," Lorne clarified, pointedly ignoring Loki's helpful comment. "But it runs a close second."
Angel
"I find that hard to believe," Angel remarked.
Listen, he'd spent over a hundred years in one. He was entitled to be a hipster about it.
Lorne
"Do you?" Lorne challenged. "Well, try this: they have no music there. It doesn't exist. Do you know what that's like? No lullabies, no love songs. All my life I thought I was crazy, that I had ghosts in my head or something, simply because I could hear music.
"Of course I didn't know it was music. All I knew was that it was something beautiful and -- and painful, and right. And I was the only one who could hear it. Then I wound up here and heard Aretha for the fist time... well." He laughed, then shrugged his shoulders, sombering. "Don't kid yourselves. Cordy and Kennedy are in a very bad place."
Angel
Wesley... had only half been paying attention to that, to be honest. It was just that his book was being so helpful, so it was only natural that he'd been focusing on that, and it was just at the end of Lorne's speech that he synthesized what he'd been reading and came to a shocking realization.
"It's cold!"
Yes, thank you, Wesley.
Angel
"Put on a sweater," Angel advised idly.
Look, he hadn't been paying attention either, but really now.
Wesley
"No, no, no," Wesley said quickly, running a finger down the page in the book he'd just been looking at. "The hotspot is cold. The place where the portal was cast!" He stood up abruptly, pacing. "Certain geographical areas are rife with psychic energy. These areas tend to function as -- dimensional hotspots, natural gateways between worlds. Fandom is one, for instance. I'm guessing Caritas is one such spot. But the catch is -- creating a portal tends to deplete a hotspot of its psychic energy. And since we already opened one, the hotspot is cold. That's why you couldn't open a second portal!"
Shh, Wesley. Calm down. Caaaalm.
Lorne
"Oh, why not just wait till the portal recharges?" Lorne suggested. Very hopefully, yes. Because that would give him time to fleeeee.
"Because we've already wasted enough time," Angel objected. "We have to find another hotspot, and fast."
Tara
"But we can't just -- rush up to a portal and jump through," Tara protested, running a hand back through her hair. "There's this whole thing where if we go through a portal as, um, separate bodies, we'll ... all separate even more. We wouldn't all end up in the same place. Thousands of miles apart, even."
She scowled down at her book. "There has to be a way around that one."
Wesley
"...blast."
That was an unexpected hurdle.
"We'll keep looking," Wesley said, reluctantly sinking back into his seat. "We'll need to find some sort of -- means of binding us all together as we go through."
SIGH.
"Would someone pass me that book, please?"
So back to square one they went. For hours. And hours. Without caffeinated beverages. It was torture.
Wesley
This was probably book twelve or thirteen that Wesley had gone through and he was exhausted. Wesley's exhaustion meant bad ideas. "I don't suppose anyone's thought of -- GPS so far?" he offered vaguely. "Some sort of -- technological tool to help us find each other?"
Tara
Tara yawned and rested her head on her arms. "We should have asked one of the Stark Repairs people," she offered vaguely. "I don't speak technology."
Loki
Loki was on book... well, it was best not to count. Someone had a large appetite for knowledge. "I have a Stark phone!" he offered, not looking away for the conversation.
Susan
Susan looked up over her book, eyeing him. "We're all better off for knowing that," she said, just a touch dryly.
"I'm afraid I'm not much use when it comes to technology, either," said Susan to the group at large. "I'm not even sure of everything you have here."
Wesley
"Right," Wesley said, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Yeah, his ideas were not so good anymore. Sleep was necessary, guys. "Anyone have anything else?"
Alex
"Well, I could call Nicholas," Alex offered from the other side of the room from Loki, like anyone else here was going to know who Nicholas was. "If we're looking for GPS that will work in another dimension or whatever, he probably has it if anyone does. But he doesn't just loan that stuff out." He looked at the book in front of him, then admitted, "Other than that, no."
Susan
"Well, apparently," Susan said in a tone meant to say 'hey look at me, I found something,' "all we really need is some sort of four-sided metal enclosure so we can all travel through the portal together. Does anyone have one handy?"
Tara
"Somebody has to make really big metal shipping containers," Tara mused. "Or we could take a big cardboard box and -- and cover it with tin foil."
Wesley
"Or -- Angel has a car," Wesley volunteered. "That is to say, ah. That's always an option."
And now he felt a little sheepish, because getting in a car? So not what he'd thought he'd be dealing with, and calling in a team of Fandomites to come in and assist with that was... really kind of foolish.
"Er," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "Sorry for the, ah. Trouble. I expected -- well. I'd be happy to arrange all of your portal back, or..."
Susan
Susan knew that it was very definitely not her responsibility to go rushing off through strange portals, especially without a very tall being with a scythe telling her not to.
But at all points in time, Susan also thought she was the only person around who truly had common sense, which was something that would probably be needed in this situation.
Sigh.
"I doubt that will be necessary," she said.
Wesley
Wesley blinked. "I'm sorry?"
The truth was that he hadn't really expected anyone to want to stick around -- and if he had expected anyone to, he certainly wouldn't have expected it to be Susan. Seeing as how she was, you know, Susan and all.
Susan
She barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "We all know how this goes. You say we can go home, we argue in whatever fashion that we're going anyway, we win the argument and do what needs to be done and everyone's happy. It's a tried and true method of doing things and it's much more efficient to just skip the unnecessary steps."
Tara
Tara bit her lip so she wouldn't smile.
"I think Susan's, um, kind of got a point?" she offered. "We came all this way. We can't just ... go home and not know what happens. I think we're here to the end."
Which involved portaling to a potential hell dimension. Whelp. Worse ways to spend an evening.
Loki
"I promise to mourn for you all if you die in horrific ways," Loki chimed in, possibly stealing a book for later use while everyone was suitably distracted by their heroics.
Alex
Somehow, Alex seriously doubted that was true. At all. "Put the book back," he hissed at Loki. "Look," he told Wesley, "Practically none of you even have any superpowers." It was sad, really, was what it was. "So you're stuck with us. So let's just get over that part and move along to the part where we all cram into a car. Dibs on not by Loki."
That might not work out so well, since they were the two smallest of the party.
Wesley
Well... two teacup gods, Death's granddaughter and a reasonably talented witch? A squad could be a lot worse.
"I suppose if you're all certain, there's no harm," Wesley said tentatively, totally missing the book thing, oops. "Provided you're -- careful, and listen to Angel, and you carry weapons... I'll go clear it with Angel and then we'll be off, then?"
Susan
Susan arched an eyebrow. Way, way up. "Careful?"
Loki
"Listen to the vampire?" The odds of Loki doing that were slim.
Alex
"And only if we carry weapons, huh?" The odds of that not happening were even slimmer than the odds of Alex listening to the vampire.
Tara
"I can follow the rules," Tara promised, looking at the others. "Kennedy's ... special. We owe her at least trying. Her and Cordy."
She considered it. "Except ... do we have to listen to Angel if he gets kind of, um, no offense, vampire-y?"
Wesley
And thaaat was why Tara had been the one Wesley had actually consulted for this mission. Way to be a good teammate, Tara.
"It's unlikely he'll be much worse to deal with than he's been up until now," Wesley said after a brief moment to consider that. "But if he's -- sharp with you, it's probably best to, er, listen, to stave off further shouting."
Aaand as for everyone else...
"Just -- behave, then?" he suggested to the group at large. Very, very hopefully.
Seriously, guys. At least pretend to be less of a crack team of reckless teenagers.
...and Tara.
[[Preplayed with: wesleynotponcy, life_inshadow, inaskinnyway. Follows this.]