badassprodigy | Thursday Morning: A Warehouse formerly named George...

While most of the island was still dealing with the lack of clothes and a heatwave, there was one warehouse that was dealing with some interdimensional weirdness of its own.

One moment everything was fine and in the next there was a rip in time and space. Gusts of wind blew debris and sand around the warehouse as a human sized figure fell through to the ground.

"All right! Send my shit through!" he shouted through the portal.

Various metallic crates began to shoot through the portal causing Barry to dodge and swear.

"Jesus fucking Christ! Be careful with those!"

Eventually all the crates came through and the portal sealed up behind Barry as he took a look at his old warehouse.

It was there, still standing. Barry stood outside and felt the sentimentality wash over him. It was here that he had his first date. Where he had made the dreadful mistake of trying to create a gremlin vaccine. Where he nearly lost his mind watching the evils of science and how it nearly destroyed the humanity of Eleanor’s universe. It was where one of his favorite teaches had adopted him as a… little brother? (That thought was immediately pushed away as he soon remembered how he and his girlfriend used to have sex on nearly every piece of furniture in the place)

Barry had made friends before Fandom. He’d also known love. But it was here in this warehouse that he realized just how important those things were. How they were more important than even (gasp) science.

The lock on it was new but not a challenge for Barry. It fell to the ground and with a slight hesitation he pushed open the door…

To find out that Kathy had redecorated.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! WHAT IS WITH ALL THIS IKEA BULLSHIT?! WHO GETS RID OF STAIRS AND REPLACES IT WITH A FUCKING ROPE! GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!”

Barry paused. Took a deep breath and let it go. Easy Barry. It’s been ten years. Lots of changes. It’s okay. Changes are good. And at least some of the same stuff was there where he left it.

Dragging in his equipment he immediately kicked on the power generator and stepped over to his communication array and started the process of downloading five years of information to review.

And that's when he caught one email in particular. A notification he never got while dimension-hopping.

"Oh. Oh, no."

There's only a few things that can shake Barry to the core. Losing a friend and not being to do anything about it? That was the first one on the list.

He sat there for a long time just sitting there stunned.

"Fuck."

He was going to be that way for a while.

[ooc: Open. Trigger warning for link as it involves character death.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

spin_kick_snap

People change, Barry. Especially on Fandom. And also after eating other people as a reanimated corpse.

"...I..." This was hard. "After coming back from LA, being a superhero was...hard. I don't even use Banzai anymore. She died. I died. And then I spent almost year wandering around in rainbows eating people." She glances down at the inside of her left wrist, where there is a tattoo with seven tally lines on it. "When I came back, I didn't want any part of that. I was...I was pretty badly broken. PTSD, night terrors, all of it." She looks up, giving Barry an awkward smile. "I remember. Everything I did. Because I did it. I wasn't a person, but my brain was still recording. And when I came back to life, I suddenly had a person's reaction to...all of that."

From:

badassprodigy

"Shit."

Barry sat down and started rubbing his hands through his hair. "There's so many things I could have done for you. I could have cloned you. Transferred your brain waves. Removed whatever caused it. Blocked memories. I feel like I'm a pretty crappy friend for not being here for you. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Nobody should have to deal with that bullshit."

From:

spin_kick_snap

"Barry." Kathy groaned, reaching over for his hand. "You were off living your life. There's nothing wrong with that. You couldn't have known what was gonna happen. This isn't on you. It's on Josh for starting the fucking thing and on me for being stupid about it. Not you. Never you."

From:

badassprodigy

"Yeah. Well-"

Barry didn't necessarily flinch when Kathy took his hand but he was certainly hesitant about it.

"I have a thing about losing friends. It's actually what brought me to Fandom to begin with. So I'd keep my friends safe from all the bullshit that happens from my experiments."

He gave Kathy a rueful grin.

"So. Yeah. Losing friends is not my favorite thing."

He gave Kathy's hand a reassuring squeeze before letting go. "But this isn't about my bullshit. I'm just glad you're good now and safe. Except for beating the crap out of demons."

From:

spin_kick_snap

"Well that's just part of living in Limbo City," Kathy said, shrugging. "And being part of Dante's life. And I dunno. It's different in my head. Being Banzai to fight petty crime is one thing. Being Kathy in a badass prototype suit, sans rainbows, keeping people safe from literal demons is another. It's way more terrifying than beating up muggers and dealers and stuff, but it means more, too."

From:

badassprodigy

“Well... as dangerous as it sounds, you found meaning. I can fucking understand that,” Barry said hesitantly. “You’re definitely not the girl I’d lectured so many fucking times about risking your life needlessly. God. I was so fucking pompous. I’m amazed you never decked me.”

From:

spin_kick_snap

"I wasn't much for decking people back then," Kathy pointed out, laughing lightly. "But you...cared. About me. And that meant a lot." She frowned inwardly. "Besides, you weren't wrong, were you? In the end."

She tilts her head. "You should meet Dante. You'll like him. He'll scandalize you, but you'll like him."

From:

badassprodigy

"Meet the new boy?" Barry teased. "Am I suddenly the big brother and he needs to meet the family? Yeah, sure but I'm not going through that overprotective family member bullshit trope. Nobody needs to deal with that kind of fucking crap."

From:

spin_kick_snap

Kathy snorted. "He would be vastly unimpressed, I promise. Dante doesn't intimidate well. But..." Her smile was soft, fond. "He's heard a ton about you."

From:

badassprodigy

“Oh? Does he know I’m the first guy you ever saw butt naked?” He teased.

From:

spin_kick_snap

"That's right!" Kathy said, laughing. "Oh god you stole my eyes' innocence!"

From:

badassprodigy

“Fucking animal transformation and in my case Bollywood,” Barry chuckled. “It taught me to always have a spare cache of clothes in the warehouse.”

Good thing he did. Probably kept Elsa from freezing the island on more than one occasion. Of course that cache of clothes just disappeared so...

From:

spin_kick_snap

"I stand by Bollywood being amazing and you're just a tasteless Philistine," Kathy said, nose in the air. "Oh god, things were so much easier then. At least for me."

She glances at him. "So what have you been up to? After you left and all."

From:

badassprodigy

"I... went a lot of places," Barry said trying his best to think on how to frame it all.

"I went home first and got things in order with my parents and friends. Then I went to Arendelle for a while and hung out with Elsa. Eventually I had to move on and she had a country run. So we parted ways on good terms and I went off to visit others and help as many places as I could. I visited Reno and Rikku and helped them with technology and agriculture issues. I also spent time with Eleanor and Joker and went back to Rapture to clean up some of that shit that happened down there. And then I went to Ramaat and helped a giant telepathic gorilla rebuild society there and get them back on track with more technology and agriculture growth. So yeah. In a nutshell that was the past ten years for me."

From:

spin_kick_snap

She smirks a bit. "Ten huh?" she asks. "No wonder you're starting to look a little gray around the temples."

From:

badassprodigy

"Har-dee-fucking-har," Barry said with an amused eyeroll. "I didn't have any gray hairs until I got back to this island. It's like it's getting weirder just because I showed up. This just means I need to stay in here and avoid any magical shit that comes our way."

From:

spin_kick_snap

"Oh yeah, because that's ever worked," Kathy snorted. "...Not saying I haven't done that, mind. But that just means I know how effective it isn't."

From:

badassprodigy

"Well it's not like I'm just going to wander around the island just let this shit happen to me," Barry said. "I'll just order food in and work in my lab. Simple right?"

Yeah. Right.

From:

spin_kick_snap

"...You keep saying you have a perfect memory," Kathy said, narrowing her eyes at him. "But that statement makes me wonder."

From:

badassprodigy

Barry let out a very long sigh.

"I have perfect memory, I'm just in denial," Barry admitted. "I don't know. I haven't had fucking regular human contact in a year. I can figure out how to map out a dinosaur genome but asking a random person what their name seems daunting to me."

From:

spin_kick_snap

"Sure, it's daunting, but when have you backed down from anything?" Kathy asked. "I have every faith you can figure it out. How many friends did you make in high school? And not because any of us cared about your inventions or your money. We all just liked you."

From:

badassprodigy

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know," Barry said. "But when I first got here I cared less what people thought of me, if that makes sense. When I first came here I did it to ensure that my friends back home didn't get hurt. And then somehow along the way to graduation, I made a whole new mess of friends. I think part of it was that I met someone who was more isolated than I was and when I helped her I ended up helping myself."

From:

spin_kick_snap

"That sounds like you," Kathy said softly. "Helping yourself by helping other people."

But before Barry could complain about getting soppy, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and added, "We would have been friends anyway. Nyah."

From:

badassprodigy

"Probably," Barry said with a small smirk. "Good thing too. There would have been at least one person criticizing me for trying to chip people I like. Though I really wish someone had worked harder to stop me from making a gremlin vaccine."