A warehouse called George - Saturday

[badassprodigy]

Barry didn’t so much wake up to find a monkey this morning so much as turn around and her sitting on his console.

“Where the fuck did you come from?”

“It’s one of those weekends, dear boy,” the monkey replied in a proper British accent. “And I am your daemon.”

Barry glared at the monkey. “Right and you’re not-“

“I am not a ploy by a giant telepathic gorilla to get you back to Ramaat.”

Barry just stared at the monkey. “You know what? I’m just going to get back to work.”

“And I would be happy to assist,” the monkey replied, as she went to the console and began looking on eBay for ancient computer systems.

Barry blinked and shrugged. “Okay.”

And there was a brief pause before he said “Hey, could I-“

“No, Barry. I’m not giving you tissue samples.”

Barry sighed and went back to work.

Comments

[somethingwithturquoise]

"I'll do the rap brea, too!" squealed Tinkles happily, because Minerva was right. It really did lose something without the rap break, although whether or not it would actually be gained by a floating magical ballerina unicorn lamb trying to mean-mug it while being the most adorable thing to ever be shat out of a rainbow was...questionable.

But you had to admire her determination.

"Summer and Tinkles,
friends to the end.
Group text the whole crew,
my mother--friends!
Ketchup to the salt,
salt to the fry.
"T" to the "Inkle"
with a Capital I!"

She finished it off with a very hardcore "Wheeee!" And a somersault in the air, leaving Summer having no idea if she was leaning toward wanting to crawl into a hole and die or being insanely proud of Tinkles right now.

So she was going to stick with answering Minerva's question. "I thought Never Past Bedtime Land was all just a fragment of the mass delusion implanted in our heads by the memory parasites," she said, then shrugged, "but apparently not?"

"It's a manifestation of all your frustrations with your overbearing parents and their refusal to just accept you as you are because they desperately need to justify their own failures in life through your presumed successes, Summer!" sang Tinkles with another cheerful loop in the air.

Which was...

"Yeah. Okay," said Summer, who was just going to blink a few times. "Wow."

[badassprodigy]

Ok. That was insightful.

And for a second Barry was flashing back to conversations with a snowman who was basically a subconscious reflection of-

He immediately looked over to Minerva who was about to say something until Barry reached over and pinched her lips shut. “So..”

This was probably the worst conversation segue ever but Barry assumed the whole statement Tinkles just said was not something Summer would not want dive into at the moment.

“Did you know that I turn into a dog anytime I see a Bollywood movie on this island?”

[somethingwithturquoise]

Yeaahhhh, so that was a risk run when your soul decided to show up in the form of a hyper-spastic but surprisingly astute ballerina unicorn lamb, apparently.

Summer's eyes were wide on Minerva for a moment with an almost crippling nagging desire to find out what exactly was stopped just then, before she blinked again, and those eyes went to Barry.

"I...did not know that," Summer admitted, "no..."

Well, there went the Bollywood thing, which she had already started looking forward to trying to uncover, and also was pretty sure was not as interesting as what Minerva would have said, buuuuut....

...there was still some potential there...

And, although she figured it was a risky question because the odd were pretty heavy in it not having an actual answer, but hoo boy if it did, she asked, "Why?"

[badassprodigy]

Minerva swatted Barry’s hand away and scowled. “That was uncalled for,” she scolded. “As for the Bollywood transformation that is truly a mystery.”

“And a fucking pain in my ass,” Barry admitted. “Just one of the many fuck you’d the island has given me.”

“Much of which you brought on yourself, young man,” Minerva said adjusting her glasses. “Much like your idea to create a vaccine for gremlin bites.”

Barry groaned in response. “Yeah. Thank you. I remember.”

[somethingwithturquoise]

At least, on the whole, Bollywood movies did seem generally easy to avoid more often than not.

Summer's eyes were still wide, but for an entirely different reason now.

"So what happened with the gremlin vaccine?"

Yeah, hi. Very few reservations about asking after details on this side right now.

And if Summer hadn't, Tinkles definitely would have, but since Summer had, Tinkles was just adding a bright, cheery, and eager, "Was it, like, aa complete and total disaster?"

[badassprodigy]

“That’s pretty fucking accurate,” Barry said with a sigh. “I was trying to figure out a way to inoculate people so gremlin bites wouldn’t make us hallucinate. I got injected accidentally and there were... side effects.”

“Severe side effects,” Minerva said from the console where she was being sneaky while Barry was talking. “I believe we still have security video from that incident.”

“Don’t you fucking-“

Too late. It was already playing.

Barry sighed. Well, he had seen Summer as Madonna the day before. Might as well get a dose of his own medicine.

So to speak.

[somethingwithturquoise]

[[ one million years later.... ]]

"Oh, no, you don't hav--"

Summer's own objection overlapped with Barry's, but then there was video already playing and Tinkles was shoving a bowl of popcorn at her, and that was enough to make her realize there was probably no stopping it, and also, "Where did you even get this, Tinkles?"

Which was just met with an indulging sort of giggle, because, duh, Summer, she was magical, but also they were going to miss it! And honestly, once it got going, it was kind of hard to not pay attention to it.

And then it was done, and Summer's head tilted, and her mouth was open as if she was about to say something, then she stopped, paused, shut her mouth.

Tinkles giggled. "Summer wants to say that that's why you don't test things on yourself."

There was a gasp of betrayal, a flush of red. "Tinkles!" Then, almost as if for damage control: "I mean, that could have been, like, way worse."

Could have. Watching high school Barry spaz out and then get basically hog-tied with a girl's hair and then sat on was definitely not what she was expecting to get out of today, but she was also not complaining about it, either.

[badassprodigy]

“I did not fucking inject myself with an experimental vaccine ,” Barry said locking down the console. “There was a gremlin that broke out of the cage stabbed me in the ass with the test vaccine.”

“Which we also have footage of,” Minerva offered but upon getting a glare from Barry added. “Which we don’t need to show as we’ve seen enough embarrassing footage today. I will point out that this was actually a turning point for Barry. He was quite the curmudgeon before this. Things for him would have been very different if he had cured himself. He learned to trust other people and be vul-“

“Shut up Minerva or we’re going to have a herd of teal deer in here.”