[video] Dip-dop Says Hello

[captainbuzzkill]

[There is a noodle-child on the comms, one that looks maybe only just old enough to be a Legionnaire. His hat is missing because he lost it on the planet and his slightly poofy hair is sticking up, so that a birth mark in the shape of the Big Dipper is visible on his forehead. He's currently hyperventilating. His eyes are wide and he's breathing like every new breath makes it even harder to take the next breath.]

Oh man. Oh man. Oh man.

[Will someone help this wayward child? This poor, clearly terrified--]

This is the best thing ever!

[Okay, so maybe he's not hyperventilating because he's scared. Maybe he's just so excited he can barely breathe right. In fact, he's so excited he basically went on the network pretty much as soon as the omnicom was put in his hands. The situation got explained to him -- and he lied his butt off about his age because they mentioned the age limit before they asked what his was -- and now he's clearly still in his Medbay bed, not even released from the Medbay yet, hyperventilating on the comms in excitement over his situation.]

Not the whole being dimensionally displaced part -- even if time supposedly isn't passing back home -- or the, y'know, mortal peril part, but we're in space! Did you all see that? You can just look outside the window! And it's space!

And my doctor had four arms! And was purple!

[Yes, he's excited. Supposedly, he even has superpowers now.]

And we all have superpowers! And -- what am I saying, all you people know this, right? They said other people have been here longer. Do you all have cool powers? Are any of you aliens? Mutants? Or, like, I dunno, space wizards with laser swords or something? That seems like a thing that could happen.

[His other hand comes in frame and he makes a gimme gimme gesture.]

Gimme the lay of the land. What am I looking at here?

[A pause and then he finally remembers maybe he should give his name. He says it like it's an afterthought.]

Oh yeah, I'm Dipper Pines.

Comments

[nerdninja]

[ Does he really want to show his face?

Questionable, honestly. But Donnie is logical. If this kid is this excited about the mere prospect of mutants and aliens, and if the chances are pretty high they're going to run into each other sooner or later...better to get the initial reaction out of the way with a video screen as intermediary, right?

Hopefully. ]

Uh, hi. Donatello, nice to meet you.

[captainbuzzkill]

[If he looks like he's about to scream when Donnie shows his face it's the urge to happy scream, really. He just had to leave Gravity Falls and now he's been pulled head first into more...weird. More wonderful, wonderful weirdness that looked way less horrifying than the end of the world.]

[And the only thing wrong with it all, as far as Dipper is concerned, is that Mabel isn't here. All of this would be way better if Mabel was here, and his sister not being there is a reality that hasn't entirely settled in yet.]

Two questions. One, are you like me where you're from somewhere else besides this universe? Question two, are you an alien from somewhere else besides this universe?

[nerdninja]

[ Well, it's better than the usual flavor of "about to scream." ]

From a different universe, yeah. Alien...is entirely a matter of perspective, but if we assume Earth, since that seems to be a pretty common answer in these things: no, I'm not an alien. I'm from New York.

[captainbuzzkill]

[That's kind of a boring answer, until the implication turns it into an exciting answer.]

Wait, so on your Earth is everyone reptile people?

[He tries to picture a New York filled with...lizard or turtle people (he can't really tell which with the omnicom). Just reptile people everywhere.]

[nerdninja]

No, no, nothing like that!

[ Well, okay, there was that alternate future they visited. The less said of that one, the better. ]

I'm a mutant. We're pretty rare.

[ringslinging]

[ ...that kid can't be much older than Howard. Goddamn.

It's one thing to realize on paper that adulthood, and thus eligibility to go blasting off half-cocked to save the universe, is apparently at age fourteen here. It's another thing entirely to see a kid about the same age as his own nephew, and have that sudden dawning moment of horror that if Howard were here, he'd be almost old enough to actually act on his oft-professed desire to be a space cop like Uncle Hal.

what is wrong with this government

However, having been exactly the kind of kid to immediately bristle and do anything someone told him he couldn't do, Hal at least has the sense not to comment on this. He's always done okay with kids. He likes them, honestly. Kids haven't had time to get too jaded or turn into assholes. (Well, maybe the latest Robin...) ]

Well, for an infinite number of possibilities in infinite dimensions, it seems like we've mostly had humans washing up to get stuck here. Humans with pretty weird life stories, but mostly humans. The rest of the crew more than makes up for that, though.

[captainbuzzkill]

Interesting, interesting.

[That means there's a pattern, something his brain immediately latches onto. Strange that they'd be yanked into this very diverse world, but that it's a lot of humans that are the ones being yanked. Maybe it means something.]

When you say "weird," can you possibly quantify how weird?

Like if you could measure the weirdness in levels or on a scale of one to ten, how weird are we looking at here? On average?

[ringslinging]

Weird is in the eye of the beholder, I admit.

[ This kid seems sharp. ]

But I know my life is probably considered a solid ten by the standards of the average person from my particular version of Earth.

[captainbuzzkill]

So's mine. I'm from Piedmont, California, which is totally normal, but my sister and I were staying with my grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls, Oregon, and it was basically the epicenter of all weirdness for...

Well. A lot of reasons.

[He doesn't really want to talk about Weirdmageddon. Or the portal. Or the rift. Or Bill. It's a little too soon. They only just got through it all, had their birthday, and said their goodbyes]

At the beginning of this summer, my sister dated a teenager that turned out to be a bunch of gnomes standing on each other's shoulders. They kidnapped her because they wanted her to marry them and be their gnome queen.

And that was just the beginning of the summer. It's the end of this summer now.

[ringslinging]

Okay, I've accidentally proposed marriage on a couple of worlds, didn't do the research, totally my bad - but you've got me on the shoulder-standing.

On the other hand, I have a colleague who's a sentient mathematical equation and another who's a living planet.

[wherenoonegoes]

[Hiccup can certainly empathize with that much excited babbling, and gives the kid a grin.]

I'm a dragon-riding Viking.

[captainbuzzkill]

[Well, he did ask for the lay of the land. And that land is probably going to have some surprises. For a moment, he can only stare, as he tries to wrap his head around that and merge both concepts. Dragons and Vikings.]

[In the end, he smiles.]

Congrats, you're probably already in the top ten list of the coolest people I've ever met. And you got there with one sentence, too. Impressive.

What's it like living in a heavy metal album cover?

[wherenoonegoes]

Y'know, that's the second time someone's made that comparison, and I still have no idea what it means.

[captainbuzzkill]

[Luckily for Hiccup, Dipper loves being a smarty-pants and explaining things.]

Since we have ways of recording music -- sometimes onto discs of various sizes -- or ways of buying them through computers like these omnicoms, they usually design pictures for the covers for the packages the discs are sold in or to click on when you buy them on the computer. Collections of music are called albums, so those pictures are called album covers.

There's a type of music called heavy metal that's really loud and wild, so the art on on the package or that you click on for those albums is usually pretty wild, too. Usually it has pictures of dangerous animals like dragons or monsters, weapons, warriors, demons, flames, metal armor -- stuff like that.

That you're a Viking and from a place where Vikings ride dragons -- which is not a thing with Vikings in history in my world, by the way -- it's like something off of a heavy metal album cover.

[wherenoonegoes]

Sounds like something my friend Snotlout would be into. After he stopped panicking about being in the future and not having giant chunks of meat to gnaw at, anyways.

I'm Hiccup, by the way, and as for what my life's like? I'm from Berk. It's a wet heap of rock in the Barbaric Archipelago, about twelve days north of Hopeless, a few degrees south of Freezing to Death, and snows nine months out of the year. The food is terrible, the people are loud and obnoxious, but our sports are second to none. Probably because we play them on dragonback.

[mirror_soldier]

[The video initially wasn't all that interesting to Thad, but he listened in anyway because old habits died hard. It's the mention of 'charts' that ends up drawing his full attention and the kid saying that he wanted to make them actually made him smile a little. The other boy may be a little over enthusiastic for Thad's taste but he had a solid respect for anyone dedicated to collecting and organizing data.

When his camera activates it gets a lens full of grated ceiling, with no person in sight, but the sound of something being tinkered with can occasionally be heard off to the side as well as Thad's voice.]

To add to what was already stated, while most of us seem to be from widely differing universes, occasionally some of us seem to be from different time frames within this universe, or from a universe very similar to this one.

And as to your earlier inquiry about charts, I've been attempting to correlate what data I've collected, but it's admittedly quite incomplete.

[He's socially inept okay? It makes this kind of research harder than it should be.]

[captainbuzzkill]

So you're already working on it, too?

Maybe we can work together.

[While Dipper is sometimes a tetch awkward, he's pretty good at talking to people. In the way children that have been actually socialized normally are.]

What's your name?

[mirror_soldier]

My name is Thad.

[Just Thad for now. Last names weren't that important in informal conversations, right?]

And that could be agreeable. If you would like I can transfer over what results I've collected.

From your reaction to the mention of superpowers, is it safe to assuming you didn't have any before coming here?

[captainbuzzkill]

[Is this a possible fellow nerd friend? Someone that enjoys making charts and graphs and recording things as much as he does? Dipper has never even met any other kids like this before -- sometimes he wonders if they even exist, or if he's just the one lone nerd in existence interested in stuff like this. Part of why he bonded so quickly with great uncle Ford was because they were cut from the same cloth like this -- and because both of them rarely found other people that were the same.]

[Maybe he's not the only person his age like that here.]

None! Sometimes weird stuff happened and my sister and I were able to do weird things back in Gravity Falls, but it was always temporary. And usually under very strange and limited circumstances.

[mirror_soldier]

[He may not be as close in chronological age to Dipper as he sounded, but charts and graphs were defiantly something he enjoyed. Collecting data, organizing it and making sense of it was rather comforting, especially in a circumstance like this where everything felt to him as if it was thrown into chaos.]

Weird things?

[That was incredibly vague.]

What kind of weird things? And are powers ever innate for humans in your universe, or are they usually fickle and limited?

[enthraller]

[Flatly:]

Space wizards.

[No, he is not good with kids. Didn't have a good time being one and has never had any reason to interact with them. He's pretty sure you're supposed to be nice to them all the time, but it's become pretty obvious that no one here gives a shit how perfectly pleasant he is.]

[captainbuzzkill]

I've met a wizard and now I'm in space. And lots of strange stuff is going on, with lots of strange people getting pulled here.

There will probably be crossovers between types of weirdness at some point.

[Someday, they will perhaps fight Mordru -- a wizard, in space -- but right now Dipper's just making educated guesses.]

[enthraller]

Are you calling us "strange"?

[He looks and sounds mildly hurt. He's not, but damn if he isn't good at faking it.]

[captainbuzzkill]

Yeah!

[A pause, because Saralegui seems hurt? Maybe? That's not really enough to make Dipper doubt himself when calling weird things weird, not when he knows so many people/beings that kind of revel in their own weirdness, but he tries to at least supplement it with an explanation.]

I mean that in the good way. Weird is good. Like my great Uncle Ford -- he's totally weird and he was born with six fingers on each hand. And he's great!

[He holds up his normal five-fingered hand to the screen and wiggles his fingers to show that six fingers isn't the norm back home.]

[enthraller]

[The look falls away all too quickly at the lack of any actual stumbling, and Saralegui's frown borders on a pout.]

You're no fun.

[He rolls his eyes before giving the kid on the little screen a pointed look.]

You're rather weird yourself.