026 》sweet troubled man are you giving or taking?

[thering]

characters: Malcolm, Neal, Negan, Raylan, Doc
location: 1306 Phillips Dr
date/time: day 26 morning
content: the reset Playstation button was pressed
warnings: tbd

After the strangeness of the past two nights they were likely fully expecting to awaken in the same strange, different, not-so-new anymore places they found themselves in in the past two days.

Instead everything seems to have reset, again. The three permanent residents and two guests are back in 1306, exactly where they had been two nights ago. Malcolm was in his own room, Neal was in Doc's and Negan in Raylan's master bedroom. The two displaced cowboys are downstairs sharing one too-small couch, a night of drinking culminating in fighting over couch space and who gets to be the bigger spoon.

The fire in the fireplace had gone out and their Winter 2020 Collection of bespoke lanterns have vanished, but nothing else seems to be awry.

Comments

[conning]

"A half-dozen memory tricks and friend prone to quizzing me on my references." Neal gives another little shrug. "I could also tell you the winning player and winning move of every World Chess Championship from 1948 to the present--I had to lay low for a month and there was nothing else to read. Great party trick, otherwise largely useless."

He fetches the coffee, loading the press as the water starts to simmer. "I've always been good at remembering things."

[vampirebats]

"Excuse the shit out of me, but did you just say you had to lay low?" They come after nerds who memorize chess championships where he's from? Because that's a weird as hell way to start a story.

[conning]

Neal gives him a brief, blank look, confused. "Yes?"

Oh. Oh. "I might have been an art thief in a past life. Allegedly."

[vampirebats]

"Allegedly. Right." He gives a nod at that, letting it sink in. Allegedly an art thief.

That's somehow not what he was expecting from the nerd boy.

"You just gained some definite cool points there, Neal."

[conning]

He grins again. "What would adding that I'm not-so-allegedly a forger, con man, and was a fugitive with a bounty on my head get me?"

The water starts to bubble, and Neal turns off the burner, filling the French press. "Have to keep pre-apocalyptic life interesting somehow."

[vampirebats]

"Wow, goddamn badass hidden underneath all poetry quoting shit, huh?" He reaches over to give Neal a clap on the back, grinning.

"You're gonna have to tell me some stories of this pre-apocalyptic life sometime, dude. That sounds exciting."