Lazers and Feelings

**Common Room C, Big Team Base, Sunday July 26th, 9:30 P.M.**

Tay swipes at the holographic screen, dismissing the Chitter app. Nothing interesting going on — some drama on Transformed Twitter, but what else is new, and some local fairy celebrity sighting or whatever. She sighs and tosses the phone away, the screen flicking off as the device dematerializes.

She looks up at Ellen’s face from where she is, lying with her head in her lap.

“You *that* bored?” Ellen also throws aside her book — some monster about speculative physics, so she can keep up the next time Tay starts theorizing about how time works — and runs a hand through Tay’s hair. “I can’t believe there’s nothing to do. It’s *Halcyon fuckin’ City!*”

She starts mulling it over, scratching Tay’s ears with slowly increasing pressure as she thinks. “Why don’t we go out? It feels like it’s been forever since we just rode around, might be fun?” Ellen looks down at Tay with a sideways smile and a raised eyebrow.

Mel doesn't know how he managed to get all the way from the Ostenberg-Welles house to Big Base, but he's pretty sure without Wingnut guiding him he would still be aimlessly wandering the city. It's muscle memory more than anything that brings him to the common room-

*Muscles. I have muscles, right? Don't think about it.*

The sight of Tay and Ellen finally snaps him out of his reverie. At the same time, he notices that he has a death grip on his shoulder and lets go like it's burning him.

"Uh- hi, guys," he says with a weak attempt at a smile. "Um, what's up?"

Ellen and Tay share a confused look before warily responding, in unison, “Hey, Noodle.” Tay sits up and they both wave him over to the couch, adding “Don’t just stand there, dude; plenty of couch to go around.”

Mel blinks at them for a moment, starting to zone out again when Wingnut pecks him lightly and he jumps. "Oh! Yeah, uh, couch. Right. Sitting." He scurries over to the couch, picking restlessly at his gloves so he won't reach for his shoulder again. He drops down on the couch beside them and draws his knees up to his chest, then forces himself to uncurl and tries to look casual. "So, uh, you guys do anything fun tonight?"

Tay’s ear twitches when he sits down. It was faint when he came in, but now, right next to her, it was hard not to notice: a faint mechanical humming sound emanating from his chest.

“Did you like, eat Wingnut?” She leans in closer, about ten centimeters from him, and sniffs the air. “And you’re either really drunk or you got replaced by a robot. What’s up?”

Mel jumps and leans back away from her, startled. "I- no! What? I mean- how did you..."

He shakes his head rapidly. "Okay, no, look, obviously I didn't eat Wingnut, she's *right here*, and I'm not drunk, and I haven't been… *replaced*, but I, uh…" He looks at the two of them helplessly. "I might be a robot? Maybe?"

“Hahaha, what are you talking about, Noodle?” Ellen can’t help but laugh. Sure, she’d teased Mel about practically being a machine himself, but he and Tay sound serious. “Seriously, are you guys doing a bit right now? Is this another nerd techy thing?”

The laughing fades as Ellen looks between Melchior and Tay, both with completely genuine expressions. “Tay? Mel? Oh…”

Tay frowns. “This is new? Or, like, you knowing about it is new?” Her tail flicks as she looks him in the eye. The expression of fear, self-doubt and the realization that he wasn’t what he thought he was certainly wasn’t fake — Tay could recognize that look anywhere.

She turns to Ellen, silently communicating that she thinks they should try to help.

Ellen nods in agreement and suddenly stands up. “Alright, I’m not gonna have anything smart to say about being a robot, but far as I can tell,” she pokes Mel and her worried expression relaxes at the give of his lanky arm, “food wouldn’t *hurt* right now. I’m in the kitchen if anyone needs me.”

She pats Mel gently on the shoulder he'd been squeezing earlier, gives Tay a quick kiss on the forehead, and disappears into the next room to the sound of cabinets opening and closing.

Mel gives Ellen a quick, strained smile as she leaves, then turns back to Tay. "It's, um… maybe both? Sort of?" He blows out a frustrated breath. "Okay, let me… let me start at the beginning."

He gets up off the couch and starts restlessly pacing back and forth in front of it. "Y'know how yesterday me and Box were talking about how we were gonna go ask a bunch of people about our parents? Well, we did that, and I found out that my parents got really into researching the creation of artificial life, and were working with Smokescreen on some project about it. So then Box got really paranoid — well, he was pretty paranoid all day, really, but *specifically* he got paranoid that I might be a robot and he was like 'look my doo-dad says you're a fake person' and I was like 'that's fucking stupid, of course I'm not a robot' so to prove it I tried to use my powers on *myself* and it, um…" He stops pacing and turns back to face Tay. "It worked? And I found this… *thing*, inside me, that I think has always been there, but I didn't know? And it asked me permission to… do something. And I said yes? I dunno why. And, um…"

He touches his shoulder again, chewing his lip nervously. "I can show you what happened? But you gotta be ready to like, stop it if it freaks out again. I think I damaged some stuff at Boon's house."

“Okay that’s some wild shit,” Tay responds, staring at the pacing lanky boy from where she sits cross legged on the couch, tail curled around her. “But that doesn’t make you a fake person. You’re pretty obviously real, this amount of nerdiness would be impossible to fake. I do wanna see, though.”

Tay grins. “Unless you’ve got a wooden stake gun hidden in there I think I’ll be fine, Noodle. Go for it.”

"Thanks, Tay," Mel says with a small smile. He takes a deep breath and his face gets serious again. "Okay, here goes… on purpose this time." He closes his eyes and purple light springs to life on the back of his hand, arcing outwards from his fingers into his own shoulder. After a moment, he grimaces and out from his back unfolds a giant, bladed wing. It slowly stretches out to its full extent, knocking some stuff off the coffee table as it goes but not flailing around wildly like its first appearance.

Mel opens one eye and peeks at it, then opens the other and slowly lowers his hand, awkwardly shifting to try to account for the new weight. When the wing doesn't start freaking out, he turns back to Tay, gesturing helplessly at it. "Um. Yeah."

Tay blinks. A remote, an empty cup and a physics book float back over to land on the coffee table, suspended on shadowy tendrils.

“That’s pretty fucking awesome, dude.”

She stands up and walks around him, poking at the metal and examining where it meets the skin — or what appeared, even to her vampiric senses, to be skin until relatively recently. Now that she knows she can tell it’s not, not quite, but it’s very convincing.

She walks back around to his front.

“Okay, so you’re a robot.”

The wing twitches and jerks as Tay pokes at it and Mel yelps, grabbing onto her for balance. Now that he's more lucid, he can feel… *things* in his back and shoulder moving as the wing moves and it's somehow both utterly alien and oddly natural. Experimentally, he tries to move it himself.

The wing jerks violently and upends the coffee table.

"Ack!" Mel yelps, nearly falling over as he unbalances. He grabs his shoulder and the purple light returns as he forces the wing to retract back into his shoulder. He rights himself and gives Tay a wry smile. "Yep. I'm a robot."

Tay jumps back as the wing shoots out, catching the flying table in her claws. She puts it back down, mostly intact, though with a few new claw marks.

A half second later, the physics book hits her in the face. “Fuck.” She grabs it and throws it on the table.

“Sit down, dude. You’re not gonna work through your identity crisis by standing around and flipping coffee tables. Trust me, I tried it. You at least need pancakes.”

Mel sheepishly drops back down onto the couch, rubbing the back of his neck. Wingnut hops onto his shoulder and starts preening him.

"Sorry," he says. "It… kind of has a mind of its own. That was actually way better than what happened at Boon and Ernest's house."

“Hey, what was that noise?” Ellen emerges from the kitchen, still stirring a bowl of pancake batter. “You guys better not be breaking stuff. Not without me! I’ll be done in like 10 minutes, c’mon!”

"We're not... *trying* to!" Mel calls back. "There was an incident and now I'm just gonna sit here and not do anymore weird robo shit and not break anything else in the base. Not that anything's broken!" he adds hastily. "Just a little, uh, battered."

Tay pats Mel on the head. “It’s okay, dude, nothing we haven’t done before. GAIA fixes it pretty quickly. Probably doesn’t even cost them anything.”

“It does, in fact, cost me in materials and processing power.” GAIA’s voice blinks on from a screen on the wall.

Tay nods. “Doesn’t cost them anything.”

“Dude, I’m not mad, I just want in if we’re breaking things. Ugh, whatever. I’ll be right back.” Ellen sulks back through the door. The smell and sizzle of batter on a hot pan wafts from the kitchen moments later.

Tay makes a mental note to go out destroying stuff with her girlfriend later. She turns back to the sullen string bean on the sofa and sits down in front of him, perching on the battered coffee table.

“So how ya feelin' about it.”

Mel lets out a long breath and shrugs helplessly. "I dunno, I guess it… doesn't feel real? Like, it's crazy, right? I can't be a robot. It would be fucking absurd for me to *be a robot*. But *apparently*..." He gestures at his shoulder. "Like, what the fuck, right?"

Tay grins. “I don’t know, dude, you’re talking to a vampire here. There’s a person living in the walls. My girlfriend’s from the past. What’s absurd anymore?” She frowns, trying to find some more comforting words. “Like, our situations are pretty different, I guess. I knew I’d be a vampire before I became one, and I know I at least was human at some point. But I think it’s not weird to have trouble coming to terms with all that shit? You thought something about yourself that turned out not to be true and now you’re questioning the whole thing, yeah? Like you’ve built an identity on a bunch of pillars of things and one of the pillars turned out to be rotten and now you’re worried the whole construction’s falling.” She looks down, poking at the table with a claw. “I get it. But I think the best question is like… what are you gonna do with it?”

Mel nods. "Yeah, like, it's not weird that *robots* exist. Obviously robots exist. And robot people exist. But *I'm* squishy human boy! Or, y'know, I *thought* I was." He runs a hand through his hair. "I don't… know what I'm gonna do. Like, I probably shouldn't just, pretend this isn't happening, right?" He looks for a moment like he's actually considering it, then shakes his head. "No, that won't work. The robo-cat's out of the robo-bag. I should probably figure out… how to control it. Whatever 'it' is. So I don't accidentally break more shit if *more* things decide to bust out of me and start wreaking havoc."

He grimaces and looks at Tay sheepishly. "I'm… kinda scared to see what else might be in there, actually."

“I’ll tell you what’s not in there!” Ellen yells from the doorway, kicking the door closed behind her and approaching with three plates balanced on her arms. “Pancakes!” She places a stack in front of each of the three of them — Tay’s are dark red in colour — and plops on the couch with Mel in between herself and Tay.

“C’mon, they’re not gonna get any hotter just sitting out. Dig in.” She bumps Mel’s shoulder with hers as encouragement. “You might be a robot, but that doesn’t mean you’re not still a noodle. You could use the bulk, Mel.”

Tay pokes Mel in the stomach, or lack thereof. “I agree. Go eat some pancakes. You’ll feel better about being a robot when you’re a robot that’s full of pancake.”

Mel huffs and ducks away from Tay's poking. "Okay, okay, I get it," he says, laughing despite himself. "Pancakes are the cure to all my ills." He pauses and looks thoughtful. "Pancakes… panacea… is there something there? Whatever." He shakes his head and just starts digging in.

"What kinda lame-ass robot am I that I still need to eat?" he asks a few moments later, his mouth full of pancakes. "Like, don't get me wrong, I'm glad I *can* eat — these are really good, by the way, Ellen — but I feel like being a robot should mean I don't have to like. Sleep. And eat. And other lame human stuff. Like there should be *perks*. Besides, y'know..." He gestures vaguely at his shoulder.

Tay leans back on the sofa, looking thoughtful. “Well, have you tried? Not eating or sleeping? Maybe you don’t gotta. You probably need *some* sort of power generation since you’re not undead but it could be all sorts of things. Like the sun or a perpetual motion thing or zero point energy or whatever.” She stuffs half a bloodcake in her mouth, chews a bit and swallows before continuing. “Have you checked for power cables? I bet there’s one hidden in your hair or something.”

Mel's hand automatically goes to his hair. "Okay, so, I haven't *checked*-"

“Oh, here, lemme give you a hand.” Ellen throws down her utensils and before Mel can respond, has an elbow around his neck and is grinding her fist into the top of his head in what can only be described as a gentle noogie.

“I don’t feel any cables *here*. Maybe *here*!” She shifts Mel around in the headlock, messing up his hair, exchanging quick glances with Tay. *It’s all I could think of that might cheer him up. Sorry, but also not even a little bit sorry.*

Mel squawks in alarm and wriggles helplessly in Ellen's grip. "*Ellen*!" he protests through laughter. "I don't have *hair cables*!" He reaches out towards Tay with a pleading look. "Tay, save me!"

Tay laughs and leans forward. “Are you sure? Maybe you’re just not looking closely enough, here, let me help.” She starts messing up his hair as well.

When his hair is thoroughly tussled the two retreat, proudly gazing upon their handiwork. Mel looks as if a whole colony of birds has decided to roost on his head. They share a victorious glance.

Mel straightens up on the couch and grimaces as he runs a hand over his hair. He twists to look at Wingnut, perched on the back of the couch, and raises an eyebrow. "You wanna help me with this?"

Wingnut whirs her servos and hops off the couch onto Ellen's shoulder and starts preening her hair.

Mel sticks his tongue out at her. "Traitor."

The three sit there and enjoy the pancakes, talking about nothing important for a while. When the pancakes are all gone and nothing remains but a pile of plates on the table they all sit back, satisfied: Tay upside down with her head on the sofa and her legs over the side, Ellen sitting on the armrest on the other side, the string bean taking up the middle.

“Wanna take apart a laser?”

Mel perks up. "Oh, *hell* yeah. Let's go figure out how time lasers work."

Down in the workshop, Mel pulls the tarp off the damaged time laser, tossing it carelessly to the side. He starts pacing a circle around it. "Okay, so, you guys saw it in action, right? How does it work?"

“We don’t know the science behind it or anything, but pretty much lasers come out of here,” Ellen points to the top of the turret, “and they make this grid that future stuff gets fried on. Y’know: gloves, boots, Tay. Wasn’t a great time — that’s why I ripped out what I’m *pretty* sure was the power source before I took it.”

She nods her head over to a flat-ish grey box covered in faint circuitry lines, nearby on the floor; there’s a panel of a similar size on the laser that had clearly been yanked open in the past.

Mel nods slowly as she explains, then crouches down by the panel on the laser. He lays one hand on the side, pauses, and then makes a face. "Okay, good news and bad news," he says as he gets up and walks over to his workbench. "Good news is you got the power source right, so it's incapable of tearing Tay or your shit apart. Bad news is without power I can't talk to it, so if we're gonna figure out how it works, we're doing it the old fashioned way."

He turns back from his bench, brandishing tools. "Ideally, we can isolate the part that identifies future shit, hook just *that* back up to the power, and I can ask it what's up. Failing that… we might have to start experimenting. For now, let's just take the whole thing apart and see what the inside looks like."

They do, making a neat pile of components to the side that slowly grows. Wiring, capacitors, chassis, electronics, lenses, they all go in their respective places around the power source. If they’re identifiable at all, that is — the largest pile soon proves to be the ‘what the fuck are you’s. They then go through that pile, trying anything that works to identify them. Tay scans them with their phone, Wingnut pecks at them, Bolt tries to talk to them, and occasionally Ellen points out they’re trying to talk to a piece of lint, but somehow, through process of elimination, they end up with one item in front of them that they’re pretty sure is the doodad.

It really should have been obvious, because it is a watch.

“Feel like we should’ve seen this coming.” Ellen pokes at the watch face on the floor, tapping the glass, sliding the NBU-413 power core towards it. “So we just gotta hook these two up and you can do your thing with Cogsworth here, right?”

"Look, I wasn't ruling out the idea that whoever built this thing just dropped their watch inside," Mel says, picking up the power core and turning it over in his hands. "But yeah, give it some juice and I should be able to see what's up."

It takes some doing, but eventually Mel gets the core rigged up to power the watch. When he confirms that it's running successfully, he glances up at Tay and Ellen, then lays a hand on the watch. Purple light arcs from his hand into the watch, and he closes his eyes.

The immediate onslaught of totally alien information is momentarily overwhelming, and he automatically reaches out for Wingnut. She presses her head into his hand, he activates his powers again, and with her acting as a filter he starts to process the information coming to him.

The watch scans the room, tagging each object with a signature that after a moment, and with Wingnut's help, he converts into recognizable time codes. It's mostly a wash of 2020, and then alerts go off as a series of numbers that resolve themselves into years flash through his brain. 1992, 2019, 2345, 2345, 2345, 2503, 2289, 2598--[ANOMALY DETECTED]

Mel drops the watch and shakes his head as he comes to. He blinks a couple times as he looks up at Tay and Ellen. "Okay, so, um, good news is we found it. This is definitely the thing that targets the laser. It identifies the time signatures of stuff around it, and it doesn't like stuff that doesn't belong. And you two are just *lousy* with stuff that doesn't belong here." He picks up the watch — mundanely, this time — and frowns at it. "But also there was something… weird."

Tay laughs. “You mean weirder than a bunch of shit from different times all together?” She squeezes Ellen’s hand.

"Yeah, actually," Mel says, getting up and going over to his workbench. He starts rummaging around in the drawers while he speaks. "The watch was pissed about all your different time shit, but it didn't even know what to make of this other thing."

He produces several cords and more tools and scurries back over to the watch and Wingnut. "Uh, I'm gonna try something, and I'm gonna do my very best not to break it. Bear with me." He hunches over the watch and starts messing with it.

Each looking over one of Mel’s shoulders, Ellen and Tay watch him tinker with the device. “Uh… *what* other thing? Do we need to inventory all our stuff, ‘cause that might take a while.” Ellen smiles at Tay over Mel’s head. “Remember when we had to downsize and leave all that stuff on Rigel-6? God, I miss those sweaters with the holo-things.”

"I dunno," Mel says, beckoning Wingnut to come closer and poking around at the back of her head. "I don't think it's a thing you have. It didn't have any problem with that stuff. I mean, it did, but it didn't have a problem, like, categorizing it, y'know? This was something else."

He plugs something into Wingnut's neck and pulls back, satisfied. Wingnut is now connected to the device through a series of somewhat hazardous-looking wires. "Okay," he says, activating his visor. "Show me, buddy."

His visor lights up with information as Wingnut transmits the data from the watch. At first it's a series of numbers that slowly fade as she translates them into visual data, leaving behind faint auras around everything in the room. He turns to face Ellen and Tay, who are so covered by overlapping auras that they appear surrounded by rainbows. A thin, bright line connects them.

Mel's attention is immediately drawn to what can only be the anomaly. It's like a mass of visual static situated between Tay and Ellen, linked to both of them.

"Uhhh… Tay? Take a look at this," he says, unhooking the base of his visor from his ear and holding it out to her with his eyes still fixed on the point in space where the anomaly was.

Tay takes the visor and tries to hook it over her ears like she's seen Bolt do, and only just manages to catch it when it falls due to the general lack of human ear to hook on to.

She puts it back on and holds it in place, then turns to look at her girlfriend.

"Aww, babe, you're all shiny!" She runs a hand over Ellen's cheek, marveling at the different colours around her hand and Ellen's face and her clothes. "What's up with this jaypeg artifact shit between us though?"

She bends down to look at it, peering closely through the visor. Close up, it looks almost like a tangle of lines in all sorts of different colors, like the time equivalent of lint, coalescing into a messy and featureless mass of static.

She reaches out with one hand, anchoring the visor to her face with the other. She expected it to move right through, but instead the static seems to cling to her, wrapping itself around her fingers. "Literally what the fuck is this? It's like it's trying to tie me up."

"Wait, what? It's *interacting* with you?" Mel steps closer to the space where he saw the anomaly and sticks his hand out. "Does it care about me?"

Tay watches as Mel waves his hand through the static, which keeps completely still as if he’s not even there. “Nnnope. Not at all.”

Mel hums. "Okay, that's not surprising. Next question is is it *you*, or is it all displaced time stuff? See if it reacts to like, your phone or something."

Ellen swishes a hand through the same area as Tay, glancing between the empty space and Tay to check for a reaction. “Maybe it’s some kind of residue from the bike? Like exhaust fumes, but for time?”

"Hmmm," Tay murmurs, peering at Ellen's hand as the filaments twist around her fingers. "Then why wouldn't it respond to Noodle? Or…" She pulls out the future phone, waving its pen core through the jumble. The static responds to her hand, but as soon as she drops the pen it just passes straight through. "Nope, just us. Not even our stuff."

“Don’t tell me we’re time haunted or something,” Ellen scoffs before pausing to consider for a moment. “Hold on, are we fucking *time haunted*? Is that even a thing? ‘Cause last I checked, we haven’t pissed off any time ghosts — unless you count Timeface.”

"I don't think Doorheart is a ghost," Mel says, "but also I wouldn't rule out the possibility of *a* Doorheart who's a ghost. You'd probably know if you ran into a ghost Doorheart, though." He hums. "What's happened to *you two*, specifically, that would fuck up time around you?"

“Uhhh,” Tay grimaces, sharing a look with Ellen. “Like, a lot? The supernova, maybe? Or that time with baby Ernest could have made some sort of paradox…”

“We coulda been cursed by those bastard wizards… Could be from that time we were arrested in Eberswalde, or the time we were arrested on that space station… or that *other* station…” Ellen returns Tay’s look, brow furrowed with concern.

"Okay, I get it, you've thoroughly fucked up time," Mel drawls. "If only we had a way to tell how long this thing has been around…" He frowns at the empty space where he knows the anomaly is. "... Maybe it's harmless? I mean, maybe it's just, like, time lint. Dunno why it wouldn't stick to your stuff, though." He hums thoughtfully.

“Well, whatever. So long as it’s not doing anything to us, I don’t really see the problem. Like, we don’t feel any different or anything, so what if we’re a little irradiated by time stuff? We’ll probably just get hit by more once we get the bike up and running again, so what’s the point in getting it off of us now?” Ellen waves her hand through the air a few more times before making contact with and lacing her fingers with Tay’s and smiling reassuringly at her girlfriend.

Tay blushes at the contact, squeezing Ellen’s hand. “Right. I don’t think it matters as long as we’re together.” She realizes just how embarrassing that was a moment after saying it and her face flushes even more, the medium grey of her face turning a deep, dark grey.

Mel rolls his eyes. "Okay, well, that's very sweet and all, but I personally would like to know what's up with the time lint for my own personal satisfaction. Here, I have an idea." He goes over to the corner near the abandoned pile of scrap metal, broken furniture, and blankets that is Lugnut's nest, where a pile of steampunk-looking nonsense is laying around and starts digging through it. He comes back with a small handheld device.

"Okay," he says, fiddling with the dial on it. "Uh, I stole this from cake-Doorheart's warehouse. It's the closest thing we have to a working time machine." He looks up at them, satisfied with his settings. "It's more of a teleporter? It sends stuff to wherever it was a set time ago. I'm a little unsure if it's local time travel or just manipulating space, but it's worth a shot. Here, gimme my visor back."

He snatches the visor back from Tay and hooks it back over his ear, fixing his eyes on the anomaly. "I set it to a few minutes ago, so you should really just jump like, a couple feet, and I'll see if it does anything. Ready?"

At their okay, he aims the device at them and hits the button.

Literally fuck all happens.

Ellen looks at Tay, then at Mel, then back at Tay with her head tilted in confusion. “Did he just say ‘cake-Doorheart?’”

Tay snickers. “Yeah, it was weird as fuck. Some version of Doorheart that was pretending to be an old lady but she was made of cake because she’d stolen the essence of crumb from the fucking cake dimension which is apparently a thing that exists? I wish I was kidding.” She turns to Mel. “Hey, did you push the button yet?”

"I don't think *she* was made of cake," Mel says absently, but he's busy staring at the anomaly. "Uhh, guys, the lint did something… weird. Hold on." He presses the button again, and sure enough sees the mess of tangled time glitch flare up. The lines connecting the main mass to Tay and Ellen suddenly reach out and wrap around them like chains, and for a split second the shimmering rainbow of time auras around both of them disappear. He blinks, and everything is back to the way it was before.

Wordlessly, he holds out the device and the visor. "Um… you'll want to see this."

Ellen grabs the visor this time, eager to see Tay through the same lens. She whips back to look and marvel at the aura of colours surrounding Tay. “Ooooh, so pretty!” The two giggle and swing their hands together through the fuzz for a moment longer.

After indulging their whimsy, Ellen also takes the timer-looking thing from Mel and directs it at Tay, setting it for another couple of minutes. Her eyes go wide with surprise, then narrowed with concern, as she too sees the “lint” tighten and coil around Tay, and the rainbow flickers out of sight.

“Maybe it doesn’t work on people?” Her voice is suddenly serious having entered analysis mode.

Mel frowns. "I mean, if you saw what I just saw, I doubt the explanation is 'it doesn't like people.' But here, try it on me." He spreads his arms in invitation.

A twist, point, and click later, and Melchior is back next to the pile of blankets on the floor. No weird tangles around him. “That can’t be good.”

"Plus I don't always count as a people for that kind of thing, so- okay, yep it's just us," Tay says, thought interrupted by Mel's sudden teleportation. She frowns. "What if it's keeping us here? Like some sort of time anchor?"

Mel scurries back over to them. "Okay, so… it only affects you guys, it's *definitely* related to the time lint, and it interferes with time shit." He pauses. "What do we… do about that?"

“Beat up whoever did it?” Tay cracks her knuckles. “All things considered it’s probably Timeface, right?”

“Almost definitely. But… when- wait, that’s a stupid question.” Ellen rolls her eyes and her whole head back. “Fuck, we’re gonna have to find them *again*, aren’t we.”

"That's assuming it's Doorheart," Mel says. "Which, I mean, fair assumption. But… *which* Doorheart? Who was the last one you ran into before cake-Doorheart?"

“I don’t think we’ve run into any, other than… cake-Doorheart,” Ellen looks with confusion between Mel and Tay, “since we got dragged back he- OH MOTHERFUCKER!” She kicks a stray component from the laser clear across the room.

Mel jumps, yelping in alarm. "Okay, geez, hold on, um- what? Who?"

“Doorheart! They were there when we got pulled back here, he had that stupid time robot at Bishop! Must have been then… shit, man we really just thought they’d never try to get back at us for taking the overclock, huh?” Ellen facepalms with both hands, embarrassed at not having realized for this long.

“Yeah, honestly I just thought they were gonna let us steal from them forever like some sort of bottomless theft pit.” Tay laughs, putting an arm around Ellen. “Oh no, the consequences of our actions!” She looks up at Mel. “Don’t suppose you want to help us beat up Doorheart? Again?”

"Oh, shit, it's about the time Rubicons? I mean, I guess that makes sense, they're powered by the FutureSite and its whole thing is trapping stuff in time…" Mel trails off, muttering to himself. He starts as Tay addresses him and perks up. "Oh, you *know* I'm always up to punch Doorheart. Call it the Time Heist One-point-five."

Ellen grabs a scrap of paper off a nearby workbench and starts scribbling notes:

TIME HEIST 1.5 TO DO LIST

* Punch timeface/escape time jail
* Fix bike
* Lugnut???

She turns it to show the others, “Am I missing anything?”

Mel hums. "Well, Lugnut is gonna have to be a separate time heist, I think, but…" He grabs a pen and scribbles some changes.

TIME HEIST 1.5 TO DO LIST

* Punch timeface/escape time jail
* Fix bike
* ~~Lugnut???~~
* Steal time machine???
* ???
* Profit

And shows it to Tay and Ellen with a goofy grin.

Ellen looks over the edits, nodding in approval. “Fair enough. Tay? What d’you think?”

“Not enough ruling with an iron fist, but we can workshop it.”