xp_logs | Time Stand Still |

xp_dazzler posting in

Alison Blaire meets one of the strange visitors. He's short, upside down, floating, and watching her swear at video games. Despite this, it goes astonishingly well, for values of well equal to "Alison gets to hear a six year old mangling the lyrics of a song she wrote that she hasn't written yet"

Alison would be the first one to admit, she had a pretty good life. Sure, her father was quite possibly the worst and her mother had been MIA since she was young, but other than that. She was young and healthy, and (she liked to hope) at least relatively smart. Some would say she was too trusting or naive, which Alison knew they meant as an insult but considered a compliment anyway. She had a good degree (audio-acoustic engineering) from a good school (USC), and... kind of a good career? That she'd been away from for too long. But that was... it wasn't...
Okay. That wasn't great. But she was working on it! Slowly. In private. Where nobody could see. God she didn't want to mess it up.

She had friends in the mansion that she loved to hang out with and mentors that she trusted and looked up to. All in all, she would always say that she had very little to complain about.

Of course, there was her one... guilty pleasure. On bad days, when nothing seemed like they could go right and she was just sick to death of dealing with people and their endless... 'peopleness', Alison liked to retreat away into her room, boot up the computer that she normally used to remix her music, put on her headset, and just relax...

"The payload is reaching its destination." "It's High Noon." "I need healing!"

"OH MY GOD, WHY DO YOU ALL SUCK SO BAD?!"

For a given definition of relax, at least.

"WHAT ARE YOU... No, don't you dare f-- GOD DAMMIT GET ON THE PAYLO-- WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU GOING?!?" she found new things to be upset about before she could even finish her original reason to be upset. Her microphone wasn't open,of course. Not a chance. God forbid. She had an image to maintain, after all. But still, her teammates were the worst.

This was why FullTiltDVa hated playing with randos.

Alison dropped her head onto her arms with a thud, whining to fight off a headache.

"Defeat!"

"I just want you to know that I hate all of you," she said into her arms, not even bothering to look at the screen. "You and your cows."

"Um excuse me, you can't have a pet cow." The voice came from somewhere about eight inches above her left ear, and only registered on Alison's powers about half as much as it should have, given the volume.

A moment later, a head of blond hair and then a round cheerful face appeared in the top of her eyeline, followed by the rest of a floating, upside-down small child. "A cow would make a milk mess. That's why we can't have one. I said so."

Alison sighed into her arms. "It was a Mulan reference," she groaned, then paused. That... hadn't come from her game.

She looked up and came face to grin with a floating six year old. As such, she did what any intelligent, well adjusted and not at all frustrated Overwatch player would have done in that situation.

She screamed and fell off her chair.

Franklin screamed back, the shrill and almost joyous scream of a child who has just realized that An Adult is screaming and that means he can get at least one happy scream off before someone tells him to stop.

He did remember to ask if the person that he didn't know was okay, but only after he got out the scream. "Hallo! Are you hurt? Do you need a medic? I don't know where band-aids are but I know where the doctors are! I got a check-up and Doctor Jean gave me a sticker. She's not my doctor at home but she can be my doctor here."

Alison's room was carpeted, but the fall still hurt. "Ooow..."

More to the point though, there was a child in her room. Even more to the point than that, though, there was a floating child in her room. She was half-tempted to reach for the panic button on her phone, but honestly? The kid was not subtle. And apparently at least Jean knew he was here, so... fuck it. This was her life, now. Better just to roll with it.

"I'm... I'm fine," she said, pulling herself to her feet. "...how did you get in here?"

"Oh no, I forgot!" Franklin squeaked, and lowered to the floor and scampered out of the open door. Only to stand in the doorway and knock several times with a little fist. "Hello, your door is open and you have a video game, can I visit your room?" He chirped, waiting and fidgeting and bouncing on his sneaker-clad toes.

And wasn't that just the cutest damn thing? How on earth could Alison say no?

"Hmm... alright, I suppose," she acted as if it was a huge ordeal to say yes. "But there's a rule in my room. No floating. Okay?"

Obviously, she'd just made that up, but honestly, she didn't want to have to deal with a flying hyperactive six year old if she could avoid it, and that was the only one of those words she could actively control.

"

Franklin pouted briefly, but kept both feet firmly planted on the ground. "Why?" He came in and sat himself down next to Alison's chair. "What are you playing? Can I help? Can you tell me about that guy? Is that a monkey? Is that a cowboy? Is that a good guy? Is that a bad guy? Is that a good guy? That's an angel, I know that's a good guy. That's a robot, is that a good guy or a bad guy?"

And Alison was remembering why she was bad with little kids. "Ummm.... Overwatch, yes, he's a robot ninja, yes, yes, yes, no no, yes she is, and he's a good guy... kind of." That was right, right? That... sounded right?

"Here, look," she said, pulling up the best character to use in the next game, if she ever actually joined in. Right now it seemed like she'd be distracted for at least the next little bit. "This is D.Va. She plays games and rides around in a robot and she's my absolute favorite."

"I like robots." Franklin answered cheerfully. "Robots are cool. My daddy won't let me have a robot, he said... " He trailed off. "I don't remember what he said. He won't let me have a puppy either. But he makes me pancakes and waffles and lets Mommy sleep on Saturday." He wiggled around, floated up about an inch in his excitement and then dropped suddenly once he realized what he was doing. "I'm a waffle gremlin. And a horrible goose."

Alison booped him gently on the nose. For obvious reasons she suddenly felt like Sombra, and she wasn't sure if she liked it. "Thank you for not flying in my room like I asked, waffle gremlin. Your daddy sounds nice. What's his name?"

"Daddy." Franklin answered dutifully. "Mommy says it's Reed. Sometimes she calls him other names when she's mad." He settled himself on the floor in front of Alison's chair. "My name." he said, poking himself in the chest. "Is Franklin. What is your name?"

Alison wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but when the kid had answered 'Daddy', she knew deep in her heart, with a strength that burned at her very soul, that she absolutely should have seen that coming.

And then her soul was burning for a different reason, because holy shit Reed had a kid. She barely knew the guy, but he absolutely did not seem like the type.

"Franklin, huh? Well, it's nice to meet you," she supposed. Didn't say that last part out loud. "My name is Alison. Alison Blaire."

"Nuh-UH." Franklin stared. "You don't have rainbow hair." He screwed up his little round face and a picture of Alison, but with short bobbed hair in a riot of rainbow colors came to Alison's mind.

The Alison in question was... definitely her but also not? There was something very uncanny valley about her and she just couldn't put her fin--

She was older. That's what it was. The Alison that Franklin was showing her was maybe two years older than her currently, just enough to be noticeably different from the face she saw in the mirror every morning. That's what was throwing her off.

...did she really look like that? Huh. She was absolutely going to have to try that hairstyle soon.

And maybe some cosplay.

"Where... when did you see me like that?" she asked, instead, distracted enough to momentarily put off the fact that someone was in her head again.

"In Daddy's car." Franklin explained, in the patient tones of a six year old explaining things to an adult that should have known this already. "Daddy has it in his car and he sings it in the car and sometimes he sings it in the kitchen." He sat up taller, and bounced, coming up off the ground just a little too much to be entirely natural. "So many spearmints, and so many steaks. I go all the way until I know all my shapes!"

Alison scrambled out of her chair to her journal, which she kept on a table by her bed. The words were wrong, but the melody was... She frantically flipped through pages until she found it, tucked away towards the back.

So many experiments, So many mistakes, But I'll go all the way 'Til i'm in perfect shape.

She glanced at the title, up at the top of the page. All Eyes On Me. The lyrics were placeholders, scribbled over the markings she tended to use to jot down potential melody and harmony lines, but...

...All Eyes On Me was Alison's come-back song. Not only was it not officially released yet, it wasn't released anywhere. Even her manager didn't know about her flirting with a return to the stage yet. All Eyes On Me was supposed to be Alison's big hit single off the new album. If it wasn't for the fact that neither the melody nor lyrics didn't exist anywhere except in the journal she was currently holding, she'd have thought it might have been stolen or leaked.

...come to think of it, hadn't there been an email about time-traveling children that she'd ignored?

"It's about science." Franklin said. "Daddy said. It's experiments, that means science." He unfolded and stood up and walked over to where Alison was holding her book. "Do you want to color? I like coloring."

...it was actually about song-writing, and the various failed attempts to write a song she thought would be good enough to launch her back into the public eye. But honestly, how do you even begin to explain the situation to a kid who evidently knew her but also didn't? Knew of her, maybe?

...she could appreciate the amusing irony of the one time that she was on the receiving end of one of those "I know more about Dazzler than you" speeches from someone who didn't know what they were talking about, something she'd kind of hoped she'd get to experience for years now (so that she could tear said person apart), and it was a 6 year old who she absolutely could not do that thing to. Fate. Cruel. You know the cliche.

"Not this book," she said, because if she didn't regain some semblance of her equilibrium, she could already tell this kid was about to walk all over her. The implications that she apparently did have a career ahead of her would have to wait. "How about instead of coloring, we can sing something instead? Do you like singing?"

"I love singing!" Franklin chirped. "A salamander! Is not a number! It's an amphibian! It's an amphibian!" He repeated this several times, louder each time, remarkably on pitch for a six year old. "I learned that from my uncle. Lets sing it together!" He accompanied this with some mental cartoons of a colorful singing beaker and a salamander in a hat with a number 1 on it. "Do you know that song? I know lots of songs. We can sing the experiment song! Do you want to get a snack? I know a song about chicken nuggets too."

If Alison had any less self control, she'd be trying to get the moogle to sing any number one hit from the next twenty years so she could copy it. It was a close thing either way.

So. Very. Tempting.

"I don't think I've ever heard a song about chicken nuggets," Alison said slowly. "Why don't you tell me how it goes and we can go see if we have any downstairs to make?"

Alison shot one last annoyed glance at her computer. She was tired of getting stuck on a team with scrubs anyway.