Physics is just a seven-letter word...

[lowkeyangel]

Who: Loki Gabriel, and you.
Where: Anywhere.
When: 31st - 2nd
Rating: A little language. Rated S for Silly?
Summary: Gabriel decides to test out the logistics of cartoon physics, with... mixed results. We can plot here, or feel free to just jump in. He's only likely to 'kill' douchebags.
The Story:

Being a trickster for so long had meant that, on the whole, there wasn't a whole lot that Gabriel experimented with, anymore. When the next big things came out, he pranked with them and then moved on (unless, of course, they were excessively hilarious). This was just the way of the big human creative machine. But, of course, when you can make physics your bitch, experiments get a whole lot more interesting than test tubes and lab coats. Gabriel was itchy to do something. He had a feeling that it was set on by the damn house, but it didn't matter. He was bored anyway.

And so, armed with a list of silly cartoon things he wanted to try out in real life, he set off to stalk various parts of the mansion and the grounds, and see what he could see.

Comments

[lowkeyangel]

"Huh."

Words were powerful back home, too, but for Gabriel's world it was words in a certain language. Or names. A bunch of books in a library? Not even enough to summon a yawn, in Gabriel's opinion. No power whatsoever if it was just self-help books and novels about ladies getting their bodices torn.

"Well, guess it couldn't hurt. What's the worst that could happen? Librarian hitting you on the head with a ruler?"

Gabriel's certain that there's no such thing in Wonderland — librarians, that is — but still, some people will just turn white as a sheet and attack you on sight if you harm a book. Bibliophiles indeed.

"I bet you could take her, anyway."

[no_nonsense]

"If I do it right, it'll be a six hundred pound orangutan with a ruler," Susan corrected, offhand, and shook her head.

"Perhaps I ought to reconsider this until the urge to try ridiculous things has passed," Susan added gradually and looked back at Gabriel. "It's getting hard to tell the good ideas from the questionable and, the more I think about it, this one might be the latter."

Wandering this library endlessly? Hoping to find and consequently wander around a dimension that links an infinite number of libraries across all time and space in every reality that has ever stacked books in a sensible fashion? With, what? The mild hope that she'd get lucky and find the Unseen University somewhere in the jumble? Somehow that seemed a touch more risky than remaining in Wonder Land.

Unfortunately, shelving that idea forced her to find another outlet for her driving curiosity and, since books weren't all that curious in and of themselves, that left him. She peered at him and, despite herself, couldn't help the question that came out of her mouth next.

"Honestly, though, do the extra four help you fly better? Or are they just for show?" She wasn't trying to sound judgmental but when you're related to Death it was a decided side effect. Confusion often sounded like impatience, and every other thing had a decided note of finality. "Given that you can reorder Time, I can't imagine there's much call for Boffo."<sup>1

1</sup> Boffo - noun - Named for Boffo's Joke Emporium, 10th Egg St. Ankh-Morpork, the practice of legitimate wizards/witches/mythical persons using theatrics/masks/children's pranks to imitate stereotypical Beliefs in order to leverage credibility over stupid, Normal people.

[lowkeyangel]

He had been on the verge of asking about that six hundred pound ape, since it sounded just a little specific and maybe there was an amusing story there. But then Susan asked him about his wings. Well, no, that wasn't correct. What was she, criticizing them? It wasn't like he'd made them.

And to say that Gabriel's thoughts on his Father were varied was truly an understatement.

"For what?" He shrugged, but there was an underlining tension to the motion. "Look, sister, I'm not asking why you were made all pink and fleshy. I have six wings 'cause that's how I get around. Nothing more complicated than that."

Well, that wasn't really true. But it was a conversation requiring plenty of metaphysics and he just didn't feel like getting into it.

"We angels aren't little kids in blond wigs and togas. We're weird shapes, too many eyes, fire, and plenty of other disturbing stuff. Don't even ask me how many eyes I really have. I get bashful," he quipped.

[no_nonsense]

"Up until you two, I had thought the toga was part of the requirements, but I suppose if you're actually another shape, that does answer my question," Susan admitted casually, as though the conversation hadn't just adopted a considerable amount of tension. "Not that it has to make any sense, at all, really. I just prefer to know whether it ought to or not."

There was a brief moment of silence and she arched a brow.

"Though, honestly, I am a bit surprised you didn't ask me about my alleged...pink and fleshiness," Susan added quizzically. While she clearly didn't care for the terminology, she didn't seem particularly bothered by the implication. "I don't usually get questions, mind, but when I do...that always ends up being the first or second."

She shrugged mildly and settled her hands on her hips.

"Even your brother tried to make out the resemblance. He was polite about it, of course, but that was one of the first things I had to explain."

[lowkeyangel]

"I try not to pry," Gabriel said, which was kind of a lie. He did plenty of prying. But since he was still, for the most part, going by an alias, he didn't demand to know what people were. Most of the time, he could tell. It was a nice thing about being him.

"But now that you mention it, it does make me, y'know, curious."

[no_nonsense]

Fortunately, Susan wasn't particularly adept at picking up subterfuge (at least, not in adults) and she missed the sly lilt to that sentence. Between what he'd said and what she heard, what she gathered was something else altogether and amounted to the fact that he was more polite than his brother (which was debatably correct, in this particular instance, and only this particular instance). Since she saw no fault in this (admittedly faulty) assessment, she had no problem being out with it.

"Since he's decidedly not Alive, I'm really more of a paradox than anything else," Susan clarified vaguely. "Fortunately this means I'm not required to look quite so...emaciated, or dress so dramatically, but I do wish I'd inherited his cheekbones."

Susan shrugged, as though what she'd just said were sufficient explanation, and cocked her head to the side just a bit. The driving need to examine and experiment was, frankly, getting on her last nerve. She was curious enough, as it was, and this new-found keen edge to it was rather more taxing than she'd have liked.

"The last angel I met rode out with them to the Apocalypse, well, sort of. I don't suppose you know him? Carries heavy iron tablets that say bolded nonsense? Terrible at Bridge?"

[lowkeyangel]

Gabriel full-on grimaced at the mention of the Apocalypse — could he take five steps without someone bringing it up? — after trying to work out what she was telling him. She was... related to some dead thing, he guessed; that was what he'd gotten out of her comments. It was as good of an explanation as he needed, really.

"Tablets are so centuries ago," he quipped. "Unless you're talking about the Scribe, sorry, no can do. And I don't think the Scribe rides anywhere. Disappeared right off the map. What's wrong with your cheekbones?"

[no_nonsense]

Susan had taken his grimace as confirmation. The angel of the tablets wasn't exactly a pleasant fellow, not when it started rambling about the more ridiculous bits of his particular section of prophecy, so a grimace was the appropriate reaction...but then Gabriel had started talking about scribes. Well, a Scribe. Given that Susan had never seen that angelic fellow with so much as a notepad (let alone a white-hot, celestial chisel), she doubted they were one and the same.

"Well, I suppose that's--" Susan started and paused mid-sentence as she ran back the last change of topic. She blinked and thought on it for a moment before she continued. She was used to dealing with children, but the children who dealt with her rarely shifted topic so quickly.

"Nothing, I suppose--um, I would have liked them a bit more pronounced," Susan explained a little awkwardly. Her statement had been honest but it had been intended to seem...plucky and conversational. She wasn't expecting further examination and, frankly, wasn't prepared for it. "Seems like people related to Death ought to have very dramatic cheekbones, don't you think?"

She shrugged slightly and, in the manner of all people who were explaining something they hadn't been expecting to, continued talking slightly beyond what was actually necessary.

"You know, just like they ought to wear black, have names with lots of X's and Z's, adopt a skull motif, that sort of thing," Susan added idly. "Not that...well, any of the other business is true, really. It just goes along with the idea, like angels and wings. Very Narrative."

[lowkeyangel]

He gave an almost thoughtful sort of nod. Gabriel had felt Death, his Death, in Wonderland, and knew the cheekbones involved there. They were pretty extreme. And while he would have been offended by a child comparison, there was definite validity there he would have never admitted to. Once the youngest child, always the youngest child.

"Goth really does seem like the MO of a person descended from the thing itself," he had to agree, though, personally, he liked it more when beings were opposite and surprising. Maybe that was just a side-effect of being, well, him. "You've got that going pretty nicely, though. Me, I sort of... try to blend in."

[no_nonsense]

Really, cosmically speaking, it was fortunate that neither of them could read the other's narration. Between her mentally comparing him to assorted first-graders and his assuming she wasn't striving to be opposite of what she was, they might've had a spectacular row. As it was, the conversation remained mildly awkward and partially confused, but generally pleasant.

Susan had no idea what Goth was, but he hadn't seemed particularly snide about the compliment so she accepted it. She didn't know what an 'EM-OH' was, either, but such was the way with unfamiliar slang.

"Well, you were doing a very good job of Blending until you manifested on the table," Susan said casually.

She hadn't encountered many people here, but she had encountered enough of them to notice a trend. By and large, all of the Supernatural people she'd met seemed to prefer discretion in all things to do with who or what they were. It was odd, at least in Susan's experience, but it was also Not Her Business. While she generally didn't mind rifling about in other people's affairs, decisions about Normality were strictly off limits.

"Speaking of, would you prefer I not mention--" Susan made a vague motion to all of him and the general area that had contained the previous mayhem, "--this, if it comes up? If you're Blending, I'd hate to drag you out from under the bed."

[lowkeyangel]

"Nah, I'm... kinda known for things like that," Gabriel said, and it doesn't matter if he was talking about the angel or the trickster. Either was right. "Mention it all you want. Though I do kinda keep the angel thing hush-hush. Sometimes people get kinda... touchy."

That wasn't it at all — he'd gone right back into his Loki persona when he and Lucifer had shown up at the same time, to hide from his older brother. But he's pretty certain that if Lucifer wanted to find him, it would only be a matter of time. So, now he isn't so sure about the trickster persona.

But there's no need to abandon it outright.

[no_nonsense]

"Alright," Susan agreed with a short nod. "I'll keep discretion in mind, should the whole Angelic business comes up."

She paused, then, and looked at the library around her. She'd been looking for the L-Space, an idea that was quite deadly and terrible now that she'd had a few moments to actively think it through...and then she'd been quietly cataloging until things had gone silly. Now that she had neither to occupy her, and she'd questioned this fellow to the limits of her own polite comfort, she was left with a frustrating lack of anything to engage her.

Awkwardly, though, she felt more satisfied with what she'd just learned than she had for the last several days.

"Well, it was definitely interesting, meeting you," Susan said as genially as she could manage. (Which, admittedly, wasn't especially so, but she'd given it the ol'Boarding-School-Try.) Her comment halted for a second, snagged on a technicality right as she hit his name, and her brow furrowed. She wasn't friendly enough with him to use his given name quite so casually and he hadn't provided (or didn't have) a surname.

"Mr. Gabriel," Susan said, after a hitch of indecision. "But I should probably retire somewhere less...risky, if I intend to survive this...compulsion with a minimum of additional casualties. Do have a pleasant day, though."

[lowkeyangel]

Gabriel internalized the chuckle at her politeness getting snaggled over his, well, singular name. Angels didn't exactly need more than one, though he'd once made a joke over having the last name of Godson. (A very long time ago. Nowadays, he barely joked about that stuff at all, and he couldn't keep the bitterness out of his tone even if he gave it his all. How's the search for daddy going?)

"I'd stay out of rooms with sharp objects, or throwable objects," he had to agree, glancing at the books around them. "Toodle-oo."

And with a fluttering of his wings, he was gone.