B-Squad Common Room, SPD HQ [Evening, 11/23/2026]

[needsaparrot]

The last time Xander missed a really important call, he'd had no other excuse than not hearing the ringtone over his hometown falling into a sinkhole around his ears.

This time, at least he could say it wasn't his fault. The thing hadn't given so much as a buzz in the last two days -- which was actually kind of ridiculous, like half his construction clients had decided to go on vacation or something -- and then all of a sudden the message light was blinking at him from atop the pizza box he hadn't even opened yet.

Funny how, once he'd let it play, Xander really didn't give a crap that it wasn't his fault (or even entirely believe that, because... because there should've been something.)

He wasn't much in the mood for pizza anymore, either.
__
[Open for texts/calls/people who live in THE FUTURE. Mmm, pizza.]

Comments

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

Parker was checking in with people, as she moved money around and tried to convince her friends that they needed to get out of town now, and Portalocity that yes, she really did need six tickets, damnit.

*ring*

[needsaparrot]

Like Xander was not going to catch every call on the first ring for say, the next five years?

"Parker." A moment of relief in his voice, before it went back, like the rest of him, to 'struck dumbfucked.'

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"Xander. How are you?" Please say you're okay, please say something silly....

[needsaparrot]

"Mel's gone." There was ... possibly a universe somewhere where that was silly, or where Xander was in any way okay?

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"Xander, I..." It was getting to feel so wrong to say 'sorry', when the losses kept piling up, were so painful and huge. "I'm so sorry. I wish there was something I could do."

[needsaparrot]

By this time, he'd heard enough from Jen to have at least a vague, one-eyed glimpse of the picture. "Are people missing from your place too?"

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"And places. Random ones. Kamchatka. Philadelphia. One of the guys you helped rescue has disappeared." Parker's voice was tight with worry. "I'm trying to get to Fandom, with the rest of my crew."

[needsaparrot]

"People are gone from the Ranger histories, Jen says. Like they never existed."

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"Christ." Parker grimaced. "I'm trying to get to Fandom; nothing's disappeared from there yet, but getting more than one ticket is... challenging." Or nearly impossible. "Are you and Bridge leaving yet?"

[needsaparrot]

"I haven't even talked to him about this yet; we just started putting things together." And by we, he meant himself, Jen, and the pizza. "Jarod still okay? And his sister?"

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"Jarod's okay. Emily and the rest of their family are living off the grid right now." How terrible would it be, if he just forgot them, after so long trying to get them back? "Isabel's... you should call her. She's not good."

[needsaparrot]

"We're supposed to go see her pretty soon." Xander leaned back on the couch and rubbed his forehead. "If that's still on; hell if I know."

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"At Ronan's place? Because that's where she and Wyatt are now," Parker said, stomach sinking. "Have you talked to her in the last couple days?"

[needsaparrot]

"No. What's she doing... dumb question, I guess." Xander glanced at his phone. "She might've tried to call; Mel's message didn't come through live. Whatever this is may be messing with the phones too, least on this end."

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"I wouldn't bet it's not." Parker grimaced, shaking her head, thinking of Mel. She'd known her far more through Xander than the one or two times she'd run into her, but she was Xander's first Slayer that he took responsibility for. First one who called him 'Watcher.' "God, this reminds me of you disappearing for seven months and coming back seven *years later."

[needsaparrot]

"You think?" Kind of the first thing he'd thought of too. "That's not really upping my itch to go anywhere by portal, though, gotta say."

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"Can't say I disagree, not the way Portalocity is screwing around, but what's the other choice? Wyatt? I don't want the guy to have to airlift me out of here unless he has to." And even that was iffy, after Isabel and Wyatt's near-miss. "Remember how they routed me through twelve places that one summer before I crashed at your place?"

[needsaparrot]

"I remember how Alanna fell through our ceiling, too." And how long had it been since anyone had heard from them? When technology barely worked to start with, it was always hard to tell if something was wrong, or just someone's reality drifting away from Fandom.

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"Note to self: start a new interdimensional company after this mess is resolved," Parker said, trying to joke, but sounding far too grim. "God. I hope she's okay too. Haven't heard from her in a while." She shook her head. "I've already moved a ton of money to the bank at Fandom, to make sure that people can... stay. As long as they need to."

[needsaparrot]

"I'll talk to Bridge about going, but I think I already know what he'll say -- the point of SPD is to be here to stop crap like this." Not that there was any crap like this, but. Alien crap, weird-ass universe-destroying crap, same principle.

[mparkerceo.livejournal.com]

"That's great, but have your damn parachutes ready. This is taking out whole worlds, Xander," Parker said, sounding sharper than she wanted to. Her voice softened. "Don't wait so long you scare the crap out of us."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Jen did not look happy when she walked into the common room, a circumstance that had nothing to do with any ridiculous layovers since she'd remained firmly in this particular pocket of the future since returning from the Ice Age.

She'd been paging back through her Ranger history records and noticed a glaring lack of . . . several people, really, including the entire Aquitian Ranger team, but mostly Wes Collins and Eric Myers's complete nonexistence.

At the moment she was chalking it up to someone hacking her files, and was trying to figure out who to have look into the situation, when she caught sight of Xander.

"What's going on?"

[needsaparrot]

Xander stared blankly at her for a moment, then just said, "Mel called," and let the voicemail play.

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Jen listened to the voicemail with a cop's impartial attention to det--

Okay, she started to, but by the time the message was over she wasn't even pretending to do that any more.

"Oh, god, Xander." She could've started asking questions, or trying to draw correlations, but she wasn't that much of a hardass cop that she couldn't give him some time.

[needsaparrot]

Xander let out a short huff of air through his nose. Listening to that again hadn't been any easier than the first time, even though he knew what was coming. "I've thought she was dead before; you think you'd get used to that kind of thing after a while, but no."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

Jen shook her head. "That sounds a little too deliberate to be a false alarm though, doesn't it? And --" Something clicked.

"The Ranger archives. People have started disappearing from those records, too." She glanced at him, corners of her mouth set into a slight frown.

[needsaparrot]

"Because that's comp--" Forgive Xander if he was a little slow on the uptake at the moment. "What do you mean by disappearing?"

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"As in there's no record of them having been there in the first place," Jen clarified. "Or even having existed."

Which was how Mel's message said things had started, wasn't it?

[needsaparrot]

"She said people and places were gone." A few more moments and he might stop looking for a wall to punch that wouldn't break his hand, and apply that to-- "You think it might be happening here too?"

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"It might be," Jen said slowly. "Anything you haven't heard lately?"

[needsaparrot]

"Haven't heard?" Dumbass... "Well, I haven't heard from any of my construction clients this week. I know it's Thanksgiving and all, but the little green guy with the coffee fetish was calling me every damn day to check on one detail or another, before."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

You could argue that Jen just naturally erred on the side of pessimistic. You could.

"Doesn't make sense for him to suddenly stop. Any more than it does for Wes and Eric to just stop existing in the past, without affecting now."

[needsaparrot]

"Maybe that just hasn't caught up with us yet?" Blame a couple Galaxy Quest episodes and Issue 294 of Bitterwoman Unlimited that he could even try to fake a guess about temporal physics. "There's your uplifting thought for the day..."

[time-flyer-5.livejournal.com]

"Twenty-five years later it hasn't caught up to us?" Jen did look kind of sorry to be pointing that out, at least. "This is more than a little bit crazy."