Snippet #1484352

“Say we just kept quiet about it, and let them think we weren’t on to their plan, then what would happen? Life here would continue to go on, and we’d never get back home. You can’t just pretend things are normal and stay under the radar unless your fixing on stayin’. And besides, if they knew we knew, at least we’d be getting some answers...” Leander could not believe she was having this discussion. It was all just surreal enough that she might still be dreaming after all. Though she had a response, she kept it for the moment. Other matters were more pressing, and among those was figuring out exactly what was going on. Only when they had that vital little piece of information would discussing what to do with it make any sense at all.

Apparently, she had not been the only one to make her way here via sleep- it looked to be true of both Princess and Shades now, though she woud have to maybe ask the others to see if- ugh. Why do I care? That was perhaps the most troubling thing for Leander- while she liked a puzzle as much as the next former honor student, she wasn't exactly anyone's definition of a humanitarian, or any kind of scientist or whoever the hell it would make the most sense to ask about this kind of thing. Assuming any of those people were even here in the first place... Leander's grip tightened reflexively on the mirror in her pocket. Maybe what she really needed was a bloody shrink.

“You might be on to something... I found these shades yesterday and, besides these clothes, the shades were the only other thing that I’ve found on me. It can’t be a coincidence, I don’t believe in coincidences,” It took her a second to process that he was answering her previous statement and not her thoughts, because really the flow was remarkable for a second there. The corner of her lip twitched. Me either, Shades, she thought sardonically. Coincidence was a shitty excuse, but statistical significance demanded further test cases, to use the dry terminology.

They were then approached by a man calling himself Chris- a brit, from the sound of it, and before she could open her mouth to say anything, Shades grabbed her shoulders and shook her emphatically, which caused Leander to scowl. She was not a big fan of unsolicited contact, and she didn't often solicit it either. Still, she had a feeling this guy didn't really get the whole concept of personal boundaries, and since she'd dragged him off a haystack earlier, she figured fair was fair at the very least. “Conspiracy, I’m telling ya! All of us were drugged in our sleep, injected with some type of knock-out drug... they moved us here during the middle of the night. Why else wouldn’t we remember what happened during the time since we fell asleep?”

"Okay, okay, just hold it for a second, Shades," she replied flatly, reaching up and gingerly removing his hands from her shoulders, placing them back at his side with somewhat-exaggerated care. "Now-" she was cut off when another man, the one she had spotted earlier in his smallclothes, bumped right into Flin.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, I was thinking about the Anthropic principle and lost track of where I was ...Are you from America?" There was an almost comic pause in which nobody said anything, then the man continued right on. "Because this isn't America, this isn't America at all."

"It's not Australia either," she replied matter-of-factly, glancing from one of the British men to the other. "Nor Britain, I think. Okay. How about this: If you're from a planet called earth and pretty sure this is not where you fell asleep last night, gather round." She increased her audibility only enough to be heard by the people in the immediate area, including the blond man speaking to Princess and the strange doll-woman. "Right. So... now... if you came across an object last night and took it home and it showed up here with you... uh, I dunno, nod or raise your hand or something." Right now that was the only commonality she had to work off of, and it seemed as fair a place to start as any.

Inwardly, Leander was praying to whatever the hell deity was out there that someone else would take charge of this bloody situation and leave her out of it. She just wanted to get back home to her life and her job and her cigs and some semblance of normality... didn't she? She tried to ignore the niggling feeling at the back of her mind that told her that this was easily the most interesting thing that was going to happen to her for the rest of her life. She looked around at the faces in the area; Shades, Princess, Blondie, Professor, the doll-girl, and... Chris. She was gonna need to work on nicknames for those last two, definitely.

Leander was a perpetual nicknamer. At first, it had just been another way to assert her lack of respect for anyone, and her complete disregard for societal convention, but she was by now far too lazy to bother with such aggressive motives. Now she just did it because she didn't really like names. They said nothing about a person, while her monikers usually did, even if it was only a bit about what someone might look or act like. Still more useful. Some people were annoyed by them, but she couldn't really care less about that, and by now it was a habit so far ingrained it was a wonder she managed to remember birth names at all.