most_unwanted | [Action/Voice]

[Finally, after all this time! Mulder has found that much-desired basketball. He's in luck too, as it's well-inflated, not a sign of wear or tear on it. Too many times, he's come across half-deflated or otherwise messed up ones. But this one is perfect. It's as if there's finally some compensation for all the usual rounds of disappearances and so on. He's really needed this. He starts dribbling the ball right as he leaves the shop and continues bouncing the thing everywhere he goes throughout the day. It can also be heard in the background of his voice transmission.]

Does anyone have any unique birthday traditions they care to share? I wonder how similar these traditions might be between the worlds... Let's just say I'm curious, for purely theoretical reasons.

...By the way, is there anyone out there who'd be up for shooting some hoops or even getting together a pick-up game of basketball? Of course, we'd actually need to throw together a hoop somehow first, but minor details! If you've never played before, I promise I'll go easy on you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think I'll have to ask whether you have what you might consider any unique birthday traditions first. I'm...not at all certain what constitutes one, at least from my world.

...I didn't know you played basketball.

Edited 2011-10-13 14:28 (UTC)

Anything aside from cake, singing, and so on. Bonus points for anything paranormal that may have been involved.

Then you have no idea how long I've been looking for a good basketball around here. It's a pretty good way to unwind in my free time- uh, whatever free time I ever have, that is.

Well, we certainly had no shortage of paranormal elements. I'm just not sure you could call that a tradition.

We all have a bit more free time around here, though, don't we?

So you happened to be besieged by paranormal entities around the time of people's birthdays pretty often?

[And yeah, the free time. It's something that's still weird to have so much of. Even the 'work' he makes for himself to do doesn't take up the same amount of time as work back home.]

All the more reason for me to have it around. That way I don't have to fill the free time with arts and crafts or any other new hobbies. As much as I've been dying to make a sculpture out of nothing but used gum and elbow macaroni...

On a distressingly regular basis. Part of the reason I've stopped celebrating mine, truth to tell.

[...a pause, as Giles pictures this next bit.]

What...sort of sculpture, then?

[He's just joking on that last thing, he swears.]

I suppose I could go all Close Encounters of the Third Kind and make a mysterious mountainous sculpture...

Anyway, I can imagine having your birthday celebrations constantly interrupted gets old, fast. Was it just the luck of living where you did?

I think so. At least, the set of circumstances to disturb us was more or less specific to Sunnydale.

...or at least, having that specific set of circumstances happening year after year was probably specific to Sunnydale.

I'm not sure whether to say I'm sorry, or feel a bit envious that you had everything literally right there, as far as the paranormal is concerned.

Oh, and that was only the start of our world's exposure to the supernatural.

...an apology is probably more appropriate, though, given what happened.

That was... what I saw during that one experiment? It didn't look like it fared too well, to give the understatement of the century.

That was an...unfortunately extreme case. It would have become more commonplace, but we managed to avert that particular catastrophe.

What you saw was the underside of Sunnydale after we'd destroyed it and closed the Hellmouth. One very unfortunate town.

I don't think we ever discussed the Hellmouth too extensively before... What was that, exactly?

More or less what it says on the tin, I'm afraid. A portal to one or possibly all of the thousands of hell dimensions that exist in our world, and a potent source of mystical energy that attracted any and every supernatural being for miles in all directions.

Not exactly a comfortable area for a vacation... but I imagine it would have been exciting to see what emerged.

[Only Mulder would be a bit on the enthused side at the prospect of a place like the Hellmouth.]

"Exciting" was, um, a polite word for it. "Nightmarish" is another and probably more accurate word.

...it was a very bad day when it actually opened, you understand.

You were there when it first opened up? Or you at least know the details about it?

It first appeared several hundred years ago, at least. But I know the history, at least. The original Spanish settlers were thorough.

It nearly opened several subsequent times, but we were on hand to stop it.

How do you stop something of such magnitude?

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