Discord
09-17-2026, 01:32 AM
Author's note and comment replies
[CW: discussion of queerphobia]
Strike Out! Chapter 3
"I wonder who it was." Aster mumbled into their milkshake.
"Try not to worry about it too much, Hun." Daniel said, pulling out of the in-n-out and into traffic.
"It's just weird!" Aster said, throwing their hands up, clutching their milkshake between their thighs to keep it secure as they gesticulated. "Dude seems to have intimate knowledge of Susie, pretends to be me, but doesn't know I've been dating you for the past two years? What were they trying to pull?"
"Who knows? Maybe they got chat logs from a public server Susie was in, maybe it was a troll trying to stir up drama. You don't need to understand every bad actor on the internet, Aster, you'll go insane." Daniel said, sparing a glance towards the passenger seat before returning his eyes to the road.
"I know, I know." Aster said, sighing and taking another sip from their milkshake. "Its just... weird. I can't really describe it, just a feeling."
The two sat in silence until they pulled into their apartment building's parking lot. Portland was a nice place to live, Aster thought. It was still wild to them that they were living outside their parents house. This sort of thing had seemed impossible until it actually happened.
Daniel didn't care that their mental disability left them unable to work, he just loved them. His simple smile could light up a room and it was infectious. Aster would do anything for him, but just being by his side seemed to make him stand up straighter, smile wider, and be kinder.
And to think, they met because of that silly cartoon they both happened to see as kids.
"I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WORK A MANUAL TRANSMISSION!" I yelled as the car sputtered under my control and gunfire from cartoon fucking weasels whizzed by.
"THERE'S NO OTHER KINDA TRANSMISSION!" Valiant yelled back.
"I can drive!" Roger stated enthusiastically, gloved fingers moving slowly towards the steering wheel.
"NO!" Me and Valiant both yelled back at the rabbit.
This was crazy and stupid, but There wasn't time to switch drivers. Valiant managed to coach me through how to use the clutch and I staggered us into higher gear, dodging around traffic as he shot back towards the weasels.
Roger was contorting in the back seat in various odd shapes to avoid the cartoon bullets whizzing by, which honestly made for a decent distraction. It was also distracting to me, so I tried my best not to look in the rearview mirror more than necessary.
I swerved past a streetcar and used its cover to drift into an alleyway. Holy shit. I couldn't believe I had pulled off something like that!
"Take a right at the end of this, town hall should be just another two blocks away!" Valiant said.
After explaining what I knew, the gumshoe had pieced together things about the case I had forgotten from watching the movie. We had Marvin Acme's will, but the weasels overheard us. I was able to give us enough breathing room with some prop comedy(There was this whole thing in the movie about them laughing themselves to death), that we were able to jump on a streetcar. Then we jumped off into a convertible when the weasels caught up and knocked the streetcar driver out, and I had taken the wheel. Valiant said that if we got the will to town hall, even Judge Doom wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
I don't know if the law actually works like that, but there was a cartoon rabbit backseat driving my ass right now so anything's possible.
The screeching of wheels heralded the weasels turning into the alley behind us. I sped up. Then a police officer on a motorcycle pulled into the alley in front of us. Shit. Fuck.
"AAHHH!!!" Roger yelped, his eyes bugging out so far that they nearly slammed into the windshield. Scared the shit out of me.
I only had one idea, I sped up more.
"ARE YOU CRAZY!?" The rabbit asked me.
I didn't have time to answer him. Worst-case scenario? We were a couple of tons of steel barreling at 50mph and climbing against a single motorcycle. But I'd bet money on the average cop being too much of a coward to win at the classic game of chicken.
I was half-right.
Right before we crashed into the motorcycle, the Cop jumped to the side. The motorcycle, still carrying its momentum, used the hood and windshield of our car as a ramp and sailed clean over our heads and into the weasels. That series of events didn't seem physically plausible, but I shoved that thought to the side with half a dozen other impossible things I'd break down over later.
It didn't stop them. However, they had to push the mangled motorcycle out of the way as they drove down the alley. So it slowed them enough that I was able to turn out the alley before they even shot at us that time.
Town hall was in sight, if the sign out front could be believed. But... if we slowed to a stop, the weasels could just pump us full of lead before we made it up the steps.
Oh god, I had a horrible Idea.
"I'm gonna make a U turn at town hall so I can keep our friends company." I said, trying to keep my voice level, "You two take that opportunity to jump out, If I slow the car down it'll just make us easy targets. I'll buy you some time."
Before either of them could object, a Police car in front of us swerved to block half the road and the judge stepped out to block the other half. Shit. Fuck. Damn. Fuck.
I couldn't just run over some guy even if he was evil. I wasn't a killer. Then it hit me. I smiled, new plan. I pushed down on the accelerator.
"You can't be thinking of running him over too! You'd kill him!" Valiant objected.
"No I won't," I said with a deathly calm that surprised me, "He's a Toon."
And that's how I ended up in a cell. After flattening the judge and revealing he was a Toon I had no problem turning myself in. No cell could hold me anymore. I was exhausted anyway, and as I watched Valiant and roger enter town hall in a hurry, I had no problems putting my hands up. After I barfed.
It apparently took some convincing from Valiant(Apparently he had friends on the force?) to get them to drop the murder charges. Which was helped by the testimony of my passengers that I had called him a Toon before I rammed the bastard.
I still had to wait a bit to be released, but Valiant walked in with a cop to let me out.
"There's something I've been meaning to ask," Valiant said as we made our way out, "How do you know so much? You gave me your name, but no one's heard of you, I just don't see how you fit into the picture."
"If I answer you honestly, you're going to think I'm crazy." I said with a shrug. "But your choice"
Valiant rubbed his chin before nodding at me.
"I'm from an alternate far future of 2026. They made a movie about this, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Was one of my favorites. My ability to travel between different alternate timelines is mostly blind, so when I ended up here and realized what was going on and decided I wanted to help before anyone else got murdered."
Valiant stared blankly at me. "You're right, I do think you're crazy. Or a liar."
I just shrugged. "Told you."
Framing my world hopping as time travel did tickle something in the back of my head, though. I was sure I could make money with this. I needed a place to sleep that wasn't a homeless shelter.
I couldn't bring gold into the future, they tracked that shit. But I could probably bring things into the past. They don't track things here nearly as well. There were plenty of ideas I could steal, but that was more of a long con. I couldn't exactly start belting out Beatles songs and expect a windfall.
And any advanced tech, no matter how small would raise too many eyebrows, and also probably cause a ton of unforeseen consequences. I needed something that they already have or could conceivably have.
As much as I tried to brainstorm I just couldn't think of anything.
"ASTER!" I heard a shrill voice yell before being tackle hugged by a cartoon rabbit going about a zillion miles per hour.
"Hey Roger," I said, sitting up from where I was sprawled on the sidewalk and giving him a big hug back.
"Thank you so so so soooo much!" He said.
"Thank you as well, Aster." The silky voice of one Jessica Rabbit said, walking up slowly behind roger. "For looking out for my husband and letting him know that Maroon forced me to pose for those pictures."
"What am I, chopped liver?" Valiant asked.
"You already got your thanks, Eddie." Jessica said, "This is our first time seeing Aster after everything that's happened."
"Guys it was literally one afternoon. I gave Valiant the info he needed and then got roped into a crazy car chase, I've been in LA for all of two days. I think your gratitude may be overblown."
"Naaaaaaaaah," Roger said dismissively, "Toons just make easy-peasy friends!"
An Idea that I was sure to regret blossomed in my mind. But! Desperation makes fools of us all.
"Well if that's the case would you mind if I stayed at your place for a while? I actually don't have any money... at all. Long story short my wallet's gone forever."
"Sure thing pal!" Roger said, shaking my hand so much I vibrated. God, Toon stuff's weird.
To say Toontown was magical would be an understatement. To say it was nerve-racking would be a disservice to heart attacks everywhere. The Rabbits lived in a rather nice townhouse(that thankfully wasn't alive like many of the buildings.)
Roger made a comic mess of doing chores while his wife unwound on the couch with a glass of wine. She watched him, smirking and giggling at his antics. I was reminded of a line from the movie. Valiant asks her what she sees in roger, and she simply replied: "He makes me laugh".
"You really love him, don't you?" I said, settling into the... well the cartoonishly comfy couch across from Jessica.
"With all my heart."
"I can see why." I said, "I've. Well I've never had much energy or ability to explore relationships, but the ones that always stand out to me are the ones where partners make each other happy just by being near one another."
"That's rather astute of you, Aster. And something that humans seem to have a hard time grasping sometimes."
I nodded. A lot of relationships were based, at least at first, on physical attraction. I was asexual, so I didn't really understand what that felt like, but I could see how the focus on appearances had warped the popular conception of romance.
We spent some time talking, getting to know each other. Roger popped in with a question now and then, between cleaning, cleaning the mess he made while cleaning, cleaning the mess he made while cooking, and cooking dinner. I was relieved that when I expressed the concept of being nonbinary that they understood.
Turns out that Toons could relate a lot to the outcasts of human society, especially the ones that don't play by the rules of 'polite society'. There still was quite a bit of qeerphobia, but it was mostly bleed over from the fact that no Toon(or human for that matter) could get a job if they were or hung around queer folk. Toons themselves were so diverse and colorful that things like sexuality and gender only mattered to them for gags, or whatever roles they would play.
I figured the 1940s would end up hurting me, but at least Toontown was safe.
Dinner was surprisingly good. I wouldn't have guessed that Roger was a house-husband, and I guess he wasn't, since both he and Jessica held full-time jobs. For all he plays the goof, and he is genuinely clumsy, the sheer effort Roger put in made up for it. He waged war to cook us a cartoon Turkey and didn't even look winded after the show he put on.
I retired to the guestroom and quickly realized how loud Toontown was. At all hours. Everywhere. Eventually, though, I was able to drift off to sleep.
[CW: discussion of queerphobia]
Strike Out! Chapter 3
"I wonder who it was." Aster mumbled into their milkshake.
"Try not to worry about it too much, Hun." Daniel said, pulling out of the in-n-out and into traffic.
"It's just weird!" Aster said, throwing their hands up, clutching their milkshake between their thighs to keep it secure as they gesticulated. "Dude seems to have intimate knowledge of Susie, pretends to be me, but doesn't know I've been dating you for the past two years? What were they trying to pull?"
"Who knows? Maybe they got chat logs from a public server Susie was in, maybe it was a troll trying to stir up drama. You don't need to understand every bad actor on the internet, Aster, you'll go insane." Daniel said, sparing a glance towards the passenger seat before returning his eyes to the road.
"I know, I know." Aster said, sighing and taking another sip from their milkshake. "Its just... weird. I can't really describe it, just a feeling."
The two sat in silence until they pulled into their apartment building's parking lot. Portland was a nice place to live, Aster thought. It was still wild to them that they were living outside their parents house. This sort of thing had seemed impossible until it actually happened.
Daniel didn't care that their mental disability left them unable to work, he just loved them. His simple smile could light up a room and it was infectious. Aster would do anything for him, but just being by his side seemed to make him stand up straighter, smile wider, and be kinder.
And to think, they met because of that silly cartoon they both happened to see as kids.
"I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WORK A MANUAL TRANSMISSION!" I yelled as the car sputtered under my control and gunfire from cartoon fucking weasels whizzed by.
"THERE'S NO OTHER KINDA TRANSMISSION!" Valiant yelled back.
"I can drive!" Roger stated enthusiastically, gloved fingers moving slowly towards the steering wheel.
"NO!" Me and Valiant both yelled back at the rabbit.
This was crazy and stupid, but There wasn't time to switch drivers. Valiant managed to coach me through how to use the clutch and I staggered us into higher gear, dodging around traffic as he shot back towards the weasels.
Roger was contorting in the back seat in various odd shapes to avoid the cartoon bullets whizzing by, which honestly made for a decent distraction. It was also distracting to me, so I tried my best not to look in the rearview mirror more than necessary.
I swerved past a streetcar and used its cover to drift into an alleyway. Holy shit. I couldn't believe I had pulled off something like that!
"Take a right at the end of this, town hall should be just another two blocks away!" Valiant said.
After explaining what I knew, the gumshoe had pieced together things about the case I had forgotten from watching the movie. We had Marvin Acme's will, but the weasels overheard us. I was able to give us enough breathing room with some prop comedy(There was this whole thing in the movie about them laughing themselves to death), that we were able to jump on a streetcar. Then we jumped off into a convertible when the weasels caught up and knocked the streetcar driver out, and I had taken the wheel. Valiant said that if we got the will to town hall, even Judge Doom wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
I don't know if the law actually works like that, but there was a cartoon rabbit backseat driving my ass right now so anything's possible.
The screeching of wheels heralded the weasels turning into the alley behind us. I sped up. Then a police officer on a motorcycle pulled into the alley in front of us. Shit. Fuck.
"AAHHH!!!" Roger yelped, his eyes bugging out so far that they nearly slammed into the windshield. Scared the shit out of me.
I only had one idea, I sped up more.
"ARE YOU CRAZY!?" The rabbit asked me.
I didn't have time to answer him. Worst-case scenario? We were a couple of tons of steel barreling at 50mph and climbing against a single motorcycle. But I'd bet money on the average cop being too much of a coward to win at the classic game of chicken.
I was half-right.
Right before we crashed into the motorcycle, the Cop jumped to the side. The motorcycle, still carrying its momentum, used the hood and windshield of our car as a ramp and sailed clean over our heads and into the weasels. That series of events didn't seem physically plausible, but I shoved that thought to the side with half a dozen other impossible things I'd break down over later.
It didn't stop them. However, they had to push the mangled motorcycle out of the way as they drove down the alley. So it slowed them enough that I was able to turn out the alley before they even shot at us that time.
Town hall was in sight, if the sign out front could be believed. But... if we slowed to a stop, the weasels could just pump us full of lead before we made it up the steps.
Oh god, I had a horrible Idea.
"I'm gonna make a U turn at town hall so I can keep our friends company." I said, trying to keep my voice level, "You two take that opportunity to jump out, If I slow the car down it'll just make us easy targets. I'll buy you some time."
Before either of them could object, a Police car in front of us swerved to block half the road and the judge stepped out to block the other half. Shit. Fuck. Damn. Fuck.
I couldn't just run over some guy even if he was evil. I wasn't a killer. Then it hit me. I smiled, new plan. I pushed down on the accelerator.
"You can't be thinking of running him over too! You'd kill him!" Valiant objected.
"No I won't," I said with a deathly calm that surprised me, "He's a Toon."
And that's how I ended up in a cell. After flattening the judge and revealing he was a Toon I had no problem turning myself in. No cell could hold me anymore. I was exhausted anyway, and as I watched Valiant and roger enter town hall in a hurry, I had no problems putting my hands up. After I barfed.
It apparently took some convincing from Valiant(Apparently he had friends on the force?) to get them to drop the murder charges. Which was helped by the testimony of my passengers that I had called him a Toon before I rammed the bastard.
I still had to wait a bit to be released, but Valiant walked in with a cop to let me out.
"There's something I've been meaning to ask," Valiant said as we made our way out, "How do you know so much? You gave me your name, but no one's heard of you, I just don't see how you fit into the picture."
"If I answer you honestly, you're going to think I'm crazy." I said with a shrug. "But your choice"
Valiant rubbed his chin before nodding at me.
"I'm from an alternate far future of 2026. They made a movie about this, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Was one of my favorites. My ability to travel between different alternate timelines is mostly blind, so when I ended up here and realized what was going on and decided I wanted to help before anyone else got murdered."
Valiant stared blankly at me. "You're right, I do think you're crazy. Or a liar."
I just shrugged. "Told you."
Framing my world hopping as time travel did tickle something in the back of my head, though. I was sure I could make money with this. I needed a place to sleep that wasn't a homeless shelter.
I couldn't bring gold into the future, they tracked that shit. But I could probably bring things into the past. They don't track things here nearly as well. There were plenty of ideas I could steal, but that was more of a long con. I couldn't exactly start belting out Beatles songs and expect a windfall.
And any advanced tech, no matter how small would raise too many eyebrows, and also probably cause a ton of unforeseen consequences. I needed something that they already have or could conceivably have.
As much as I tried to brainstorm I just couldn't think of anything.
"ASTER!" I heard a shrill voice yell before being tackle hugged by a cartoon rabbit going about a zillion miles per hour.
"Hey Roger," I said, sitting up from where I was sprawled on the sidewalk and giving him a big hug back.
"Thank you so so so soooo much!" He said.
"Thank you as well, Aster." The silky voice of one Jessica Rabbit said, walking up slowly behind roger. "For looking out for my husband and letting him know that Maroon forced me to pose for those pictures."
"What am I, chopped liver?" Valiant asked.
"You already got your thanks, Eddie." Jessica said, "This is our first time seeing Aster after everything that's happened."
"Guys it was literally one afternoon. I gave Valiant the info he needed and then got roped into a crazy car chase, I've been in LA for all of two days. I think your gratitude may be overblown."
"Naaaaaaaaah," Roger said dismissively, "Toons just make easy-peasy friends!"
An Idea that I was sure to regret blossomed in my mind. But! Desperation makes fools of us all.
"Well if that's the case would you mind if I stayed at your place for a while? I actually don't have any money... at all. Long story short my wallet's gone forever."
"Sure thing pal!" Roger said, shaking my hand so much I vibrated. God, Toon stuff's weird.
To say Toontown was magical would be an understatement. To say it was nerve-racking would be a disservice to heart attacks everywhere. The Rabbits lived in a rather nice townhouse(that thankfully wasn't alive like many of the buildings.)
Roger made a comic mess of doing chores while his wife unwound on the couch with a glass of wine. She watched him, smirking and giggling at his antics. I was reminded of a line from the movie. Valiant asks her what she sees in roger, and she simply replied: "He makes me laugh".
"You really love him, don't you?" I said, settling into the... well the cartoonishly comfy couch across from Jessica.
"With all my heart."
"I can see why." I said, "I've. Well I've never had much energy or ability to explore relationships, but the ones that always stand out to me are the ones where partners make each other happy just by being near one another."
"That's rather astute of you, Aster. And something that humans seem to have a hard time grasping sometimes."
I nodded. A lot of relationships were based, at least at first, on physical attraction. I was asexual, so I didn't really understand what that felt like, but I could see how the focus on appearances had warped the popular conception of romance.
We spent some time talking, getting to know each other. Roger popped in with a question now and then, between cleaning, cleaning the mess he made while cleaning, cleaning the mess he made while cooking, and cooking dinner. I was relieved that when I expressed the concept of being nonbinary that they understood.
Turns out that Toons could relate a lot to the outcasts of human society, especially the ones that don't play by the rules of 'polite society'. There still was quite a bit of qeerphobia, but it was mostly bleed over from the fact that no Toon(or human for that matter) could get a job if they were or hung around queer folk. Toons themselves were so diverse and colorful that things like sexuality and gender only mattered to them for gags, or whatever roles they would play.
I figured the 1940s would end up hurting me, but at least Toontown was safe.
Dinner was surprisingly good. I wouldn't have guessed that Roger was a house-husband, and I guess he wasn't, since both he and Jessica held full-time jobs. For all he plays the goof, and he is genuinely clumsy, the sheer effort Roger put in made up for it. He waged war to cook us a cartoon Turkey and didn't even look winded after the show he put on.
I retired to the guestroom and quickly realized how loud Toontown was. At all hours. Everywhere. Eventually, though, I was able to drift off to sleep.
