Duck's beady, black eyes narrowed as they fixed upon his nemesis, layers of viciously harmless teeth hanging open in a classic shark's grin. Time was an inconsistent factor when you were the best friend of a not-a-human as Noah, but he knew how to time his attacks properly. It would involve lightning speed, perfect reflexes, and a powerful bite, all of which would combine to result in the perfect move. He would have to do it right... NOW!

Lily watched the fuzzy shark in confusion as he blurred through the air, slightly fuzzy teeth chomping down with a satisfying squish on the ceiling fan. Since the fan was spinning at the time, it meant that Duck went flying around the fan, holding on as tightly as he could.

"Sharks don't make sound."

Her attention was diverted as Noah spoke. He was mixing a strange cocktail of chemicals, and would occasionally snap his fingers to produce the odd ingredient, putting it into the concoction without missing a beat. She raised an eyebrow curiously. "Sorry, what was that?"

He glanced up at Duck, who was somehow still hanging on despite the increasing speed of the ceiling fan. The shark was little more than a gray-white blur at this point. "Sharks don't make sound. They don't have any organs for it. I thought he'd be growling or something, but he just... can't. That's how it works."

Lily frowned, crossing her legs on her seat as she paused from typing on her laptop. Normally, she'd be worried about being late for work, but she still hadn't figured out how the time in their apartment worked yet and had asked Noah to simply remind her when they'd landed on the appropriate timeline. If there was anything she knew from her many binge-watches, it was time travel.

Albeit, it was usually linear, rather than whatever the heck Noah was doing.

"Well... he's your shark, right? Why can't you just... you know?" She finished by waving her hands around indistinctly, not entirely sure how to end the sentence.

Noah finished her sentence for her. "Give him the capacity to produce sounds? Not really, no. My mom could do it, no problem, but my siblings and I aren't really allowed to directly change organic life. Let's just say there are better ways to learn biology."

Lily opened her mouth and then closed it. "There is so much in that sentence you have to unpack."

Duck finally lost his grip on the fan and hurtled away, slamming into the wall with a stuffed-animal squeak. He flew away irritably, glaring at the ceiling fan. Jill, reading a magazine while sprawled across an easy chair, chuckled darkly. Lily raised a finger uncertainly. "Didn't you say..."

Noah shrugged. "The thing I've learned about the universe is that anything can happen, and the odds of anything happening increase exponentially if I'm in said universe. Oh, and the Dino Diner opened in about an hour and ninety eleven minutes."

Lily blinked. "Uhhh... translation?"

He turned back to his concoction, pulling a suspiciously heavy-duty welding mask on. "If you leave in about five linear minutes, you'll be right on time. The door's only going to work along with that timeline for another eight lightyears, so you've really got plenty of time. At least until you don't, obviously." He caught her expression and promptly rephrased. "You might want to get going."

She shrugged and grabbed her uniform, slinging it over her shoulder. As she headed out the door, she sent one final glance back, to find Noah aiming a ridiculously dangerous-looking high-tech cannon of some kind at the overflowing beaker of glowing purple liquid, Jill watching with interest. Shaking her head, Lily exited and closed the door.

Based on the earth-shattering blast that followed, it was probably perfect timing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lily drummed her fingers on her steering wheel, staring hard at the Diner.

How was she supposed to explain any of what had happened yesterday to her coworkers? She'd been fired and hired in less than ten linear minutes, and-

She cut herself off, kneading her eyes with the backs of her hands. Linear minutes, huh? How on Earth had she adjusted to Noah's freaky sense of time so fast? Probably the same whatever-it-is that made her collectively lose her mind in the healthiest way possible. Or perhaps it was something else?

Either way, she was going to be late for work if she waited any longer.

Getting out of her car, she slammed the door shut and headed inside resolutely. Social interactions were a lot less intimidating after seeing someone get shot in front of her, even if that particular victim had come out of it with a cheekier attitude than when before.

She walked in with a ready smile, fully prepared for anything the day could throw at her.

"Why Lily, it's so good to see you! The Diner's not the same with-out, you!"

Okay, never mind. There wasn't anything that could have prepared her for the sight of a fat man singing for her, or the fact that the rest of the crew was singing backup. And where in the world was the generic pop music coming from?

"Uhhh, James? Why are you-"

He cut her off with a perfect-teeth grin, which was just wrong. He'd come to work with morning breath enough times that his teeth should be yellower than the sun. In perfect sync with everyone else, including a few customers, he sang in an uncomfortably flawless soprano. "Girl, you won't believe the day we've had! We're doin' new stuff-" A man walking by muttered in time, "Shouldn't try it," and James continued, "We don't know what's inside it!"

Everyone started a low chorus, building quickly. "Don't know what's in, don't know what's in, DON'T KNOW WHAT'S INSIDE IT!"

It broke her. Lily turned and sprinted for the door. Throwing it open, she ran from the dancing crowd and positively hurled herself into her car. Locking the doors, she yanked out her phone and promptly scrolled to her texts. Finding the one Noah had sent her yesterday, she tapped and held on the message, and it pulled up his phone number. She called him instantly, deciding not to think about whether or not the apartment would interfere with the resulting call. Thankfully, it seemed to work.

Noah picked up after a single ring. "Y'ello?"

"Noah, everyone's singing and dancing, and - wait, yellow?"

She could practically hear the shrug over the phone. "Not yellow. Y'ello. There's a difference, although you'd have to read it to get it. What'd you say about singing and dancing?"

Lily peeked over the side of her car door. Everyone inside the Diner was still singing, and now that she thought about it, the sun was suspiciously bright. Not in a dry, July, summery feel - more of a you're-in-Florida-and-on-vacation feel. Frowning, she said, "My coworkers and a bunch of random people are singing in unison, and I can't tell where the music's coming from."

She heard Noah hum thoughtfully to himself, followed by an explosion. As though the blast hadn't occurred at all, he asked curiously, "But you're not singing? There's no desire to break out in Sinatra and tap-dance?"

Rolling her eyes, she told him, "No. Besides, I'm more of a Gene Kelly kind of person."

He snorted. "Well, aside from the fact that you're horribly wrong, I'd say you're in one of two scenarios."

"Okay, well which is this?"

She had a feeling he'd started counting off his fingers. "Well, option one, you're getting flash-mobbed. In all seriousness, that's happened to me way more often than you might think it does."

Lily rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers. "Somehow, I don't think this is it."

"Fair enough," he conceded. "leaving us with option number two. You're in a musical."

Her left eyebrow, messy from sleeping two times in a row on a couch, shot up. "I'm sorry, what?"

He continued, the sound of bubbling liquid in the background. "You're in a musical. Ordinarily, when a Cosmic enters a universe, we do so at the very beginning. It lets the universe settle into the fact that there's a nigh-omnipotent being chilling inside it, gives it time to adjust. In this case, I just straight up hijacked this universe, and it's dealing with the throwback, especially since I'm the spaciest Cosmic, in every definition of the word. Point being, it's adjusting to me being in it, and it's doing that by going through genres. Make sense?"

Lily blinked. That had been a surprisingly concise explanation, or at least more so than what she'd come to expect from the mildly insane teenager.

"Mildly? Mildly? I only get a mildly? I'm an all-out nutjob, where are you getting at with mildly!?"

She was more than a little taken aback. "What are you talking about?"

He was practically seething, for no apparent reason to her. "That freaking author! I knew he'd get at me somehow, but this is just low!" He hung up. She stared at her phone, then shook her head. Who knew what went through the mind of Noah.

Sighing, she leaned her chair back and relaxed. If the universe was adjusting, well, at least it didn't involve her.

Her phone buzzed, and she checked the caller ID. It was Noah. Surprised, she picked up. "What is it?"

He started talking very quickly. "Okay, so I was thinking about what you said a bit more after I had some guarana-infused coffee - great fruity edge, by the way - and realized that you weren't affected if you recognized that singing and dancing was weird and thought 'hey, that's weird, why aren't you affected'? So I got to more thinking and realized you were in the apartment when it started changing, which not only means you're not affected by the resulting changes, but that you're going to be the primary target of all subsequent modifications to the fabric of the universe! Did you catch all that!?"

She hadn't, no. "Uhhh...."

He laughed. It was a short, energy-filled sound. "Never mind! I'll come to you and explain it all again."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Thankfully, by the time he'd made it over to the Diner and Lily's car, he'd calmed down somewhat from the coffee. Knocking on her passenger window, she briefly unlocked the car door, and he hopped inside. Putting his seatbelt on for no apparent reason - they weren't moving, after all - he turned to her with an only mildly serious expression. "Okay, so as I was saying, you're going to essentially be the main character for a bit. This has actually happened before, so I can predict which genres you'll be going through. While you're dealing with... well, all of that, I'll be trying to cook up some randomatter back home. Keep your phone on at all times, I'll be talking with you over that. Sound good?"

Lily frowned. "Hang on a sec, what? Why are you making more randomatter? I thought that stuff was really dangerous! Don't you remember the whole Jill thing?"

Noah shrugged. "It's a story. They've all got cliches, deus ex machinas, twists - but yeah, mostly cliches. In other words, randomatter is hands-down the most effective, most efficient, most universally modifying concoction there is. It's just about as MacGuffiny as it gets. So I'm going to be trying to make some at home, and it'll somehow solve all the problems. It's not going to be easy, for no apparent reason. I'm going to fail the first attempt despite the fact I've made it hundreds of times. Someone's going to interrupt me at a critical moment during the second. At the very last possible second, when all hope is lost, I'll get it right and yell 'Got it!' in your ear, and then everything will fix itself."

She blinked. "Okay then. I'm just going to assume you know what you're talking about. What should I do?"

He checked his phone, scrolling down for a moment. "Hmmm... Well, it looks as though the musical phase is ending pretty soon, so you're going to want to find the nearest shopping mall and hide in the women's clothing section."

Okay, that was just weird. "Um. Why?"

He stared off into the distance intensely. "Because next up... is rom-com."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Lily browsed through the moderately fashionable T-shirts, none of which she had any plans for buying.

The Martinville shopping mall wasn't especially massive but featured several prominent ports of well-known outlets, such as the clothing shop known as Thread and Needle. They were well known for comfortable clothes, specifically casual and semi-formal. As far as prices went, they were actually fairly manageable, but Lily wasn't sure she wanted to be buying anything after the whole apartment thing.

Her phone buzzed, and she picked up. "Hello?"

Noah's voice came through with stunning clarity as if he was standing right next to her. It was hard to tell whether it was due to her phone, his phone, or possibly both. Either way, he sounded deadly serious. "Hey. Have you seen any inordinately handsome guys yet?"

She rifled through a series of shirts marked as lavender and violet, although she couldn't figure out what the difference between the two colors were. "No, I haven't. And why would that be such a bad thing?"

He snorted through the phone. "Despite however much you think you might like handsome people running into you and developing crushes on you, it'd be more like several gold-wrapped flavors of tall, dark, and handsome candy going after you, and then, inevitably, meeting each other."

Lily picked up a shirt, flipping it over and thinking about it. "Are they at least going to be nice people?"

There was a noticeable pause. "Of course, duh. They're going to be impeccably polite, horrendously charming, and unreasonably handsome. They're going to be about as perfect as you can find on your average cheesy Hallmark Valentine's Day special."

She thought about it, tilting her head with a thoughtful expression. "Really? So it's going to be that nice?"

Noah considered his words. "Yeah, for about... thirty minutes, right up until they run into each other."

"What happens then?"

There was a long wait. "It's going to be like the Walking Dead, except with hot guys and chocolate."

Her eyes widened. "Oh."

Turning with the shirt, she slammed into someone and tripped, falling over. Someone grabbed her hand in a stunningly firm grip, yanking her out of a fall and pulling her to her feet in one movement. Spinning around, she found herself staring into a pair of crystal blue eyes. The eyes sparkled with faint humor, set above a confident smile and a dark five o'clock shadow, set on a square jaw and framed by chiseled cheekbones.

Dusting her shoulders off, he examined her from head to toe, finally saying, "Wow, that was quite the fall! Are you all right?" His voice was like velvet wrapped around a bass string, a hint of a deep laugh hidden in the words, and he was a good eight inches taller than her, muscles obvious beneath the dressy blue long-sleeved button-up and gray slacks.

She blinked, feeling her throat drop into her sternum as her mouth dried up entirely. All she could think was why, oh why didn't I try to make myself look better this morning? He smiled even wider as she flushed, raking a hand through his flawless black hair. "Sorry, did I say something wrong?"

Lily's mouth clopped shut as she shook her head. "No! No, of course not! I was just - startled, is all! "

He nodded thoughtfully. "I see. Well, I must say, this is rather forward, but my name is Haydn Johnson. Might I have the pleasure of knowing yours?"

She opened and closed her mouth several times, soundlessly gaping like a fish before finding her voice. "Uhhh..."

"LILY! What's going on?"

The sound of Noah's voice snapped her out of her reverie, and she was almost disappointed by it. Pulling her phone up, she asked, "Noah! What is it?"

"Who are you talking to? Why were you startled?"

She glanced at Haydn, who smiled patiently. "It's... it's a guy. Do you think-"

"What? A guy? Already? How'd he get there? The women's clothing section is a guaranteed stay-away for rom-coms, how did he get past it?"

She spoke into the phone quietly, tucking a hand over it. "Look, can I just... enjoy this for a bit? I kind of want to see where this goes."

"Ahaha, no. Definitely, no. That's going to cause so many problems down the road."

Haydn checked his watch and tutted. "Oh, my goodness! I'm sorry, I've got to go. I'm sure we'll bump into each other soon." He turned, tucking one hand into his pockets as he waved. "Goodbye, miss mystery! Watch out for trip hazards!"

She watched him leave, crushing disappointment filling her.

"Oh goodie, it sounds like he went away. I guess he wasn't involved in the story."

Looking at the shirt she'd picked, she headed for the cashier, still enormously disappointed. Putting it on the counter, she started pulling out her wallet.

"Wow. I mean - I'm sorry for coming off so strong, but do you know how gorgeous you are?"

Her eyes slid up to the absurdly handsome man operating the store, and a goofy grin crossed her face.

"Lily? What's going on? You're not talking to another-"

She knew she'd probably regret it later, but she hung up.