Obligatory psychotic jackass

Previously...

Logan doesn't make it to L.A. very often. He's more inclined to go south, hit the waves in Baja than deal with all this fake shit.

It means he doesn't see his sister very often, either, but that's sort of how their lives have been since she moved out of the Echolls home, and it doesn't seem like a big deal. Didn't used to, anyway.

Lately it has seemed a little more important, for some reason.

So that's why he's stopping by today. The case of his once-dead, then dead again, mother has been solved, and he just...

He's just stopping by to see what's left of his family.

Being able to feed himself has never been high on Logan's list of Things To Do. There was always someone around to make food, whether it was his sister or dad or a maid or a girlfriend, and when there wasn't, take-out and delivery people were very, very helpful. So were Hot Pockets and frozen pizza.

And yet here he is, ready to take on the mysterious appliances in his very nicely appointed kitchen: Stove, oven, and eventually, dishwasher.

(Actually, he does know how to operate that one. Even if the first time he tried he used liquid dishwashing soap rather than the stuff just for the machine. That was not fun to explain to the landlord.)

Still, he guesses it would be handy to know how to do more than defrost things, so he's waiting for Parker, pulling out and washing his brand-new, sticker-still-on pots and pans. Because the directions say so.

Trina ambushes Logan into looking at places to live that aren't hotels. After two years, it's time to finally move out of the Neptune Grand and be a grown-up.

Logan and Sarah Jane have a conversation. It wanders a lot, but it's fun.

And next time, he'll be bringing t-shirts.

Anybody else?

It's the day before Christmas, and all through the mall, procrastinators are shopping. Some are more frantic than others. Logan is one of the less frantic, but he's certainly not in the best of moods. There are too many people, and they are mostly in moods even worse than his.

so he's not smiling when he gets to the checkout line and deposits his Christmas presents-to-be on the counter. He's not glaring, either, but he's got that sort of dazed shopping look about him, the one that says he's overwhelmed by all of this thinking about people who aren't him crap. All he wants to do is go home and play video games until he falls asleep.

But he's got to have gifts - Trina wants to see him for Christmas. She didn't say if Chad would be there or not, but Logan's not going to have Chad try to psychoanalyze Logan for not bringing Chad a gift. Besides, he needed to get things for some Milliwaysians, anyway.

He looks up from his gifts when the petite and pretty blonde salesclerk says cheerfully, "Hello! Thanks for shopping at Macy's! Did you find everything OK?"

"Yeah," Logan says. "Fine, th-"

He breaks off, noticing her nametag. It's not exactly common, an old-fashioned name for what seems to be an outdated idea in 21st century America.

"Thanks, Grace."

The woman - a girl, really, she can't be more than 16 - smiles broadly. "You're welcome. I'm glad you got what you need. So many people seem to look so hard, and still they can't find the right things, you know?"

Logan gives her a long, hard look, so long that her smile dims slightly as she runs the items over the scanner. "Maybe," he says finally. "Maybe they just shouldn't look so hard. Maybe the right things just come, given time and space and...thought."

Grace's smile brightens again. "I've always thought so," she says. "Not that it doesn't take time, but more that thought counts for a lot more than just this helter-skelter running about that most people seem to do, you know?"

Logan nods, still pondering. "I guess," he says a bit absently. "I mean, you're probably right."

Grace laughs. "Maybe. I'm wrong more often, though."

Logan smiles back at her then. "I think maybe not so much this time."

She shrugs, ducks her head. "I dunno." She tells him his total, Logan hands over his credit card and their interaction is complete when she tells him to have a nice day and a merry Christmas.

"Sure," he says. "You too, Grace."

That smile, which oddly enough reminds him of Amy, and the odd coincidence of meeting Grace when it's almost all he's been thinking about since the last time he was in Milliways, will be sticking with him for some time.

Logan checked the door one last time, just to make sure it would continue to open to Neptune. How embarrassing would it be if it didn't open? Or worse, opened somewhere boring, like Indiana.

Fortunately, the Neptune Grand is right on the other side, and he leaves the door open a crack, just in case Bar should decide to play a cruel, cruel trick on them both. But it seems the trip is likely to go off as planned.

He turns as he hears a knock on the door and goes to answer it.

Logan is not a morning person. He was born to be nocturnal, and he's pretty well okay with that.

Nevertheless, he's up early, which means before noon in Logan-speak. It's after Aaron Echolls's funeral, and he hasn't been sleeping well since, so why bother trying? He was up all night playing video games, because it was a better option than staring at his ceiling fan, and ended up falling asleep on the couch.

Not being a morning person means he also rarely reads the newspaper. He'd much rather get any news he needs online or from CNN, but the Neptune Grand is a snooty enough hotel that the room service guy brings four upstairs when he brings Logan's breakfast (waffles, bacon and fried eggs, if you must know) - The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and, of course, The Neptune Daily News.

Normally he just pushes them off the cart and digs into his food, but not today. The Daily News rests on top of the others, and it's the one that makes Logan spew his coffee all over the giant headline.




Shaking off the slightly soggy newspaper, he reads on:

Morgan Quinn
neptunedailynews.com

In a shocking move, daughter of murdered actor Aaron Echolls married Chad Witherspoon, ex-husband of pop princess Jerrica, in Las Vegas's Hunka Hunka Burning Love Wedding Chapel late last night. The two dated briefly eight years ago, but the chemistry between Echolls and Witherspoon hasn't dimmed, based on their behavior last night.

The two competed in Celebrity Poker Grudge Match, with Echolls losing in the first round and Witherspoon in the second. They left after the game finished, and sources close to the couple say they spent the evening drinking in Las Vegas's hottest clubs. It was 2 a.m. when they went to the wedding chapel, and video footage shows Echolls looking rapturously happy as the two danced at their hotel after the ceremony.

The couple was unavailable for comment as of press time.

witherspoon is best known as the 'boy next door' from the boy band Pretentious Umlauts, who released the album Umlaut Nation in 1998. The album went platinum six months later, based largely on the strength of their single, "Love is in the dots." He's since gone solo, with a hit-or miss career that includes the stellar "CHAD" and the less-than-stellar "WITHERSPOON."

Echolls is the daughter of Aaron Echolls, the Neptune actor who was brutally murdered in his Neptune Grand hotel room last month. Echolls is best known for her false alarm leukemia scare and her appearance in "Morgan Wilder Goes MAD," the teen film about an Ivy-League bound high school student who cracks under the pressure. Echolls played Morgan's best friend, Carissa, who has sex and is unable to get into a good college.



Logan can't read anymore. It's too depressing. He does look at his cell phone and ponders calling.

Ponders some more.

He eats his waffles first. After all, if Trina had such a big night, he doubts she's awake yet. Then he picks up the phone and dials her cell phone number. The private one, the one no one else has, because if she could be reached, he's pretty sure she'd have given a statement by now.

The doors behind him sound as loud and as forbidding as he's always imagined the gates of hell would sound. He leaves the courthouse just in time to hear his father pontificating about the glories of freedom, the joys of being acquitted, and he can't take it anymore. Logan turns on his heel, nearly slams into the court reporter, and barely makes it off the steps and away from the cameras before he is violently sick on the courthouse lawn.

Logan's erstwhile lawyer is the only one who sees him. "Cute," Cliff says in a tone that implies that a lack of cuteness is Logan's sole distinguishing characteristic. "Look, kid, you'd better get away from that mess before some screw-up from the local TV news crew spots it and it makes it onto E!True Hollywood story. Just a thought."

Logan mutters something under his breath and pushes past Cliff toward the steps, then stops. "I can't go up there," he says in a high, nervous voice. "I can't, I'll hurl again, and I won't make it to the bushes in time then."

Cliff sighs. "There's a back entrance, handicapped, because of course you wouldn't want to ruin the front of your courthouse for those poor paralyzed people or whatever. I'll take you around."

Logan follows, docile. It might seem all the fight's gone out of him, but that is not, in fact, the case.

He's just saving it up for later.

Logan's been out with Jackie all night.

You remember Jackie, right? Small, cute, and super-annoying?

Yeah. Jackie.

Logan was angling for Hot Monkey Sex. Logan did not get any sex at all. All he got was an tease of a girl to dance with and an Angry!Daddy for keeping the girl out all night.

He's less than pleased with this.

Because of this, he's pulling out his cell to see if he can convince Dick that petty vandalism on a random Saturday would be fun! Maybe they can put burn something, or start a riot among gangs or something. Anything.

Then he notices he's in dire need of petrol, so he swears instead and pulls into a gas station. After fueling up, he decides that an orange Gatorade would be awesome and deigns to enter the store.

Unfortunately, the door does not lead him into the Quik Stop.

On the plus side, he can still get an orange Gatorade!

Logan's Bound. He hadn't realized it until tonight, when he'd planned to pop back to Neptune to replenish his supply of liquor and realized that the door wouldn't let him out.

Then it faded, which he takes as sort of a bad sign.

It's not even like Logan wants to go back to Neptune, particularly. He'd just kind of like the option to not be here for a while.

He considers beating his head against the wall for a while, or going downstairs and watching the

some say the world will end in fire

universe end, but it just doesn't seem to be the thing to do.

So he lays back on his bed and watches the ceiling fan go round and round, hoping the monotony of the motion will put him to sleep.