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An army of tiny, tiny soldiers was in the process of slowly pulling the sugar bowl to the top of the couch, which had turned into an interesting shade of purple Liz would either love or hate.
"Would anyone care to explain to me why our living room looks like - " Hellboy started, before he realized that there was, in fact, not anything their living room looked like, except that it did not, in any way, shape or form, looked like a living room. "Uh. Like this?"
Johann (Hellboy hardly ever called him 'Glasshole', or 'Kraut' or stuff like that anymore; he was really impressed with himself for how well he was handling that so-called temper of his). "Ah, Herr Hellboy. We need more spoons over here, please. Those small ones people use to stir their tea, ja?"
"We are recreating the fabled battle of Ap Theron, where the mighty armies of Pharaoh Akhnaten the Second vanquished the dreaded legions of King Hozzar the Terrible," Abe said.
"Yeah?" Hellboy considered playing along - for Abe's sake - then decided yeah, maybe not. "Never heard of it." Bragging had never done anyone any good, after all.
Johann turned to him, looking smug. (Well, not really, but Hellboy knew how to read body language. Even when people didn't actually have bodies.) "That does not surprise me at all."
"It doesn't, does it?"
Abe did that sort of blinking thing he did sometimes when he sensed Hellboy getting fed up about something. It made Hellboy feel unfairly exposed. Everybody got mad on the inside sometimes, didn't they? It didn't mean they'd actually get mad on the outside.
"What Johann means is that this battle did not, in fact, ever happen."
Hellboy turned that particular bit of information around in his head a few times. "Come again?"
"It never happened," Abe repeated.
"Not in this universe, ja?" Johann said. "But in a universe much like ours, it might have happened, ja? We are therefore performing this experiment to determine the outcome of such a battle, from which we may then proceed to extrapolate the course history may have taken as a direct result."
"Oh. Right." Hellboy looked at the wallpaper. He'd spent two grueling days putting it on exactly right, and that only after Liz had taken an even more grueling afternoon picking it out. There seemed to be some tea splashed on it. He wondered if Johann would be able to teleplasty the stuff out of there. "So basically what you're saying is: you're playing war."
"That is a gross oversimplification," Johann said, his 'that' sounding more like 'zat'. With no vocal cords, Hellboy figured the accent would be sticking around for a while yet.
"Whatever." Hellboy looked at the sugar bowl again, and the tiny soldiers pushing it up, up, up, while yelling encouragment to one another in something that rather sounded like German. Liz had found it in some small shop in London, he thought - or maybe it had been Paris. Moscow? Somewhere in Europe, anyway. "You break it, you find a replacement for Liz."
Johann made a dismissive gesture. His helmet whistled a little. "Your concern is noted, Herr Hellboy. And, I assure you, completely uncalled for."
"Is that so, huh? Glad to hear it." Liz tended to be a little unreasonable when she lost her temper. It didn't even seem to matter who'd done what, or why - all that seemed to matter was that everyone was very, very sorry anything had happened to piss her off.
"Und jetzt, if there is nothing else, would you be so kind?" Johann jerked his head in the direction of the door. "You are letting in a slight draft that may influence the outcome of this historical battle, thereby rendering the result void and invalid."
"What, there's no wind in this other universe of yours?" On the other hand, the further away he was when things started going wrong and somebody broke the sugar bowl or discovered those spots on the wallpaper, the better. "Never mind, just remember what I said about breaking stuff."
"Ja, ja."
"We'll be very, very careful."
"Okay. If you say so." Hellboy closed the door and leaned against it.
Which was when he noticed Liz, of course, looking at him with a curious expression.
"They're playing with toy soldiers in there," Hellboy told her. "And maybe using sugar cubes instead of bombs. I told them not to break anything. Why do I feel like we've already got kids around here?"
"Hm. Could be worse," Liz said. "They could be acting like teenagers."
"Watching crappy movies and making out on the couch? Sounds more like something we'd do."
She grinned at him. "Got any other plans for tonight?"
"Not better ones, anyway."
Something in the living room crashed to the floor and shattered. There was the sound of someone cursing in German. Hellboy winced. Liz sighed.
The door opened at a crack. "Excuse me - do we have anything to glue ceramic material with?" Abe asked. "I'm afraid there has been a small accident."