milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Milliways is up one vampire Slayer, wandering in from the staff wing with her nose buried in a book.

No, this is not as rare a circumstance as you might believe: the book in question is a Watcher's Diary from the 18th Century, and the history of Vampire Slayers happens to be Mel's very personal area of dorkery.

Without once looking up from her book, she swings by Bar, picks up a pint of nog and a plate of fried paradoxes and finds her way to a table in the middle of the bar.

And there she remains.

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The smell of baking from the kitchen precedes Sunshine by a good five minutes. When she does come into the bar, she's carrying a couple of good-sized baskets of bread (rosemary/garlic, basil/cracked wheat, strawberry/pecan) and cinnamon rolls. These she leaves at the bar with notes for Demeter and Sirona.

A few cinnamon rolls she keeps for herself, munching on one as she writes another note.

Finishing that, she looks around briefly, at something of a loss. She'd not pretend to be an expert on inter-dimentional kleptomaniac taverns, but Sunshine hasn't come upon this particular bit of information before. "How does one reach Security anyway?" Rae asks Bar. "Should I just leave it with you and hope someone comes by to get it?"

Mel's not sitting far away from bar, and she also has super hearing.

So she clears her throat, and crosses her legs, raising the Security badge on her hip to a higher line of sight.

(On Bar, there appears a napkin in front of Sunshine. It is folded into an arrow shape. The arrow is aligned to point at Mel's table.)

Sunshine tilts her head at the arrow, before following it with her gaze.

Pause.

"Oh." She smiles. "That's simple enough, I guess. Hi."

"Hi."

Now, Mel looks up, and closes the book in front of her.

"Something's up?"

She brings the still-warm cinnamon rolls over with her. "Mind if I join you?"

"I met Jane Austen the other day," which Sunshine briefly reflects is a sentence she never thought she'd say, "and she'd been attacked by something."

Some-thing or -one? She never really knows which to say.

Is Mel supposed to know who Jane Austen is? She doesn't.

She does know that she's hungry for cinnamon roll. It's a hunger that dictates the direction of her gaze.

"Some thing?2 Mel repeats. "You know what kinda thing?"

Sunshine is always willing to share her famous Cinnamon-Rolls-As-Big-As-Your-Head. She smiles faintly as she sits, and nudges the plate towards Mel in an offer to share.

"Well, it left deep teethmarks in her neck, and left her pale and weak from blood loss?" Sunshine doesn't sound too happy about this. "I know where my mind goes."

She cuts off those thoughts, though, because lately they've always been ending up on the same ten-second memory: one which she doesn't want to think about.

Mel stills, giant roll halfway to her mouth and smell filling her nostrils. It brings a surreally pleasant sensation to the situation.

"Jesu," she mutters.

And a list of names lines up in her head. It takes some effort not to scratch her own neck, which is under a high collared halter neck shirt, covering any and all scarring that certain boyfriends have not been privvy to yet.

"She give a name?"

Sunshine's own shirt doesn't exactly cover up the shiny scar across the upper-left portion of her chest, just below her collarbone. The other bruises and scrapes on her body are healing, though some of the scrapes still itch annoyingly.

"She didn't remember anything of what happened. Just said she was in the library the other night, then woke up the next morning with bite-marks on her neck and her hair all mussed, pale and feeling weak. I took her to the infirmary to make sure she was all right, apart from blood loss."

Mel shuts her eyes, blocking out the news of another rutting lurk in the bar, and takes a bite of the roll.

Mmmm.

She smiles briefly before opening her eyes.

"Alright. Hey - spun question, maybe, but who'd you see in the infirmary?"

Sunshine's look as she bites into her own cinnamon roll is a little wry and a little guilty. "Dr. Cullen."

"He made sure she was all right, and helped her cover up the bites so she wouldn't get asked troublesome questions when she went home. We both thought she'd be safer there than here, just in case."

Wry. "He also rather pointedly informed me that suckers in his world didn't have fangs, so it wasn't one of his."

"She's gone home now?" Mel says, trying to keep annoyance away from the clear disappointment in her voice. "would've liked to ask her some questions."

It's a good reason to go home, she'll concede that. And offer a wry smirk.

"Quick to cover his family's ass. Alright."

"Can't blame him," she shrugs. "Still weirds me out, thinking of a vampire as a doctor for humans, but he's helped me in the past."

"Oh," she blinks, then holds out a hand. "I'm Rae, by the way, though I'm usually called Sunshine."

"Melaka," she says, taking the offered hand in her own - skinny, calloused, and in no way hiding the fact that's she's stronger than average. "Mel.

"Lurks always weird me out, and they're my job."

Sunshine has a certain amount of upper-body strength, pounding surly dough and lifting heavy trays every day, but still well within the upper-average ranges.

"They're your job? Like Special Other Forces, or...?" Er. She tends to forget that people are from other worlds, unless it's obvious. "Sorry- SOF polices non-humans in my world, and the vampires." As best as they can, at least.

"Yeah, I'd like to be that organised," Mel says ruefully.

"It's just me. I'm the Vampire Slayer."

Sunshine's eyebrows raise.

"That... doesn't sound like it's the most secure job ever. 'The'?"

As in, the only one?

Mel shrugs helplesly, accompanying it with an eyeroll. Because hoe stupid is only one Slayer anyway.

"It's a one at a time deal. With a high rate of turnover."

"I bet," she says, faintly.

"Sounds a bit like what the SOF at home want me to be doing, when all I'd really like to do is continue being a baker."

Mel glances at the roll in her hand and takes another bite.

"These're good," she says, with her mouth full. Althoughm she does follow up with, "why don't you?"

All the buns in the world can't make up for fighting vamps.

"Why don't I just continue doing what I love, or why don't I want to go hunting suckers?" Sunshine says, just to be clear.

"Second one," Mel says. "I get not giving up your thing. I still have my job."

"Maybe it's just a question of job security?" she says, wryly. "That high turnover rate is no joke."

"I was lucky once - once - and they want me to work for them. I only survived because the vampire didn't expect it to work, either."

That... wasn't a good night. Ugh.

Mel considers this, and accepts it with a one-shouldered shrug.

"Maybe different. If I don't do it, no one else can."

"That's essentially what they told me," Sunshine says, looking uncomfortable. "Just that we're losing the war, and we need every bit of help that we can get, or else the suckers'll be running the show in another century or so."

"I have... well, in essence, my nickname is more accurately descriptive than most."