milliways_bar | (no subject)

"Ellen," Pavel greets her with a smile--still hasn't eaten the cupcake the Bar gave him--and a little wave. "Vhere did you come in from zis time?"

"On my way to destroying an Enclave communications relay," Ellen says. "I don't think the other Brothers saw me, I can't normally open a door if anyone from my world is looking at me. Hi, Pavel. How are you doing?"

"I am vell," he says. "Nozing much is happening at home."

Ellen nods, and then glances at the cupcake. "Special occasion?" she asks curiously. "Or is that just at random?"

"I turned sixteen a few days ago," he explains. "She knows, I think. I do not eat cake wery often, so...is cute, but not precisely vhat I would ask for."

"Oh! Congratulations," Ellen says. "I had no idea. I'd have tried to get you something if I did."

"Is alright," he says. "I do not ask for things for birthdays. It is just anozer day."

"Even so. We celebrated them in the Vault and there was hardly anything to celebrate with," Ellen says. "Maybe a comic book or something, next time."

He smiled. "Maybe, da."

"How have you been otherwise?" Ellen says. "I know things were happening at the Academy for you, weren't they? What comes next?"

"I am almost to ze finals for my courses," he says. "I vill just keep taking zem until I am done. I am limited on how many of the last ones I can take at one time, though. But after I am graduated, ze Admiratly vill assign me to a ship."

Ellen nods. "How much longer until that happens, do you think?" she says. "And what kind of ship are you aiming for- there's more than one sort, right?"

"Oh, a year at most," he says. "I vant to be on ze new flagship--a constitution class, named ze Enterprise. But I do not know. I am good enough, certainly, but ze choice is not up to only me."

"I imagine it wouldn't be," says Ellen. "But honestly, I really don't know much about even just ordinary navies that sail on the water. I've been on board an aircraft carrier once, that's about it."

"Well," he says thoughtfully, "I vill graduate as an ensign. It is ze lowest officer ranking--more are below it as non-commissioned officers. But as fr as commissioned ranks go, I vill be on ze bottom of ze food chain--is the right phrase, I think?"

"I think so," says Ellen. "That sounds like about where I am with the Brotherhood, although I don't think they have anything like commissions. The lowest fighting rank is in about the same place, though."

Luna is watching her with undisguised interest.

"Oh, my. That looks terribly uncomfortable," she says, conversationally.

"Well, it's not all that bad," Ellen says, "unless I need to go to the ladies' room, or scratch. You can't scratch worth anything in this."

"I imagine you'd want to stay away from deep water as well. You'd sink like a stone."

Unless the outfit has some sort of not readily apparent flotational abilities.

"Why are you wearing armor?"

"Oh, there's plenty of reasons to stay away from deep water," Ellen says. "But yes, I'd sink pretty quickly."

"I'm on my way to a battlefield back home, actually. Although it's just a good idea in general to wear armor when you're traveling in the Capital Wasteland- it's a dangerous place in a lot of ways."

Luna's not sure what those reasons might be. Unless one simply does not like to be wet. Or doesn't know how to swim.

"I suppose that does make wearing armor a very sensible thing to do."

Danger would trump some discomfort.

"I've never actually seen someone wear armor before. Except for ghosts. I suppose it simply fell out of fashion at some point."

"There are ever so many suits of it at my school, but it's just for decoration, really."

It's a long story. And it depends on whether - actually, of all the wizarding world Luna and her family are probably the people most likely to accept the possibility of an invisible non-magical energy that makes you horribly sick if you're exposed to it for very long.

"It's become pretty common again back home," Ellen says. "This is probably the heaviest suit of it I've seen. There's lighter sets that look different, if you can't hold up under this stuff or if you aren't going somewhere with deathclaws and yao guai and other things that'll rip through lighter armor. It all depends on what's out there, you know?"

Clearly, it would be a larger, much more malevolent cousin of the wrackspurt. Or a plot by rogue elements in the wizarding postal system.

Luna eyes the armor.

"You must be expecting to encounter something with very large claws, indeed."

"Where is your home?"

"We got attacked by one of the deathclaws already," Ellen says. "The claws are like this-"

She indicates something easily six or seven inches long.

"Fortunately I didn't get hit, but they're dangerous anyway."

"Oh- it used to be Arlington, Virginia, two hundred years ago. In America," she adds remembering that the English patrons around here have no real reason to be familiar with the area. "My name's Ellen, by the way."

"I've met a lot of people from America, here," Luna says. "I'm from Britain, myself."

She smiles a bit.

"I'm Luna. It's very nice to meet you, Ellen."

"It sounds almost like you got attacked by a dragon. Did it fly? Or breathe fire?"

"I think my father was from Britain, originally," Ellen says. "Either that, or he talked like he was. He never really said where he came from."

She shrugs lightly; Dad lied about a lot of things, so it's probably best she never asked about his accent.

"No, deathclaws don't fly," Ellen says. "And the only creatures in the Capital Wasteland that breathe fire are giant ants. Not all of them, just the ones near a little town called Grayditch. Do you have dragons where you come from?"

This is Milliways. People often do.

"Oh, yes. They're kept on reserves now, mostly. Occasionally one will stray off, though. It's generally quite a mess, especially if the Muggles happen to spot it."

Muggles seem to like dragons, except for when one actually turns up.

Luna's head tilts thoughtfully to the side.

"That's odd, isn't it? Unless he didn't at all like where he was from."

"I don't know that word," Ellen says. "Muggles?"

Then she sighs. "It's... well. My father was afraid that it would be too dangerous to raise me where I was born, so he took me to a place that he knew was safe. Only they didn't normally let anybody in, ever. They let Dad in because their only doctor was dead, and me because I was a couple of days old. But Dad had to agree to raise me as if we had lived in that place all our lives and never let me know that we had been born somewhere else. All I knew was that Dad sounded different from most people in Vault 101. Turns out he sounded English."

"People who aren't witches or wizards."

Strange people. Nice enough, for the most part. But strange.

Luna scoots her chair over a little closer.

"When I was born, my parents were living away from home. Because home was dangerous. But the war ended when I was just a baby, and they were able to go back."

"I'm glad those people let you in."

"Oh," says Ellen. "All right."

She edges over as well, although it's louder for her. Armor's funny that way.

"I'm sorry to hear that- about the war part, I mean. I'm glad they got to go back. Hopefully it won't happen again?"

Perhaps that's why armor fell out of fashion. It makes it very hard to slip up on people.

"I hope that it won't, too." Luna looks calmly thoughtful. "But Dad thinks it's going to. And I think he's probably right."

The Ministry and the Daily Prophet are content to ignore rumors about You-Know-Who and Death Eaters and vampire infiltrations and armies of heliopaths.

But not the editor of The Quibbler.

That gets a grimace. "Should I ask who the war would be with?" Ellen says. "Or would it be some group or something I wouldn't know?"

"With You-Know-Who."

That clears everything right up, does it not?

"Him and his followers." Luna leans forward a bit, lowering her voice. "He was beaten last time, you see, and disappeared. But they say that he's trying to come back, and it will only be a matter of time before he manages it."

Luna doesn't like the thought at all. But not liking a thought doesn't mean you can discard it.

"Some of his old followers have gotten very bold. They attacked the Quidditch World Cup at the end of last summer."

Ellen thinks about this for a bit. Eventually, carefully, she says, "Just as long as 'You Know Who' isn't a code name for John Henry Eden or Augustus Autumn, then I think we're all right. They were quite enough trouble where I come from."

She nods then, and says, "I've heard about World Cups, mostly from old vids and things, but I don't know Quidditch. Is that a person's name?"

Luna shakes her head.

"No. His real name is quite different." She thinks for a moment. "Although, I don't know that his real name is actually his real name." Voldemort not being what one would call a conventional name. "But I've never heard either of those names before."

"Quidditch is the name of the sport. I think it's supposed to be named after the marsh where it first originated."

"It's played on broomsticks. It's very exciting."

"Okay. We already defeated Eden and Autumn in my world, so I didn't want to find out that they'd hopped to someone else's."

She considers the broomsticks thing for a while. "Flying broomsticks, I assume?" she says tentatively. "I mean, the ordinary kind don't really seem like they'd be very exciting."

"I think there are enough troublesome people that every world has some without them having to travel," Luna says, thoughtfully. "Fortunately, I think the same is true for helpful people."

She nods.

"Oh, yes. The broomsticks fly. I forget sometimes that not all of them do."

"There wasn't much room for flying anything where I grew up," Ellen says. "Let alone broomsticks. I mean, not that we had anything that could fly, but if we did, it wouldn't have been a good place for it. It was all underground."

Luna smiles a bit.

"You should try sometime. It's wonderful."

Maybe not at home, but there's room at Milliways.

"Huh," says Ellen. "Do they lend out broomsticks here? I mean, I wouldn't know where to look otherwise."

"I don't know," Luna admits.

"But if they don't, maybe Milliways has other things that fly."