milliways_bar | (no subject)

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A guy dressed in black jeans and a worn purple t-shirt opens the door, and takes a half-step in. One foot over the doorway, and one foot in his world, he glances sideways to use his peripheral vision. Yep, apartment still there.

Huh.

"... Sure, why not," he says. He steps in, hesitating for the briefest of moments before letting go of the edge of the door so it closes behind him. Clint rubs his hand over the short hair on the back of his neck, and steps to the side of the door so he's not blocking it. He realizes he stands out, but a door showed up in his apartment. He's pretty sure it'd be weirder to not be confused.

[OOC: Clint has been re-set with a new mun! Hellooo. He is post-Thor, pre-Tesseract babysitting duty. Please don't spoil him re: the future.

~~Catch me in crackchat at the moment as TLvop~~, or check out the contact post in his journal -- I'm prone to slow, but slowtimes are A+ awesome :)]

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There's a fellow of about... mmm, twenty-three? Twenty-four? Something like that... in Marine Corps urban camo fatigues and a pretty standard high-and-tight haircut at a nearby table; he sets the book he was reading aside at the sound of newbie confusion. "Door git you by surprise?" he inquires.

(He looks pretty normal, except for two things. One is the part where his right hand is silver in color- skin, nails, hairs, everything about it is silver, and not the weird clingy bluish silver you get from body paint. The other is the part where the rank insignia on his sleeve is not something nice and reasonable like a corporal's or a sergeant's markings, but the insignia worn only by the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps- essentially, the God of Non-Commissioned Officers.)

(They both seemed the sort of thing worth mentioning.)

"It pounced," he says, with an easy grin and -- on catching sight of his rank, a clear if brief huh crossing over his face. Guy either ages really well, or -- well, he could be fake, but Clint's pretty sure he can recognize a Marine when he sees one.

He pushes off from the Bar, and crosses to offer his hand. "Clint Barton. Guess this place has a habit of catching people offguard?"

Shephard notes the huh, and he's really not all that surprised. He's well aware that he's much too young for his particular markings. Not much to be done about that, though, so he comes to his feet and smiles and shakes the offered hand. "Adrian Shephard," he says, and that's not body paint at all, that is very definitely a solid piece of moving metal he's shaking Clint's hand with. "First time's damn near always a surprise, yeah. This here's Milliways. First drink's free."

Important stuff first, you know?

"That's a policy I can get behind," Clint says, glancing back at the bar, before looking at Adrian sideways. "No offense, but are you a cyborg or something? Because right now..."

He'd let the I'd believe just about anything go unspoken. Even Stark can't get close to this kind of tech.

"Naw, that's a prosthetic," says Shephard, and rolls up his sleeve. Sure enough, the arm's meat above the elbow, metal below. "I got shot down a while back. Real fuckin' ugly wreck. Medic had to take the arm off to git me out of that shithole before the wreckage blew."

Okay, so the prosthetic was provided by the Fair Folk of Elysium in exchange for stabbing a four hundred pound wild boar to death with his remaining hand, and the wreckage was the wreck of a Voltron lion robot, but it's still true!

"We ain't got a whole lot of cyborgs where I come from less'n you count the ones the Combine fucked over. I'mma guess you ain't talkin' about that kind. Fact is, it ain't nothin' you could ever git in my world. Had to go to a whole 'nother goddamn dimension to git it done."

Edited 2013-01-21 06:07 (UTC)

Clint doesn't wince at the mention of being shot down, but his eyes stay steady on Adrian's face. "Useful, though," he says after a moment, blinking. "Assuming your -- dimension," he says it with the slight hesitance of someone who's watched scifi b-movies but not exactly examine the theory, "can't really afford to disable any more Marines out."

It's not exactly a question, but if he's not a cyborg and he's from some world full of things Clint hasn't heard of -- well, there aren't a lot of other ways to get that rank.

Shephard's expression goes wry at that. "Ain't a whole lot of anybody we c'n afford to disable out just now," he says. "Long story. Short version is, we got us a shitload of nasty-ass aliens from another fuckin' dimension and we got 'em twice in the last twenty-one years. Fuckers won 'bout seventeen years back. Took us that long to git our shit in gear'n finally kick their asses on their home turf."

There'll be more detail as necessary, of course, but shit, that's a fuck of a lot of nasty to drop on a man who's just walked through the door.

Clint does wince this time. "Yeah," he says after a moment. "That would do it."

"You were saying something about a drink?"

"Sure," says Shephard easily. "C'mon over. Bar's voice-activated, or magic, or some shit- I heard both, I don't care which, long as she works. You name it, she's got it."

And, because he doesn't intend to be taken on faith and because he could use a drink himself anyway:

"Hey, Bar? Gimme a Miner's Daughter'n put one of whatever our new friend here wants on my tab, mm'kay?"

Clint's watching carefully. He glances at Adrian, and tilts his head slightly in thanks. "Just some coffee," he says to the Bar, trying not to think of this as weird. Natasha said Stark has an AI, right? It's got to be like that. "Whatever medium-dark roast you've got works."

And there they are, one pint of oatmeal stout and one cup of fully respectable coffee. Shephard pushes the cup in Clint's direction and picks up his glass. "She does food, too," he notes. "Damn near anything, in fact, 'cept for weapons'n live ammo, 'n she's flexible on the ammo iffen it's just for target practice out back. Can't do living shit, though, don't try askin'."

"Good to know," he says, taking the coffee. He's got breakfast plans, but new restaurants (that serve anything, and pop up anywhere) are definitely important to keep in mind. "You gotta be licensed for open carry?"

"Naw, nobody gives a shit about that," says Shephard with a wave of one hand. "Security only cares 'bout three rules. No violence in the Bar, no shit from home like grudges or nothin', and no public naked or fuckin'. Fistfights outside are okay. Ain't nobody got jurisdiction here but them. You got to git it on, git a room upstairs or find somewheres outside'n don't git caught. "

Clint nods, taking a drink of his coffee, and turning watch at the bar as a whole.

He looks over to Shephard. "Any chance your aliens come from a place called Asgard?"

Might as well ask.

"'Fraid not," says Shephard. "Xen, some of 'em. I dunno what the Combine called the Overworld but it sure as fuck wasn't Asgard."

He glances at his metal hand a moment, thinking.

"Tell you what, though, I run into enough weird-ass mythic shit around here that if some fucker from Asgard did show up I wouldn't so much as bat a goddamn eye no more. Fuck knows you run into every other kind of weird-ass bunch of gods'n shit."

Clint laughs, quiet and not really amused. "We've got them-- did enough damage when we caught the edge of an in-fight, so I'm glad they're not yours. I'd hate to see what an army of them would do."

"Speaking of," he adds, after a moment. "I was with the 75th."

Given he's not wearing a handy uniform to give these things away.

Shephard nods. "Thought it might be somethin' like that," he says. "When? You 'n me might not be from the same time frame, can't hurt to check."

... yeah, fair.

He really doesn't want to have to deal with anything calling itself the Combine, so hopefully this goes okay. Or at least they have time to figure out how to fuck them up a little more.

"2011, now," Clint says. "I got disabled out almost 20 years ago, after Somalia."

"Ain't gonna happen to you, then," says Shephard. "Black Mesa eggheads fucked us up in May of '01'n got us 'bout four solid years of Xen wildlife'n shit comin' in through every kind of candy-ass portal you could imagine. Combine showed up after that. They called it the Seven Hours War, on account of that's how long the Combine took to win."

... yeah.

"Wasn't there for that, understand. My unit went up against the first wave of oogieboogies'n I wound up last man standing, right up until some fucker of a G-man in a suit got me put on ice. Swear to God, some kind of Walt Disney cryogenic twenty-year suspension shit or somethin'."

... Clint does not say fuck, at 'on account of that's how long the Combine took to win,' but that's because he's thinking it too hard to express.

"That must've been unsettling," is what he settles on, blinking still. Can you say bad science fiction movie? Because Clint's fond of them, but living in one... yeah, no.

"Yep," says Shephard. "Weren't a whole lot of Marines left by the time I got back on my feet."

The ones who were medically disabled or retired or otherwise unable to take up arms and get killed or assimilated by the Combine were still Marines, just out of commission. The only ex-Marine is Lee Harvey Oswald, in his book.

"Hence-" He nods towards his arm. "-no medical discharges, not any more."

[ooc: hey cam I may need to ask for a fade or your help in figuring out our way to one; my brain is stalling and not just in the "cannot think up words, but have gist of it" way. of course maybe tomorrow this will be different! but... as of now.

thank you so much for this awesome thread, though ♥. I love Shephard, and I'm so glad I finally got a chance to thread with him.]

ooc: fade is no problem at all! Thank you for the thread. I'm sure there'll be more in future@!

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