(no subject)

[heard_of_her_now]

An older lady enters the bar, her hands full of freshly-cut orchids.

She notices where she is - and more to the point, where she isn't - immediately, and her hand drops to the secateurs in her overcoat pocket... but does not withdraw with them, not yet.

(There are handguns discreetly holstered in her coat, too. She did the sewing herself.)

"Well," she says, playing for time as her eyes sweep the bar, assessing and cataloguing threats and counter-threats.

"This is unusual."

Comments

[neverbelievedintheend]

"That's one way of putting it," says the large, dark-skinned man in the uniform she probably hasn't seen before; he's seated at one of the nearby tables, sorting through the endless works of bureaucracy and silently despising the people who made it necessary. "I take it you were headed elsewhere?"

[heard_of_her_now]

That's not a uniform she recognises; odd, given that his accent suggests he's from her own home country - and that she can recognise most current and past national military uniforms.

Curiouser and curiouser.

"I was intending to put the dinner on," she admits, and though she smiles like a flustered housewife the fluster (and the smile) don't quite hit her eyes. "But this is not my house."

[neverbelievedintheend]

"Neither is it the Anchorage Shatterdome, or the Jaeger Academy," he says, an comes to his feet. "Sounds as if Milliways decided to reach out and pick up another guest for the first time. I'm told it has a habit of surprising people."

Introducing newcomers to the Bar is not an activity with which he has familiarity. He's only been here a few times himself, so far. He's doing his best.

[crabbycustomer]

Catalogue this: if he were human, Karkat would appear to be an adolescent male between thirteen and fifteen, with hair that was last combed on the 12th of never and last cut with a sickle when it started getting in his eyes. Unarmed, apparently, and dressed entirely of shades of black and grey.

The complicating factor: his skin, where it shows, and his hair and lips are also done entirely in those colors, with orange accents in the eyes and nails and teeth that are fairly white and fairly sharp.

He seems to be having an argument with a little purple gadget, in an undertone that is low enough to not be understandable but loud enough to qualify as an over tone. It also involves a fair amount of gnashing those teeth and alternately waving his hands around and plunging them through his hair, which probably contributes to the rake-groomed look.

When he does this, the nubby orange horns poking up from his scalp are much more visible. Finally he smacks the little gadget hard enough to send it bouncing off the table, at which point it runs away from him and directly towards the door on little purple plastic crab legs.

[heard_of_her_now]

...Well, then.

She steps out of the thing's way as it scuttles towards her, and though her grip tightens on the secateurs in her pocket she does not produce them yet.

She'll wait for further intel before reacting decisively.

[crabbycustomer]

He chases it across the room, catching up to it a meter or so before bowling into her. He snaps it into place on a band around his wrist as he straightens up.

His expression now is less animated and furious, but beetle-browed and slightly scowling; he looks at her and the rest of the world as if it's a problem someone has asked him to solve without the right tools or the budget and he hasn't slept in a week. It's an odd look for a young face.

He nods up to her. "SORRY ABOUT THAT." The voice is gruff, hoarse and loud; not yelling, just too loud. "PASSWORD AUTHENTICATION ISSUE."

[street_sparrow]

"Whatever you've got in your pocket", Gavroche says helpfully, "I don't recommend getting it out. Security don't like violence. Welcome to Milliways."

[heard_of_her_now]

Well, then.

She smiles, every inch of her politely flustered (provided you don't pay too much attention to her eyes), and produces them anyway, as if to say 'who, me?'

"Only garden cutters," she tells him sweetly. "Milliways?"

[street_sparrow]

"You might not believe me, if this is your first time here, and clearly it is." He's still watching her carefully, aware of something... not quite right, even if he couldn't put a name to it. "The door you thought you were opening has been temporarily hijacked, by what or who, no one here knows. This is a place between worlds, and at some time, somebody built an inn here. Milliways."

[abitofawildman]

Bumi's been here long enough to know the sound of a newcomer, and so turns to take in the expression of someone who's just ended up where they least expected to.

What he wasn't expecting was for this new comer to be as strikingly beautiful as she is.

He runs a hand through his unruly hair, straightens his United Forces Uniform jacket, and then calls out to her.

"For a woman to bring a man flowers? Surely not. These are modern days we're living in, after all."

[heard_of_her_now]

Oh, Yanks.

She has lived in New England since her retirement; she worked with Americans very nearly all her life. But to her they will always be, on some level, still over-sexed, over-paid and over here, as the old saying went.

She raises her eyebrows at him.

"Actually, I was referring to the pub in my kitchen."

If the world wishes to conspire to give her alcohol, then she can't complain. But good manners demand that it should at least have the decency to ask, first.

[abitofawildman]

He only sounds like a Yank...

"Oh?" He looks around for effect. "There is that too, yes. Please, join me?"

[fairy_fixit]

The 51 cm tall fairy sipping a milkshake at a nearby table is not likely a treat. Then again, if she were an insect, gah, huge flying insect. The fairy's large eyes are a bit buggy.

She stops to stare. "It is unusual, but at least it is a tavern. Welcome?"

[heard_of_her_now]

Well, isn't that a hell of a thing.

Person.

Whatever.

She raises her eyebrows, tilting her head. "It is a tavern in my kitchen, apparently."

And no, her grip on her secateurs hasn't loosened, yet.

[fairy_fixit]

If they were magic secateurs, she might be worried. More about where she got them than about herself, though.

"It is my understanding the the front door of this place replaces other doors sometimes and instead of going where you intended, you end up here at the end of the world. Thankfully it is not as terrible as it sounds. This place is called Milliways."

[dark_dancer]

"You won't be needing the weapons."
Cata's barely glanced up from the assignments she's working her way through, but she doesn't need a very close look to know what someone reaching for concealed weapons looks like; she's done it often enough herself. (If Victoria were to look closely, Cata's black tunic has its fair share of carefully hidden pockets.

You're never fully dressed without a few knives and a small assortment of poisons.)

"It is unusual, yes, but it's as safe as any other place."

[heard_of_her_now]

She'd agree on the knives, but poisons have never really been her thing: too fiddly, and too nonspecific.

"What is it?" she demands, and doesn't pass comment on the weapons remark at all. Spook calls to spook, and all that.

(She doesn't quite let go of the secateurs, but on the plus side, she hasn't gone for the guns.)

[dark_dancer]

Poisons are Cata's specialty. Besides, her world doesn't have guns and she won't be the one to introduce them. They'd make her line of work... messy.
"Milliways. It's a tavern, at the end of the universe if you believe the local word, and I've found no reason not to. It pulls people in from many worlds and times."

[katyafeline]

"Da. But the vodka is good." Is the rather pragmatic reply from the bar. Or rather, on top of the bar - Katya is perched, cross-legged, on the wood.

And yes.

She's a threat.

Just not one that considers a human a target.

[heard_of_her_now]

Every one of her instincts certainly tell her she's a threat, or at least has the potential to be. But she doesn't appear to present immediate danger.

(More's the pity.)

"I'm afraid I don't drink vodka," she tells her sweetly, which is of course a lie. "Does it serve gin?"

Clearly, something has gone seriously wrong: she's hit her head, or the process of losing her marbles has finally begun. But until she can do something about it, she may as well go along with it.

But she hasn't yet loosened her grip on the secateurs, either.

[katyafeline]

"She serves everything - makes wonderful pelmeni too." She advises cheerfully, patting her jeans jacket in an absent-minded fashion until one of the outside pockets crinkles, and she pulls out a cellophane-wrapped half-empty box of cigarettes.

"Smoke?" She offers, after tapping one out for herself.

[realmrsreynolds]

"You got no idea."

Says the lady with silver hair behind the bar.

[ooc: going to bed now but plz moar helen mirren in my life.]

[heard_of_her_now]

"I really haven't," she agrees, (almost) every inch the flustered retiree, but takes a step or two away from the door.

"Where is this?"

[boston_bruiser]

Time was, the dude in the blue polo by the door reading Starship Troopers would have a little more fun with newcomers. He'd chat them up, spin them around a time or two, maybe mess with the gullible ones a little more than usual, and at the end of the day, they would be in one of two very firmly delineated categories in his head.

(Even that one dumbass fireman. Especially that one dumbass fireman. God bless his idiotic ass, wherever it was.)

But somewhere along the line greeting newcomer after newcomer became rote. Uninspiring. So instead he sighs, turns a page, and goes, "Yeah, yeah. Welcome to Milliways, bar at the end of the universe. First drink's free, you run a tab after that. Mind the waitrats."

[heard_of_her_now]

"I've been told," Victoria says, thinly.

He gets assessed: military, armed, almost certainly the kind of man who inevitably winds up underestimating her, but nevertheless definitely a possible threat in the unlikely circumstance that he turns out to be a hell of a lot smarter than he looks.

"I'm still a tad confused as to how precisely the debatably magic bar can convince you to pay, however."