AU week -- multipup edition

[ostro_goth]

In the bar today, you find:

• a wind turbine engineer who had recently moonlighted as sea rescue volunteer, now carefully arranging a breakfast for two on a tray;
• a metal musician who walks in from the the door, followed by a grey cat, to sit down by the fireplace, order a craft beer, and start trying out cords on his guitar:
• a vampire in a long black coat, shielding himself from the sunlight by standing calmly in a dark corner;
• a biker in full leathers and cut-off vest, leaning against the bar with a beer and listening to the music;
• a dark-haired woman in ca. 1910 clothes, folding suffragette pamphlets at a table right next to the window, the sun warm on her hands;
• an FBI consultant who steps in from a hot and humid place that stinks of stagnant waters, and sighs with relief upon seeing Milliways.

They are all basically friendly and approachable people, even though you might want to be wary with the vampire.



[[OOC: Teja and Count are alive and don't live in Milliways; Hannibal is from this amazing fanfic. Please say in your tag whom you want, or you might get whoever is just logged in.]]

Comments

[cook_the_rude]

"Knocking pretty boys off horses with blunted sticks might be quite entertaining at times," Hannibal muses.

[electro_kinetic]

"Not when they complain as much as they do," Noriko answers. "Loras is alright. Too interested in Renly to be interested in me, which is good. And he puts up a good fight."

But she still doesn't understand why all the girls flock around him.

[cook_the_rude]

"If they complain so much," Hannibal says, shaking his head, "the prettiness is void, anyway. Nothing is less attractive than whining."

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko laughs, nodding. "I'm inclined to agree. But then, my opinions on things are usually considered very strange. At least to the everyone in the Seven Kingdoms short of Dorne."

Usually the Martells make some sense. About some things.

[cook_the_rude]

"Then why not go there?" Hannibal suggests. "As a rule, leaving an overly benighted place works for unconventional people. I know it did for me."

[electro_kinetic]

"What?" she asks. "Go to Dorne? Because it is atrociously hot and far too close to being back in Tyrosh. If I wanted to get that far away from the Westerosi I'd just go to North."

[cook_the_rude]

"Is that a place more conducive to your kind of unorthodox ideas?" Hannibal asks.

[electro_kinetic]

"The North?" she asks, scoffing. "Not particularly. But they're slightly less annoying about refusing than they are in King's Landing, which is where I am now. As long as it doesn't offend their honor...it's more or less passable in the North."

[cook_the_rude]

"Refusing what?" Hannibal asks. "Or whom?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Any idea they didn't come up with. Or that might make life easier."

Like not picking fights that turn into duels for honor. Because that never ends well.

[cook_the_rude]

"They sound a bit hidebound," Hannibal concedes.

[electro_kinetic]

"Westerosi usually are," she says. "Something about the traditions of their ancestors and honor and all that."

He gets an expressive shrug. "We are not so strict about things in the Free Cities." They're infinitely more dangerous, too, as a result.

[cook_the_rude]

"What made you leave there?" Hannibal asks. "Westeros sounds difficult to navigate."

[electro_kinetic]

"Tyrosh can only support so many sellswords. Westeros, however...more people, more opportunities. Since the last Targaryens were killed they've been going through kings and princes like ale at a tourney."

[cook_the_rude]

"And all of them need mercenaries," Hannibal nods. "Good business thinking."

[electro_kinetic]

"Thank you," she says with a quiet smile, confident but not overly showy about it. "I thought so too. Clearly I'm not entirely wrong, I'm not starving."

[cook_the_rude]

"Annoyed, but fed well enough," Hannibal agrees.

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko nods, and takes a drink from the cup she'd been toying with. "And so now you know about me, what of you? You have to be more interesting than the folk in King's Landing."

[cook_the_rude]

"I am just a doctor," he says. "My patients are interesting, not I."

[electro_kinetic]

"No one is just anything that comes here," she says lightly. "Including you and I."

[cook_the_rude]

"You are just a mercenary?" Hannibal smirks.

[electro_kinetic]

"Among other things," she says with a little smile. "Much like, I suspect, you are other things along with being a doctor."

She'd be willing to put a lot of money on that were she the betting kind. (And she is, she just does so discreetly. Pays to have people think you're too upright for that kind of entertainment.) "To start with, you have a wonderful grasp of Westerosi politics already."

[cook_the_rude]

"You told me," Hannibal smiles.