milliways_bar | (no subject)

Yamato peers at the man as he passes the Bar, trying to figure out exactly what the song is.

After a few seconds: "... Is that Darlene Love? Christmas songs aren't, er, aren't my speciality."

"Huh?" Mike asks, looking up from where he's been watching his own hands on the guitar. His rendition of the song isn't perfect, and he's trying to figure out what note he's getting wrong.

"You know...I have absolutely no idea. Is that who sang the original?"

"I think so. I'm not a Christmas-song-ologist, though, so who knows. Could be anyone. Could be Phil Collins."

It seems like most Christmas songs are by Phil Collins, on average.

Mike pulls a face.
"NO...it's definitely a woman who sang the version I'm thinking of. Hey Bar? Can you settle this for us?"

A napkin appears on Bar's top, and in flowing script the following is written:

Yamato is correct. Darlene Love.

"Huh! Well I've learned a thing today. Two, actually. Nice to meet you Yamato."

"Huh. Guess I am a christmas-song-ologist. Who knew."

He shakes his head. "Nice to meet you too, er ..." He rubs the back of his neck. "Still don't know your name."

He blinks a few times.
It's been a good long while since Mike has had to introduce himself, he's just so used to everyone already knowing who he is.

Of course, in his mind he's always around...even when he's not really talking to folks, or engaging.

Rather than just put his guitar pick on Bar's top, Mike sticks it to one side of his mouth, freeing up his hand for shaking.

"I'm Mike," he says around the pick. "You been coming here long?"

Yamato gives his hand a quick shake.

"I guess I've been coming here for a fair while," he says mildly. "Longer for me than for here, my timeline is kind of wonky like that."

"You've gotta love that flexible time, right? So like," he pauses to remove the pick from his mouth, and so he can begin to strum the melody to Time After Time.

So is this a usual thing for you back home? Or something that Milliways has like...gifted you."

"Just a Milliways thing. My timeline back home is pretty linear, but here I seem to switch back and forth between me-from-now and me-from-seven-years-ago," Yamato says. "So from my perspective, my first meeting with most of my friends was way after their first meeting with me."

"Well that doesn't sound confusing at all," he says with a cringe.
"Sorry man, I don't have control over the door. It's kind of got a mind of its own. There aren't many things above my paygrade here, but that's sadly one of them."

Mike stops to ponder a thing.

"Can I get you a drink? I mean, at very least."

"It's actually probably better this way. I wasn't exactly great at making friends and influencing people when I was a kid."

He's not exactly amazing at it now.

"I won't turn down a drink, if you're offering, though."

"Well," he begins with a grin as he rolls backwards across Bar's top, landing behind her and in a prime position to fix a drink. "...they say that the best friendships are the ones that you just pick right up with no matter how much time has passed, so...looks like you've got some good friends there."

And yes, he still has the guitar.

"Name your poison!"

"I do," Yamato laughs. "They're pretty great."

The roll back across the Bar is ... actually pretty impressive, Yamato has to admit.

"I'll take a latte, with extra sugar and sprinkles," he says. "Or just some orange juice, if asking for a coffee is off-limits."

Okay, Mike was not expecting the order of a coffee, as is evident from his expression.

"No no, I've got nothing against coffee, I just...how can you be in the mood for both of those drinks at the exact same time?"

Okay, this is going to be interesting, because Mike hasn't made a fancy'ish coffee order like this since he stopped living with his brother Donnie full time.

"I'm in the mood for basically anything that isn't water, fish, and berries. Back in my world, I've been stuck on a mission for a few months and this place is the only place I can get non-foraged food and drink," Yamato says wryly. "Honestly, you could serve me anything and I'd be happy. I'm just in this for the sweet, sweet taste of variety."

Just when you think it's no possible for Mike's grin to get any wider, ... it does.

"Anything?"

"This seems like a trap."

Well, may as well spring it.

"So yeah, sure, anything."

What?!
Mike!?
But he's as innocent as the purely driven snow!
...
Would you believe purely driven through snow?

"Do you prefer a chocolate or a fruit profile?"

"Let's say chocolate," Yamato says. "I can get fruit outside my door, even if it doesn't exactly taste like Earth fruit, but chocolate's next to impossible to come by."

"We get that a lot around here. Like, the sheer number of places that don't have chocolate, really makes me wonder about...so much."

New change of plan. Coffee, is out. The blender, however, is up.
Mike slings his guitar over one shoulder, so it's now strapped to his back.

"Like, why even create a multiverse if there's not going to be chocolate in all of them? Just seems...mean."

Then Mike ducks down, half disappearing into one of the low bar-back coolers.

"...how do you feel about booze?" he calls from what sounds like a cavernous space.

"I'm under the drinking age in my world," Yamato says, in response to that query. It's not a no, just a fair warning in case Mike isn't up for serving alcohol to him because of it.

"The Earth I come from has chocolate a-plenty," he says conversationally. "But there are other worlds in my, er, world, and I'm on one of them at the moment -- and it doesn't even have cocoa beans, let alone chocolate."

He flips himself back up into view.

"Lookit you, being all honest and upfront about laws and stuff." It's aDORable.
"If it wasn't for my near sacrifice to a pagan god on the altar of some high-fantasy pocket dimension the last...and only time, I'd ever been black out drunk, I'd have totally lied when someone asked me if I wanted booze."

AWWWW BLESS!

"... Okay, you can't actually leave that story there," Yamato says. "How did you end up nearly sacrificed to a pagan god?"

"I mean, that kind of IS the story. I got well and truly hammered one night, got lost in the tunnels on my way home, fell through a rip in space-time, and wound up in this pocket dimension. They uh...didn't take to kindly to my face, and the next thing I knew," he says employing some well timed jazz hands at this point in the story. "I was tied to a slab in furry manpanties, with a very..."

Pretty much the universal hand gesture for A Well Endowed Woman goes here.

"...lady tried to drive a really big knife through my chest."
Mike puffs up his cheeks and blows out a lungfull of air.

"And that's the last time I even so much as looked at alcohol."
Says the guy standing behind a bar.

Yamato peers at him for a moment.

Then, very somberly: "We've all been there, buddy."

Beat.

"But also: How the fuck did you escape?"

They'll get you every-damn-time, those unexpected pocket dimensions.
Also, busty dames? They are NOTHING but trouble.

"You know to be honest, the rest of the adventure is kind of a blur at this point. But," he says with a shrug. "I got to keep the horned viking hat and furry manpanties, so it wasn't a total loss."

"What do you say about a forbidden chocolate milkshake?"

"Those seem like things that'd come in handy."

For example, if one should need to infiltrate a viking camp or such.

"Sure, let's try it. The fact that it's forbidden intrigues me."

"A bold choice."
Mike seems pleased by this accepted call to culinary adventure.

"A bold choice well chosen. Here, hold this," he says unslinging the guitar from his back and handing it across Bar's top.

Yamato takes the guitar, sitting down and settling it across his knee, gently strumming out the tune to Moon River as Mike works.

"I'd say there's a fifty percent choice I regret saying yes to this."

"Only fifty?" Mike tsks. "I'm losing my edge."

"That, or my self-preservation instinct isn't that great."

Atrophied from years of disuse, even.

"This is the start of a beautiful friendship," Mike says with a grin that really, no one should trust.

Then back into the cooler he dives, looking for just the right ingredients for the most decadent milk shake the multiverse has ever known.

From the cooler, "Do you know Freebird?"

"Or one that gets me killed," Yamato murmurs.

Then again, what's the difference, really?

"Freebird? No, never heard of it."

Mike surfaces from the cooler with not just an ice cream scoop, but an ice cream scoop containing three perfectly spherical scoops of ice cream so dark they're like an event horizon.

"...how do you not know Freebird."

it's not even a question.

"I just haven't heard of it," Yamato protests. "Or him. Her? Them."

Who is this mysterious Freebird. Why is it so free.

He shakes his head.
"It. Freebird is an it. More specifically, it's a song."

The precariously balanced ice cream gets deposited into a nearby blender, the carafe of which gets brought over towards one of the beer taps.
Only this tap seems to serve not a brew of unknown brand, but ... is that chocolate milk?

Yes, yes indeed it is.

"Huh, I never knew there was a chocolate milk tap there," Yamato says thoughtfully. "Well, sorry, probably going to have to turn down any requests to play Freebird. I can play Fly Me To The Moon or something."

That's like Freebird, right? Birds fly, after all.

"Lemme finish this? And I'll give you a lesson in guitar rock history."

There are squeezes of various chocolate syrups into the blender, before it sets to blending.

The resulting pitch black concoction has a viscosity of molasses in January. As it slowly pours from the blender to the cup, Mike gives Yamato the thumbs up for some music.

"Lay that Frank on me."

Yamato is eyeing that concoction rather dubiously, even as he starts strumming out a rather layered, complex rendition of Fly Me To The Moon.

"... Be honest, am I going to get diabetes when I drink this?"

"Well I'm not a doctor, nor have I ever played one on tv, but in my 100% expert opinion, probably not?"

Mike then grins.
The concoction is still pouring.

"That's good enough for me, but if you do accidentally poison me, keep in mind that my team's medic is already pretty scalpel happy and might try to assassinate you," Yamato says gravely. "But I'll be rooting for you."

Mike's smile shifts into something more akin to, Aww Bless than Run For Your Life.

"I don't think that'll be necessary, but just in case...warn them that I'm a ninja, and out of retirement."

"But if I tell him that, he might try to scalpel me instead. Be reasonable," Yamato says.

Clementine's in an elf outfit at the opposite end of the bar, and toasts him with her shotglass when he's done.

"A classic," she says.

"There ain't no school, like the old school," he says with a confident grin.
"What were we drinking?"

Because it looks like her glass might just be empty, and he might just be the kind of a guy to help fix that kind of problem.

"Straight Jim Bean," she said. "I don't mix fruit with my hard liquor."

[OOC: Sorry for disappearing - my January became violently dramatic out of the blue!]