One (1) Assassin-Captain Enters the Bar

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara had been headed from her office toward her room, but the moment she passed through the doorway, her step froze against the sudden myriad of voices. Reflexes pricked, counting the numbers of people off even before the second later lift of her gaze from the datapad in her hand and found .... a weird kind of diner-bar?

Without ever raising a foot, she shifted her weight to look behind her. Then back.
In front of her. Well-lit diner-bar. Behind her. Midnight Waverider bridge.

The latter at least earns less severity than alternate would have. Not that she relaxes her tense scrutiny of a random bar appearing on her time ship. Instead, all she says, to no one in particular is,

"We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto."




[ Welcome to Milliways, Sara Lance! The first thread is Bar Intro only; feel free to spot Sara at the bar, the window, etc., somewhere else after that. Open until it rolls off the page. ]

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[angry_friendship_wolf]

Mere moments after the door shuts behind Sara, there's a tall, blond teenage boy ambling through it -- with a black eye, because he's been working his other other job, although it doesn't look like it bothers him much.

(And since he carries himself with the straight-backed posture of a soldier and the watching-all-the-exits, light-on-his-feet demeanour of a habitual killer, he's probably used to black eyes anyway.)

"New here?" He asks lightly as he passes. "I -- heard the Wizard of Oz reference."

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara isn't expecting someone to come from behind her just then, and her fingers slide to the slight weight of one of the more than a dozen weapons hidden across her body. But it's just a boy. A little roughed up, but not posed to attack. (Her fingertips still stay where they are.)

She answers his question by way of a different one.

"Where exactly is here?"

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Yamato's gaze slides over to where her fingers are, seeming to recognise that there's probably a weapon there. He doesn't appear to be armed, but then that doesn't always mean that much.

"Interdimensional nexus point appearing as a bar," he says. "There are leaflets that explain more. And the first drink is free."

[strongerthanyouknow]

"Like the Vanishing Point?"

But no. The Vanishing Point had been completely outside of space and time (and destroyed). Her expression doesn't change much at all for the glance back to the boy, but it's hard to shock a girl who has already seen alternate universes and alternate timelines, the entire fabric of the multiverse both destroyed and remade.

Then, and vastly more importantly,

"What kind of drinks are we talkin' here?"

[angry_friendship_wolf]

"I -- don't know what that is. Might not be a thing in my multiverse."

Probably isn't a thing in his multiverse.

"As far as drinks go, though, basically anything you can think of. Including alcohol -- a lot of people need it the first time they arrive."

[strongerthanyouknow]

Oh. Isn't he precious? Sara's mouth curled toward small, but sharp amusement at his leaning toward alcohol as the latter of options listed, as though she hadn't gone one hundred percent straight there.

"Far be it for me to mess with tradition while I'm a guest in someone else's house."

Is that just what Sara Lance would do if she felt like? Could change her mind about at any time, without so much as the bat of an eyelash? It's hard to tell, but at least she's open to getting her free-drink on to go with this newest bout of soon-to-be midnight paperwork on the multiverse.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Well, it's not as if Yamato's old enough to drink. If he wants to get drunk, he has to bring alcohol in from home.

He flashes a grin -- and while the effect is somewhat ruined by the fact that he has visible fangs, he's clearly at least trying to look friendly -- and eases towards the Bar.

"If you decide you want a second drink," he says, "the Bar'll set up a tab for you. Don't worry about waiting for a bartender either, if you just tell the Bar what you want, it'll materialise it for you."

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara adds magical fugitives (?) to the second top of her mental list, after wtf did i do to deserve being saddled with a supposed multiversal diner bar at 4 in the morning, but there's no real shift to her expression, posture, or gait for his smile. Even if it factors into other calculations in her head, she does her best not to look in the direction of until she has to. It's just safer for everyone if she doesn't.

Her gaze flicks calmly over the expansive room (checking that she had counted the occupant number correctly initially before even seeing the room itself; which she had, of course), as she follows him further in. The bar is long, sturdy, and looks like any million others she's seen. "What kind of tab?"

And. "Materialized from where exactly?"

[hat_and_dimples]

There is a slight man in very historical looking golden robes lying on the rug near the fireplace, an important-looking black hat on an ottoman behind him, a cup of tea at his elbow and an incongruous tablet computer (on which he is working on a complete monster of a spreadsheet) in his hands.

He looks at Sarah.

"Whoever Toto is, they didn't follow you."

[strongerthanyouknow]

"More's the grace for you." Sara says, with an easy congeniality, as though she were talking to someone she had a hundred times before, raising her 'first drink is free' whiskey glass to the newest guy. "The Legends make a better showing of themselves when they aren't pissed and cranky as shit, drug from their rooms still in sleep clothes."

Beat. Her smile sliding toward a golden confessional smirk.

"No one needs to meet Mick Rory for the first time in the buff. Trust me."

[hat_and_dimples]

The young man inn the golden robes laughs quietly. "I would very much prefer not to meet anybody for the first time while they are wearing no clothes," he says. "They would make a very uncouth impression on me."

[strongerthanyouknow]

"And yet, we call that Tuesday. If you're unlucky enough to be in the kitchen at the wrong time of night. You can be sure to tell him I'm warning the universe early as my one good samaritan act of whatever year it happens to be here." She takes another drink of the scotch, savoring the sharp burn as much as not feeling it at all.

For all her brightness and bluster, Sara actually has very, truly little to say bad about Mick. In the end, the two most important things remained forever uncontested, for all her glibbest mouth or sharpest temper. Mick Rory was whatever got the closest to being second to her on the ship, and he was maybe the one person in all time and space she could trust to kill her without hesitating if she needed to be.

"Sara Lance." Her eyebrows and the edge of her smile begs the question of introduction more than asking it.

[hat_and_dimples]

"I am honoured, Sara Lance," he says, putting his hands together before his chest in a perfect semicircle before bowing to her. "My name is Jin Guangyao, of the Lanling Jin sect of cultivators."

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara takes the official bow with the mustered respect of someone who isn't entirely surprised to see it, or at least who knows how to affect respectful patience. But that said, after the beat of a bare pause after his words and far more informative introduction, her head tips speculatively with a painless, rather amusedly academic, scrutiny.

"Jin Dynasty, too?"

[hat_and_dimples]

"Oh, we are not a dynasty, just one of formerly five, now four, Great Sects of the cultivation world," Jin Guangyao says.

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah Lance comes into the bar from the garage, wiping her hands on a rag, ometie later while Sara is at the bar. She heads over to where there's company that looks friendly enough, and exchanges the greasy rag for a cup of something hot and alcoholic.

She offers a smile to the lady already there.

"Hey."

She's in skinny jeans and a shirt tied at the waist, both of which are now randomly stained with dark finger marks, and ankle boots with a kitten heel that she could run in, but only because she can run in any heel.

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara noticed the new person arrive, for all that she hadn't, too. Another body in the space nearby, but not quite a focus yet, as she sipped at whatever number drink this was. She was maybe at the state of taking some advantage of this 'time stops our there while you're in here' thing. It's cheating, but The Legends cheat with capital 'T' Time all the time. Breaking the 'no messing with Time for personal reasons' rule at least once a person.

All except for Sara. Who doesn't ever get to use it to do any of the things she most wants to. She knows better. She doesn't get the excuse. The One-Time Warning. (You answer to a higher calling, Sara. I’m sorry. You cannot stray from our guiding principle.) So maybe she's taking this one: a nice long sit and a few good drinks. Nothing about it screwing up time with any of her better angels or demons.

The greeting gets a look over, and Sara raises her eyebrows, a little surprised but easy-peasy about, "Hey." It also lends to the cursory of taking the woman in. She always did like a woman that didn't mind getting their hands dirty. A tip of her chin toward the clothes. "What were you working on?"

[raptorcanaria]

"A Yamaha CS5," Dinah replies. She glances down semi self-conciously at her stains, and scrubs at one half heartedly with the heel of her hand. "Some of the poor things down there get dusty, so I occasionally give one a bit of a tune up."

She turns on her barstool, leans with her back against the bar so she's facing the room as a whole and can hold her drink.

"You know anything about bikes?"

If so, she's about to get her ear talked off. If not, there are other small talk avenues.

[strongerthanyouknow]

"I like riding them," is an easy pop back that takes no time to think of. "But it's been a good while since I've been on one, or even around them."

That was the problem with being at so many points in time. You were either long before something got invented or long after many things had been invented to replace them. But she had a deeper appreciation for the things from her time, even if none of them could make her stay either. She was where she was supposed to be, doing what she was supposed to be doing, and she would be as long as she remained capable of it.

[raptorcanaria]

"Well, there's plenty downstairs if you miss 'em."

Dinah really would spend hours down there if she was away from bikes for any extended period of time. She has, in fact, although mostly that's because they remind her of Ted, and feel like home.

"Why not around them? Just noot part of your life, or - " two fingers and a thumb spread wide, a wrist arching as the hand waves and takes in the whole Milliways is weird situation in as minimalist a gesture as possible " - trapped on a planet the other side of the galaxy where they have teleportation devices but no wheels?"

Ask her why that sounds so specific.

[strongerthanyouknow]

"That's really specific," Sara does note, question in the statement, with a raised brow. Because it is.

Before shrugging her shoulders into it, too. "Home's Timeship. Doubles as a Spaceship. Does not have bikes on it. I really should inform Gideon that it's a reflection of a design flaw that needs fixing sometime soon."

[raptorcanaria]

Dinah waves away the sort-of question. "Friend of a friend," she explains.

"And that's why I try not to spend too much time in space - ironically, there's no space for decent vehicles. I'll support your campaign to get some."

[magic_by_accident]

"Sara Lance," says John Constantine in a tone of sincere appreciation. "Never thought I'd see you here. What brings you to the end of the universe?"

[strongerthanyouknow]

[ fifty million billion year later; can continue, or handwave and do another when I hopefully post her in again early June ]



"John." Is it amazing someone can fit surprise, amusement, and vague suspicion into those two syllables? Well, Sara's just that magical then. A hand ends up on her hip, and her weight shifts, still much too tightly still. "Walked through a door, and wa-la." This with one raised hand-making, finger-waving, jazz fingers.

(The other doesn't move from her hip. Or the weapon closest to it.)

"You want to fill me in?"

[magic_by_accident]

[ooc: Let's do another. I'll keep an eye out for her EP.]