First EP -- Tang Fan

[dipdyed_robes]

All of a sudden, a rather pretty and very young man in dip-dyed robes walks into the bar. Behind him, the door closes on a lively city street from 15th century China.

"This restaurant is new!" he declares, delighted. All the strangeness (trilobites, galaxy window, bra over the bar etc.) gets ignored as funny decor in view of that momentous fact: there will be new food here!

"Hello!" he calls out. "May I have your special, please?"

Always go for what the cook does best.



tinytag: tang fan

[[OOC: Tang Fan may or may not remember having been here for the All-Skates that he was part of. In any case, he's not here for plot, he's here for food and chatting.]]

Comments

[yinyangwizard]

A man steps out of the kitchen wearing an apron over his robe and his sleeves tied back with a white strip of cloth. More importantly for Tang Fan’s purposes he is carrying a tray with a big bowl of steaming soup and a small plate of tempura vegetables.

“Oh! I suppose you must be the one I have been waiting for,” he says, in a form of Chinese that a person of the Ming era might consider antiquated but still comprehensible.

He puts down the tray on the Bar. The soup bowl is filled with udon noodles, scallions, and little bits of dried tofu in a miso broth. Beside the bowl and opposite the little plate of vegetable tempura is a shaker of hot flakes.

“Forgive me, I forgot the aloe juice! I shall return with it presently.” He bows, somewhat hurriedly, and darts back into the kitchen.

[dipdyed_robes]

"Oh, did you know I was coming?" Tang Fan says. "I didn't even know myself; I just happened by on my way home from the office."

He won't eat a full banquet because Sui Zhou will most likely have cooked dinner, but a bowl of noodle soup and a few little things on the side have no chance of spoiling his appetite for Guangchuan's cooking.

[yinyangwizard]

The man emerges from the kitchen again with a black ceramic flask and a cup of the same make. The insides of both pieces are glazed celadon.

“I knew someone new would be coming and I should give them something to eat.” He puts the flask and cup down near Tang Fan and, after taking a closer look at how he is dressed, adjusts his Chinese to something a little more contemporary. (Contemporary to the 15th century, anyway.)

“These dishes are from Nihon, my homeland. Udon noodle soup, and vegetables lightly fried in tempura batter. There are dried chili flakes if you like your soup a bit spicy.”

(The divination did not say whether the new guest would like spicy food.)

“The drink is sweet aloe juice, with a little bit of pineapple flavor.”

[dipdyed_robes]

"Oh, thank you! This is your restaurant? You came from Nihon to introduce your dishes to people in the capital?" Tang Fan says.

He pours himself some of the aloe juice and has a sip.

"This is great, but what is pine-apple?"

[yinyangwizard]

“No, no, it is not my restaurant - in fact I do not cook here very often, but I had a feeling that I should today.”

(If he were a professional in the restaurant business, he would not have forgotten to bring out the aloe juice.)

“Pineapples have a sort of intimidating appearance, with skin that looks like scaly pangolin armor and a crown of stiff pointy leaves. But the flesh of the pineapple is bright yellow and sweet. In distant Western lands the pineapple is associated with hospitality and luxury.”

[dipdyed_robes]

Tang Fan sips the drink with great reverence, holding the little cup with both hands.

"I do thank you for your luxurious hospitality," he says. "Anyone may cook here?"

He has to bring Sui Zhou and watch him enjoying himself feeding a restaurant full of people, as he at Auntie Dong's when they met.

[yinyangwizard]

“Oh yes, although we all defer to regular guests who are expert cooks, such as Rae-san the baker.”

If she had been in the kitchen, Seimei would ask her permission before using it, even though she does not technically own it.

“Normally one orders food directly from Bar-san, and she conjures it up from somewhere.”

[dipdyed_robes]

"We do what?" Tang Fan says, putting down the cup.

He can deal with the foreign honorifics, but even accounting for those, it doesn't make sense.

[yinyangwizard]

“Like this. Bar-san, may we please have a small pineapple?”

And, suddenly, there is a pineapple sitting on the Bar where there was nothing before.

[dipdyed_robes]

Tang Fan gapes as politely as he can manage, which isn't much.

"That is -- yes, it looks a bit like a pangolin, but as fruit," he says. "Also, a bit like a pine cone; I understand why they named it that. But -- where did it come from?"

Because things do not simply appear. From thin air, that is.

[yinyangwizard]

“The things Bar-san conjures come from somewhere in the vastness of existence, across space and time. How she locates and retrieves these things is a mystery we are unlikely to solve.”

After a while, one gets used to it.

[dipdyed_robes]

"Can I do that, too?"

[yinyangwizard]

“Certainly. Bar-san cannot conjure weapons, viable seeds, or living things, but that still leaves one with a great many options.”

[electro_kinetic]

Noriko almost wants to ask how many more of these guys are going to show up, but...opts not to, just watching him for a moment, eyebrow lifted, and going back to her fried paradoxes and her book and her tea.

The petals in her sakura-yu are beginning to unfold, and cloud the otherwise clear green tea.

...What is it with these dudes and robes?

[dipdyed_robes]

Tang Fan looks around, and spots another patron -- with blue hair! Amazing!

"Good afternoon, Miss," he says. "Do you know where the owner is?"

[electro_kinetic]

"There is no owner," she answers lightly, resting her thumb in the spine of her book as she looks him over. As outlandish as she must look to him--bright blue hair, shorn nearly to the scalp on one side, wearing short-shorts and with her colorful tattoos on unashamed display--she seems utterly unconcerned. As she does about the colorful bruise riding her cheekbone.

"Not that anyone I've met knows about, anyway. Hate to disappoint."

[dipdyed_robes]

"But how do we get food here?" Tang Fan asks, almost dismayed. "And erm, miss, would you like to press charges? I am an official at Shuntian prefecture and would be glad to take down your complaint."

[electro_kinetic]

Tang Fan, and his questions, get a blink and a slow eyebrow lift as she drinks her tea. "You ask the bar--it'll show up, it's advanced tech, or magic, don't ask for expanations--and....what am I pressing charges for?"

[dipdyed_robes]

"For having been beaten up by thugs who then took your clothes?" Tang Fan says.

He doesn't want to mention potential rape. That would be rude.

[electro_kinetic]

Those eyebrows aren't going anywhere.

"Okay, first, if my clothes had been stolen I'd have gotten new ones. I'm wearing everything I started with this morning," she says. "Second, if I was beaten up, I'd have way more bruises than this. This was a lucky shot by an asshole in a bar. Third, and possibly the most important, you are emphatically not in whatever prefecture you came in from."

[dipdyed_robes]

"You are intentionally going half-naked?" says Tang Fan, whose only exposure to bare skin in a public or semi-public context is looking at Sui Zhou's sinewy arms when he cooks. "And I just came in through that door on my way home, so we're definitely in Shuntian prefecture. Seriously, I'd like to help you. Assaulting young ladies in bars is definitely illegal, no matter how little they choose to wear."

[electro_kinetic]

"You got a problem with how I'm dressed?" she asks expectantly.

"You're not in Shuntian prefecture the same way I'm not in New York City. We're in a pocket that's outside the normal continuum of spacetime, though it's accessible from multiple locations and years."

[dipdyed_robes]

"I would have thought that you've got a problem with it," Tang Fan says. "Aren't you cold?"

Pause.

"What is New York?"

[electro_kinetic]

"Nope," she says, breezy and comfortable. "Miracle of climate control."

In answer to his second question, though, she holds up a finger, gets up and makes her way to the door, opening it on a hallway, at the end of which is a window, looking out onto a city that is, notably, nothing like Shuntian prefecture. "That is New York City. Where I live."

[dipdyed_robes]

"What are these buildings?" Tang Fan marvels, peering out of the door behind her. "With so many windows, and stacked so high!"