[Nexus] Trog's Tavern CCXXXII

[Rebonack]

Zee's here!

She's fixing sammiches, as she is oft known to do. Though for the time being she doesn't pounce on the new person. Magtok seems to have taken that honor already. And interrupting would be rude!

Don't want to be rude.

Being rude is terrible.

So in lue of any terrible interrupting rudeness she instead begins fixing herself a mug of licorice tea whilst wondering what sort of crazy adventures the Nexus has in mind for this somewhat disheveled woman.

No doubt something crazy!

Possibly adventurous!

[The Bushranger]

"That's one way of putting it...and sure." Eileen chuckles, and pays for the drinks before standing.

[Murkus]

That tall, gangly, worn-looking young man from before reenters the bar. He's still glowing in an almost radioactive manner, just the same as the 'hair' on his head. He's dressed in a simple, slightly oversized tank shirt and a pair of dark cargo pants.

Orrey gives everyone his regular, hard look-over and sits at the bar. Rummaging in one of his many pockets, for the moment.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Zel gets up, stretches a little, and heads for the door.

She stares at Orrey for a moment on her way.

[Rebonack]

Zee bounces over to this other guy she hasn't ever met before!

Yay, new people!

New people are the best!

"Hiya! Welcome to Trog's Tavern, home of the best lousy service in the whole Nexus! I'm Zee and I'll be your server today! Can I get you anything sir?"

A pause to take a breath.

"Hey! Did you know that you're glowing? 'cuz you're really glowing a lot."

...

She's very perceptive.

[The Bushranger]

And Eileen follows Zel, looking curiously in the direction she's staring as well.

[Murkus]

Zee bounces over to this other guy she hasn't ever met before!

Yay, new people!

New people are the best!

"Hiya! Welcome to Trog's Tavern, home of the best lousy service in the whole Nexus! I'm Zee and I'll be your server today! Can I get you anything sir?"

A pause to take a breath.

"Hey! Did you know that you're glowing? 'cuz you're really glowing a lot."

...

She's very perceptive.

Orrey looks up, blinking with wide eyes. His expression turns flat and neutral. "Yeah... is it still as cool as I remember?" Seems a generally passive question. He forgets to order anything, anyway.

[Rebonack]

That's too bad.

Zee likes to make stuff for people! And people that just sit at the bar and don't order anything tend to get yammered at endlessly. More so than normal at least. So it'll probably just be a matter of time before Zee begins to prattle without end.

"Yep! It's very glowy and stuff!" she replies, utterly failing to pick up on the fact that the glowing man's question probably wasn't very sincere. She's really bad at picking up on false sincerity.

Just one of those human quirks that doesn't make much sense to her.

One of many, no doubt.

"Sooo..." she looks rather vacant for several seconds before snapping back to attention. "Do you need something to drink?"

[Murkus]

Orrey... keeps on frowning a little. He quirks a brow and says, in a remarkably high-end piece of sarcasm, "No. I'm here to enjoy the ambience and the local culture." Of course, he just met Butler. So before this nutty chick can go 'okay!' and leave, he says flatly, "A Black Shadow, please."

[Rebonack]

Zee is just about to go 'Okay!' and leave when Orrey makes his order. She was just starting to turn and walk off so the end result is the Far-maid lurching in a rather odd sort of way. Something about the movement is... off. Really off. But it's hard to place one's finger on precisely what the problem is.

She peers at Orrey blankly for several seconds.

Then busts up laughing.

"Oooh! You were using false sincerity, weren't you? Ha! That's funny, right? Sorry, I'm really bad at recognizing 'sarcasm'."

You can almost see the finger quotes when she says it.

"Alright, one Black Shadow coming up!"

There's a Black Shadow sitting on the counter in front of Orrey. It has been there for a while now. Though he may find it difficult to recall exactly when it had arrived.

[Murkus]

His frown deepens a little at the whole affair. The lurching and peering. The drink that... that couldn't have been there before. He says flatly, calmly, "My Gods, you're creepy. Not human, am I right lady?"

Orrey's hand shakes a little - a lot actually, despite the calm on his face - as he reaches for the drink. There's a slight twitch to his face as his expressions change, but that's about it. The thug takes a long, chilly draught of his Black Shadow before wiping his mouth with his meaty forearm.

[Rebonack]

Zee's bouncy, cheerful disposition instantly melts into one of abject disappointment. "Aww... You can tell?" she sounds like someone just told her that her goldfish died. Shoulders slump, face wearing a morose frown. The change in emotional state was quite sudden and equally complete. It's jarring.

Almost as if it's all an act.

A mask.

A facade.

Because it is.

"And I thought I was getting better, too..." Zee sighs with pretend frustration. She feels no such thing. But such a reaction is what any normal disappointed human would do. Though they would no doubt be better at it than she. "No, I'm not strictly human. I'm from... uuhh... Somewhere Else."

She somehow manages to make Somewhere Else sound absurdly foreboding.

[Murkus]

"Yeah... if you're trying to fake being human, you have a looong way to go." Orrey says, frowning at the bartender. He takes a smaller gulp of his drink, the shivers resulting barely differing from his regular shaky hands. "Why are you faking it, anyway?"

[Rebonack]

"Umm... well..." Zee considers that question.

Why does she fake it, anyway?

Is it just because a more comfortable, natural shape would unnerve some people? She glances over at the shark-headed cyborg with the lower body of a go-kart seated at another table nearby.

No...

That can't be it.

There are lots of really weird things in the Nexus and most people take them in stride.

Is it to make her easier to interact with? Faking the emotions certainly helps her to seem less... strange. But at the same time people seem just as jarred when they realize that something is wrong with her, too.

So...

So what is it?

Why does she fake it?

Zee has been staring off blankly into space for about a minute and a half now.

[Murkus]

"I think I broke the bartender." Orrey says, mostly to the audience. No, wait, fourth wall's in the way. He says it quietly, to himself, and partly to the NPC patrons nearby.

The thug snaps his fingers in front of Zee's eyes. "Hey! Lady! You still with me?"

[Rebonack]

Broken?

No...

Zee's just...

Umm...

Special is all.

At the finger snapping she starts slightly, eyes quickly refocusing. "Oh! Right! Umm... I'm not really sure... I guess to make me a bit more approachable?"

Though having thought about it that reason isn't quite as good as she previously believed it to be. Though it'll have to do for now...

Ah well.

[Zefir]

Wolfy sighs and heads over to Fade. "What is it?"

Fade takes a nip of his Nuke Cola and his shadow returned. The shadow now is a normal one no sign of any magic or other.

"I'm hunting for a God you may konw or not thats either way not nessasary. I would ask you to lend me a bit of your power , so I could go and do what he deserves."

The god in question is one of his homeworld causing himi and other of his kind to leave the realm, most of them don't mind it, but Fade sees it as a curse and wants to stop him doing the same to others. Well thats why he is collecting shadows.

[UncleWolf]

"I don't give out power. And even if I did. Mine would be useless to you." Wolfy tells Fade.

[Zefir]

"It's not like you have to give them away they really don't leave you. So why should they are useless? I think 'Gods' allways ahave powers to threat the people who worship htem."

A special stress on the word God may be heared, seems really llike he hates to call taht word.

[UncleWolf]

"I don't give it out, for a couple reasons. Because it's too easily abused, and because I don't have any worshipers." Wolfy says. No real worshipers at any rate.

[Zefir]

"But well you could tell me what kind of powers rest into you? It's not like I could take them without your permission and, well I don't think it will hurt someone if you just tell me them."

[UncleWolf]

Wolfy's eyes go dark and he gives a half snarl. "You want to know my power...." He growls. Fade will feel the air grow moist and chill, a fog growing out of thin air as he lets his Power show. The lights dim in the Tavern and stars wink into existence in place of the ceiling. The furniture, bar, and fireplace will find themselves in a Moorish clearing in a cool wet night, a bright full moon above them. The smell of conifers and damp earth fill the air.

Wolfy seems to grow in front of Fade, turning more savage and less refined than his appearance in Nexus. His clothes are replaced by only a simple cloth to keep him decent, and the now 15ft tall wolf-man looks down at Fade as dark and primordial animals howl nearby. "I am Uncle Wolf, Father of all that is Primal and Protector of this Pack that you call Mortal-Kind." His voice booms. "My Power..." He spits out, his purely silver fur giving off a brighter shine as he does so. "Is anything I wish it to be. I am not some mere little Godling or Being, limited by Codes of Conduct, Worship, or Immortal Law. I have always been Eternal and Limitless, and I always will be!" he shouts before the fog gets thicker.

When it clears again, Wolfy is as he was earlier, in fine clothes, 6ft tall, and gray fur, but his eyes have a new glint to them. Everyone will also be back in their familiar Trog's. "I know exactly what can be done without permission. If I explained my powers in detail, what would keep a mortal like you from trying to steal them?"

[Zefir]

Fade isn't really impressed by that show, for reall he chilled a bit when the room got darker, He enjoyed th shadows until the where drag back to Trog's.

".. mortal..." Thinking about called like this cause of his Age and the tendenze his kind tend to live.

"Your permission." thats his answer for his question "There isn't really some way I can go through it without your permission."

[Gullara]

Magtok gives a bit of a relieved sigh. Thank gods, someone familiar with the word cyborg! He would've probably had to punch her in the face with a trout if she didn't correct herself.

It's possible because I-Oh come on, they were making primitive monkey tech robot legs by the late nineties, at the very least. Hoodies weren't really that popular until we hit the two-thousand year mark, so I know you're not that technologically backwards. I'm a cyborg because SCIENCE, duh.

And you're in a smelly old tavern in fantasy/sc-fi/Lovecraftian/Douglas Adams town. To be a bit more precise, Trog's Tavern, in Inside, in the Nexus.

He tries to poke a finger at her forehead.

Did you fall asleep at a keyboard? Terrible idea. Everyone knows it's always when you collapse like that, you immediately wake up in a twisted fantasy world loosely based off of whatever you were last doing or reading or watching. That was a terrible idea. Gods help you, this dream is going to chew you up, spit you out, and murder the hell out of you with a falling house with ruby red slippers.

"Right right. It's just that cyborgs aren't exactly a common thing. I mean, the sci fi sort of cyborgs." She looks around the tavern. A frown grows on her face. Especially when the tavern is suddenly not a tavern then is a tavern again. "So Nexus? Like... bleh, what's the definition of the word again? Sort of like a crossroads for all kinds of things like the ones you mentioned? So what, I'll be running into elves and halflings and vampires and whatnot? Aliens and things too. And gratuitous amounts of lasers."

"That's... really cool actually." She runs her fingers through her hair a bit and pulls it back into a rough ponytail with the scrunchie that was around her wrist. "I suppose I could be dreaming." Although she really hopes she isn't.

"In the case I'm not dreaming." She extends her hand to shake, a bit awkwardly. "I'm Jasmine White. You can call be Jaz if you want."

[Morty]

Dorotha jumps, startled, when the tavern is replaced with wilderness, smoke and fog. She shrinks back - having been raised in a city, she feels her new surroundings extremely unnerving - but the apparition is soon gone. She feels uninclined to disregard it as usual Nexus weirdness, though. This was something bigger.

[happyturtle]

Shae, the androgynous winged fae, walks over to Magtok and Jasmine. "Hi! Are you mortals?" As soon as he gets near, any technology of the era of gunpowder or higher is likely to start malfunctioning, preferably in a comical manner.

[Project_Mayhem]

"I suppose it is good to be curious. To a degree." She was a curious one herself, particularly when it came to the symbols she uses. There was still rather a lot about their power yet to learn. "I've not been here so long myself, and I must admit it is a truly remarkable city."

Another question! Ulthlan looks up properly from the page, and smiles in return, her green eyes glinting with a hint of amusement.

"I don't see myself as a mage, really, though some people might consider it so. What about you, Jonathan?" She tilts her head, lips pursed thoughtfully. "I don't suppose you're a mage."

Jonathan nods

Yeah, I'm an Acanthis. That's, uh, a Fate mage. Time also, but I haven't really learned any of that yet. I'm just an apprentice, but I can do some cool stuff.

He gets excited as he speaks, before suddenly stopping and looking a bit embarrassed

Un, not that I mean to brag or anything.

[Lord Magtok]

Mag narrows his eyes as a pine tree suddenly appears behind him, and tries to shove it away before it just magically disappears to wherever the heck it came from. He shakes her hand, despite several loud voices in his head telling him to just point a gun at her instead and maybe dangle her over some sharks.

Nice to meet you, Jaz. I'm Magtok, friendly neighborhood supervillain. If the stuff about elves and everything doesn't unnerve you, I'm sure that won't-

Magtok's left eye shatters like glass when Shae gets near.

Aaghblaghaaie!

He flails like an idiot and presses a hand against the ruined eye socket, before turning toward the newcomer.

She is, definitely. I might be, too. Depends on your definition of mortal.

[happyturtle]

The fae (who is also rather drunk) beams in delight. "Someone who isn't fae and isn't a god! And not an animal either. Or a thing. If you're none of those, you're mortal! At least, I think so. You're the first mortals I've met! I'm Shae! Why did your eye blow up?"

[Gullara]

"Oh... hey." Jasmine's eyes widen at the sight of the fae. "Er, I'm a mortal I guess." She scratches the back of her head nervously as she looks between Shae and the broken eyed cyborg.

Then her phone suddenly starts ringing. It's playing Back in Black. "Oh, sorry about that." She fishes it out of her pocket. "Let me just silence that." She presses the button and nothing happens. She presses it again, and several more times, to no avail. Finally she just puts it on her seat and sits on it to muffle the sound.