Trog's Tavern CLV

[Rebonack]

The trap door leading down to the wine-cellar pops open, starting an odd looking bipedal parrot-like person with hands instead of wings. He squawks and quickly back-peddles away. Shortly there after Zee emerges from the gloom, a pair of bottles in hand and a triumphant look on her face!

Then she spots the irritated parrot.

"Look, there's a sign on the trap door. Stay clear, do not stand!" she chides them.

They squawk at her irritably.

"No, I'm not responsible for you reading or not reading the signage. There's even stripey caution tape! I've taken ALL the precautions!"

The bird person huffs at her again.

"Ugh."

Why can't people ever read the signs? That's what they're for! But just like the spoiler tags at the beginning of threads no one ever bothers to actually read them.

Oh well.

Zee hooks her toe under the trap-door and flips it shut before heading over to a table occupied by a collection of raucous Klingons. "Hey guys! Two bottles of chech'tluth for you. This stuff packs a kick so no crying if you can't handle it."

This provokes some glaring and harsh words in an equally harsh language being shot at the barmaid.

She responds in kind to the fellow mocking her, resulting in a chorus of 'Ooooh,' from the other Klingons.

The barmaid flashes a smile, sets the bottles down, and heads for the counter.

"Hey Selekhael!" she calls out to the newest server. "How are things going so far?"

For whatever strange reason the bar's manager doesn't seem to have noticed that there's a shuttle crashed through the wall.

Weird.

[Ironsmith]

In fairness, it's not in the wall much longer. By the time Zee could see it, Vlad was already in the process of separaring the two entities, having managed to somehow throw the silly thing in reverse and back out of the tavern. So rather than have a conspicuous shuttle sticking out the wall, there was now a conspicuous hole in the wall with a totally innocent-looking shuttle behind it. Nothing to see here, citizens.

[bc56]

Selekhael looks back at Zee. She smooths the wrinkles out of her apron and smiles. "I'm, uh, okay." This is all still very new to her, although over there, a version of her that is much more experienced is taking down the orders of a pair of Asari. But the Selekhael speaking to Zee is paying her no mind. "Uh, I, served some people, and, uh, got some tips, uh, and he," She points to a Red Martian man who's trying not to be caught staring at her from across the room, "keeps, uh, trying to flirt with me whenever I walk past."

[Rebonack]

Okay that's making it more obvious.

Zee glances in a shuttle-ish direction and looks puzzled.

"How long has that hole been there?" she mutters.

Gotta watch out for those stealth holes and completely unrelated shuttles that just so happen to be about the same size and shape as the hole in question. But there's nothing to see here so Zee doesn't concern herself with it too much.

There are more important things to address than random unimportant holes, though!

Like Selekhael!

"Yeah, that's a problem sometimes," Zee admits. "See, it's our job to be nice to people and help them. Some guys take any woman being nice as a sign that she's into them. We're not. That's just our job. So the best thing to do is to be polite but firm. If he keeps it up get the attention of one of the other servers. They'll be impolite and firm. Usually when creeps realize that the staff as a whole will stand up to them they knock it off."

Sounds like Zee has some experiences with this stuff.

Then she adds with a wide, eyes-closed smile. "And if they still don't get the hint I'll toss 'em out on their ear!"

[bc56]

Selekhael sighs. "Okay, uh, I'll do that." She doesn't really know the other servers yet, and she's always a little afraid to meet new people, even if she is a human now and not a monster anymore. Waiting tables has been a bit of a challenge for her.

[Rebonack]

"I know you're not use to it because of your history, but this is how things should be," Zee says, reach out to put one hand on Selekhael's shoulder while panning the other across the tavern at Nina, Paige, and Cosmo. "Co-workers looking out for each other! You don't have to go it alone anymore. You don't have to worry about people rejecting you because of who you are."

Except people who don't like Empyreans.

They probably won't like you still, Selekhael.

But hey!

At least they won't try to kill you for being hellspawn.

They might try to kill you for totally unrelated reasons!

Way better.

Especially since you can just blend in and everything will be fine.

"Go on, get out there! Meet some nice people. And let that jerk know that you're happy to serve him but not interested in whatever nonsense he's hoping you're interested in."

[bc56]

With a few words of encouragement from Zee, Selekhael goes out and back to work. Time seems to blur into a montage of her learning her duties and becoming more and more professional. We see her telling off some customers hitting on her, her sharing a sad story with Nina, tripping, spilling food all over a customer, and apologizing profusely, laughing with Paige, grumbling at Cosmo not doing his job. We see the ways she uses her powers, subtly or not, to do better at her job, bringing food almost as soon as it's ordered, being in several places at once, and generally being willing to work extra hard to make people happy.

[Rebonack]

It definitely isn't Sekhmet's old apprenticeship, but it's something right?

This is only a temporary thing.

Just until Selekhael decides what direction she wants to move in.

There certainly are quire a few of them.

Not everyone gets a questlog pointing them in the direction of people in need of help and the monsters tormenting them. Imagine how many heroes would love having a tool like that.

But does Selekhael want to be a hero?

Or just a normal person?

Speaking of normal people!

Two men in Great War attire step into the tavern. They're dirty, certainly. Not in great shape. Their clothing is muddy and well used. Though, oddly, they don't have any weapons to speak of. Also oddly, one is wearing a British soldier's uniform and the other a German uniform. Both look pretty shocked to find themselves in the tavern. This definitely wasn't where they were a few seconds ago.

"I'm telling you, William, they must have started shelling the football match," the German solider says. "There's no way we survived."

"A little dingy for the pearly gates, don't you think, Hans?" the other, apparently William, replies.

The two of them find themselves a table, looking around with naked astonishment.

[bc56]

Selekhael doesn't know what she wants to be yet! But she has time. More than most, due to her nature. Heroing with Arukael was fun, but is that what she wants to do? Constantly risk her life like that? She's not sure.

The Great War is/was/will be after Selekhael's time. She doesn't recognize the uniforms, except that they belong to soldiers, if rather drab ones. She walks up to the pair, and, as best she can, says, "Hi! Uh, welcome to Trog's Tavern! Can I get you anything?" She probably looks as unusual to then as they do to her (but other people in the tavern look more unusual than that). Black hair, slim build, yellow eyes like an eagle's, or maybe a cat's. A lion's tail pokes out from the back of her long blue dress adorned with spiraling patterns, and she seems to faintly glow with some sort of light, that, if someone could put it into words, might be described as FORGIVENESS.

[Rebonack]

Strictly speaking Arukhael DOES do other things. Like Sekhmet, he has lots of time on his hands. He just has to be a little more careful about how he accesses that time since he doesn't have an easy way to offload paradox.

Man.

Selekhael's life really got weird since she arrived at the Nexus, didn't it?

But then again, living in fear inside her house all the time really wasn't much of a life.

The two soldiers halt their conversation when Selekhael speaks up. There is, of course, something otherworldly and awe inspiring about her when she's letting it bleed through like that.

"The first living creature was something like a lion," Hans mutters under his breath.

"A cup of earl grey for me, miss," William replies. Hans just sits there a few seconds longer staring at Selekhael in bewildered silence until William elbows him.

"Oh, ah, a kölsch for me, fräulein," Hans finally manages to say. Hans is feeling like he's really going to need it.

Drinks ordered!

[bc56]

Even when she does have an easy way of offloading paradox, Selekhael avoids it. If she doesn't alter the timeline, she won't generate any. Her future selves avoid interacting with their pasts, and she mostly keeps a handle on it. She's not doing anything silly, like delivering food before she takes someone's order. That would be weird and annoying.

Also, she's not letting her nature leak out so much as she's forgetting to transform all the way. She's used to having a tail her whole life. It's weird to her, to walk around without one.

"Okay, I'll have them for you in a few." Selekhael rushes off to get the drinks together. She'll return soon, faster than it should be possible to brew a cup of tea, but a measurable time later (she's almost always running tight on time distortion, so she needs to let the timestream recover).

[Rebonack]

Obviously lion tails are objectively superior to devil tails. Especially when those lion tails are celestial in nature rather than infernal.

The two men look like they're about to begin conversing but Selekhael is already back.

"Fast service," William mutters as he accepts the cup and saucer.

Hans decides to be a bit more forthright. "Are... you an angel? Did we die?"

Wow.

Some heavy questions here.

Now.

Technically speaking?

The answer to that first question is 'yes' by all reasonable measures of the meaning.

Though Selekhael has no way of knowing if they died. They seem alive?

[bc56]

Selekhael stops. That's a question, alright. Fortunately, the first part is easy. "Yes. Uh, and I don't think so? You seem, uh, alive to me." She sets the drinks in front of the two soldiers. "You're in a place called the Nexus. It's, uh, a sort of joining place between worlds? Some people, uh, come here by dying, but others, uh, just show up. I don't know what happened to you."

[Rebonack]

William sips his tea.

Hans does not sip his beer.

"Well, that doesn't answer the dead part, does it?" William muses.

"She IS an angel, though," Hans contends.

The men will begin throwing ideas back and forth. About how they might figure out if they're dead or not. About where to go from here. Fairly typical newcomer things. Eventually they settle on the idea that if they meet any of their comrades that are definitely dead then they'll know that they're dead, too. That's a reasonable test, right?

Meanwhile!

Something(?) enters the tavern!

The something has no actual physical appearance. The only reason one can tell that there's something there at all is that everything viewed through it looks a few shades more blue and is subjected to a weird spiraling distortion. The anomaly jitters through the air like a lost house fly for a few seconds before alighting at a table.

That's...

Probably a customer?

[bc56]

Selekhael leaves the two soldiers and heads over to the blue... Thing? "Hello, welcome to Trog's Tavern! Can I get you anything?" Does it even eat or drink anything?

[Rebonack]

The blue thing vibrates at Selekhael, the air around it humming.

"COLOR."

Calling it a voice isn't quite right.

Have you ever heard someone playing music with a Tesla coil?

It sounds like that.

"COLOR NO BLUE."

Alright.

So...

It wants something colorful that isn't blue. Sure. Maybe some hardboiled eggs? Those are white so they technically have blue in them, right? Or maybe a nice green salad? Or red tomatoes?

[bc56]

Color no blue, huh. Selekhael's not exactly sure what color the blue thing wants. But she can oblige it. She rushes back to the kitchen, stopping at a couple other tables along the way. When she gets there, she picks up a salad. Not just lettuce, but one of the nicer salads with other things mixed in. Tomato slices, bits of carrot, crumbled cheese, those sorts of things. She brings it back out to the entity. "Is, uh, this good?"

[Rebonack]

Selekhael sets down the plate and the thing sort of...

Envelopes it?

A humming noise that makes Selekhael's teeth vibrate fills the air for a few moments before the entity backs away, leaving the plate and food changed.

The white plate has turned blue. As have any of the objects in the salad that had any amount of blue in them. Anything that lacked blue has turned completely black.

"SUFFICIENT," the entity hums. "GRATITUDE."

Well!

It sounds like the... whatever it is... liked the meal?

...maybe?

This thing is pretty weird after all, even by usual Nexus standards.

[bc56]

With that done (it sounds good but maybe not good enough? Hard to say.), Selekhael takes a brief break. She looks briefly at the two soldiers to make sure they're okay, but doesn't stop to chat, and she takes the dishes away from a few other customers and back to the kitchen to be washed.

[Vahnavoi]

Demion just shrugs.

"I don't think there is anymore to add. Thanks for your story."

Rose shrugs. "Any time." She pushes back her stool and stands up. "Anyway, I have to be on my way. Thanks for your time." She smiles and leaves the gold at the table, making her way to the stairs.

As Rose leaves, another customer appears to take her place: a man, around 181 centimeters or 5'11" tall, dressed in camo pants and a black leather jacket. The jacket has a rather prominent white Ouroboros symbol on the back. "Yo. Heard you were talking 'bout some gruesome things", he says, glancing at Demion. His face is covered in white, linen bandages, save for his bluish-green, bloodshot eyes. "Didn't hear the whole conversation. Just something she said about skinning people." He gestures towards where Rose left and grins, his mouth appearing from the mess of bandages. "How'd you end up talking 'bout that?"

[Zefir]

Demion is a man of equal size. He wears common clothes, a shirt and jeans with outdoor boots. A heavy leather jacket hangs on the back of his chair including a wool scarf. He looks a bit suprised at the man, not really knowing the meaning of the bandages or his shirts Symbol. Must be some kind of group or organisation.

"Yes" Demion replies carfully. "In short it seems like a way people got tortured in her world. It's a bit more complex, but for details i suggest asking her."
He makes a short break.
"May I ask who are you and why you are intressed in that?"

[Vahnavoi]

"Who am I?" The man taps his chin and his eyes gaze into the distance for a moment. "Who am I? Who am I? That's an interesting question. I sometimes wonder 'bout that myself." Oh no. He's one of those existential drunkards. Not that there's any real evidence that he's drunk anything, he hasn't even ordered, it seems like he's in the tavern just to waste space. "Not sure if I know the answer. But as for your second question? Eh, when isn't gruesome violence interesting? Just wanted to know a bit of context. Speaking of, what's yours? Context, I mean."

[Rebonack]

The soldiers are still chatting and Selekhael manages to collect the dishes!

The... whatever is. Sapient patch of color? It seems content with whatever it just did. The thing is so profoundly alien that it's kind of difficult to make heads or tails of it.

Does it even HAVE a head?

Or tail?

Or a digestive tract?

Who knows!

However, as she's heading toward the kitchen something terrible happens.

Remember that creep of a red martian?

As Selekhael is walking past he slaps her butt.

[bc56]

Selekhael's had it up to here with this guy. She's been here a while now, and every so often he shows up and hits on her again. He's been told off several times, almost tossed out of the tavern once. So she takes matters into her own hands, too angry to think straight about this. She whirls furiously on the Martian, and in an instant, changes. Where the mild waitress stood, a celestial being is, but there's no call to "be not afraid." Something like a lioness, like a tawny eagle, like a branching coral, and like a spinning ring roars at the man. The sound carries with it the power of Id, pure terror refined into a weapon. Selekhael isn't thinking about the scene she's making, but although the fear effect is concentrated on her victim, she's definitely very visible here.

[Rebonack]

Being afraid is kind of the point, here, isn't it?

The martian's eyes go wide in terror as the supernatural fear permeates his brain. He makes a little choking noise first.

Then comes the acrid scent of urine.

And then he flees from the tavern shrieking incoherently.

Victory!

However?

More than a few people are staring at Selekhael now. Some look afraid. Some unconcerned. And some-

A shark-like humanoid, a card player who's a regular here at the tavern, pumps her fist in the air. "You tell 'em, girl!"

It looks like Selekhael has several supporters among the tavern's regulars.

Oh hey! And here comes Cosmo! Is he going to congratulate Selekhael for standing up for herself?

"I'm not cleaning up the pee," he says, holding out a mop and a bucket for Selekhael to take.

Nope.

Guess not.

[bc56]

Selekhael, still in her true shape, smiles shyly, but with relief, at the attention she's getting. That creep won't bother her again, she's sure. She shifts back to human an instant later. "Uh, sorry about the noise." Then she begrudgingly takes the mop from Cosmo and begins cleaning up. Mostly, she's just glad that's over with.

[Rebonack]

Well.

Hans now has more appreciation for why angels always lead with 'Be not afraid'.

So!

Cleaning up.

Not really fun but someone has to do it.

Once Selekhael is done Zee will gesture for her to join her over at the bar.

Should Selekhael join her then she'll be getting a hug.

Mostly because Zee thinks Selekhael could use some comforting right now.

"Hey. How are you doing?" she asks.

[Morty]

"Michalson, I'm sorry." Ithuriel sighs, slumping back in her chair. "I hope you think what we're doing is helping in some way. I like to think we're doing the right thing. And, you know, if you find some way to make a change for the better here, you know I've got your back, buddy, right?"

"I... hope so too. I joined Intersection for stability and to find something new. A... proper order of things, instead of tryin' to make my own way. It's been working so far." Michalson sighs. "And thank you. Having someone watching my back... it means a lot. It's been a long time since I had someone like that. Someone I trusted."

[bc56]

Selekhael gladly accepts the hug. "I'm okay. Uh, I kinda overstepped my bounds there, uh, didn't I?" Going full angel and blasting that guy with the power of her spheres probably wasn't called for, but he's probably not permanently hurt, except for his pride. Also, it's not her job to bounce.

[Rebonack]

"It WAS a little overboard, yeah," Zee admits. "When you think a customer is over-stepping their bounds like me know and I'll take care of it. I don't want you to get caught up in a mess like that."

She doesn't want Selekhael to get hurt!

As unlikely as that might be.

Zee trusts her ability to endure just about whatever the Nexus can throw at her.

But the people who she supervises?

Well.

They're pretty savvy, but the Nexus can throw some real curve-balls when it comes to resourceful jerks.

"Just try to avoid doing that in the future, okay? Unless you feel like you're in immediate physical danger. Defending yourself or running away is always gong to be your call."

Getting butt-slapped is more of psychological danger, which can be just as bad.