fandomtownies | Luke's, Thursday Afternoon

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Luke's, Thursday Afternoon

"Dammit, Eliot!" Hardison snapped from his spot at the counter. "Do you even believe this, man?" he asked, collaring the busboy and making him look at...a blinking green dot. "What the hell, man!"

The busboy mumbled something and made a break for it, running into the kitchen. Hardison barely noticed, continuing his grumbling at his laptop. "First he just up and leaves with only a damn message, like we're just supposed to hang out here and wait for him to get back or something--" which, yes, was exactly what Eliot wanted them to do. "--And then he leaves his damn phone in his damn apartment! Like what? How'm I supposed to track your stupid ass now, Eliot? Huh? Huh?"

Which, again, was exactly what Eliot had wanted. Hardison, however, was taking it as a personal insult.

"What'm I supposed to do? Just search all the damn traffic cams in Baltimore and then wait to see if any of the identities I handcrafted for you gt dinged? Didn't you think that maybe I had other things to do today? Other than search for your sorry ass for the inevitable time you need our help?"

Hardison was doing a lot of talking to a guy who wasn't even here. Though if anybody asked, he'd totally claim he was bitching at Eliot through their earbuds.

"If Val weighs more'n a pound more when I get home than she does now, I'm going to break all your fingers," he said in a decent mimic of Eliot's drawl, before switching back to his own voice. "Well, maybe you shouldn'ta left your damn crew behind to watch her and not give us any damn details about where you're going or what you're doing!"

The kitchen staff just looked at one another and shook their heads. Yeahno, they were just gonna let the crazy guy keep talking to himself. They could run the kitchen on their own.

Specials:
Anchovy and Pineapple Pizza
Gummi Frogs
Orange Soda

Luke's was open and featuring the most passive-aggressive menu board in existence.

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Just ignore Hardison. It's better that way.

Well...okay. If you want to!

Pinkie Pie had only just gotten back from Equestria, so she was trotting through town, comically-overladen saddlebags swaying, full of banners and trinkets and brightly colored dodads from her friends back home. She was singing happily to herself, but froze, eyes wide, when she passed the diner.

She backed up and stared a little, then burst through the doors to the diner, saddlebags flying off behind her.

"OMIGOSHHIHIHIHI!" she greeted Hardison with an extended hoof. "You're new around here, aren't you? I know 'cause I know pretty much everypony in town even if just by sight and you don't really look like anypony else, even though lots of you humans kinda look all the same and anywho, I'm Pinkie Pie! What's your name?"

There, Hardison. Maybe now you can understand why Parker and Eliot keep bringing up "the pony".

"I am just not in the mood for--" Hardison said, swinging around in his chair. What it was that he was not in the mood for went unsaid as he took in the bright pink, talking pony in front of him.

And upon seeing her, Hardison did the most mature and rational thing he could come up with at the time--which was scream like a girl, spilling his bright orange soda everywhere, and try to climb up and over the diner counter. "Get behind me, Satan!"

"Satan?!" Pinkie gasped. "Where?!"

And then she was on top of the counter, too, prancing in place in a manner not unlike an old-timey cartoon elephant having been confronted with a mouse.

"Ahh!" And now Hardison was flinging himself off the counter. And onto the ground. Where he was just going to lay for a few seconds because ow.

Okay, this could have been handled better. Yup. Wait, was his chin bleeding? Seriously?

Definitely could have been handled better. Or at least differently.

"Okay," he said, pushing himself up into a sitting position. "Who--what--I don't even know what the hell I'm supposed to be askin' right now."

This was entirely Eliot's fault. Somehow.

Eliot had tried to warn him!

Pinkie leaned down from the counter, her neck seemingly -- or, you know, actually -- longer than it absolutely should be to get her head on his level. "Are you okay? Do you need a band-aid?"

"I need a damn drink is what I need," Hardison muttered. "Maybe two. Hell, I might need to change my name to Nate and see where that gets me."

He cupped his chin, looking around for a napkin to press to the skin. It was a small cut, it would stop bleeding in a second. Which meant that in two seconds, he'd have to go back to acknowledging there was a pink pony ignoring all physical laws, rather than focusing on the tiny bit of blood he was losing.

Looking back up at Pinkie, he jerked back when he realized just how close her face was to his. "A'ight, a'ight, so why'nt you back up some. Let's have a nice bit of personal space between us, hmm? I can't think when you're bein' all..." he gestured at her, "...undeniably present."

Pinkie cheerfully backed up a couple steps on the counter, settling in on top of it with her hooves folded under like she was a cat. "Okidokiloki, Nate!" she said. "Take your time. Humans always need a little while when they meet their first pony."

"Nah, nah, I met ponies before," Hardison corrected. He was a child of the internet, he could bicker with anybody. "Did a job in a stable, in fact. Learned more about hicks and horses than I ever thought I'd need."

That's right, Eliot. He was sassing you.

"And ain't none of the horses we saw were pink. Ain't none of 'em talked, neither. And all that other weird stuff you're doing?" Again with the gesturing. Hardison talked with his hands a lot. "Nope and nuh-unh. Not a thing."

Beat.

"...Wait, did you call me Nate?"

"I know!" Pinkie pressed a melodramatic hoof to her forehead. "Ponies in the human world are so boring!" She tilted her head. "What's a hick?"

Of course she called you 'Nate', Hardison. You just said you were changing your name to that.

"You know the guy that runs this place? Him. He's a hick. 100% pure, American-grown hick."

Hardison!

"So...you're like some kinda pony-alien then?" he hazarded. "Cause you keep talking about the human world?"

Aliens? His brain could wrap around that. He never expected first contact to be with a Pepto-Bismol bottle on acid, but hey. The truth was out there and all that.

"Oh!" Pinkie said. "So hicks are quiet people who stare at you like this." And Pinkie made the ಠ_ಠ face that had made Parker shriek and giggle.

"I dunno," Pinkie said. "What's an alien? Where I'm from everypony is a pony who isn't a dragon or a griffin or a manticore or -- well most things that aren't humans, really. But mostly ponies."

...That was actually an eerily good impression of Eliot, actually. "They also tawk lahk this," he said, giving an exaggerated impression of Eliot's drawl. "And argue and give orders and run out on their friends with only a damn note like we ain't gonna worry or nothing..."

Help him, Pinkie! He's having problems with a friend!

"And an alien is anyone who's not from Earth. So, uhh, if you're from a different planet with no humans on it, yeah, you're probably an alien."

A pony-alien that comes from a world populated by mythological creatures. Sure.

"I have a friend just like that!" Pinkie said. "Her name is Applejack and she runs the biggest, bestest apple farm in all of Equestria! She once ran off on us without explaining at all and we had to chase her all the way out past Apploosa and then when we caught up she Pinkie-promised she would explain the whole thing and then tried to run off again! She borrowed a carriage so we grabbed a wagon and chased her all the way out across the desert until finally she explained that she was upset and embarrassed because she didn't do as well in the rodeo as we all thought she was going to." A beat. "So maybe you could try that with your friend."

"...Enter him in a rodeo and then chase him in a wagon?"

Hardison was not following Pinkie's logic.

"I was going to say methodically hunt him down and force him to talk to you and confront his problems," Pinkie said. "But that could work, too!"

"Whoooa okay, little mama, you just calm down there," Hardison said, looking at the bright pink pony with new respect. "You a little hardcore, ain't you?"

Pinkie poked at her own belly. "Actually, I'm pretty squishy in the middle."

"I do not know how to respond to that," Hardison decided.

He was pretty sure that if he agreed, his Nana would walk to the island to smack him for being rude. And if he didn't agree, then he'd be discussing the relative sveltness of a pony and that just made him think of fedoras and neckbeards and just all kinds of no.

"That's alright," Pinkie said. "I get that a lot." She looked at the specials board. "Omigosh, Nate! You have frogs named Gummy? I have a pet baby alligator named Gummy! How neat is that?"

"Okay, first of all, the name's Hardison. Nate's a friend of mine with a drinking problem, much like I'mma develop ten minutes after we stop this conversation."

Ten minutes was a generous estimate, really. If they stocked Thief Juice, it would be more like seven.

"And, naw, those aren't real frogs, they're candy ones." He pulled a package out from his pocket and shook a few into his hand. "They're really good. Wanna try one? They go great with orange soda."

No, Hardison, no.

"If I ask about your pet alligator, am I gonna start questioning my grasp on reality again? How do most people--humans--respond to that?"

Pinkie was wondering how it was that someone just forgot how to drink things, but decided it was impolite to ask. "Candy frogs!" she shrieked delightedly instead. "And orange soda! Candy and soda are two of my favorite things!" Anything with sugar, really. "And I dunno? Gummy's a little shy, so he doesn't always meet everypony." She trotted over to her saddlebags, which sat by the door, and scooped them up by the strap in her mouth. "Ffay hi, Mmmy!"

A tiny, dead eyed green alligator stuck his head out of the saddle bag and blinked lopsidedly at Hardison.

Edited 2015-03-06 03:42 (UTC)

"Well, that right there is deeply unsettling," Hardison said, mentally revising the time down to about eight minutes.

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OOC