fandomtownies | The Devil's Nest, Friday Evening

It was the last day of peace and quiet before the next influx of new folks to the town, so Eliot figured it was a fine time to drop in at the bar and grab a drink. He smiled faintly at the woman behind the counter. "Beer, please." And since he'd learned his lesson from Derek, added: "Anything from a small brewery'll be good."

He wasn't going to get handed another Bud Lite, dammit.

"You're lucky," Allie said, reaching into the cooler and pulling out a ~~completely moddable~~ bottle (http://www.thebrewersart.com/#!/page_seasonal). "Now I at least have a vague idea of what you're asking for. Once upon a time I might have given you a Coors Light."

Eliot turned the bottle in his hand and smiled. "Nice." He took a sip and raised an eyebrow at Allie. "Not a beer drinker yourself, huh?"

"Vampire, so I stick to the True Blood," Allie shrugged. "It's not great, but it beats the alternative."

Once upon a time, Eliot's reaction to that would have been more than a simple nod. That was before Navaan. In contrast, Allie was basically normal. "You're the one Parker was talkin' about," he guessed. "With the sword?"

Allie pointed her thumb over her shoulder towards where her sword was resting in its case against the back of the bar. "That's me. Which makes you, Hardison or Eliot?"

[Heading to the gym back after 4ish! Great SP OK?]

[works fine for me!]

"Eliot. She told ya about us, huh?"

"She did," Allie nodded. "How's your puppy doing?"

Eliot grinned. "Val's good. Gettin' big. Still ain't named 'Megabyte', if htat's what she told you."

"She never mentioned a name, just that you had a puppy. I like the name Val. It's simple," she replied.

"Right?" Eliot said. "And it ain't too confusin' for a little puppy. They mostly call her that to mess with me, but still."

"You'll have to bring her by one night. I'd like to meet her. Dogs seem like fun." At least Lucky did which kind of summed up Allie's dog experience.

"I'm Allie by the way."

"Allie," Eliot said. "Nice to meet ya." He nodded towards her sword behind her. "That's a nice one. I should start practicin' with mine more. Probably more useful around here than it is back home."

"Strangely enough, I haven't had to use it on the island much," Allie said, reaching for the sheathed katana and setting it on the bar in front of Eliot. "But where I'm from it's best way to put a rabid or a vampire down and make sure it stays down. Decapitation's a kind of hard to heal from."

She nudged the sword towards Eliot in an invitation to inspect it. "It's probably four or five hundred years old. I found it in the basement of a destroyed museum back where I'm from."

Eliot was not going to turn down that offer. He picked it up carefully, unsheathing it just far enough to get a look at a couple inches of the blade. "It's in good condition. It take much restoration after you found it?"

[ooc: anything Eliot can "very distinctly" recognize about the sword? He could potentially recognize the maker, if you like.]

She watched as he handled it, unexpectedly reminded of Kanin. "No, I was lucky. It was in perfect shape, packed safely away, probably since long before everything went to hell."

[ooc: It's a museum quality katana that's several centuries old. It has a red & black diamond pattern on the hilt. Have fun and run with it if you want.]

Edited 2015-05-01 23:50 (UTC)

"It's not by one of the masters I know about," Eliot admitted. "But it's definitely high quality. Fantastic balance." He resheathed it and held it out for her to take back. "I got a Hanzō, myself, about that old. Ain't had much call to use it, though. Mind if I ask what happened to your world?"

"If we're lucky, maybe the flying dinosaur things will come back. You could use it then. Probably not as efficient as a gun, but a hell of a lot more fun." Yes Eliot, Allie had a very distinctive idea of fun.

She set the katana back in it's spot behind the bar before turning back to Eliot. "Long story short? There was an outbreak of what they called Red Lung. Millions of people were dying. Then vampire blood got involved in a failed attempt at a cure. After that, the dead didn't stay dead. They called them rabids, but you'd know them as zombies. That was sixty years ago. Now it's just a mess."

It didn't sound terribly different from Eliot's idea of fun. "Guns usually just result in the wrong person bein' shot. Swords are -- elegant." He as maybe just a little bit of an ancient Japan fanboy, yeah. "Sounds like a hell of a time. That why you work at this bar, instead of the one with the zombie band?"

"First time I went in Caritas, I went after the band. I didn't know any better. Damn non-violence spell dumped me into the duck pond at the park." Looking back, it was humorous, at the time not so much.

"I work here because the first person I met on the island works here. He introduced me to the owner, who happens to be a thousand year old vampire," she explained. "He took pity on the lost baby vamp and gave me a job."

"A thousand years old." Living that long sounded appalling. But then Eliot hadn't really expected to make it past 30. "What's a 'baby vamp' to a guy like that, 400?"

"If only," Allie laughed. "I turned eighteen right after I was turned, which was only about three years ago Fandom time. I got to the island a few months after that. I couldn't serve drinks until a few months ago because of the local laws. So I was more bouncer then bartender for a while."

She was much younger than Eliot would've guessed. He decided it was a vamp thing. "So you been dealin' with the, whatsits, 'rabids' your whole life then, huh?"

It was a growing up on the streets trying to stay alive thing.

"If you stayed in the city, which was all walled up, you were safe enough. Every once in a while a rabid would find its way in and there'd be a panic but the vampires and the guards would put it down quick enough. Have to protect the food supply and all that." Yeah, she was bitter about that.

"Outside the walls was different obviously"

"Obviously." The more Eliot heard about some of the other worlds, the more he appreciated how relatively unfucked up his was.

Mind you, it was still pretty fucked. He'd seen enough to know that. But at least there weren't zombies and vampires treating you like cattle.

"How'd you end up in Fandom?"

"I left the city a few months after I was turned, wandered for a while and then one night I saw a light and wound up crossing the causeway." Allie smiled wryly, "I'm kind of stuck here at the moment. My world's closed and Portalocity won't take me. But I suppose there are worse places to be stuck so I'm not complaining."

"What about you? Did you follow your friends or did they follow you here?"

"They followed me," Eliot said. "I've been here about a year, now. Actually showed up to try and give 'em some space after we moved to Baltimore. Then Parker and our friend Sophie came by for Parents Weekend, and Parker decided I needed someone keepin' an eye on me, signed us up to teach, and Hardison chased after her a month or so later. . . ." And he learned that they didn't actually want space, not from him. Which still took some getting used to, but mostly in a 'how the hell did he get so lucky?' sort of way. "And -- yeah. Now we're all here."

"If you can deal with the general weirdness it's not a bad place to be. Hell, even the more serious stuff, like Gaunt and that damn shop, something like that only happens once or twice a year and we deal." Allie made a face, still mad at herself for being taken in by Gaunt.

Eliot's expression when she mentioned Gaunt pretty much matched hers. "Yeah, those things would be why Parker thought I needed lookin' after, here." Admittedly, she wasn't wrong on that front. He didn't want to think of what he might've done if she and Hardison hadn't been here to stop him after meeting Gaunt. "Gettin' to meet kids from alternate universes kinda balances it out, though."

She nodded in understanding. "I don't have much to do with the students, but I still get what you mean. There's people in town from just as many different places."

He'd meant the future kids, but the students counted, too. "Definitely a town that takes all types," he said.

"Some quirkier then others. But we all make it work." Mostly. But Allie and Navaan would never be friends.

[Zzzzz.....]

The Devil's Nest, Friday Evening

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