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Devil's Nest | Thursday Evening

"So they're plastic?" Annie was checking, as Tiny held up one of the offending axes so she could catch up to speed.

She considered that for a moment, and then posed the question that she knew Tiny certainly didn't know the answer to, and yet, Annie could not help but wonder.

"...who's making plastic axes? Like, for children?" Like, whose children??

Never mind that Annie knew, like, at least three people who would have loved to have toy axes as a child. (Maybe more like six or seven people.)

~*Specials*~
Mudslide
Caramel Snickerdoodle Martini
Nutty Irishman

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Get a drink, mod a Tiny, talk to an Annie.

Gladio had actually worn a coat today for his class, which meant he'd definitely earned his shirtless Thursdays at the bar, and he planned to make the most of it.

Even if he was squinting a little bit at the specials board, especially that last one, because with a name like that, it was probably enough to convincing him off of reverting back to a Cup Noodle^TM cocktail. It had be a while, though!

"I'm embracing my sweet tooth today," Annie explained, gesturing at the specials board. "How's it going, Gladio? Wanna throw a plastic axe around? Apparently we have those, now."

"Plastic axes?" asked Gladio, with a quirk of a scarred brow and his attention now shifting toward the axe range curiously. "What happened to all the regular ones? And I think I'll have one of those Nutty Irishmen. I don't know what it's about, but I'm definitely interested to find out."

"Bailey's and Frangelico, mostly," Annie explained, exaggeratedly rolling the Fr there like a total dork as she started grabbing ingredients. "Good choice. And dude, I have no idea. I want to guess it's an Eric-Lucifer thing? They've been squabbling about the axe range for like six months."

Annie hadn't helped, given that she'd forced a renovation post-hole since she'd taken the bar down there with her.

Rolling that Fr definitely was a total dork move, but it was also insanely adorable, so Gladio could definitely let it slide.

"Is that tied into the whole piano thing?" he wondered, vaguely remembering...something about dragging a piano outside and lighting it on fire at one point, but he honestly wasn't too sure. "Or is this something entirely separate?"

"You know, it probably does have to do with the piano," Annie mused as she mixed. "I know Lucifer isn't a fan of the axe range, so it would probably follow that that's Eric's baby, and the piano is Lucifer's?"

Annie was very used to powerful, downright god-like beings acting like children. The fact that the Devil and an immortal Viking vampire were arguing over how to decorate and theme (???) a bar was kind of par for the course for Annie's life at this point.

"Why would anyone not be a fan of the axe range?" asked Gladio. Sure, sure, it was not exactly his preferred weapon, but he was pretty sure that concept had an undeniable appeal even as a non-axe user.

Although he had to admit, for all the times he was in here, he wasn't sure he could really recall anyone actually putting it to use.

Now he was wondering if he should.

The fact that the axes were currently plastic just made it even funnier, really.

"I think," Annie suggested thoughtfully as she finished the drink and set it before Gladio with a proud little flourish, because it looked great even if she was pretty sure she had, per usual, overpoured, "that it's an aesthetic thing? Like, 'piano bar' and 'axe-throwing bar' are pretty different vibes and I think there's some, like, competition there? Something like that. Though I think they work well together, honestly!"

Peanut butter in her chocolate, chocolate in her peanut butter, et cetera.

It was proven fact that the flourish could make any drink taste that much better, after all. Gladio nodded his thanks and lifted the glass in a toast to his favorite bartender (excluding Cup Noodle^TM cocktails, of course; Tiny would forever be his guy on that one), and had a sip.

And was mostly impressed that it had a bit more of a kick to it than he was expecting. "Not bad!" he complimented, took another approving gulp, and then settled in with, "Yeah, I don't think they gotta be mutually exclusive at all. Some days are piano days, some are axe-throwing days. Some days are for leather pants." He snorted. "A bar for all occasions."

Honestly, Tiny would kind of have to forever be Gladio's guy on that one, because if Annie was ever asked for a Cup-Noodle-Tee-Em cocktail she would probably need the entire length of time it took to prepare to just stare in wonder and horror at the existence of such a thing.

She did, however, dip a humble little bow at the compliment, because that's right, her drinks were not-bad, weren't they? "I mean, Caritas kind of has the market cornered on karaoke," Annie pointed out, considering this. "And I guess since this is the bar that cards it probably makes sense that it can...wear more hats? Or more leather pants."

And like, this was the second time she'd considered investing in a pair of leather pants for herself, and maybe that idea had merit. They'd be for work!

Gladio would fully support this investment. The weight of Leather Pants Nights was heavy burden for even his broad shoulders to carry alone!

"But fewer shirts," he added, with a grin and another lift of his glass as he would happily drink to that.

"So how've you been, Annie? But quieter this week, huh?"

"It's been nice having no one, like, turn into a child," she admitted, going ahead and pouring herself a shift drink while she was at it. "That has to have been the weirdest thing that's happened to me since I moved here. And, like, it's been over a year of weird things, so that's nothing to sneeze at."

"Weekend as a plant is still number one for me," Gladio admitted, with a shake of his head and a hope that it really did not get weirder than that, especially considering all that Prompto had gone through in his time here, "but I turned into kid me on my first week here, so that's pretty much an old trick by now."

He snorted a laugh again.

"At least this time," he allowed, "I didn't also tie up all my roommates and shove them into a closet, too."

"I mean," Annie decided, thinking about it, "if you did that as a child, that's pretty impressive."

Especially if they were not also children at the time.

They were not.

Ignis did have surpringly long and beautiful hair, though, that actually worked to his disadvantage.

Gladio...couldn't really remember what had been going on with Prompto, though, and Seivarden...well...

He grinned. "I was very shouty," he offered. "And determined. I may have been trying to take over the world? And I had a dog."

A pause.

"My sister," he added, "may or may not have that dog now."

What exactly happened to the original Colonel Bahamutt was questionable, but the resemblance to the one that still showed up afterwards was uncanny.

Tiny was not a friendly face and friendly faces were what Stark needed at the moment, so he was going with 2 out of 3 here.

"I don't think I know what any of those drinks are." But he'd probably like all of them. He might even drink all of them. That was still how things were going.

"Do you have a favorite?"

"Can't go wrong with a mudslide," Annie offered, gesturing to the board. "It's basically boozy ice cream. Caramel snickerdoodle's gonna taste like a cookie," that someone had poured vodka all over, "and the last one is hazelnut and Bailey's. I'm kind of having a sweet tooth day."

"I'll try the mudslide," Stark decided. "To start. Maybe another after."

Probably another after, let's be real here.

"You got it," Annie declared, going to grab ingredients -- and pausing as she caught sight of her own bag, which still had a real excess of Starlight-branded candy in it. Still. "Want a lollipop while you wait?"

Even if he said no, Annie was already reaching to grab one and set it out on the bartop. She had to keep getting rid of these things, okay?

"I won't usually turn down candy." Not even when unbearably sad, apparently.

"You have lollipops now?"

"I have lollipops now," Annie confirmed with a sigh. "And other candy, but these are being rolled out right now so they gave me a bunch."

Which meant she'd spent a week already foisting them off on people and using them as ill-advised swizzle sticks for juice.

"You don't like having candy?"

But there were so many worse things they could be putting your likeness on, Annie!

"Lollipops seem alright. And," he added, after opening it up to give it a try, "it tastes fine."

Maybe not when you put it in a horrifying caffeinated juice concoction though.

"I'm fine with having my own candy, it's just never candy I actually like. Much like you, I'm a big fan of chocolate," Annie admitted, producing that mudslide with a little flourish, because she had flair. "Plus I don't like how they want to market me with the lollipops, but that's kind of how it always goes."

Stark nodded and crunched the remains of the lollipop because he wasn't going to put it in his drink like a heathen. He was going to chew it like a heathen instead.

"Has it gotten any better? At... your employer?"

"Eh." Annie wobbled a hand back and forth. "They generally give me what I want, but not without fighting me a little to see if they can get their way, first. So yeah, for the most part."

"A little improvement is still improvement."

Did that sound encouraging coming from the morose alien sipping a boozy milkshake? Maybe not.

"I'm glad it's at least a little better."

"Little improvements are the way most good things end up happening for me," Annie replied, shrugging a shoulder optimistically. "For the most part, if something is suddenly great overnight, I've learned not to trust it."

She wasn't going to ask what was wrong, even if she could tell something absolutely was. It just didn't really seem like her business to intrude.

"I'm not sure I've ever had things be suddenly great," Stark said. His luck didn't run that way.

"Suddenly terrible, sometimes." Often. "I don't think I'd trust it either."

Play with plastic axes!

Lurky vampires go here.

I hit random icon for all of these icons and with the exception of the back office thread they're all from the same episode! The beauty of having 16 hours total of canon.

Edited 2022-01-27 13:12 (UTC)

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Devil's Nest | Thursday Evening

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