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Devil's Nest | Thursday Evening

Annie had heard all about the whole T&C sloth debacle yesterday, of course, so you'd think she'd be more prepared for what awaited her when she got to the Devil's Nest tonight.

But then, who could really be prepared for the sight of a giant...pig-like thing trying to attack Tiny, who was brandishing a bar stool at it like a lion tamer?

Annie might have made some promises about not putting her pregnant ass on the front lines, yes, but -- look, emergencies happened, right? And at least she kind of had ranged attacks.

"Tiny, cover your eyes!"

A series of deft blasts to the attacking werewarthog later, during which Annie kept a good bit of distance between herself and the creature for the babies' sake, and one final smack from Tiny's barstool, and they were left looking down at a...perfectly normal, thoroughly passed-out, much smaller...little man?

In the bar. Sure thing.

Annie was so frazzled, as she started setting the bar to rights again (one did not blast the everloving hell out of a werewarthog without knocking over some chairs and bottles) as Tiny put the...sleepy small pig-man thing in the keg fridge for safekeeping (?), that she didn't even realize she'd forgotten her specials board. (But then again -- like she could think of anything good at the moment, anyway?)

[open, no OCD!]

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It was pretty impossible to not realize that something was up by this point, and while Annie had superpowers and honestly shouldn't even be at the bar that night, if you asked him, Gladio still couldn't really sit there and not check.

Disappointed that the door opened when he tried it, Gladio and his big ass sword poked his head in to look around and access the situation before tentatively coming in and finding Annie and asking, "You all good in here?"

"I'm good," Annie assured him, poking up from where she was sweeping up a broken bottle of rum (and whooooo that was pungent, maybe she needed to take a break, anyway.) "There was like...a boar?"

Almost, Annie. C'mon, girl, The Lion King canonically exists in your universe.

"Are you all right?" she added, casting a glance to that big ass sword with a touch of gratitude -- both that Gladio was clearly taking precautions, and also that he'd thought to check in on her.

"Bring back a loooot of memories," Gladio admitted with a bit of a huff, shaking his head, as he moved into the bar, sword over his shoulders, and started to take an assessment of the damages, with a glance over toward Tiny to see how he was doing, too, and a quirk of his chin in silent acknowledgement and approval, "but yeah...I'm good."

Fighting crazed creatures hellbent on destruction was just what he did, after all.

Well. Used to.

"Need any help?" he offered, gestured his free hand at the mess. "With all this?"

Or maybe just a little extra backup for any subsequent boars?

"Only if you'll drink vicariously for me," Annie replied lightly as she righted a barstool, still a little kind of...thrown by all of this. Like, it had honestly been no big deal for her, but she was also a lot more used to fighting human-shaped things, at least. "This is a fun one. It's been a hot minute since we had something, like, just straight-up attacking us."

And just in time for her fight-happy husband to be power-free, and for her to be electively staying out of the fray for the better part of a year.

Edited 2023-04-27 13:45 (UTC)

"Don't know about vicariously," said Gladio, since if he liked keeping a level head on him even in times of peace and quiet, that was going to be especially true now, but he was also picking up another barstool and setting it down before having a seat, laying his sword down on the bar, "but if you're offering, one might not be a bad idea. Could probably use a little breather."

"That's fair; if I wasn't pregnant, I'd probably be tipsy by now, which probably isn't the best plan," Annie acquiesced, throwing a dishrag vaguely on her rum spill and heading back behind the bar. "Though honestly when shit goes sideways in Diego's universe or mine, everyone's first priority seems to be finding a bottle."

Which had been a real bitch last time, what with how Annie had to keep discreetly dumping out her drinks and whatnot.

"And hey, if anything else comes through that door, we have three of us --" Annie started, just before Tiny's retreating back (he was gonna go check on the keg fridge, obviously) had her amending, "two of us to deal with it."

Gladio gave a faint grin at the amendment. "I can call Specs in, too, if that helps. But he wanted to stick on night patrol, since, you know, it's all pretty much the same to him."

There was a faint, thoughtful pause before he admitted, "Feels kinda nice, though. It's been a while."

And this was a part of it, too, he felt, that odd nostalgia kicking in, the kind that enjoyed this more than he probably should, and cast even the horrible past in an almost optimistic light. The moments of respite, when you'd fought your way back from a supply run to the warm glow of a camp or the Hammerhead, to share a drink or two with friends and comrades before setting out for the next round. It always made you feel better, too, a little more powerful, after you rested, helped you feel like you could keep going forever again.

"I think we've got this handled," Annie assured him with a little smile. "I mean -- actually, Ignis would be great for me to fight alongside, now that I'm thinking about it? But like, for your own purposes, if anything else comes through and I have to start blasting --" She pointed to the door, and them immediately to her own eyes. "Don't look at me. Seriously, Gladio, I can cause retinal damage, and with the babies, I can't like...switch to punching, you know?"

That was the compromise here. She could fight these animals off, and she thought being here was important for all of those narrative reasons listed -- people needed a place to drink after punching a werellama or whatever, and a place to congregate and take stock and recharge -- but she had to keep at least a few feet between her and anything that could, as she'd said of the punching bags, fight back.

Gladio nodded. "Leave the punching to me," he said. Punching and obscenely large sword swinging! "And I'll be careful. Definitely not looking to have two of us with that kind of handicap, especially since there's no way I can do that the way Iggy does. But you are kind of right there, aren't you? Could be kind of a dream team-up, especially with his lightning skills.

"I'd say I'd love to see it," he added with a faint grin, "but by the sound of it, it's probably best I didn't."

"Maybe someday, if you wanna slap on some welding gear," Annie offered, "you can see the whole light show in full. When I really get going, I can fly."

But she also tended to put spots in your eyes at best, when that happened.

"But also," she added thoughtfully, trailing her hand along the bar and locating a glass, which she sort of rocked side to side at Gladio as though asking what he'd like her to put in it, "I wonder if I could actually draw power from Ignis's lightning thing. The one chick I fought who could do that wasn't helpful that way, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be."

Seriously, dream team, right there.

Gladio shrugged his shoulders a little at the tilting glass. "Whiskey, maybe?" he asked. "That seems like a good between-battles beverage. And, honestly, I was sort of thinking the other way around, that you might be able to help him. His magic's not all that much any more, off of Eos. It's all connected to the planet, things like that, so if you were taking from him, you wouldn't get much, maybe about as much of a jolt as touching an electric fence, really. But maybe if he got the charge on his daggers going, and you could pump a little his way..."

He shrugged.

"Maybe you guys could try it some time."

Hey, with Marc out of town, clearly someone had to fill the just whiskey omg no fun drinks quota around here.

"Oh, that's an interesting idea," Annie noted, eyes widening with thought as she reached for the bottle. "'Cause, like, I need a power source, but I can siphon off anything electrical and magnify it -- like, I broke myself out of jail with a little flashing fire alarm last year, I don't need much -- and then that power's just stored in me until I do something with it. So maybe I could be like a...conduit for him? If he can draw off me, that might work?"

She made a slightly helpless face, confessing, "Magic tends to be a little above my scope of understanding, honestly."

Gladio just didn't want to get anything too involved. Nothing worse than a drink interrupted for needing to smack a few werebeasties around.

"Yeah," Gladio said with a bit of a grin, "same. Iggy's tried to explain it about a million times, but I swear, my mind just glazes over every time. Most I get, though, is that you draw it from the land, it's usually just a royal thing, but obviously, there are a few others who can learn how to do it, which means it probably runs in his blood or something, going way, way, way back. And that's not even touching on what you can get from the gods, either. I'd rather just keep it nice and simple. Swing. Hit. Done."

"See, that's so interesting -- the magic people I know?" Annie told him, sliding his whiskey over because she was gonna need both hands to demonstrate, "Just do shit like this and it makes their magic work, I think."

And cue, just...like, the absolute worst impression of what one might call 'Doctor Strange hands,' as Annie twirled her wrists around each other in jerky, mystical motions. (With a touch of Scarlet Witchiness in there for unconscious emphasis.)

"As far as I know, no one's ever had to involve the land." An evil book, maybe. "I just like that with hitting things -- and, honestly, most of the time with superpowers -- things are a lot more consistent across universes? Everyone's magic seems different." Although Margo and Eliot did also seem to use special hand-motions as a huge portion of their craft, too.

"I used to be able to do something like that," said Gladio, ruefully poking at the old wound he'd been reminded of, earlier, when he'd run into Jane. "Just a little..." He lifted his own hand, gave it a little flick in the air, with a fist formed at the end like holding onto the hilt of a sword. "To summon out our weapons. Part of the whole Kingsglaive deal. Noct's magic. Pretty useful, really, but, obviously..."

He shrugged a shoulder, sipped his whiskey, figuring Annie could finish the rest of that thought on her own.

But feeling himself teetering again toward maudlin (lot of that lately, huh? But better maudlin than angry, like earlier this week...), he tilted his head at Annie thoughtfully.

"So," he said, "lemme ask you something, Annie."

Annie could, indeed, finish that thought on her own, and her sympathy was both immediate and physical, like a twist in her gut.

Maudlin was allowed and welcome. For that matter, Annie knew better than a lot of people how anger was a much easier emotion to manage than a lot of other, messier ones, and she was more than prepared to see that through, too, if it came up.

"I'm all ears," she replied, leaning onto her elbows with a glance towards the bar doors, lest a werehippopotamus come rampaging through the door at this inopportune moment. "What's up, Gladio?"

"So...tell me something."

And Gladio folded his arms and leaned forward, too, looking at Annie with what he felt was an incredible amount of control, at first, before the grin slipped out.

"Just how weird is it having me in here with an actual shirt on?"

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Devil's Nest | Thursday Evening

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