Jack considers this seemingly innocuous statement for a few beats, turning to look at Fiona. Experience has taught him that if something appears to be too good to be true, it usually is (except when it isn't).
He's learned to be the wary variety of superhero.
"Is there a catch? I take a drink and get spirited off to Battleworld and have to fight my way out?"
"I assume it is provided as an apology, as you have just been plucked from your place in space and time and brought to the end of both, which, as you might have guessed, is here."
She didn't have anything to drink herself, nor to eat, but she was sitting at the bar counter. She had a book instead, a thick, old volume that'd left some dust on the wood.
"Also, depending on whether you see the door behind you right there," and she pointed to the place right behind his head, "you are either trapped here or allowed to go whenever you like."
The attractive lady with the book has a glint of her own. It says 'try anything and I will slice you in half with a rubber band'.
"Good for you. I lack one at the moment. I don't think the power behind this place appreciates what I did outside."
She sounded annoyed, as if someone was harping on one tiny little rule when the rule was silly and stupid and pointless. She also sounded a bit pouty, young.
She was, after all, only sixteen, no matter how mature she looked because of her experiences and the Apple.
"Regardless," she continued, stiff and proper, "you are welcome to a drink, which is obtained by asking the counter itself unless there is a visible tender serving at the time."
Jack knows better than to try anything with strange women -- after all, he did once accidentally hit on a warrior nun who promptly kicked his ass into the next solar system, and that lesson has stayed with him very, very well -- and if/when he ever finds out her age, his headdesk will be chronicled as worthy of being set down for posterity by the universe's worthiest poets, balladeers, and yellow journalists. He will, in fact, headdesk without a desk actually needing to be present.
She's given him a lot of information in that burst. Well, it's too dignified to be a burst; more like a steady flow of precisely dictated syllables. There's the Thing She Did Outside, and talk of doors, now the offer of a drink from a mecha-servitor. Mecha-servitor thing. He thinks.
"I'll...take one," he says, cautious and impulsive at the same time (if anyone can do both simultaneously, it's Jack).
He sits down next to her at the bar.
"So. I ask this for a drink?" he says, tapping the top of bar with a gloved finger. "Dear magic counter, a glass
( ... )
The glass appears, filled with something alcoholic and interesting. Fiona looked over at the drink thoughtfully, sniffing at it for a moment before leaning back.
"Does that answer your question?"
And if she sounded a little smug, well... she sounded a little smug.
'Alcoholic and interesting' turns out to be a Pink Flirtini. Very, very bright pink.
Jack doesn't realize the extent of the Pink Flirtininess, of course, until he nods at her and hazards a small sip. The reasons that Jack recognizes a Pink Flirtini have to do with Tigra, Moon Knight, the son of Satan, and a particularly ill-advised night out in West Hollywood that had Jack almost cited for flying while drunk at 3:00 AM.
"Very funny," Jack observes, dryer than the Sahara. His dryness could wither oceans. "Let's have a Mystery Men moment. Your power's matter transmutation?"
"Are you speaking to the bar counter or to me?" she questioned stiffly, completely unaware what 'Mystery Men' might be. She'd grown up in a rather unusual situation: a world without fiction, without music, without movies or plays, without other people except when she was to be working at a casual dining restaurant down the road. As such, pop culture was going to go RIGHT over her head, but reference obscure history or bizarre medical ailments and she'd be all over it.
Jack has a B.A. in poetry and he has alcohol. Sooner or later, if the natural course of events is allowed to unfold, references to obscure history are bound to be in evidence.
"Both," he experiments. "I'm Jack, by the way. Jack of Hearts."
Jack would gallantly kiss her hand, but he decided five minutes ago that she probably wasn't the shaking hands type. Or hand offering type. But he's dangerously close to offering her his hand to shake anyway.
Jack is nothing if not good at poking at his environment to see what it'll do. If Jack likes you, you'll know it right away. If Jack doesn't like you, you'll know it just as quickly.
"I believe you," he finally offers. He's not sure if he does or not, because not everyone with the ability to rearrange atoms and produce a Pink Flirtini would want that particularly ability to be made public.
"Del Sombre, California," she said with a touch of amusement, the smallest curl of her lips. She was certainly nothing normal, not human even if she looked it, but she'd grown up human. It was the only thing she really knew.
So many ways he could answer here. In fact, he's conscious of an almost giddy sense of being able to say whatever the hell he wants in reply. Like a lot of very public people back on his Earth, he can't escape his past, present, his mistakes, or his victories (Pyrrhic though some may be). He could say anything. El Segundo. Dallas. Rio. Osaka. The Turks and Caicos. The fifth moon of that one pretty planet near Hala.
"Lately of Connecticut, more lately of New York City. I'm an Avenger, and by the way, that's not a strange question at all to ask someone back where I'm from," he adds, in reference to her observation that his initial line of inquiry had been bizarre. "In fact, when people start making drinks materialize, it's the first question one should ask."
Oddly enough, the rakish grin got another curl of lip from her. Her... well, there was a young man who had a tendency to show up in all kinds of helpful ways, a Driver for her Family, who had a rakish grin. And, of course, her Uncle Henry had practically invented them.
"I wouldn't know what an Avenger is, other than one who seeks vengence.
"And it was the bar counter who provided your drink. As I said, I've seen no evidence of such gifts."
Well, her expression could cause the sweetest cream to curdle into something sour, couldn't it?
"All right, madame, the veracity of your words is obviously unassailable. I give. You win."
He holds up his hands, placating.
"You've never heard of the Avengers? We're a..."
What were they to someone who wasn't familiar with the concept of an organized fraternity of lunatics who played dress up and went looking for trouble?
"...a proactive law enforcement organization with a dedication to high-impact methodologies," he decides. "Where the hell's Del Sombre?"
"No," she offered.
"In fact, the first drink has proven to be free of charge."
Reply
He's learned to be the wary variety of superhero.
"Is there a catch? I take a drink and get spirited off to Battleworld and have to fight my way out?"
Reply
She didn't have anything to drink herself, nor to eat, but she was sitting at the bar counter. She had a book instead, a thick, old volume that'd left some dust on the wood.
"Also, depending on whether you see the door behind you right there," and she pointed to the place right behind his head, "you are either trapped here or allowed to go whenever you like."
Reply
"There goes the need for my 'am I on Earth, an Earth, any Earth?' question. Thank you, I think?"
But there's the issue of a door. Following the implied trajectory of his finger, he looks over his shoulder.
"There's a door," he says, turning back to her and letting a glint steal into his eyes.
The kind of glint that one uses when one suspects that the attractive lady with a book might be slightly insane.
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"Good for you. I lack one at the moment. I don't think the power behind this place appreciates what I did outside."
She sounded annoyed, as if someone was harping on one tiny little rule when the rule was silly and stupid and pointless. She also sounded a bit pouty, young.
She was, after all, only sixteen, no matter how mature she looked because of her experiences and the Apple.
"Regardless," she continued, stiff and proper, "you are welcome to a drink, which is obtained by asking the counter itself unless there is a visible tender serving at the time."
Reply
She's given him a lot of information in that burst. Well, it's too dignified to be a burst; more like a steady flow of precisely dictated syllables. There's the Thing She Did Outside, and talk of doors, now the offer of a drink from a mecha-servitor. Mecha-servitor thing. He thinks.
"I'll...take one," he says, cautious and impulsive at the same time (if anyone can do both simultaneously, it's Jack).
He sits down next to her at the bar.
"So. I ask this for a drink?" he says, tapping the top of bar with a gloved finger. "Dear magic counter, a glass ( ... )
Reply
"Does that answer your question?"
And if she sounded a little smug, well... she sounded a little smug.
Reply
Jack doesn't realize the extent of the Pink Flirtininess, of course, until he nods at her and hazards a small sip. The reasons that Jack recognizes a Pink Flirtini have to do with Tigra, Moon Knight, the son of Satan, and a particularly ill-advised night out in West Hollywood that had Jack almost cited for flying while drunk at 3:00 AM.
"Very funny," Jack observes, dryer than the Sahara. His dryness could wither oceans. "Let's have a Mystery Men moment. Your power's matter transmutation?"
He looks suspiciously at the bar, then at her.
Reply
Reply
"Both," he experiments. "I'm Jack, by the way. Jack of Hearts."
Reply
"Jack, then," as she didn't believe the last. It sounded like theatrics.
"My name is Fiona. And that seems a rather strange question to ask someone you've just met.
"You're wrong, however," she added after a minute, "as I've no ability to transmute anything, as far as I know."
Reply
Jack is nothing if not good at poking at his environment to see what it'll do. If Jack likes you, you'll know it right away. If Jack doesn't like you, you'll know it just as quickly.
"I believe you," he finally offers. He's not sure if he does or not, because not everyone with the ability to rearrange atoms and produce a Pink Flirtini would want that particularly ability to be made public.
"Are you from Earth? An Earth?"
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"Yourself?"
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"Lately of Connecticut, more lately of New York City. I'm an Avenger, and by the way, that's not a strange question at all to ask someone back where I'm from," he adds, in reference to her observation that his initial line of inquiry had been bizarre. "In fact, when people start making drinks materialize, it's the first question one should ask."
He grins. Rakishly.
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"I wouldn't know what an Avenger is, other than one who seeks vengence.
"And it was the bar counter who provided your drink. As I said, I've seen no evidence of such gifts."
Reply
"All right, madame, the veracity of your words is obviously unassailable. I give. You win."
He holds up his hands, placating.
"You've never heard of the Avengers? We're a..."
What were they to someone who wasn't familiar with the concept of an organized fraternity of lunatics who played dress up and went looking for trouble?
"...a proactive law enforcement organization with a dedication to high-impact methodologies," he decides. "Where the hell's Del Sombre?"
Reply
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