Multiple Settings The Helldiver- An RP to sit back and relax at a weird bar [Open]

[StarskiTM]

I'm guessing this is one of your travels?

The figure looks back. Writing down in their note book. Before turning it around and sliding it forward.
"I did not know this place existed, but I had some sort of idea how to get here. If that makes since. I did stop here voluntarily, I could just leave, but this place seems interesting, and I can take a break."

 

[StarskiTM]

The Figure also places a gold coin next to Price's drink, noticing, the payment here is still unknown.

 

[PixelSymphony]

"You know," Val returned Lucy's remark with, "you'd think that would be the issue, but actually she didn't really mind. No, the part that got the Creator's goat was how it came to be; the Sublime Engineer of all Reality wasn't exactly consulted on this one, to say the least." She took another drink. "But that's a story for another day. Or another drink."

"Well," she drawled on with, responding to Jazz, "sortakinda. You're definitely not wrong about being crazy for the cause; the DA guys were definitely not anybody you ever wanted to get into a fight with." She lifted a finger towards the broad-shouldered bouncer. "You'd have probably fit right in, honestly. But no, it wasn't a blood frenzy that did in the Black Bishop of the OoI, it was something a touch more subtle. A touch more... shrouded, you might say," she spoke, a knowing smile just barely visible on her face as she idly ran a finger over the blade she'd used to cut her lemon wheels. "Hey, you guys need me to sharpen your knives?"

 

[Breadman]

"Oh, one moment!" Precilla hurried over to the table where her patrons were sitting down and conversing. As soon as she saw the gold coin, she raised an eyebrow. "Oh, I think this more than covers things. Would you like anything else, guys?"

"Ooooh, assassinations." Jazz let out rather enthusiastically. "Nothing to throw the world on its head like having an important figure suddenly gone just like that." The bouncer snapped his finger."Sharpener is in a drawer somewhere, Orlo usually keeps those in shape."

"Your creator sounds way better than ours, honestly." Lucy shrugged.

"Eh, Lucy, she barely told us anything." Izzy looked at her a bit confused.

"Yeah and its already far more than what we know about ours." The half-demon stifled a laugh. "He just made a heavenly host to balance the Abyss from where we came from and then fucked off somewhere far away. King of kings and Queen of queens are in charge of all of Hell, but nobody has that sort of authority in the Heavens." She offered Val a bottle of tear "Didn't give you, your initiation drink."

 

[Specialist]

Interactions: StarskiTM
Mentions: Breadman​

Price only nodded curtly at the figure, taking a glance at the gold coin before it was picked up by the bartender. Clearing his throat, he nodded. "Well, then. Wouldn't suppose you mind if I ask you where exactly you're from? Or is that classified?" Price said with a soft chuckle. From the time he arrived here to now, he was just seeming to settle in as he relaxed his posture, but only slightly. Running jobs to and from Mos Eisley spaceport meant spending most of his time in cantinas, a few of which, some of the deadbeats had the gal to attempt on his life. This individual wasn't one of those, he surmised. If anyone here wanted him dead, he would be already.

 

[Sir loin of beef]

The alien gets up, slightly buzzed from the drink, "thank you, living earthling skeleton, I needed that" he says to harry

 

[StarskiTM]

where exactly you're from?

The figure leaned back and looked downward, for a moment. Slowly writing a response.
" I forgot what world I am from, I have no clue where I was born, or what my original world even looks like, for all I know, I have visited it before, or perhaps I never will find it."
The figure slides the paper over to Price, without looking up.

 

[PixelSymphony]

"Who said any thing about an assassination?" Val said with a shrug. "No, I fear that one night, as the Ecclesiastic Cataclysm flared into a white-hot conflagration and the streets burned with vengeance, the poor Bishop of Excelious fell prey to his paranoia and despair, and shot himself in the head," she recounted, "...from across his own desk." The bartending demoness gave just the faintest flicker of a smirk. "How unfortunate for such a powerful man to come to such an ignoble end, wouldn't you say?"

"As for the Creator, eh," Val said with entirely too unconcerned a shrug given she was talking about her nominal deity. "She's okay. Kinda weird, makes bad calls occasionally. Honestly I have no idea how she got to be a deity, she's really bringing the reputation of the whole deific class down, if you ask me. That said, she does knack for coming up with drinks on the spot though, so guess it evens out in the end." She took a sip of her drink and swirled the ice cubes once again, their crystalline forms clinking around in an idle gesture. "Honestly yours sounds pretty traditional to others I've heard of. I mean, honestly I prefer a deity who's a bit laissez-faire. Having been under a boss who basically was breathing down my neck night and day, I'll take the hands off approach any day. In fact I'd have been looking forward to a lot more chill cadre of angels, had you not mentioned what you had earlier."

Val took the bottle of wine and held it up to the light to peer through. "Tears of the Damned, eh? Considering I'm only a whopping quarter demon, how badly is this gonna mess me up?"

 

[Breadman]

"Is that so?" Harry responded.

"Right, accidents happen." Jazz nodded along as Val 'clarified' what exactly had happened to the bishop. "Real tragedy that. Taken before his time."

"Tears of the damned are toxic to humans, but demon blood is the natural counter-agent." Lucy explained as she poured herself another glass "To the boys here" She motioned to the two gentlemen sitting at the bar "They barely notice it. For me, its more of a buzz. As for you...you might want to take it slow the first time."

 

[Sir loin of beef]

"yes, getting brutally defeated by a rival will do that to you" the alien hiccuped

 

[PixelSymphony]

"Yes indeed. Tragic," Val said in a dry monotone as she nonchalantly finished her whiskey drink. "Right, Lucy said I should talk to you at some point about the armaments here. I got a couple of personal items to add, if that's all hunky-dory. Figure it's best to stay in my wheelhouse if things go sideways here," she said, before gesturing to the big guy, "not that I'm particularly worried about things given you and the orc's little tag-team dealie." The demoness chuckled. "Surprised Lucy hasn't seen fit to try and get you guys into some kinda pro wrestling league. I could see it now: 'Horns and Tusks, the deadly duo, coming to you on at Hell-in-a-Cell-and-also-Outside-of-the-Cell on pay-per-view for 9.99.'"

"Hoo boy, sounds like it's gonna be a heck of an instantiation drink then." She popped the cork on the bottle of tears and poured a shot's worth of the drink into her previously-used glass, swirling the substance to chill it. The liquid seemed to glimmer and shine, as if filled with small glass particles; a description Val suspected would also roughly describe imbibing it. "Well, to my new employment then." And with that she raised the glass and tipped its contents down the hatch.

Not even a second passed before she was coughing and hacking, stifling herself with a hand and an arm and just about anything else she could get her hands on. Sure enough, the concoction burned the entire way through her mouth and down her throat like sulfuric acid mixed with lime juice, and even when it was in her stomach it continued to roil, churning the contents of her most recent meal and threatening to purge such from her system. Thankfully, whether it was her demonic blood kicking in (or perhaps her latent alcoholism), a few minutes later the worst had passed, and she was able to stand once again without fear of retching all over the bar. "Well, I guess if *hack* nothing else, that's proves I've *wheeze* got some humanity left in me *gag*."

 

[Breadman]

"Can't say I know anything about that." Harry said as he picked up another glass to clean.

"Man, we had that wrestling gig for a bit actually." Jazz turned away and placed one finger on his chin as he started to reminisce about days past. "Getting names was the hardest part. Doomsday, Authors of Pain, Brothers of Destruction, Demolition, Team Hell no, Team Hell yes (we were running out of ideas, ok?). All taken or used somewhere else." The bouncer shrugged "So we just settled for our names instead. Worked out in a promotion from our Hell, ran by greed demon called Jimmy. And boy did he try to carnie his way out of paying us." Jazz started to murmur something "Little pencil neck geek trying to pull one over on me! If I see him out in the streets somewhere I'm applying a brain buster on the little shit." He was so wrapped up in his own inner rage again, that he didn't notice Val was hacking up a storm and gasping for air due to the tears.

"I'm going to forgo giving you an angel fire drink then." Lucy reached for a glass and filled it with water. "That would actually go through your demon side and likely knock you out cold for the rest of the evening." She cursed herself mentally that she didn't think about Val only being 1/4th demon would lead to that hard of a whiplash. Can't go and knock out your new bartender on the first day now. "Here, something cold might help with it."

"Anyway, yeah rookie, any weapons or gadgets you have to add to our little armory, just tell me before-hand." Jazz finally snapped out of it and continued on like nothing happened. Lucy simply cut him a look. "What?"

 

[Specialist]

Interactions: StarskiTM
​

Pausing a moment longer to observe the person, his brow lightly furrowed. To him, being a Clone was the only thing relatable. Every Clone knew their birthhome. For ten years, they trained alongside their brothers before being sent to fight in a variety of assignments all in service to the GAR. Yet- to be born and not even know a home? Price glanced down as well, chewing on the inside of his lip as he blew out a soft sigh. The pain of that was something he could never fathom, nor relate to. Without a home, there's no identity- no basis. Looking up from across the table, his voice softened considerably against the background chatter of the other patrons. "I'm sorry. Truly.. I am. If there's anything I've held onto, it's that no matter what, you keep on finding a reason to fight, yeah? Doesn't have to be a fight either- a drive, a purpose. You can't lose that- you lose yourself if you do. Your home is out there in that void somewhere, you and I both know that. No matter how close or far away it is, it's out there. That's.. all I can say. I'm just a soldier, I uh... I don't get paid to think much beyond the battlefield." Price gave a soft huff, sighing as he looked to the figure. His heart ached for them, and for a fleeting moment, he wished he could do something, anything to help. Yet, he didn't even know where to begin.

 

[Sir loin of beef]

"of course not" the alien growled

 

[StarskiTM]

"I'm sorry. Truly.. I am. If there's anything I've held onto, it's that no matter what, you keep on finding a reason to fight, yeah? Doesn't have to be a fight either- a drive, a purpose. You can't lose that- you lose yourself if you do. Your home is out there in that void somewhere, you and I both know that. No matter how close or far away it is, it's out there. That's.. all I can say. I'm just a soldier, I uh... I don't get paid to think much beyond the battlefield."

The figure began to write again before putting the paper down and slowly breathing in.
A soft, seeming weak, and never used voice said. "thank you"
Then the figure retreated into silence before passing a note to Price.
The paper said " I try to never get attached to anything, or anyone, as those things rot, fade, grow old, forgotten, I don't... and that's my reality, so I instead explore, even revisiting places decades later, you don't have to feel sorry for me, truly, I learned to forget about finding homes. You may be a solider, but all soldiers are people, and you are just as capable as the senators, the kings, and the presidents. All you men of war are, the same as the ones who made the war, in most cases, I find this to be true. Thank you."

 

[PixelSymphony]

Val eagerly took the proffered glass and downed it in a single chug, small coughs still following afterwards but slowly petering off. She pounded a balled up fist against the oak counter top a few times, working out the last of her involuntary spasms, before finally standing and taking her first deep breath since the whole escapade. "Ugh, thanks boss... I owe you one." A bar towel made it's way to her face to clean off any remaining spittle or worse before being summarily tossed into the dirty linens bag, to be dealt with later. She'd have to ask Lucy how laundry was handled another time. "Yeaaah maybe hold off on anything angel-related until I level up a bit," the demoness said with a sigh, before muttering quietly, "Creator knows it didn't go great last time..."

Val refilled the glass and turned to Jazz, slowly sipping from it while attempting to stave off the (ironically) absolutely unholy hangover the next day inevitably held. "You're telling me that, even in the deepest pits of hell, with the absolute mountains of muscle that you and greenie embody, your manager was still trying to scam you?" She shook her head. "Some things really never do change, do they?... woah, easy big guy," the bartender interjected with, as the wraith demon's anger began to swell. "Don't blow a blood vessel over someone that's not even present, jeez. Here, you need some of this?" she asked, sliding the tumbler over.

"Anyway, in terms of things I want to add to the armory, here's what I'm thinking. So on any op, the gear needs to fit the mission, right?" Val held two hands out with finger guns aloft like some kind of Hollywood character as she panned around with them. "If anything goes sideways in a place like this, honestly we're talking like 50 yard range maximum, right?. Not exactly PRS territory, that. So I was thinking of bringing in an old PDW I've got bouncing around in my closet: you know, high cyclic rate, low recoil, looks like somebody left their rifle in the hot wash for too long?" She lowered her "gun" hands and placed them upon her hips in a confident pose. "Sound good?"

 

[Breadman]

"I just serve drinks here, sir." Harry responded "My ruling days are behind me." He 'glanced' back to Elizabeth. "I prefer it that way."

"Greed demons live up to their name." Izrovut had a quick answer to Val's bewilderment. "He was some lanky loser with a pretend southern drawl. Tried to track him down as a favor to Jazz and because Lucy was furious."

"I was their manager." Lucy interjected "The boys are good at smashing things, but they can't make a good business decision to save their lives...or unlives." She shrugged "After I found out we were being cheated out of out money, we wanted the bastard dead, but he had already split."

"And he's good at hiding." The information broker picked up the reins of the story. "You'd think that he's some master of deception, but no. He's so small time that none of my contacts had any idea about him." He chuckled "Literally too small for anyone to care."

"Yeah, that's his luck alright." Jazz downed another half bottle of wine. The large demon listened as Val analyzed the bar and proposal, nodding along. "PDW should do, but if you want better weapons, we should give Smiley a call."

"Oh no." Lucy squinted and squeezed the bridge of her nose.

"Boss, you don't like him, but he's the best gunsmith that works with us." Jazz's jaw formed a smile of some form as he turned his attention back to Val "Smiley is a half-wrath and half-pride demon. Works for Lucy's dad, but his loyalty is...not there. Guy will give you a discount if you call him good looking with enough spirit. His other weakness is..."

"Me. But it's not mutual, never was and never will." Lucy finished that thought with a pained smile on her face. "Smiley has never gotten the hint, even as I literally beat him with a stick one time." Jazz started laughing from the memory "Don't know if the steep discount is worth it, but its there."

 

[Sir loin of beef]

"have it your way" the alien walked away from harry to talk to somebody else

 

[Otterman]

[...]

"You can probably guess that Harry is not my real name, but truth is, I forgot what it even was...and I think I like it that way."

Elizabeth sighed, setting down her drink, "Sounds like a lot of people want some kind of immortality," she offers a comforting grin, "Though it's always with a cost. I know plenty of people who wanted to be in my position. Possibly yours too. But I bet more than anything you'd rather be at peace... unless you find yourself liking the bar so much. I guess being immortal could work if you find a place you want to belong. I'm still... figuring that out. Hard to find those who understand what it's like... Sorry to hear about your lover," a quick apology, spoken as if she almost forgot.

 

[Breadman]

"I appreciate it." Harry let out a sigh "I do miss him, but I live with it. This place helps with that. Back there, I was a prince of nothing. Aimless and shackled to a throne of nothing. How did that one song go? An empire of dirt?" The skeleton shrugged "I would take any opportunity to get out of there and fortune had me and Lucy cross paths...I'm not sure if I figured it out either. Sure, I'm soul bound to this bar by demon contract, but I don't fear or loathe it. Every shift I meet someone or see something new. Occasionally the boss takes me on some errand or hair brained scheme somewhere. But the bar stays the same and I'm usually the one manning it." He scratched his dome with a bony finger "Maybe it's something that will ease your mind? Someplace where you can come in and have someone familiar serve you a drink or two."

 

[Otterman]

"Hm, maybe," she speaks sincerely, giving it some thought, "Already frequent another bar run by a friend, but every now and then I'll try and stop by... if it's simple enough to do so. Not that I want to leave just yet, but I'd appreciate if you could tell me how I could? And a way to come back?"

 

[Breadman]

"Door currently manned by the big man over there will do just fine." Harry pointed to the entrance currently protected by Orlo. The large orc had kicked up his feet and was reading something from the stacks of magazines near the door. "You just need to think about your destination and you should be good to go as soon as you walk out the door. As for coming back, there's a few ways. Portals, warp holes and teleportation spells can be attuned to this place. Lacking any of that, you just need to know where to look. Lots of towns have doors that seemingly go nowhere, but they have a destination. Just keep this place in mind and you should come in."

 

[PixelSymphony]

"Ahh, should have known," Val said with a nod towards Izzy as she leaned back against the counter, her arms splayed out. Barely even an hour in and already she acted like she was veteran staff; this was the true sign of Val's confidence in her bartending abilities in all aspects. "Either way, stinks that the wrestling promo was a bust, I'd have definitely paid for the seat even if I'd ONLY NEEDED THE EDGGGGE," she suddenly broken into, her voice turning overdramatic as she emulated a PA announcer. "Hey that reminds me, what do you guys do for fun around here? Don't get me wrong, I can certainly burn half a lifetime just on drinking, and rest assured I have, but I'll assume that's not all ya'll do. Also, Izzy, ya need another drink?"

Jazuzu's mention of upgraded weaponry drew Val's attention, an attention that only grew as she witnessed her boss and her coworker get into it. "Well well, a gunsmith with a weakness for flattery. Hmm." The horned bartender considered the situation for a moment. "While I do already have a guy, and he's a guy I went to school with so I know he's trustworthy, I dare say a visit to this Smiley could be lucrative." She glanced over to Lucy. "Especially if I can figure out what kind of dress he likes..."

"Speaking of lucrative, you know, if you still need your former wrestling business partner tracked down, I've been known to dabble in... discretionary services, shall we say. You don't get the moniker 'Nightshroud' by being a bull in a china shop, after all." She shrugged. "Just an offer."

 

[FloofWhispers]

From somewhere within the depths of the bar came a springy, small, plump wolf with the biggest grin on his face, as if everything around him delighted him. He would jump around, talking to random strangers before eventually plomping on a chair at the bar and sighed. He looked at the bartender and grinned, "Hello! May I please have a rootbeer float! Oh, and, by the way, my name is Asmodeus!"
​

 

[Breadman]

"Val, if you want to get yourself caught up in Smiley's business, I wont stop you, but I will warn your mailbox will suffer for it." Lucy poured Izzrovut another drink before he could answer Val "But you also want to manipulate the poor sap" Her smile switched to a more nefarious one "Wear something that draws attention to the hips, he'll be drooling like a hellhound."

"Nightshoud huh?" Jazz wondered for a second if he had heard the name before. There have been many nicknames he encountered on this job, but that one was new. He'd have to ask her about that announcer voice later. "You're full of surprises, but I'd wait till Izzy gets a lead on something. Better ways to spend your free time than hunting some pondscum, y'know?" The big man moved his finger to his chin as he thought on her other question. "Besides the sports we get on TV" He quickly pointed to the mounted screens on the walls "I do scatting, do some poker with Harry and Orlo and the occasional arena bout back home."

"Don't be fooled, somehow he still turns all of those violent...well, Arena gets more violent." Lucy commented before listing off her own activities "I make sure Jazz does well on that and the scatting. Thanks to Kassidy, I also do some high society mingling. Its fun to see them get shut down and seethe over the clothes she makes. As for something more relaxing, I do a lot of media binging when I'm not running around doing something else. Plumbers were nice to hook this place up with access to their archives, so you can request a limitless supply of...well anything. Books, shows, movies and whatever else someone has made in the multiverse. I am neck deep in watching a drama about archeology called "Bones of our fathers", that's 10 seasons long. Its really good!" She got a bit exited while talking about the show that she almost missed the new patron walking in. "Oh, will have someone right with you, dear." She tuned her attention to Val "Would you like to take him as your first?"