barring emergencies

[the_very_best]

Bella's not sure where she has wandered. She thought she was about to walk into a shop, but this appears to be an unattended bar. With none of the windows associated with the shop she thought she was entering. It could be an elaborate psychic assault of some kind, but it doesn't feel very... assault-y... and she was in the middle of a town and doesn't think any humans want to sic their 'mon on her. It's strange. She approaches the bar, looking around warily, hand hovering near her belt.

with Max (Benedict)

with Earth and Lightning (kappa)

with Ann and Sabrina (kuuskytkolme)

Comments

[unblinkered]

Maxwell Wax intended to enter Brenda's for a cup of coffee. Or... to stare at people and surf the web, actually, but ostensibly to get a cup of coffee, which he didn't actually want. This intention does not match what happens when he walks through the door.

The first thing he notices is that Brenda's has installed a new floor. This is weird, he reasons, because he would expect a complete floor remodeling to take some construction time and not be flawlessly installed overnight. He lifts his eyes from the floor to look around for signs of construction having been hastily cleaned up.

...Well, all this has nothing to do with that hypothesis at all. The windows are different, that's odd, there's new tables and chairs and a new bar and, come to think of it, a new floor plan, and new interior dimensions, and also new exterior scenery and oh boy this is not new decoration at ALL, is it. He must have walked into the wrong... no, no, that's... the street outside, to the best of his recollection, looked really nothing like exploding stars at all, whereas the view from this Wrong Brenda's... differs substantially in that respect.

He is standing in the doorway looking back and forth between the street and the inside of this entirely different coffee shop. Perhaps he thinks that if he looks between them enough times, everything will suddenly begin to make sense.

[the_very_best]

"Hey, do you know where this is?" asks the girl who is... dressed like a Pokémon trainer. She looks nearly as confused as he is. Well, maybe not very nearly, but confused.

[unblinkered]

"...nnnno! No, I do not? I do not- you do not- who would...? Where?!"

He fails to recognize her outfit. He might, if less distracted, have recognized the red and white capsules on her belt, but he is very much not less distracted.

[the_very_best]

"I just walked in here and it seems definitely odd, but I don't know who or what could be doing it or why," she says.

[unblinkered]

Okay, this person seems to have about the right sort of handle on things. This has been duly categorized as a Weird Thing Someone Is Doing. The questions "who or what" and "why" are, by her suggestion, privileged over more complex questions like "where" or "how".

"Yeah, odd- is that- those- not fireworks, the-"

He steps outside, notes that it is a bright and sunny morning and the sky is not full of exploding stars, and steps back in.

"The outside is different from this outside. The outsides don't match. How can outsides not match?!"

[the_very_best]

"Maybe the window's a TV?"

[unblinkered]

This is a good and hopeful idea! He decides to test it. Max steps inside, closes the door, and immediately steps over to the window and moves his head back and forth directly in front of it.

There is noticeable dejection in his voice when he turns to her and says "If it's a TV, it's a 3D TV with head-tracking and higher definition than anything I've ever seen."

[the_very_best]

"My first thought was that it was a psychic attack, it just doesn't seem nearly hostile enough to be an attack," says the girl.

[unblinkered]

He looks at her funny. "You're... going to have to unpack that."

[the_very_best]

"Huh?"

[unblinkered]

"The "psychic attack" thing. D'you think people are trying to mess with us with, what, crystals, or something?"

[the_very_best]

"...What do crystals have to do with psychic attacks? I mean like somebody's having their Kadabra prank us or something."

[unblinkered]

"The hell is a Kadabra?"

This girl is being confusing. She is being separately confusing from the whole Tardis-coffee-shop thing, and Max does not care to be two kinds of confused at the same time.

[the_very_best]

"It's a Pokémon. I guess you haven't been in school for a while?"

[unblinkered]

"What, that game my kid used to play? You're seriously proposing a Pokémon is using a Psychic-type attack to make us think the coffee shop is-" Oh. Wait. That was a joke. Duh. "-ohhhh. Oh, sorry. I thought- didn't pick up on the joke. Heh."

[the_very_best]

"It wasn't a joke - what ware you talking about?"

[unblinkered]

Ha ha! Kid's got a funny bone, alright. He chuckles. And then... doesn't chuckle, because there's still that exploding stars thing.

"So... okay, seriously. What's... there's something... what do you think happened here? This looks... a few different kinds of impossible. Where did Brenda's go?"

[the_very_best]

"Brenda's? I wasn't going into anywhere called Brenda's..."

[unblinkered]

It's one thing for a door that was supposed to lead one place to lead to a different place. There exists, presumably, a space of hypotheses to explain seeming singular discontinuities of this type. There exist markedly fewer hypotheses that explain multiple places leading to the same different place. The shrinking of the hypothesis space is both encouraging and intimidating.

But first...

"What do you mean you weren't going anywhere called- where'd you end up here from? Huh?"

[the_very_best]

"I was trying to go into a shop to get more Pokéballs and Potions."

[unblinkered]

ha ha ha the joke again ha ha ha this would be a lot more funny if he hadn't just noticed the pokéballs already hanging from her belt

There are a couple obvious possibilities. One possibility, the stupid one, is the one where she is actually a Pokémon trainer. The other possibility is that he's talking to someone who's suffered some severe mental something-or-other and has lost the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Neither is reassuring.

"What..." he begins, "do Pokémon have to do with..." he fails to continue.

[the_very_best]

"Have to do with what, magically appearing bars? I don't know, I already told you my first guess and why I don't think it's quite right."

[unblinkered]

Okay this crazy person doesn't know what is going on and is probably only going to confuse him further. He ignores her answer and walks up to the bar.

"HEY! Is anybody back there?! Hello?! We're- um, you've got customers!"

[the_very_best]

The girl rolls her eyes and sits at the other end of the bar.

The bar, near where Max is yelling, produces a napkin. Of course, it reads in feminine cursive. What can I get for you today? First drink is on the house.

[unblinkered]

Napkins do not materialize out of nowhere. This is the same impossibility class as doors leading to different places. This is much less plausibly deniable than the door thing.

Max screams and recoils from the bar, failing to read what's written. "WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?! What IS that?! HOW?!"