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."

[pythbox]

A pair of... people... walk in the same door that brought her.

One is wrapped in green leafy vines, in a roughly symmetrical pattern that just about barely conceals the parts of him that humans are expected to. He has more vines sprouting from his back, arranged in the shape of wings, with long feathery leaves. They move and stretch like real limbs. Tiny green tendrils twine through his hair.

The other has a similar height and general build, but a completely different peculiarity: he is wrapped in lightning. It crawls over his skin in tight crackling arcs and spreads out from his back and shoulders into wings shaped roughly like the vine man's, although the limitations of the medium mean that you can't really claim these ones have feathers.

[the_very_best]

Well, her first guess is that these are Pokémon she's never heard of. Some Pokémon walk on two legs. Bella hates indoor battles and they aren't making challenging noises at her, but she lets Fireflower out, just in case. Fireflower tosses her mane.

[pythbox]

"Whoa, what the fuck?" says the lightning man. The vine man arches a wing protectively around him and gives Ace a curious look.

[the_very_best]

Not Pokémon, then - or, exciting legendary talking ones. She pats Fireflower's neck.

"She's a Rapidash."

[pythbox]

"And what's one of those?" inquires the vine man.

[the_very_best]

"They evolve from Ponyta. Fire-types, if it wasn't obvious. Uh, what are you?"

[pythbox]

"Earth and Lightning," says the vine man, gesturing respectively to himself and his friend. "If it wasn't obvious. Do you happen to know where we are?"

[the_very_best]

"No, I just - got here myself, still figuring it out. I've never heard of you or seen anything like you before."

[can_i_help]

Sabrina is having an argument with her sister while walking. "I cannot even begin to tell you how wrong you are. I need to invent at least ten new words, that's how..."

She stops. She's sure she went trough a door that leads to a hallway, not.... where ever this is.

She turns to Ann. "Was there always a bar here or did I suddenly go insane?"

[can_i_stay]

"If you have it's contagious. We'd better-"

The door they came through is no longer there.

[can_i_help]

"Oh come on! What is this?"

Sabrina kicks the place where the door used to be. Nothing changes.

[the_very_best]

The girl near the bar whips her head around to look at the newcomers. "You don't know what's going on either, huh?" she sighs.

[can_i_help]

"Either? I don't know if that's reassuring or not."

[can_i_stay]

"I don't know about you, but I'm going with not."

Ann looks at the stranger. "How'd you get here? I don't think I've seen you around."

[the_very_best]

"I was walking into a store for Potions and Pokéballs and I found this instead."

[can_i_stay]

"Potions and what?"