First DE of the new year and it's ALL MINE! *maniacal laugh*

[leeshajoy]

Let's start the year with a Test Drive! Tag with IC posts from pups you are apping, thinking of apping, or old pups you want to pit against new ones, and let the RP commence!

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[unglitched]

"Woah," says the little girl in the licorice hoodie and peppermint leggings to no one in particular. "Tapper's is way cooler than Ralph said it was gonna be."

[druid_knight]

"Tapper's? Is that the name of this tavern?" asks a boy in a blue cloak. His eyes are blue and wide as he tries to take in everything at once.

[unglitched]

"That's what it said on the sign at Game Central Station," says the girl. She eyes the boy curiously. "What game're you from? 're you an NPC or what?"

[druid_knight]

"I'm from Albion not a game," he replies, confusion clear in his eyes.

[unglitched]

"Never heard of that one. Is it new?"

[druid_knight]

"Albion is a place, not a game."

[unglitched]

"C'mon, it's gotta be a game of somekind," she protests. "You sure don't look like a surge protector to me."

[in_his_nest]

There's a bloke at the bar. A SHIELD agent is never surprised by anything.

Maybe he's been here before. Maybe he hasn't.

The fact he's sitting without a drink may be a clue.

[druid_knight]

A little boy comes in and quickly loses himself in the shadows while he tries to figure out where he is.

[toasters_muses]

The front door rocks back on its hinges to reveal a lone figure posed dramatically in the opening. The pale horse pauses for a moment, ears flicking forward at this unexpected development before dropping its head to the floor boards and... snuffling in to the bar in a distinctly canine manner.

Justice will be served!

[valiantrebel]

Harry Percy knows this much: dogs and horses are two of his favorite things.

Which might be why he's watching the horse with an open-mouthed grin of disbelief and delight.

Oh gawd help me...

[sharpeyedwarf]

There's a dwarf. He doesn't seem to be too bothered by the strangeness of the place. Instead he's down right cheerful.

But then again it's a magical bar. How could he not be?

Currently he is building a tower out of plates and bowls and cups. It's getting kinda precarious.

Oh, boy, help me...

[blankflankbuilder]

There's a small filly pony who just emerged from wherever she came from. She didn't appear upset, instead she looked pretty happy. So Apple Bloom did what she always did, she hunted down a way to get her cutiemark.

"Wow, wait till Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo see this place!"

[rotwood_reaper]

For Milliways, it's been literally years since a newly-minted shinigami stumbled in en route to her first assignment in the world of the living. For Rukia Kuchiki, however, it's been less than four months — eventful months, to be sure, but still only months.

She's not caught as flatfooted by it this time, but it's clear that it's taken her by surprise again. She's still dressed in shihakushô, with her sword at her belt and what looks like a bunny-headed Pez dispenser in one hand, and it's hard to say which of these she's happier about.

[maxwell_a_mercer]

Two men come through the door from the lake, one of them a familiar face in these parts and the other not so much. "What are you trying to hide, Michael?" the stranger asks. "Where are we, anyway? I couldn't have gone that far out into the countryside in as short a time as it's been."

The red-haired man in the gray suit just smiles mysteriously. "'One day the king of France got lost while hunting and found himself in Scotland...'"

[aeons_crackshot]

"Max!" Possibly someone should stop the blonde woman before she glomps poor Maxwell Mercer?

[md_donighal]

Someone does, thinking So much for preserving his ignorance.

Max is visibly nonplussed. "Do I know this woman? Why does she think we're on a first-name basis? And... weren't you on the other side of me from her just a moment ago?"

Michael sighs in considerable detail. "This is what I was hoping not to have to explain, because it really is amazingly complicated. I mean, more complicated than listening to my father try to explain the Schleswig-Holstein Question."

"Oh, come now, Michael; nothing's that complicated." Max turns to the woman and bows. "Max Mercer, at your service. With all due respect, who are you, and what's going on that Michael's refusing to explain?"

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle facepalms, then mutters several curses under her breath. "What's going on is that you and I are from different points in time."

"And I am not even going to ATTEMPT to explain how the hell that works, because I don't have a clue."

[maxwell_a_mercer]

"Different points in time? Like something out of a scientific romance?" Max looks at Michael. "Is she telling the truth? Because I must say, it would explain a great deal."

"This place, man, this place," Michael mutters under his breath. "Yes, she's telling the truth. Meet Annabelle Lee Newfield, late of the Phantasmagoria Circus. Although that was some years ago for her, rather more of them for me, and even more for this place, which is Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."

"How far is that?"

"Remember when Wells' Time Traveller (for so it shall be convenient to speak of him) encounters a crab scuttling along a beach under a dying red sun?" Max nods. "It's sometime after that."

Max blinks. "That's... rather a lot to take in."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle smiles sympathetically. "One of the reasons the first drink here's on the house. You're taking it a lot better than I did, that's for sure."

Admittedly she wasn't....in the best state of mind at the time.

[md_donighal]

"I'm sure it helped that his transition from his point of origin was smoother."

Max rolls his eyes. "If you can call stumbling out of a burning house into a forest 'smooth'. I'm just glad the first face I saw here was a familiar one."

"And not part of a crowd," Michael points out. "Annabelle came blasting in through the front door — not literally, despite what you might expect. Well, what someone who knows her might expect."

"...I think I'll have that drink now. Whom do I ask?"

"Order as if there were a human to take it. Trust me on this, Max."

Sigh. "Very well, but only because I know you." He turns to face where a bartender would be. "A shot of The Glenlivet, please." Such a glass appears. "...what the devil?"

"Apportation. The chap who set it up thought of it as magic; you can think of it as an application of psychical powers, or of the sort of technology you see in Wells' work or Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires. I assure you, there's nothing more dangerous about that glass than if you'd gotten it at a pub in Scotland."

[aeons_crackshot]

"Probably safer, actually. There are some very shady pubs in Scotland."

Annabelle orders a whisky of her own. Because if this situation doesn't call for alcohol, what does? "It's easier just to think of her as a person," she offers, gesturing toward the Bar.

[maxwell_a_mercer]

"If you say so, Miss Newfield."

"Remember, Annabelle, this is a Max who hasn't yet met Enkidu. In fact, this is a Max who just escaped from Atlas Cross—"

"Enkidu? The companion of Gilgamesh?"

"No, just another 'wild man' of the same name. Further information is not available here."

"You said that a great deal on the walk in from the woods, Michael. 'Further information is not available here.' Where is it available?"

"From you, once you live through it. After which, you say those words to the rest of us quite a few times."

"...you enjoyed that, didn't you?"

"Not as much as I once thought I would."

[aeons_crackshot]

"Atlas Cross? The very beginning, then," she says with a sigh. "That's going to make things....difficult."

"I don't think Michael's being coy to torment you as much as he's trying to preserve the timeline," she says to Max with a small smile.

"Dr. Stantz might know corrective measures for that kind of mess, but....." (That ghostbuster has lived through enough weirdness to make Milliways seem normal and he's married to a Time Lord.)

[md_donighal]

"He might, at that. And preserving the timeline is part of it; the rest is about not duplicating effort by telling him anything his elder is going to tell him."

"My elder what?"

"Further information."

"...is there anything you can tell me?"

"It's going to be an adventure, Max, the sort we grew up reading about. And I don't mean in the way that being boys-of-all-work on your parents' expeditions was an adventure; I mean the way getting Roger Styles' son out of India was an adventure. And talking of exotic locations, whom else d'you suppose will be joining us?"

"Besides Miss Newfield? Are you talking about Whit, or someone else?"

"Whit's going to be along, yes, but... let me rephrase the question: when you were young and I was younger, whom did we always want to have adventures with?"

"... ...you're joking."

"Serious as a heart attack, Max. We get to work with Safari Jack himself."

[aeons_crackshot]

Annabelle may grin and mutter something about "cantankerous old goat" in response to the mention of Safari Jack, but she means it in an affectionate sort of way!

"An age of adventure, with all that that entails," Annabelle agrees. Much of it was good, some....not so much.

They're going to excavate a whole new level of HELL ITSELF just for me.

[futamura_neo]

A naked Japanese teenager walks through the front door. Well, not completely naked; her icon doesn't show it, but she is in fact wearing shoes. Wait, did I say "she"? Because whatever might be indicated by her figure, certain appurtenances in her lap seem to cast that appearance into doubt.

She seems bemused about being here, and a little self-conscious about being the only one nude among so many clothed people. She turns as if to go... and, judging by her reaction, has just had her door escape while she wasn't watching it, like doors will. Wat do?