Travis Handley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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zenderael_rl2013-06-06 11:16 pm
reference_section) wrote in zenderael_rl2013-06-06 11:16 pm
Entry tags:
Mal + Travis: Moving Day
Who: Malachai, Tyrus
When: Tuesday the 16th
Where: Mal's dad's house, Bastan
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Cursing, drinking
Moving hadn't taken long. It was mostly little things packed neatly into boxes; lots of videos, crafting and art supplies, clothing, jewelry, and thanks to his more recent career choice, alchemy ingredients and construct parts. The boxes were all sealed and labeled, making for easy unpacking later, but for now were stacked up in the living room or kitchen of Mal's father's house.
Jill was out of town, which meant she hadn't come with the rest of Fall City, which meant she couldn't stop him even if she wanted to. He'd informed her through e-mail, but hadn't waited for a reply.
Mal walked into the house with one of the last boxes, labeled 'office', and moved to set it down on the coffee table in front of the couch. He was dressed casually, because it was summer and moving was bad enough even without that. Jeans and a t-shirt, no jacket, even his goggles lacking.
"Thanks for the help, man," he said to Travis, despite having thanked him a few times already. "I really appreciate it."
Travis had a second box, labelled the same, which he walked to the same table. He put it on top and then stood up straight, stretching out his back and arms. He dressed similarly; he usually dressed up a little, a polo shirt and slacks, or something along those lines. Today, he just had a plain grey T-shirt and blue jeans on. He looked at Malachai and shook his head once, grinning at him. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I'm not gonna leave you to do this all by yourself."
And, he thought, a lot of Malachai's other friends now had the fate of Zenderael in their hands. They probably would have liked to help, but it did not mean that they had the time to.
"You mentioned some booze, yeah?" he asked.
Mal had been ready to do it himself, actually, if only because most of his friends were guild leaders now, and he hadn't wanted to bother them with something so... mundane. Travis, however, was not. Probably the one person Mal knew well enough to trust with his things that wasn't. He didn't know many people 'well', even if he did know a lot of people.
With a soft chuckle, Mal answered, "Yeah," and headed over to a cabinet near the kitchen, opening it to reveal a variety of rums, whiskeys, vodka, some cream liquors and flavoured alcohols... Some of it was his, brought over earlier that day, but most of it had been his father's. The only thing missing was beer, which neither he nor his father drank. Something they'd had in common.
Mal's brow furrowed as he hesitated, caught up in that thought for only a moment before he turned his attention back to Travis. "There's ice, if you want," he offered, making a hand motion towards the kitchen before pulling two glasses down from the cabinet.
"I can't say no to ice. Let's see--here we go." He found a bottle of scotch in the back, uncorked it, and started pouring. Tyrus got a grin at the nice, burnt oak smell that marked a good bottle of scotch. He threw a couple of ice cubes into the glass and looked down at it, for a moment, before he looked back up at Mal.
"Too bad that Heim couldn't make it," he said. "I think he has some kind of big announcement tomorrow or something. Poor bastard." He swirled the scotch around in the clear glass and waited, watching it start to settle, and then looked back up at Mal. He grinned. "He's gonna be putting in some serious overtime. Can't say I'm jealous."
Glass in hand, Mal looked over his options, wrinkling his nose ever so slightly at Travis' selection of scotch. He didn't much like scotch. His dad was a whiskey man, but Mal couldn't stand that stuff either.
He went with what he always drank, selecting a bottle of dark rum and filling his glass as he smirked at Travis. "That was today," he said, with a hint of annoyance. Mal wasn't exactly jealous, really, but he was a little bitter. First Rhys, then Gabe, then Lera... He hadn't expected Duncan to go joining them. At least, he'd hoped very hard that Duncan wouldn't. "He's busy saving the world or some shit, now."
"Full time job, that," Tyrus said. He took a drink of his scotch, eyes widening slightly with the burnt taste, and then he sighed. He wiped his lips on a sleeve, before he looked up at Mal. It wasn't hard to catch the annoyance in his tone -- repressed annoyance, sure, but there just the same. He shrugged his shoulders once, before he looked back down at the scotch.
"Feels weird how everything's changing," he said. "It knew two of them, at least--and, you know, I remember the Mazda's press conference. The news was saying she's from around here, too, yeah?"
"Yeah," Mal answered, staring into his glass. "We used hang out, go drinkin' an' shit." He let out a sigh and turned, heading back to the couch to sit down. "I know most of 'em." He paused, contemplating. "Knew, anyway. Dunno how much they've changed. The Ahura sure wasn't the same last we spoke."
A smile snuck across his face. Gabe hadn't seemed to change much. Mal was grateful for that much, at least.
Even then, he was still the Asha. He had responsibilities to an entire guild, to Safta, to the Khshathra- which was Harriet, another he knew. He had no idea how much she'd changed, since he'd only known her online before.
His smile faded and he took a long drink from his glass.
"Seems like it'd have to change you," Tyrus said.
It was the simple truth. That much responsibility, that much power could not leave someone the same as they were. He shook his head and took a sip of his scotch. "Nyx changed a lot. I mean, she said taking the brain just sorta changed the way she thought. I guess that's not a big surprise."
He looked up from his glass of scotch, contemplating, and glanced in Mal's direction. "But even the others, you know? With as much as they got on their plate, it's gotta make them different." He frowned. "Power just does that to people, I guess..."
Power? Mal wasn't so sure if it was the power that changed them so much as the experiences having that power lead to. They'd been in a war, for fuck sake. Some of them, anyway. And of course, Duncan's acquisition of the god-heart hadn't exactly been a walk in the park.
Still, he let out a disgruntled, "Hmph." It was just more going on that he wasn't involved in. More reason for them all to be busy and deal with each other while he was just this lowly, unimportant alchemist. Though... Duncan had come to him first, when he'd needed help.
But the others had still been in Zenderael at the time.
He shrugged. "Prob'ly won't see much of 'em while they're sortin' out their countries an' guilds an' shit."
"Probably not as much," Tyrus said, with a shake of his head. "It seems like it'd take up a lot of time."
He took another drink of his scotch. This was fantastic stuff, he though; Mal's dad had good taste in liquor.
"I went and saw Nyx in her lab, too," he added. "It was kinda cool. Really crazy looking, though." And it was a near miss with trouble; she started thinking he wanted to be turned into an alchemist, which would have presented a number of problems. Such as her discovering that he was already a paladin.
"Never saw her lab." He hadn't really seen much of her outside of class, either. Mostly they'd just yelled at each other on the forums or in private messages before meeting, and by then she was already Khshathra and he didn't want be impose. She'd been closer to Duncan. Course now they had more reason to be close...
"Guess I'm just thankful they're all alive, though. With the war an' all." It was true. Seeing Gabe had been a pleasure, of course, but he knew Gabe couldn't stick around too long, and he had no idea when there'd be time for another visit. But at least there'd be time, sooner or later.
"It was a close-run thing." Who said that? Tyrus wondered. He failed to recognize the words, but they came to him the way that the various references Travis built into him did. Sayings he uttered without understanding, that just came to him suddenly.
"I still can't believe they fought a god," he said. "And, you know, won. That's just..." He honestly thought it was impossible.
If that was a reference, Mal didn't catch it. It was accurate, though. "Yeah, Lera got pretty hurt, she said." Possibly others. He hadn't really asked too much about the battle itself.
"Right? Fuck, imagine if Earth's gods were all real an' kept meddlin' in shit." All those wars they'd had would've been very different. There were stories, of course, of Gods or godlike beings taking part in battles, ages and ages ago... He wondered if they had, in fact, once existed, and somehow faded away, or some such.
And would the same happen to Zenderael's gods...?
"But fuck, man. They were usin' fuckin' super powers. They're like... demigods, or superheros, or some shit, so I guess it's not really too surprisin' they could win."
"Probably not," Tyrus said. He had only heard of one guild leader at a time fight, at most, in the past. They always seemed to play it cautious, to leave it more to underlings, minions, and their more mortal comrades. It made sense -- they were powerful, but if they died, things could fall apart. Against a god, though, what else could work? They needed demigods for that.
He sipped more of his scotch, nearly down to the last of it.
"It's hard to imagine," he said. "We knew half of them." Maybe more than half. Except Tyrus hadn't; he only knew Harriet as the Khshathra. Otherwise, they were text and bits from logs that he'd read. "And now they've got those powers."
"Yeah, well. I got powers, too." He sounded a little miffed, though. Sure, he had alchemist powers, but he wasn't Khshathra. That was a whole other scale of powers. What would he even do with powers like that? Try to take over the world! (Probably not.)
"Fuck it," he said, and drank back the rest of his rum, standing to go grab a refill. Or maybe just the whole bottle... "I got me clockwork horse in th' works an' at least one person t' get smashed wit', aye?" He grinned at Travis, then pointed at him with the same hand holding the glass, which was a little awkward. "Don't you go turnin' into a guild leader, y'here?"
Tyrus laughed aloud at that. "Me?" he asked. "Shit, I'd be a terrible guild leader. A guy like me doesn't need that kind of power over people."
That, he thought, was maybe too honest. His expression sank slightly.
He knew what he would do with it, though; he could take over Bohun Upas with a god-organ. The idea was tempting, but which would he even take? Could he really bring himself to do that to a friend? He found himself thinking it -- imagining smashing in Harriet's head with a rock, trying to make it quick -- and then quickly drank down the rest of his alcohol. He winced, the burning in his throat feeling incriminating instead of good. Maybe Travis had been right about him all along.
He had, for a moment, seriously considered it. But he would never. Would he?
"I'd prob'ly start throwin' parties or some shit." Not in the house, though. But as a guild leader, he'd have somewhere for that. The headquarters of whatever guild it was.
He paused to consider that. "Holy shit, can you imagine the parties? Fuckin'.... all th' members of that guild doin' whatever the guild does as entertainment, shitloads of booze an' food." Another pause. "Wonder how much you'd get away with. I mean, th' guild's got other people runnin' it, too, yeah?" Their 'seconds', at least. There'd always been NPCs of them around.
Remembering what he'd gotten up for, Mal grabbed the bottle of rum and returned to the couch, only pouring himself another glass after sitting again.
"Crazy ass parties," Tyrus agreed dimly. It took him a second to key back in.
He looked sideways at Mal. "Druids used to hold the best, I bet. I saw videos of their festivals, those looked off the fuckin' hook!" He grinned at that idea, then he stood up and walked towards the liquor cabinet. He just grabbed the bottle of scotch and took it back with him to his chair. His ice wasn't melted yet. He poured more scotch over it, thoughtfully, and then looked up. "And berserkers are fun, too, I bet. Maybe alchemists."
He shrugged, then drunk some of the scotch. "Paladins and spellswords probably are boring, though," he said. "Soldiers? I bet they'd be tight-assed. Lots of rules and all. Rules aren't good for partying."
"Fuck yeah, didja see the solstice parties?" Mal's grin broadened. "I went to Medena's. Her fire exploded." Sort of. Close enough to cause a ruckus, at any rate. He'd been pretty drunk, though- drunk enough to pick a fight with the cops once they showed up and get himself arrested.
He supposed with the current location of Fall City that wasn't as big a deal as Duncan had made it out to be...
"I bet berserkers jus' get drunk an' beat the crap outta each other. Dunno about alchemists... Lotsa fireworks?"
He was an alchemists... What would he do for a party? Probably the 'lots of fireworks' thing. Maybe a bunch of constructs designed to shoot fireworks into the sky in patterns, maybe get Harriet to make up a bunch of her godbeer...
"Lera might throw better parties than th' old Mazda," he commented. She did like to drink. But would she spend spellsword resources on it...?
"I didn't make it to any of them," Tyrus said. He'd been finalizing the change to Travis, then, after murdering him. Going to a party with a number of Zendereans seemed like a good way to get himself in a lot of trouble.
He nodded his head. "Yeah, alchemists probably do a lot of fireworks." And carnival rides, from ones he had seen, but Tyrus wasn't going to point that out. It wasn't something that Travis was supposed to be an expert in. He sat up straighter and frowned, looking down at his glass of scotch. He took another sip of it.
"Mages would be a mixed bag, I'm guessing. Depends if they're mostly crazy?"
"The Asha ain't crazy," Mal noted. It was a little strange referring to Gabe as 'the Asha'. He frowned, and corrected himself, "Angel. Angel ain't crazy." Though he had worried about it happening...
Mal's brow creased, thinking about that, thoughts of guild leader parties fading. They'd be too busy for parties, anyway. Running guilds and countries, probably sorting out the Earth cities that had shown up with the completion of the merge, integrating shit or whatever...
"You think they'll make all'a us Earthers citizens or somethin'?" He blinked. "Wait, would that make me Everean?"
"You know the Asha, too?" Tyrus asked, looking at Mal. News to him.
He sipped again from his scotch, considering that. They would probably have to; there was no sending them back to their homelands, and their cities were over here. The chance remained that some might want independence. He wasn't sure which disturbed him more. Earthers becoming citizens or city-states suddenly revolting? Both had problems.
And profit. Tyrus frowned.
"Yeah, I'd say so," he said. "You're Everean--or at least, sort of. Your kids definitely will be. The world went and got rightly, truly fucked, huh?"
"Yeah," he answered casually. "We hung out a lot, him, me, Chief, an' Red. B'fore Red became the Ahura an' fucked off t' Zen." And after, though it had frequently been coloured by Gabe's concern for Rhys...
"Fuck. I gotta see if there's any British cities out here..." He was pretty proud of his British heritage. "Think they'll go wit' a permanent resident deal?" Which was what he was in Fall City to begin with, having retained his dual Brit-Canadian citizenship.
One of the people they knew, then. Tyrus failed to recognize the nickname Angel, but he could figure it out, he thought. He needed to check the notes back home.
"They might," he said. "You could just move, y'know? I think pretty much any of us could. I got to the Nenakret without any trouble. I didn't hear about any British cities, but it doesn't mean there's not any out there."
Mal wrinkled his nose. Moving again? Though, more importantly, moving to an altogether new place would cost money, money he didn't have. He didn't want to rent some dinky little hole, and it would take time to sell the condo. And then what would he do with his dad's house?
Maybe just hold onto it as a second home...
"Eh, fuck it," he said, dismissing the idea. "Don't need to worry about it tonight." He grinned and lifted his glass towards Travis. "Fuck everythin', let's get drunk."
"No argument from me," Tyrus said.
He drank from the scotch again and leaned his head back. It was easier to focus on the alcohol and tune the rest out. Let himself enjoy the oak-rich taste of the scotch, ignore the problems and questions about whether he was an awful person or not. He shook his head and let out a long sigh. "This shit never gets old."
When: Tuesday the 16th
Where: Mal's dad's house, Bastan
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Cursing, drinking
Moving hadn't taken long. It was mostly little things packed neatly into boxes; lots of videos, crafting and art supplies, clothing, jewelry, and thanks to his more recent career choice, alchemy ingredients and construct parts. The boxes were all sealed and labeled, making for easy unpacking later, but for now were stacked up in the living room or kitchen of Mal's father's house.
Jill was out of town, which meant she hadn't come with the rest of Fall City, which meant she couldn't stop him even if she wanted to. He'd informed her through e-mail, but hadn't waited for a reply.
Mal walked into the house with one of the last boxes, labeled 'office', and moved to set it down on the coffee table in front of the couch. He was dressed casually, because it was summer and moving was bad enough even without that. Jeans and a t-shirt, no jacket, even his goggles lacking.
"Thanks for the help, man," he said to Travis, despite having thanked him a few times already. "I really appreciate it."
Travis had a second box, labelled the same, which he walked to the same table. He put it on top and then stood up straight, stretching out his back and arms. He dressed similarly; he usually dressed up a little, a polo shirt and slacks, or something along those lines. Today, he just had a plain grey T-shirt and blue jeans on. He looked at Malachai and shook his head once, grinning at him. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I'm not gonna leave you to do this all by yourself."
And, he thought, a lot of Malachai's other friends now had the fate of Zenderael in their hands. They probably would have liked to help, but it did not mean that they had the time to.
"You mentioned some booze, yeah?" he asked.
Mal had been ready to do it himself, actually, if only because most of his friends were guild leaders now, and he hadn't wanted to bother them with something so... mundane. Travis, however, was not. Probably the one person Mal knew well enough to trust with his things that wasn't. He didn't know many people 'well', even if he did know a lot of people.
With a soft chuckle, Mal answered, "Yeah," and headed over to a cabinet near the kitchen, opening it to reveal a variety of rums, whiskeys, vodka, some cream liquors and flavoured alcohols... Some of it was his, brought over earlier that day, but most of it had been his father's. The only thing missing was beer, which neither he nor his father drank. Something they'd had in common.
Mal's brow furrowed as he hesitated, caught up in that thought for only a moment before he turned his attention back to Travis. "There's ice, if you want," he offered, making a hand motion towards the kitchen before pulling two glasses down from the cabinet.
"I can't say no to ice. Let's see--here we go." He found a bottle of scotch in the back, uncorked it, and started pouring. Tyrus got a grin at the nice, burnt oak smell that marked a good bottle of scotch. He threw a couple of ice cubes into the glass and looked down at it, for a moment, before he looked back up at Mal.
"Too bad that Heim couldn't make it," he said. "I think he has some kind of big announcement tomorrow or something. Poor bastard." He swirled the scotch around in the clear glass and waited, watching it start to settle, and then looked back up at Mal. He grinned. "He's gonna be putting in some serious overtime. Can't say I'm jealous."
Glass in hand, Mal looked over his options, wrinkling his nose ever so slightly at Travis' selection of scotch. He didn't much like scotch. His dad was a whiskey man, but Mal couldn't stand that stuff either.
He went with what he always drank, selecting a bottle of dark rum and filling his glass as he smirked at Travis. "That was today," he said, with a hint of annoyance. Mal wasn't exactly jealous, really, but he was a little bitter. First Rhys, then Gabe, then Lera... He hadn't expected Duncan to go joining them. At least, he'd hoped very hard that Duncan wouldn't. "He's busy saving the world or some shit, now."
"Full time job, that," Tyrus said. He took a drink of his scotch, eyes widening slightly with the burnt taste, and then he sighed. He wiped his lips on a sleeve, before he looked up at Mal. It wasn't hard to catch the annoyance in his tone -- repressed annoyance, sure, but there just the same. He shrugged his shoulders once, before he looked back down at the scotch.
"Feels weird how everything's changing," he said. "It knew two of them, at least--and, you know, I remember the Mazda's press conference. The news was saying she's from around here, too, yeah?"
"Yeah," Mal answered, staring into his glass. "We used hang out, go drinkin' an' shit." He let out a sigh and turned, heading back to the couch to sit down. "I know most of 'em." He paused, contemplating. "Knew, anyway. Dunno how much they've changed. The Ahura sure wasn't the same last we spoke."
A smile snuck across his face. Gabe hadn't seemed to change much. Mal was grateful for that much, at least.
Even then, he was still the Asha. He had responsibilities to an entire guild, to Safta, to the Khshathra- which was Harriet, another he knew. He had no idea how much she'd changed, since he'd only known her online before.
His smile faded and he took a long drink from his glass.
"Seems like it'd have to change you," Tyrus said.
It was the simple truth. That much responsibility, that much power could not leave someone the same as they were. He shook his head and took a sip of his scotch. "Nyx changed a lot. I mean, she said taking the brain just sorta changed the way she thought. I guess that's not a big surprise."
He looked up from his glass of scotch, contemplating, and glanced in Mal's direction. "But even the others, you know? With as much as they got on their plate, it's gotta make them different." He frowned. "Power just does that to people, I guess..."
Power? Mal wasn't so sure if it was the power that changed them so much as the experiences having that power lead to. They'd been in a war, for fuck sake. Some of them, anyway. And of course, Duncan's acquisition of the god-heart hadn't exactly been a walk in the park.
Still, he let out a disgruntled, "Hmph." It was just more going on that he wasn't involved in. More reason for them all to be busy and deal with each other while he was just this lowly, unimportant alchemist. Though... Duncan had come to him first, when he'd needed help.
But the others had still been in Zenderael at the time.
He shrugged. "Prob'ly won't see much of 'em while they're sortin' out their countries an' guilds an' shit."
"Probably not as much," Tyrus said, with a shake of his head. "It seems like it'd take up a lot of time."
He took another drink of his scotch. This was fantastic stuff, he though; Mal's dad had good taste in liquor.
"I went and saw Nyx in her lab, too," he added. "It was kinda cool. Really crazy looking, though." And it was a near miss with trouble; she started thinking he wanted to be turned into an alchemist, which would have presented a number of problems. Such as her discovering that he was already a paladin.
"Never saw her lab." He hadn't really seen much of her outside of class, either. Mostly they'd just yelled at each other on the forums or in private messages before meeting, and by then she was already Khshathra and he didn't want be impose. She'd been closer to Duncan. Course now they had more reason to be close...
"Guess I'm just thankful they're all alive, though. With the war an' all." It was true. Seeing Gabe had been a pleasure, of course, but he knew Gabe couldn't stick around too long, and he had no idea when there'd be time for another visit. But at least there'd be time, sooner or later.
"It was a close-run thing." Who said that? Tyrus wondered. He failed to recognize the words, but they came to him the way that the various references Travis built into him did. Sayings he uttered without understanding, that just came to him suddenly.
"I still can't believe they fought a god," he said. "And, you know, won. That's just..." He honestly thought it was impossible.
If that was a reference, Mal didn't catch it. It was accurate, though. "Yeah, Lera got pretty hurt, she said." Possibly others. He hadn't really asked too much about the battle itself.
"Right? Fuck, imagine if Earth's gods were all real an' kept meddlin' in shit." All those wars they'd had would've been very different. There were stories, of course, of Gods or godlike beings taking part in battles, ages and ages ago... He wondered if they had, in fact, once existed, and somehow faded away, or some such.
And would the same happen to Zenderael's gods...?
"But fuck, man. They were usin' fuckin' super powers. They're like... demigods, or superheros, or some shit, so I guess it's not really too surprisin' they could win."
"Probably not," Tyrus said. He had only heard of one guild leader at a time fight, at most, in the past. They always seemed to play it cautious, to leave it more to underlings, minions, and their more mortal comrades. It made sense -- they were powerful, but if they died, things could fall apart. Against a god, though, what else could work? They needed demigods for that.
He sipped more of his scotch, nearly down to the last of it.
"It's hard to imagine," he said. "We knew half of them." Maybe more than half. Except Tyrus hadn't; he only knew Harriet as the Khshathra. Otherwise, they were text and bits from logs that he'd read. "And now they've got those powers."
"Yeah, well. I got powers, too." He sounded a little miffed, though. Sure, he had alchemist powers, but he wasn't Khshathra. That was a whole other scale of powers. What would he even do with powers like that? Try to take over the world! (Probably not.)
"Fuck it," he said, and drank back the rest of his rum, standing to go grab a refill. Or maybe just the whole bottle... "I got me clockwork horse in th' works an' at least one person t' get smashed wit', aye?" He grinned at Travis, then pointed at him with the same hand holding the glass, which was a little awkward. "Don't you go turnin' into a guild leader, y'here?"
Tyrus laughed aloud at that. "Me?" he asked. "Shit, I'd be a terrible guild leader. A guy like me doesn't need that kind of power over people."
That, he thought, was maybe too honest. His expression sank slightly.
He knew what he would do with it, though; he could take over Bohun Upas with a god-organ. The idea was tempting, but which would he even take? Could he really bring himself to do that to a friend? He found himself thinking it -- imagining smashing in Harriet's head with a rock, trying to make it quick -- and then quickly drank down the rest of his alcohol. He winced, the burning in his throat feeling incriminating instead of good. Maybe Travis had been right about him all along.
He had, for a moment, seriously considered it. But he would never. Would he?
"I'd prob'ly start throwin' parties or some shit." Not in the house, though. But as a guild leader, he'd have somewhere for that. The headquarters of whatever guild it was.
He paused to consider that. "Holy shit, can you imagine the parties? Fuckin'.... all th' members of that guild doin' whatever the guild does as entertainment, shitloads of booze an' food." Another pause. "Wonder how much you'd get away with. I mean, th' guild's got other people runnin' it, too, yeah?" Their 'seconds', at least. There'd always been NPCs of them around.
Remembering what he'd gotten up for, Mal grabbed the bottle of rum and returned to the couch, only pouring himself another glass after sitting again.
"Crazy ass parties," Tyrus agreed dimly. It took him a second to key back in.
He looked sideways at Mal. "Druids used to hold the best, I bet. I saw videos of their festivals, those looked off the fuckin' hook!" He grinned at that idea, then he stood up and walked towards the liquor cabinet. He just grabbed the bottle of scotch and took it back with him to his chair. His ice wasn't melted yet. He poured more scotch over it, thoughtfully, and then looked up. "And berserkers are fun, too, I bet. Maybe alchemists."
He shrugged, then drunk some of the scotch. "Paladins and spellswords probably are boring, though," he said. "Soldiers? I bet they'd be tight-assed. Lots of rules and all. Rules aren't good for partying."
"Fuck yeah, didja see the solstice parties?" Mal's grin broadened. "I went to Medena's. Her fire exploded." Sort of. Close enough to cause a ruckus, at any rate. He'd been pretty drunk, though- drunk enough to pick a fight with the cops once they showed up and get himself arrested.
He supposed with the current location of Fall City that wasn't as big a deal as Duncan had made it out to be...
"I bet berserkers jus' get drunk an' beat the crap outta each other. Dunno about alchemists... Lotsa fireworks?"
He was an alchemists... What would he do for a party? Probably the 'lots of fireworks' thing. Maybe a bunch of constructs designed to shoot fireworks into the sky in patterns, maybe get Harriet to make up a bunch of her godbeer...
"Lera might throw better parties than th' old Mazda," he commented. She did like to drink. But would she spend spellsword resources on it...?
"I didn't make it to any of them," Tyrus said. He'd been finalizing the change to Travis, then, after murdering him. Going to a party with a number of Zendereans seemed like a good way to get himself in a lot of trouble.
He nodded his head. "Yeah, alchemists probably do a lot of fireworks." And carnival rides, from ones he had seen, but Tyrus wasn't going to point that out. It wasn't something that Travis was supposed to be an expert in. He sat up straighter and frowned, looking down at his glass of scotch. He took another sip of it.
"Mages would be a mixed bag, I'm guessing. Depends if they're mostly crazy?"
"The Asha ain't crazy," Mal noted. It was a little strange referring to Gabe as 'the Asha'. He frowned, and corrected himself, "Angel. Angel ain't crazy." Though he had worried about it happening...
Mal's brow creased, thinking about that, thoughts of guild leader parties fading. They'd be too busy for parties, anyway. Running guilds and countries, probably sorting out the Earth cities that had shown up with the completion of the merge, integrating shit or whatever...
"You think they'll make all'a us Earthers citizens or somethin'?" He blinked. "Wait, would that make me Everean?"
"You know the Asha, too?" Tyrus asked, looking at Mal. News to him.
He sipped again from his scotch, considering that. They would probably have to; there was no sending them back to their homelands, and their cities were over here. The chance remained that some might want independence. He wasn't sure which disturbed him more. Earthers becoming citizens or city-states suddenly revolting? Both had problems.
And profit. Tyrus frowned.
"Yeah, I'd say so," he said. "You're Everean--or at least, sort of. Your kids definitely will be. The world went and got rightly, truly fucked, huh?"
"Yeah," he answered casually. "We hung out a lot, him, me, Chief, an' Red. B'fore Red became the Ahura an' fucked off t' Zen." And after, though it had frequently been coloured by Gabe's concern for Rhys...
"Fuck. I gotta see if there's any British cities out here..." He was pretty proud of his British heritage. "Think they'll go wit' a permanent resident deal?" Which was what he was in Fall City to begin with, having retained his dual Brit-Canadian citizenship.
One of the people they knew, then. Tyrus failed to recognize the nickname Angel, but he could figure it out, he thought. He needed to check the notes back home.
"They might," he said. "You could just move, y'know? I think pretty much any of us could. I got to the Nenakret without any trouble. I didn't hear about any British cities, but it doesn't mean there's not any out there."
Mal wrinkled his nose. Moving again? Though, more importantly, moving to an altogether new place would cost money, money he didn't have. He didn't want to rent some dinky little hole, and it would take time to sell the condo. And then what would he do with his dad's house?
Maybe just hold onto it as a second home...
"Eh, fuck it," he said, dismissing the idea. "Don't need to worry about it tonight." He grinned and lifted his glass towards Travis. "Fuck everythin', let's get drunk."
"No argument from me," Tyrus said.
He drank from the scotch again and leaned his head back. It was easier to focus on the alcohol and tune the rest out. Let himself enjoy the oak-rich taste of the scotch, ignore the problems and questions about whether he was an awful person or not. He shook his head and let out a long sigh. "This shit never gets old."