Sharpmate Noodle Shop

[supernal 22146]

The Noodle Shop

Attribution: Gelof7

Layout

Sharpmate Noodle Shop has only a single floor and serves noodles that have been described as dazzlingly mediocre. This fare here is always cheap, always filling, and always no less than decent tasting. It is open 24 hours a day, more popular late at night than any other time of day, always has at least three customers, and the wooden sign that hangs in front of the window has lettering of a faded lilac which somehow manages to remain legible.

Note - this is a hub thread and as such may host multiple arcs at the same time. Players can use a text header to help distinguish arcs

Thread History

1. Ruiser and Luna

Menu

• Noodles
• Beer
• Tea

 

Edited October 23, 2020 by supernal

[Fallen Joy 891]

A small ting of a bell announced her entry.

It was followed by a grandiose flare of emerald silk shimmering with flying rain water from the chasing wind. Different shades of the green hue revealed themselves with her stride, the flutter of cloak's wings birthing a lighter shade in her dress and the peeling of its hood blossoming into a forestry of tresses.  She shook the latter free of the weather's tears and flung them out her cloak. It was warm in here. The allure of it would draw any from the sudden rain, exemplified by greater occupation of tables.

She settled at a vacant spot near an unwanted window where wind stuck dirty wet leaves on the glass. A vanilla candle was the sole aesthetic of the wooden table, but it accentuated a charming mundane blush of crimson undertones to the surface. She removed her damp gloves before retrieving five thin parchments from her cloak. Water droplets spotted the pale sheets into grey, but the golden ink upon the surface remained intact. It even glimmered as if inked from the rays of the sun. She always wrote in magical ink, it gave her confidence that the words within would remain forever true in such a dishonest world.

She ordered an herbal tea and a small warm broth to melt her chilled insides.  The tea came first, lavender with honey and milk, and she drank it while staring out the dark window. At the time, the evening was early though the rainy weather made it seem late. She watched her newly hot breath fog the cold pane, one hand on the letters as she awaited the recipient.

Edited October 17, 2017 by Fallen Joy

[supernal 22146]

"Pardon me miss."

A stranger's shoulder bumped against Luna's. It was a motion lacking anything even close to innuendo or malice; the man just wanted to get out of the rain, had been too eager, and apologized for it. The woman veered off to one side, occupying a table, meanwhile the man placed himself at the tail-end of a short line leading up to the counter.

The woman had already put her order in as the man just arrived at the counter.

"What's this?" Ruiser pointed to a picture on a menu which was kept at hand for customers.
"Flat rice noodles." The man behind the counter said, his face smooth and free of affect. "Stir fry with chicken and leeks."
"Oh. Is it good?"
The man behind the counter shrugged. "Eh. It's decent."
"Oh." Ruiser let his eyes scan the menu once again and pointed to a new dish. "What's this?"
"Buttered wheat noodles served in a pork broth. Comes with egg, seaweed, and onions."
"Is it good?"
"Eh. It's decent."
"I'll have that one then."
"It goes from 'decent' to 'pretty decent' if you have a beer with it."
"That too then."

Ruiser parted company with the man, having nothing to show for his troubles but a small stand with a number fixed to the top. He scoured the restaurant's interior for an open table, when his roaming gaze came to rest on Luna. There his eyes stopped their general search and instead apprised the woman individually. After a moment's consideration, he walked up to her table and placed his numbered stand on it, then took it upon himself to occupy an empty chair.

"You are Luna?" This was a question in which Ruiser made no attempt to soften the edge of skepticism. "I was told you're a powerful magician . . . centuries old."

[Fallen Joy 891]

She diverted her eyes away from the fading fog when a number placement settled on her table. Her gaze trailed from it and to the man that joined her. She took in his image, placing written words to a face, and then allowed her coral lips to smile.

“Ulmost seven of them, " her British accent came out smooth. "Forgive me, I seem to have forgotten my wrinkles and gray locks.” Her eyes twinkled with a teasing nature. “And I am not a magician.”

Her free slender finger twirled once and puff of purple smoke suddenly transpired above her crown, existing only temporarily before it solidified into a large dark pointed and hunter green hat.

“I’m a witch,” she finished as it landed perfectly on her head.

As he took that in, she slid the letters mildly across the table with the same finger. “Is this your writing? That would make you Ruiser.  A pleasure to meet you. Though..perhaps my shoulder had the pleasure first.” She rolled the one he bumped, but then casually sipped her tea to indicate her jest. 

“Mmm,” she removed the cup from her lips and inhaled the sweet steam. “The lavender 'erbal is quite exquisite. Now...Do you really have what you say?”   

[supernal 22146]

"I'm not a magician."
"Oh."

The crestfallen downturn of the corners of his lips matched the disappointed tone of his voice. When the woman congealed smoke above her head, Ruiser started, shifting back in his seat at her sudden and unobtrusive display of magic. It was a harmless parlor trick, but so too a stark reminder of his proximity to an accomplished mage. 

"I'm a witch."
"Ah. I see."

His failure to grasp the subtle nuance between classes of magic user was utter and complete. But he did his best not to show it. He looked around to see if anyone had noticed Luna's magic – if they had, no one was bothered by it. She corralled his attention with continued speech. As he listened to her talk, Ruiser found himself leaning forward, turning his ear towards her. Her accent was unlike any other he had come across in his travels through Terrenus. 

"That is my writing, yes. And also I have what I claim."

He took a breath, prepared to jump into something tedious and long-winded, but was interrupted by a waiter pushing a bowl in front of him with a glass of beer besides. The bowl was steaming; the glass was sweating condensation. Next to the bowl rested two pieces of wood.

Another look around confirmed Ruiser's gravest suspicions. People were using the wood to eat the food. He pinched them between his fingers and immediately felt like his hand was covered with a mitten, only by the grace of the uncanny gods mustering enough dexterity to shovel some noodles and broth into his mouth. Then gracefully spat them back into the bowl when they proved too hot. He cooled his tongue with a sip of beer. 

"Like drinking from a hot spring. But yes, to the . . . item. I came upon it almost by accident." As Ruiser spoke both at length and with regards to an emotional time in his life, his control over his polished Terric slipped slightly. He remained comprehensible but his accent became increasingly more pronounced. 

"An accident but not happy. Many men, they died to push the sw – the item in my hands. It is too heavy wifk memories for me to keep and wifk it I have done the best of uses I can think. So, if you wilk trade wifk me? As we wrote?"

Edited October 21, 2017 by supernal

[Fallen Joy 891]

The witch folded her slender fingers within one another and rested her chin on the knuckles. She watched his comedic gestures with a glint in her irises and coral lips compressed in a still smile. The waitress brought the broth and noodles accordingly, removing the numbered tablet and telling them to enjoy. She left her steaming broth untouched while he swooped in for the kill immediately and found himself burned. She suppressed a soft giggle, though her eyes twinkled shamelessly with amusement, and her untouched glass of ice water independently slid closer to him.

“Quite, love.” Her voice rang a bit. “An ice cube will also sully the burn a tad.”

The amusement in her expression slowly fades into one of solemnity when the tale of the sword begins. It was short but meaningful to the witch.  His emotions oscillated down to his very control of tongue, and while witch did not express sympathy, she was quite focused to the detail. Magical artifacts had a tendency to carry the burdens of their previous owners—she had to keep this welded in her mind when she took one into her care. Blood spilled for possession of the arcane depending on the circumstances could leave an iniquitous artifice on the blade.  She’d have to dismantle it later, if necessary.

“I see…” She allowed a delay of speech in that moment, perhaps so he could see that she acknowledged the depths of his situation, and then rekindled her smile. “I’ll be chuffed to relinquish your burden then. Ulmost lost two people dear to me in search of this item, thus it is just as pertinent for me to acquire.

“The items you desire are, how dae you say…cooking in the pot? You’ll hae it in your hands before we depart.  Though…”

From the stacks of letters rose another to the top.  Unlike the others, it had yet to be signed by recipient or sender. She withdrew the ostentatious feather from her hat,  revealing a pointed pen. She had noticed something quite curious when they bumped shoulders, a repelling energy to her aura of sorts. Though it was something she recognized all to well and dismissed at the time, his identity made it important.

“I’ll need to add some ingredients.” She began to write on the parchment. “Wasn’t aware of your resilience to the art…Dinnae you know? Could hae been quite the dog's breakfast there." She glanced up to stare at him curiously, the look on his face would likely make her smile wider. "It's no matter, I hae what we need for the adjustment.”

 The ink shone delicately with new set of words she wrote. Literal ingredients it seemed.  “Will you show me your half?” She said, not looking up this time.

[supernal 22146]

Ruiser was a simple man born to a common family. He rose in the ranks only after displaying reasonable competency when riding dragons for Rosinder's military, but even that growth had eventually been stymied by his lack of ambition. Or rather, by his lack of interest in the things that other people told him he had to be interested in if he wished to advance.

This base contentment had done wonders for his mental health, but rather limited his exposure to the finer things, reserved for those who had the drive to reach out and grasp them.

As such, the man was a touch uncouth. The moment Luna offered him her cup, he pushed his fingers in to fish out an ice cube, and did so again and again as they conversed and the ice melted. By the end of it his tongue was cool, her cup a bit murky and ice free, and his hand was wet; he remedied the last by wiping his hand on his pants.

"Resilience?" It was a word he'd encountered before but not very often, so it took him a few seconds longer to call up the appropriate memory and then translate it into his native tongue for a full understanding.

"'To the art' . . . do you mean to magic? I resist magic?"

This detail was clearly news to Ruiser. Almost always having been exposed to magic at a distance, from the vantage of clouds meanwhile Summoners wreaked havoc on the ground, he'd never had occasion to learn this about himself. But now that she brought his attention to it, a few interactions Ruiser had undergone since coming to Terrenus, where magic was in superabundance compared to his homeland, made more sense to him now.

He was briefly lost in the reverie of implications that this realization wrought, but was brought back to the present by Luna's direct, pragmatic inquiry. Ruiser looked around once again, noting that there were fewer customers around, and again that none had bothered them.

"I can."

The man reached up to his neck and fished an amulet out of the depths of his shirt by the chain from which it depended. He brushed a finger across the amulet's surface. At his touch the object shed light, shining with an obvious churn of magic, but not so bright as to disrupt the conversations of the people around them. Then Ruiser reached out into the open air and grasped at nothing; in the next moments, in his hand was the handle of a sword.

With that, and no more, Ruiser placed gently on the table the legendary blade of Sable.

[Fallen Joy 891]

The soft scratching sound of her writing ceased the moment he touched the amulet and the witch turned her eyes up with an enraptured curiosity. The perfume of magic was always alluring and this stole her attention from when her own casting ink. She watched with fascination as the sword was pulled out of the air, transpiring into existence and lain from the surface. She set the pen down.

“Impressive,” her eyes were actually on the amulet. “And beautiful.” She said this time with her eyes on the blade. “May I inspect it?”

Her hand reached out slow, hovering over the metallic surface. Sable’s Blade was spoken to be rusted and unimpressive by the legends, but its abilities far exceeded its surface impression. The witch closed her eyes, hand hovering only inches away from touching it. What exactly she was searching for was unknown; her breaths became long and focused as her nude hand swept gradually down the entire length without contact. Sixty long seconds she remained this way, before a soft breeze glided up her arm and waved through her hair like a curtain. She opened her eyes, a satisfied glimmer within her mauve optics.

“This magic is old. Young to this sword but old in creation. Yes, this is what I seek.” She looked back upon him. “Blade appears to hae a certain affinity towards yer nature, Ruiser. Perhaps it sensed something similar between you and its original owner.”

She withdrew her hand, rubbing her fingertips together as if some dusty residue remained on them, and reequipped her pen.

“Now…Everything is complete for the trade.” Her hat flew off her head and she caught it with her other hand. Flipping it over to reveal what appeared to be nothing but a gaping hole of black. She finished writing the last ingredient and the paper swept up, twirling once into the air and then disappearing into the hat. Lost to the black.

“In order for the items to be rightfully yours and the sword rightfully mine, I require a small piece of you. A hair. A drop of blood, whatever you fancy. Worry not, it will return to you in a much better form. Place it in the hat now and aim straight for the middle, I prefer no stains on my hat.”

Edited October 28, 2017 by Fallen Joy

[supernal 22146]

By way of response to Luna's request to inspect the blade, Ruiser merely nodded. His attention had drifted back to the bowl of noodles and glass of beer. The borth had cooled somewhat during their exchange so, as he ate, Ruiser could now discern the nuance and subtlety of flavor the dish presented. Having spent most of his life on the battlefield, where meals were made up mostly of hard biscuit and dried meat, this was a welcome detour.

On drawing the blade from its scabbard, Luna could be forgiven for the brief thought that Ruiser might be trying to pull a fast one on her. Or had himself been deceived. This blade, which alleged itself as having belonged to Sable, lacked the heavy cake of rust it was said to have accrued throughout time's endless march. Its body was matte obsidian and looked polished; its chipped edges had been restored.

"It was dirty when I got it." The man across the table from Luna said around a mouthful of noodles which he washed down with a mouthful of beer. "I cleaned it up some."

This first impression fell to shambles as Luna's deeper dive revealed the sword for what it was. It was the real deal.

". . . between you and its original owner."

"It didn't even occur to me that a weapon might think and choose for itself."  He said this with sincerity. This meeting was one which would prove fruitful to both of them but which for Ruiser had the added value of being instructive.

When Luna offered up her hat, Ruiser leaned forward, peering into its fathomless abyss. His face paled a few shades when confronted by the impossibility of what he saw, eyes switching between the woman and her artifice, but was once again flushed with healthy color by the time he leaned back. He pulled a long strand of hair from the back of its head and let it drift from his fingertips over the brim of her hat, watching it drift down into the void.

He waited a full sixty seconds before change was forthcoming. The abyss was no longer an abyss but the mundane depths of a regular hat. In it he saw something winking at him, catching and throwing back the restaurant's light. After one final glance at Luna, Ruiser reached in and pulled out an object like some sort of street magician.  

A bracelet.

To the eye, it was perfectly ordinary. A simple band of simple metal, lacking in any gems or filigree or symbols, perfectly unassuming. Unless one had an eye like Luna's, which could identify the powerful protective aura the object radiated.

Ruiser posed a question to her as he locked the bracelet over his wrist.

"How do I – how does it work?"

[Fallen Joy 891]

Their understandings of the arcane and the interconnections it manifested between artifacts and their wielders were quite different and the witch understood that. Thus, she did not say a word to his response and accepted his instruction. She was in nature both a woman that enjoyed being insightful and brandishing it to those she felt lacked it. However, perhaps today the witch was feeling humble enough to keep her mouth firmly closed—or perhaps she enjoyed Rusiers’ motions and behavior to what transpired next and was merely distracted.

“How do I—how does it work?”

She rose her emerald brows and the twinkle in her eyes had a brief flame to it. For a moment she suspected him asking her to prove the legitimacy of the bracelet’s prowess and  didn’t hide the danger of the insult if that were true. But ultimately she devolved it to be an instructive inquiry and smiled accordingly.

“It works as discussed.” She reached her fingers out towards his wrist, urging his hand forward with a curl of her finger. “Your skin will be under its protection while worn.” She took his hand, gradually running her fingers down the course of his wrist and to the inside of his elbow. “There’s a thin aura upon your skin, visible only to the trained eye. Fortunately this requires no focus to maintain. Think of it as a basal stone skin.”

She released his hand, folding her own back towards her lips with a coy smile.

“However, you may also tap into this aura and project into a shield of sorts. Denser and less surface area, it will be far more protective to coming onslaughts. But for this you must will it into manifestation. You seem sharp of mind and…” Her gaze twinkled. “For some reason you remind me of a dragon. I have confidence you can figure it out. If not, your instinct will show you when the time comes.”

Luna leaned back and exhaled once. "And to end our trade..." Her hands rose to her neck and began to untie the fastening of her cloak. She tossed the thick cloth to the back of the chair, revealing a metallic curved bow fasted to her back, string clenching between her breasts. She removed the weapon and set it smoothly on her side of the table, taking care to not knock her booth over.

“Because you so polished and beautified the sword for me, I have one more gift for you. This was forged from a rather skilled orc and enchanted with my personal design of runes under the blessings of the moon. It is adorned by what my uh..world calls the teardrops of night. Moonstones. ” She ran her finger along the rim, indicating engravings etched into the silvery hue and the small glimmer of stones within them. 

“Allow the bow to bathe in light of a full moon once a month for one night and it will provide arrows at the tug of the string without supply. Though minor, they will have the blessings of light about them and will serve even more potent against forces of shadows. Possibly more. Otherwise, they inflict a similar piercing signature of arrows.”

Luna.

The witch paused her explanation, shifting her eyes off to the left. If Ruiser followed her, he’d see there was nothing present.  She apparently saw something different.

I’m sensing some trouble back at the mountain. Morwenna’s aura is very disturbed.

Her eyes narrowed slightly in focus and then she sighed like a worried mother. Before long, she turned her face back to Ruiser.

“It’s time for us to say goodbye. I’m needed elsewhere.”

The witch stood and her cloak ascending politely to her shoulders and tying itself to her form. She reached her hand out and grasped the sword by the handle., then took her hat. She aimed the blade into the middle gaping black and sheathed it into the darkness.

“It’s been a pleasure trading with you Ruiser. I wish I had more time to get to know you. Perhaps another letter in the future.” She placed the hat on her head, the other hand on her bosom. She nodded her head just slightly. “Blessed Be.”

And with a rush to her stride and broth untouched, she strolled towards the door. She lifted her hood and regloved her hands,  preparing for the rains that awaited her. Not to mention the dragon sized challenge awaiting her back on Mount Ariadne. She didn't know the man she was conversed with was a dragon rider. If she did, perhaps she would have asked more of him. It was an opportunity missed, but perhaps not the only one between them. Time would tell.

Edited October 31, 2017 by Fallen Joy

[supernal 22146]

Ruiser followed along with Luna's explanation, slipping the bracelet on, feeling out the slight changes to his body as its abjurative spell activated. It was a subtle change but one that, as its direct recipient, he couldn't help but notice. It was only a slight tingling of the skin at first, but all over, then this was replaced by a pleasant warmth which endured so long as he left the bracelet on. And left the moment he took the bracelet off. He kept it on for the remainder of the witch's explanation.

The benefit of Luna's arcane expertise would be of great help to Ruiser in his continuing trials across Terrenus. He had armor and a spare weapon stored in his amulet but the armor was cumbersome, and he much preferred the motility that came with being unadorned. But this exposure posed risks. Having come face to face with dangers both quotidian and extraordinary, from the rapier of a mugger to the fangs of a foul and undead beast, Ruiser knew that he would have to take special pains to protect himself – which had led him to Luna.

She presented to him the perfect answer. An object which would passively grant him durability and which, on command, would form a shield against concentrated attacks. And for it he had only to pay one epic sword, for which a dozen or more men had lost their lives, and whose emotional weight had proven to be too much of a burden to Ruiser.

"I thank you for th –"

But there was more. Luna removed her cloak to reveal a masterwork bow, which she laid on the table, in the same spot once occupied by Sable's blade. Ruiser's eyes widened. Unlike the bracelet, the bow was clearly a work of art as well as of function. Grasping it in his hand, he nearly gasped at its weight and balance. He moved it with ease. Posing with the bow at his table drew eyes from nearby customers but no one spared him more than a passing glance – armed customers were all the rage in Palgard.

"This is even more than I could ask for. I thank yo –"

Consternation shadowed the valleys of her face, and in the next moments Luna parted ways and was off to attend to more pressing matters. After a moment of recovery, Ruiser finished his meal, gathered his belongings, settled any outstanding bill, and then went to find trouble in the alleys so he could put the items to a reasonable test.

[end interaction]

[supernal 22146]

# Jericho and Severin

Jericho sat himself down at an empty booth in Sharpmate's Noodle Shop.  

As a customer the redhead was somewhere between a stranger and a regular, someone who had stopped by the noodle shop more than once but was not yet familiar enough to be able to shout 'the regular for Jericho at booth #3' and expect spicy mie goreng to show up where he was reading the paper.

So he got up, went to the bar, ordered a bowl of noodles and a beer whose taste profile would both mute and complement the spice of his dish, and sat back down; once seated Jericho slapped a thin piece of flexible plastic onto the table and called up the Public Defender newsfeed, of which he had a personal stake, before flicking his way through the information piped by other news agencies.

"An archdemon, that's new." Jericho mumbled to no one in particular. "Looks like Hasturia lost their king. They should put a chip in his ear or something, can't just let your king go missing."

Edited October 12, 2020 by supernal

[Pygmalion 136]

[Jericho and Severin]

*ding*

The sound of a bell signaled the entrance of a brown-haired young man through the door of Chesterfield's Sharpmate Noodle Shop. Dressed in a rather ordinary ensemble of a red top and brown pants, the most notable features of the man visible from a distance was a makeshift arm sling made of white cloth tied around his neck cradling his right arm and a metallic staff-sling slung over his left shoulder. While injuries and weapons were not exactly uncommon in a city where services catering to adventurers made up a considerable sector of the economy, Severin Seto was the only person in the noodle establishment at this time that was anywhere close to the aforementioned description.

He waited momentarily to see if this was the kind of establishment where you had to wait to be seated, but finding no staff waiting for him at the door, he began to scan his surroundings. A short queue on one side of the shop lead up to a counter where he could see piping-hot noodles being ordered and served; Severin queued up and awaited his turn to place an order, mulling the options available in the meantime.

'Rice noodle soup with beef, please.' Severin said as his turn came, holding up a single finger with his left hand to gesture for one bowl.

With a minimum of fuss, a man behind a counter prepared Severin's request, sent him off after quickly settling the matter of payment, and then moved on to the next customer in the steadily growing queue like clockwork. Clearly, this was a well-oiled operation.

Having his food in hand, Severin then searched for a vacant seat somewhere. As day was quickly turning to evening at this hour, the establishment was already somewhat crowded and there did not appear to be a second floor to supply extra seating. He went straight for the first open seat that his eyes came upon: an uninviting spot near a windowless section of the wall, with a lonely vanilla candle on a wooden table supplementing the erratic illumination from a malfunctioning overhead lamp. For an establishment located in an otherwise rather-modern city, Severin regarded the candle on the table with a look of amused curiosity.

'Guess dining by candlelight hasn't completely gone out of fashion here...' Severin mused.

Sitting down and setting his bowl of noodles and his cup of tea on the table, he immediately realised that he had perhaps ordered the wrong thing given his current condition: there was no way to hold a spoon in one hand to scoop up broth while eating noodles with his other, which was the usual way he would eat a bowl of noodle soup. Worse, with only his left hand he could only make the most clumsy of attempts to work his food with a pair of chopsticks. He supposed that he took for granted the practiced ease of eating food with his right hand, as the fine art of using chopsticks became an insurmountable task for him the moment he tried it with his other. He eventually resorted to what was to him a foreign style of eating the noodles: twirling them around the pair of chopsticks until they formed a small nest around the tip, and then eating it as if it was a piece of meat on the end of a skewer. The soup would have to be separately drunk straight from the bowl, regretfully giving up the experience of eating each morsel of noodles together with a spoonful of broth.

As he went about his awkward efforts to eat the bowl of noodles before him, his thoughts turned towards the recent events that brought him to this situation in the first place: just last night, he had expected to have to survive out in the wilds for some time as he searched for a way to provide for himself, the last of his money gone not long after finishing a recent quest at Chesterfield's Giant Ant Support Program. Though he stumbled upon a party at the outskirts of town, it was not a long-term answer to his difficulties, no matter how generous the host was. Having prepared himself mentally for some hard times, it came as a surprise to Severin to have been contacted out of the blue this morning as to whether he was interested in some work with a Chesterfield-based organisation. Details were scarce except to meet at the Sharpmate Noodle Shop this evening, though the contact that reached out to him was kind enough in the initial message to forward Severin some credit in advance to treat him to a meal there, noodles in exchange for his time, as it were.

'Well, the difficulties of eating it aside, can't say a bowl of noodles on the house isn't worth at least hearing this out...' Severin said to himself quietly after downing a mouthful.

@supernal

Edited October 28, 2020 by Pygmalion

[supernal 22146]

[Jericho and Severin]

Jericho's seat offered him fantastic perspective on the shop's layout. It was so obviously the superior vantage that it had been a feature the owner's sketched into the blueprints. A honeypot, so they could make explicit note of people like Jericho, who favored that spot and other spots like it for all the obvious reasons. Jericho knew this. They'd shared tense words one balmy night in the lapsed summer, but the parties had come to mutual accord and Jericho, for now, accepted the risk for its gains.

Gains like the unobstructed view of the main entrance, so he could peg Severin the minute he tenderly probed his way into the diner's interior. He tracked the man as he put in his order, as he wove his way through the patrons and chairs to claim his own, as he struggled with his meal. Jericho waited just a few seconds more, until Severin found himself a little deeper into the rhythm of his meal, before he placed a hand on the back of a chair and scraped it across the floor so he could take a seat.

"Heyyy." An upward tilt of the pitch, interested and amiable, his hands open and spread on the table, not selling anything, not asking for anything either. "I think I heard about you!" Genuine, simple excitement. The overalls, the boots, the canary yellow shirt were well-worn but durable, even if in some places held together by a deftly woven whip stitch.

"Ain't you that fella what they say took down a giant ant with his own two hands?" Jericho let dark green eyes fall down to Severin's wound. "Oh. Those rumors don't say so much about what that cost you though . . . is that from . . .?"

@Pygmalion

Edited October 12, 2020 by supernal

[Pygmalion 136]

Severin gulped down the morsel of noodles he was eating before taking a look at the man who had taken up a seat opposite him at the table. Yellow shirt, overalls, a casual demeanour, and a voice that exuded affability: not quite the image Severin had in his mind when he was contacted this morning, and a far cry from the suited bureaucrats at GASP. Jericho was friendly enough that Severin did not immediately question how he was able to pick him out from amidst the growing crowd in the noodle shop; he supposed that the man who sat down was either more observant than one might normally expect, or he had chosen this meeting place for a very good reason.

Still, taking down a giant ant with his own two hands? Severin shook his head slightly and let out a chuckle; he hoped that Jericho didn't have the wrong impression...

'Is that what the rumors are saying now?' Severin asked curiously. 'Before I disappoint you, I should let you know that I neither have super-strength, nor am I a master of martial arts.'

He then turned to his injured arm in the arm sling and raised it up slightly to above table level, drawing both men's attention towards it.

'While it's true that I survived a fight with a giant ant, it would be more accurate to chalk it up to a bit of resourcefulness, more than a hint of desperation, and most importantly in a fight: a whole lot of luck.' Severin continued. 'And yes; as you correctly imply, I didn't exactly come out of it unharmed.'

Severin, with a pair of chopsticks still in his left hand, then gestured towards the bowl of noodles in front of him, briefly taking in the sight of the half-eaten meal before turning to Jericho.

'I presume that you, or one of your associates, are the one who reached out to me this morning: in any case, to whom do I have the pleasure of saying "thanks" for the meal?'

@supernal

Edited October 13, 2020 by Pygmalion