[FIN] Three Cheers for Understanding

[TawnyAngel]

Well success was good. Aulus tried to think of the last time he'd been out drinking with somebody he vaguely knew and rather failed to find a response. He'd have a few beers with Alex sometimes but, well, not often. Alex's work came first, and there was a lot of work. He wasn't going to pretend that didn't hurt so long as he was in the privacy of his own head; Alex came back and flitted around his life for a while and then.... Oh well, Alex was an elite. An important man.

"Glad it passes muster," Aulus said with a smirk after a barely perceptible pause. "I guess I do," a shrug, "wine, beer, or something fizzy with something strong with it." He took a swig of his drink and then added; "You can get the next round, though I'll go for it." Hers had been more expensive than his this time but he wasn't really keeping score, so long as a gesture was made a reciprocity he was content enough.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Ohh it was always fun to be out with someone with a sense of humor. "I know you were probably worried you wouldn't pass," she said with an exaggerated sigh before she took another sip, then set her glass down, though her fingers remained curved around the bottom of it. "Worry no more though." Grandiosity concluded, she offered a simple nod. "Yeah, those are all good; I'm not a huge fan of wine though, personally, and the last one is usually better than the second one." Beer was all well and good to buy a lot of for parties or for nights drinking with friends, but there was something to be said for being able to take shots or mix drinks that had a much bigger effect than just plain beer did. Plus one would have to consume a lot more beer than liquor to get drunk, and would likely have a worse hangover in the morning because of it.

"Sounds good to me," she replied agreeably, and spent a moment or two figuring out how much to give him for the next round. Hers was more complicated than his, and possibly more expensive in consequence - but then again, he might've gotten some really fancy liquor in his, which would undoubtedly be expensive. He probably hadn't gotten anything super fancy though, now she thought about it.

She leaned back in her chair as she raised her glass to her lips again, her pale eyes sweeping across the other patrons thoughtfully. "I'm glad it isn't too packed today," she noted with a touch of relief in her tone once she'd set her drink down again. "Would've sucked to not be able to find a table or good place to sit."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Goodness knows I would have been totally heartbroken had you not approved," Aulus replied with overplayed sincerity in his voice and a curved smirk on his lips. Yes, he was glad he'd come here tonight and he was damn sorry Sera wasn't a Rocket. Oh well, best he could hope for was that she didn't find out about him and he could continue with their vicious back and fore emails and evenings such as this.

"I guess I'm not all that picky really, though I generally like to be able to taste my alcohol," Aulus shrugged, and he supposed that really did sum up his tastes with some kind of vague quality control for 'does not taste like the arse end of a laboratory'.

"I might have had to menace people if there hadn't been a decent place to sit.... Though menacing is harder than it used to be. People don't take you seriously, right?" Pain in the ******** arse.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Oh I know you would've," she countered in a voice full of playful sarcasm, trying to keep amusement from her voice and expression but largely failing, "you're just so lucky I approved, huh? I just know it would've kept you up all night if I didn't."

Being able to taste it, huh? "Yeah, I agree with that, definitely. I do like it when it's subtle at times, but there's something to be said for taking a drink and having absolutely no question about there being alcohol in it," she said with a nod. "I like both, so long as one way or another I feel it hit me sooner or later. Preferably without having a hangover the next day," the brunette added a little ruefully as she stuck out her studded tongue a bit. No, hangovers were never fun.

"Mm, menace them, huh? You look like you're damn good at menacing people," she pointed out easily before she took another sip of her drink - then a second sip. "But ugh, don't even get me started about people not taking you seriously. At least if they don't take you seriously, you could still probably kick their asses pretty easily. If they don't take me seriously?" Her hand raised and she shrugged excessively, "Oh well for me, I just have to suck it up and take it. I can't exactly make anyone take me seriously if they don't want to."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Surely my heart would have broken, and I would have been forced into long exile in the wilderness seeking a way to regain your favour," Aulus replied dryly, quietly delighted at the in-person banter. It just wasn't the same over email.

"I find that a few glasses of water and preemptive paracetamol are good friends," he offered re: hangovers. Also if you felt sick before going to bed making sure you were sick and then drinking water after that, but he somehow felt that the above was too dysfunctional to mention to Sera. They were here for fun and snark, not discussion of his possibly slightly unhealthy drinking habits.

"I am pretty good at menacing, and I usually can," Aulus continued, putting the rest behind him. "For you though... what about your pokemon? I know it's not you per se but regardless, getting people to back the ******** down and mind their damn business is the aim and could be achieved, right?... Or I suppose you could get some kind of legal weapon to menace people with."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Alright, she couldn't do it - she attempted to counter but found herself giggling instead, unable to help herself. She did so enjoy sarcastic, witty banter. Once she regained her composure - or some of it, at the very least - she attempted (but largely failed, due to intermittent giggles) to appear serious. "The only way to regain my favor would've been for you to embark on a life-long quest through the wilderness, made more challenging because you'd have to get s**t in places you've been exiled from, and you wouldn't even know what it is you'd have to get, either, to add to the challenge." Or something like that. Whatever, that made enough sense.

"Oh water, of course," she agreed without hesitation, nodding her head as she spoke. "Food's good too, especially fattier stuff, but then it also makes you not feel the alcohol longer, and who wants that?" Certainly not someone who wanted to get drunk as fast as possible, but she figured that wasn't exactly good to say when they were here for social drinking.

Sera nodded at him, glad at least one of them could push others into taking them seriously somehow, even if that 'one of them' wasn't her. Maybe someday... "My pokemon?" She echoed, brows raising a little as she pondered it. "I never thought about that before, really... I've never been into the whole 'threaten someone with bodily harm if they disagree with me' thing." No, she'd been more into the 'threaten them with a legal battle if she could get her parents to sue the offender' category, not that such a thing had actually ended up happening ever. That never stopped her from trying, though, not that she would ever breathe a word of such embarrassing stories to anyone. "But... I think one of my dark-types would be happy to. My Absol maybe, or my Sneasel - my Zoroark would probably just wanna mess with them or something..." Trickster that he was. He could be good when he felt like it - he just usually didn't feel like it. "Legal weapons though... You mean like a gun or something? I dunno if I'd want to go that far..." Didn't Luke have a gun? She remembered hearing about him having one before, even though he had a perfectly good sword he could use. Plus, she wasn't sure how she felt about guns. A gun - or rather, the Rocket behind it - had hospitalized her once before, and she didn't think she could ever forget the experience.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Well bugger me with a cactus, I guess my quest is doomed to fail," Aulus said with a lazy grin. "That is of course unless I've got a video game-worthy inventory that I can shove everything from those places into, surely some of it would have to be right!

"Right though," the grin turned into a wry smirk and Aulus nodded, "not really conducive to the quest of get royally pissed." When you were drinking for the purpose of drinking then obviously you didn't want any hindrance, and if you were drinking enough to get badly hungover you were probably drinking to drink.

To the question of threats Aulus snorted and shrugged. "I was thinking, like, mace or something... as in the spray not a mace, though I suppose that would be fairly effective too. I suppose menacing people has always just come easily to me, I don't usually have to follow through on threats." It was easier to talk to Sera than most people; they seemed to have more in common than just the lack of a second hand, a similar enjoyment of banter and lack of patience with the world for a start.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Yep, it is doomed," she sighed with her brows raised over half-lidded eyes, and she nodded once. "You might get lucky though, one of them might be it. Maybe none of them would be it. ...or, y'know, you could try to ask for a hint," she finished with some amusement.

Royally pissed... Angry? Oh, no, he meant drunk. "See? Exactly. I never got that - if you're trying to get drunk, why eat s**t that'd prevent you from getting drunk?" The brunette shrugged excessively, "It doesn't make any sense."

Mace, like the spray? "Oh." Her glass raised so she could take another sip as well as try to hide the brief tint of pink on her cheeks. "Right, I knew that." Totally; of course she did. Of course she knew he meant more self-defense things than actual weapons weapons. What did that say about her, that she'd immediately thought of things to inflict grievous injuries to someone? Well, given what she and her friends had been through, it was probably understandable. "See, I'd have to follow through on mine because - going full circle here - they wouldn't take me seriously if I just spouted threats at them. It's stupid is what it is," the brunette finished a little heatedly. Everyone was stupid. ...well, almost everyone.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Asking for a hint is too sensible; I'm a white male protagonist, I just charge in waving my sword around," Aulus replied, now smirk-grinning again at the swift and frivolous exchange. It was fun, verbal fencing, and he didn't get to do it nearly often enough.

"And social pressure? The drinking I mean." Aulu shrugged. "I guess some people feel like they should show they're not trying to get drunk even when they are." Of course when he was drunk he usually fancied food like that - often meat, unfortunately - but drinking before a planned big night out seemed daft. Then again the last time he'd really been out drinking with intent had been a while ago, probably a couple of years or more really and.... Oh no, there had been that night with the weirdo who tried to wear his pokemon. Well other than that he hadn't been out drinking with intent in a long time, it was easier to get drunk on base rather than worry about getting back through security sloshed.

Anyway.

"You make a good point," Aulus agreed, taking a sip of his drink and then setting it back down with a satisfied sigh. "Still, it would serve the bastards right, right?" Damn right.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

His response made her giggle again, unable to help herself for a few moments before she managed to regain some semblance of composure. "Oh, oh right, I should've known. White male protagonists can do anything at all, they just need to stand around banging s**t with their sword for a while and eventually something will happen," Sera managed to say through some more giggling. It was a comical mental image, thinking of Kurt waving a sword around while yelling unintelligible noises and hitting stuff.

"Ah, yeah, that's a good point," she ceded with a slight frown, taking another sip of her fruity beverage because mmm, alcohol. "Still, that's kinda stupid anyway. I mean, if you want to get drunk, then just get drunk. They shouldn't pretend that they're trying to be all 'oh no, I'm too good to get drunk' when really that's what they wanna do. They should quit faking it and just get hammered if they want," she finished with a huff. People that pretended, or just fake people in general, really drove her up a wall. Not including herself, of course, when she pretended to everyone else that she was totally fine when she wasn't. That was totally different anyway.

"Right? Ugh, it's such a pain," he sighed as she leaned forward on the table a bit. A muffled clicking sound emanated from the inside of her mouth as she clicked her tongue piercing against her teeth thoughtfully. "I suppose I could just, I dunno - jump on them or something. Maybe smack them with my arm," she waved her short arm a little bit, "or pretend to slap them with my ghost hand or some s**t. Wouldn't that be weird for them? I bet some of them would get so uncomfortable."  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus grinned around his drink at Sera's giggle and then nodded. "That's pretty much the shape of it, though I believe bare fists are also acceptable. Well, I can half do that plural.

"Isn't it weird how people are so worried about fitting in with people, who are also only really worried about fitting in with people?..." Aulus trailed off there and drummed his fingers on the table. "I haven't drunk enough yet to express that train of thought properly, but you know what I mean?" People expected stuff to be expected of them so.... Yes, not enough alcohol yet to express it properly.

"And... Hummm." This was a train of thought he could follow, and as he did he started to grin. "Say, you've got a ghost type right? Why not ask it to float invisibly behind you and ghost slap them properly?"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Or," she started, shaking her glass at him a little - only a little, she didn't want to spill anything - a wry grin slowly spreading across her face, "or you just use some white male protagonist magic to attach the sword to your arm and then you can punch things and wave your sword around." That was alright, right? It seemed funny in her head, but now that she'd said it she hoped he didn't take it the wrong way or anything. She'd feel bad if he did.

"Hmm.. No, yeah, I know what you mean." Another nod, a pause, then another gesture with her drink, "Sounds like we'd both better drink more then, so we'll be able to better express ourselves." So saying, she took another sip of hers.

The suggestion of using Giselle made her pause, her brows knit together low over her eyes, and her glass slowly lower back to the table. One could almost see the gears in her head slowly turning as she thought about it. "I'll do you one better," she said at least, another wry grin on her face, "I've got a Zoroark. I'll bet I could teach him to time it right so I could swipe my arm at someone and he'd make them feel like they just got slapped by nothing." An actual slap would probably be much more convincing than Giselle waving her invisible, ethereal tendrils around in someone's face.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Ha!" Aulus snorted, and was glad he hadn't been drinking at the time. "I might be better off wit a lance, but hey, why not make them interchangeable? An attachment for every occasion." If somebody else had said it he might not have been pleased - unless he had initiated the joke between himself and Alex, Tam, or Claire - but Sera got a free pass and it was a pretty amusing mental image.

In response to the comment about more drinking he just nodded and did so before continuing with; "A Zoroark hu? Nice! I got a Zorua recently, she's still pretty green though. But yes, that sounds like a good plan, very good; get in some practice on a willing volunteer or a punchbag or something. It would probably be an internet sensation if you filmed it."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Ooh, that'd be awesome," Sera pointed out with another giggle. "Interchangeable sounds like it'd be sweet. You could even have other s**t too, like a.. like... Uhh... I can't think of anything else, so obviously that means I gotta drink more." With that said, she polished off the rest of her beverage and set the glass down. Mmm, alcohol... It always made fun meetings even more fun.

"Oh, nice," she said approvingly. Dark-types were her favorite, so she always approved of people getting them. "Mine's a total jerk, loves to play tricks on people, so I bet he'll be completely on board with it. Man that sounds like a lot of fun, I'm actually really excited to go home and try this out later." Jacques would love it too, she was sure.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Umbrella," Aulus suggested with a grin, "or secret drinks cabinet? For the purpose of drinking more." He drank again, getting near the end of the glass now but the first one usually went down quickly.

"You'll have to let me know how it goes, and sent the footage if you do get it on film." Would be a bit awkward for her to hold it and do the faux slapping but he was sure she had a friend who could do it, or that one of her pokemon could. A little bit of payback would be wonderful to see... for all the real good it would do though it may as well not happen. "Not that it will change anything really," he added aloud with a scowl and a snort. "There'll always be another stupid b*****d the next day."