Off to the bar

[burnburnburn]

Who: Dilandau Albatou, Ellen Harville
Where: The bar
When: Evening of 93
Why: Foreign measurements are hard to grasp. Thankfully, Ellen has the tools


Normally, Dilandau would never have entertained the idea of swapping blood with a vampire. It sounded like a messy, nauseous and dangerous proposition. However, given the conditions they were living in, he felt far too vulnerable to remain too injured to even hunt for nearly another Moon. Better to take a risk at getting better than to endure the certainty of a slow healing.

However, Mina had asked for the payment in pints. He'd seen pint glasses in the bar, so knew it was a volume measurement, but he had only the faintest grasp on how large they actually were. This was one of the things he hated about living among all these otherworldly demons, their insistence on using senseless measurements for length and weight and time (seriously, feet? Or worse, minutes? Miets were a far easier to estimate than that stupid unit).

He'd talked her into considering taking her payment in instalments, at least until he knew for sure how much he was meant to provide, It seemed smart to him to know exactly what he was giving. True smartness would have been asking if that was the full price of her offer, but he was too intent on being healed.

And that was why he made a beeline for the bar as soon as he headed through the doors, intent on 'borrowing' a few glasses.

Comments

[burnburnburn]

He abandons his glasses and stalks past her, turning so that he's not got his back to her. He keeps her in the corner of his sight as he checks the bottles, only breaking contact when he spots the bottle he's after.

He grabs it and sloshes it, grinning with relief when he realises that nothing's missing. He tucks it under his arm and backs out of the enclosed space, back to where he was before.

"Are you going to meddle around and move it if I put it back there?" He points to his hiding spot.

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen snorts. "No bottles beneath the bar." Unless they're her personal stock, but she's not going to tell him that. She will, however, be anal about where alcohol is kept.

She heads over to a corner and moves a few other bottles, these empty. They're going to hold the dandelion wine, once it's made.

"Put it here. I'll leave it alone." She nods to the spot. "There's better wine back there, why that one?"

[burnburnburn]

He finally moves his hand away from his swordhilt as he takes her offer and places it where she shows. There's no thanks, though his expression softens out of his glare.

"Because I don't want wine, I want vino. This is the sweetest wine I found, though it's nothing like how vino ought to be. It's meant to be stronger and sweeter, richer on the tongue."

Frankly, he's glad she's got a place he can reserve his bottle. Drinking it without anyone around would mean the only thing he'd focus on would be on how far it falls short of what he's used to back home.

"How did you know I was fetching the glasses for vampire?"

[justrunsasaloon]

She frowns. She might be able to make a brandy that's sweet, but really, sweet alcohol isn't her forte. Most of the people she knows or knew drink beer and whiskey. Sweet's for the froufrous.

Ellen snorts. "Pint glasses. She's got to get her feed from somewhere. You're injured. Doesn't take a genius to put it all together." She taps her wrist. "And, if you experiment a little, you can see other people replying to things. She said she could heal you. Sounds like a deal to me."

She normally isn't one to judge, but she's not sure this is a good idea.

[burnburnburn]

"You don't approve." It's obvious enough, from the way she's acting. He leans against the bar.

"Have you got a better way I can get healed quickly?" It's not a challenging question, but a probing one. She's been useful so far. Perhaps she'll be useful again.

[justrunsasaloon]

"Vampire. I'm a hunter. I've killed my fair share." She walks back through to the main part of the bar. She turns on the water and starts cleaning glasses.

"You can ask the feather brigade, but they'll probably say no." She hadn't expected Raphael to heal Jo. But he had. "Other than that, nope. But then I don't mind healing naturally."

[burnburnburn]

That doesn't surprise him. She comes across as a veteran sergeant (most sergeants, of course, would know not to get on the wrong side of the rising star Albatou, no matter how long they'd been serving when he was just still a twinkle in his father's eye. It's one of the many things that make Kore a hell hole)

"You might not mind, but I'm sick of being useless. I want to hunt my own meals for a change."

He scowls at the humiliation of being dependant on others for a moment before turning to the new piece of information.

"Who are the feather brigade?"

[justrunsasaloon]

She snorts. The glasses are set to dry on a towel near the sink. She's swift and efficient in her movements. This is something she's done hundreds of times before.

"The angels. Raphael, Cas, and their group." She's still a little bit bitter about that dream with Raphael.

She finishes up the glasses, grabbing another towel and drying them off. "And it's better to heal naturally than to owe your soul, or other things, to someone who'd probably eat you alive, literally." Ellen doesn't believe everything is evil, but vampires aren't exactly high on her list of trustworthy allies.

[burnburnburn]

"Them?!" He jerks, as if expecting a lightning bolt to crash through the ceiling at the mere mention of Raphael's name.

"They let you speak that way about them?"

That's actually the most surprising part. His encounters with the angels have left him with the impression they barely tolerate humanity. Either Ellen's ignorant, arrogant, or favoured somehow.

The least perturbing answer is that she's not offensive enough to warrant their attention, so her little slips don't matter. Still, it's not wise to attract their attention.

"No, I don't want gods involved any more in my affairs. But tell me how you kill a vampire, just in case she attempts to renege on her end of the bargain."

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen leans back against the bar and crosses her arms over her chest. "They sure as hell can't stop me. What are they going to do? Send me to hell?" She shrugs. "Kill me? Won't be the first time." She is dead back home and she knows it. "Cas is family, anyway. The rest can deal with it."

She likes Balthazar, but he's not family.

"Chop her head off." Ellen is blunt and to the point. "Dead man's blood is poison to the ones where I'm from, but we don't have any of that around. Best just to decapitate them and be done with it." She knows how to kill all sorts of supernatural beings.

[burnburnburn]

"That's it?" That answer relaxes him; he was afraid he'd have to get the chalk out and draw seals similar to the ones covering her bar. "I'll bring my sword. She wouldn't be the first person I've decapitated by far."

He gives her a very sour look for her blasé approach to the angels.

"Your family member's the reason I have to get help in the first place. Interfering, bastard god."

[justrunsasaloon]

Ellen stiffens. "Cas is many things, but he's family, so watch your mouth, boy." She cautions him. There are times when she doesn't agree with him; others when she wants to yell at him about everything that happened. But family is family, warts and all. He'd stood with them against Lucifer - an archangel and that counted for something.

Plus, he stuck by the boys when she was gone. She'd defend Cas.

"Thing you gotta know about the angels is you can mouth off, but don't stand in their way unless you're willing to take the blows." Something she knows about intimately. "You don't want hurt, then get the hell out of the way."

[burnburnburn]

The cautioning only results in a bristling glare at the fact she dares look down upon him. It's been years since he's had to establish that he deserves respect for his talents despite his age.

"I'm not a boy, old woman, and if you want to keep a conversation polite you won't call me that again. And if you don't want your family insulted, keep then in rein."

He'd been avoiding thinking about the angels or interacting with them. They weren't the only thing in this situation making him helpless by a long shot, but their immediacy and power angers him with how little he can fight against it.

"So we're supposed to kowtow when they decide they want to have their own way?" He mutters. The fact that he would have to Castiel, if he'd not been in front of an audience and it he not had Balthazar's tentative support, is galling for his pride. "You wouldn't see Jeture trapped somewhere like this."

[justrunsasaloon]

"Boy, you're younger than my daughter." Ellen shakes her head. "Meaning I'm old enough to be your mother, and then some." She really doesn't want to think about it, but respect your elders boy.

She laughs at his telling her to keep them in line. "I may know a lot of things about angels, demons and the things that go bump in the night, but I didn't survive this long by ordering around people I had no right to." And anyone who stepped into her bar obeyed her rules or found themselves facing her .357.

She shrugs. "There are ways to trap an angel."

[burnburnburn]

So that's the way she wants to play it? He makes a mental note to exchange 'Ellen' for 'old woman' completely until he found a better name for her.

But once again, she found a way to completely throw him off guard. That's information he needs immediately and he makes not effort to hide his eagerness.

"How?!"

[justrunsasaloon]

She raises her eyebrows at him. Then, she looks at the chalk designs around her bar, before looking back at him. "There are ways. None here, unfortunately." She would gladly keep Raphael away from her - despite what he did for Jo.

Ellen sighs. "If you want to keep them away from you, don't get in their way. I made that mistake and got dead." She knows it. Her and Jo. That explosion hadn't just killed the hellhounds.

"Other than that, there's nothing here that will keep them away. Not as far as I know." She knows some sigils, but not well enough to reproduce them, and here she's not going to do it. That just would add fuel to the fire, and it isn't worth it. "And if the folks holding us captive have it? They better hope it never runs out. Angels don't take kindly to being trapped."