It's like paradise, spread out with a butter knife :: [OPEN]

[bonhomme7h.livejournal.com]

Who: EVERYONE
What: Réjean has decided that more people ought to celebrate and help raise a bit of dosh for one of his favourite bars. See: flyer.
Where: The Apache.
When: Misdi night and into the wee hours of the morning.
Warnings: Discussion of Pickman's manky feet.

The Apache is much the same as it always is: dimly lit, with the jukebox playing in the background, and the bartender serving whatever's on tap. Tonight, the bar is packed with people from all across the city, different cantons and cohorts, all out to celebrate surviving the fungal plague. Patrons are encouraged to buy tickets for a door prize with the proceeds going to repair the damage tunnelling ants made to the cellar.

Comments

[hehaseatenthepancake]

Hellboy had noticed Tosh approaching his general vicinity, but had busied himself with drinking his soda in case she decided to change her mind. When she finally decides to talk to him, he gulps down the last of it and settles the glass down on the bar.

"Hi. Yeah, sure." He chuckles at her request, then raises his big stone Right Hand up and waves it to call over the bartender. "Hey!"

That duty done, he turns back to Tosh and offers his left hand while the bartender comes over to take their orders. "I'm Hellboy, by the way."

[warped-inside.livejournal.com]

Now Tosh has put herself in it -- she's dealt with enough aliens to know that it's never a good idea to ignore the social conventions they're expecting. Well, hopefully he's the friendly sort and won't just crush her hand into tiny bits.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Toshiko." She takes the offered hand and shakes it, feeling very small. "That's...sort of an unusual name. Where I'm from, anyway. I suppose it's probably perfectly ordinary where you're from. That wasn't very diplomatic, sorry."

[hehaseatenthepancake]

"Nice to meet you." Hellboy's handshake, while firm, is nowhere near crushing. What she says next makes him laugh, though. "'Where I'm from.' That's... hang on a second."

The bartender rolls up, and Hellboy briefly looks away from Tosh to tell him, "Another soda for me, and whatever the lady's having."

Once Tosh gives her order and the bartender goes to fill them, Hellboy smiles his mildly grotesque smile again and continues, "Actually, 'where I'm from' is kind of complicated. The name suggests one place, but to me, life began in England and moved to a military base in New Mexico. Either way, it's not a normal name, but my adoptive father was startled by how I showed up."

((Knew I was forgetting something the first time.))

[warped-inside.livejournal.com]

"Probably about time for me to switch to soda myself," Tosh replies, with a quick smile for the bartender before turning her attention back to Hellboy. It's hard to continue feeling nervous in light of the easy conversation.

"Well I was born in England too, though I imagine my parents were a bit less startled by that event. Do you mean Area 52?" Tosh can see why someone who looks like him would end up in at a secret government base.

[hehaseatenthepancake]

Mmmmm, soda.

"It wasn't so much being born as..." He deliberates a moment before deciding that it's a bit late not to say anything; besides, as he once told someone, It's just my life. "...appearing in a fireball in a burned-out old church." Hellboy refuses to use the word summoned.

He shakes his head. "Roswell Army Air Field. Well, until '47, anyway. Then the Army needed the space, so the Bureau finally got its own headquarters in Connecticut." He points to the patch on one of his coat sleeves. "Uh, that's Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Kind of like what Hellsing does here."

[warped-inside.livejournal.com]

That kind of fits with the whole 'Hellboy', giant red guy thing going on, and Tosh nods. "That way you always win the 'funny story about when I was born' contest though, right?"

Ah, now that's interesting. Tosh has kind of special curiosity about people from earlier decades. Particularly ones she's experienced for herself, however briefly. "Your Bureau sounds like our Torchwood, only were more interested in aliens than the paranormal. Actually most things people paint as being paranormal where I come from are really aliens."

[hehaseatenthepancake]

Hellboy laughs at the idea of such a contest, then gives a so-so gesture with his Right Hand. "Eh. Back in the day, I worked with an amnesiac merman, a pyrokinetic, and a homunculus. My story is only so interesting in comparison."

Toshiko's description of Torchwood causes him to perk up a bit, realizing that she's a colleague of sorts. "Huh. How about that. We mostly had actual supernatural stuff -- vampires, werewolves, freaking Nazis who can't stop messing with forces from beyond." That last is a bit of a thing for him, and he takes a breath to calm himself down. "That said, there was that one case in '85, that started with satanist kids and missing cows and ended up in an alien ship and... actually, that's really about as much as I want to say about that one."