A Dish Out Of Water

The rush hour of dinnertime is a few hours in the future. What one sees now is the trickle of the very first customers of the day. It is a very well known trope that Adventurers are attracted to taverns like moths are attracted to the fire, or like Spriggans are attracted to Darkness (or so some Lander rumors go). Does that make Spriggans reverse-moths?

These are the biggest mysteries our trapped heroes are left to ponder. The thing of what happened to them during the Apocalypse has to take the backseat.

Speaking of Spriggans -- one of the very very few customers, probably the most prominent at the moment, is a Spriggan nurse sitting at a table. She has already been served, a bowl of rice, meat, and other Adventurer-appropriate treats laid in front of her, along with a jug of water. She is quietly staring ahead of herself as she eats, cheek propped up with one hand, lost in thought.

    Naniko enters, lowering her woven poncho's hood to look around. Few people. The nearly-human-looking Undine rubs a hand over her short hair--shorter even than a pixie cut. She moves to the person who looks like they've eaten the least of their meal and raises a hand. "Excuse me," she says to Uta. "Are you busy?"

    Fur is a mixed blessing in the desert. A tigress were-fang pads in in desert clothing meant to protect from sand and sun, looks thoughtful for a moment, and then brings up the menu to switch equipment around a bit. Flowy, covering clothes swap to the opposite, the 'leather pants' and 'leather shirt' that are anything but what their names describe. ...Nope, too far. Ears reddening a bit, she cycles through her pirate and ninja outfits and the harem girl outfit Gwen gave before just landing on her normal town clothes, then de-equipping the jacket leaving the T-shirt to bare striped arms and sighing in relief. She really needs a better selection of clothing... how did she never notice how limited what she had was, before?

    Anyway, she orders some sweet iced tea and something like ramen with meat in it, and, seeing a couple of familiar faces, heads over that way. "Hi, Uta!" She smiles, then looks more concernedly at Naniko. "Hi Naniko. How are you doing?"

The Spriggan turns to Naniko. "Hm? What?" She asks, yanked back from her thoughts to, once again, be grounded in physical reality, or, depending on the circumstances, what passes for physical reality. "Oh. No, no, I am not. Is there anything I may do for you?", she asks.

That is when a tigress comes in and goes through a selection of her wardrobe (or all of it? Hard to tell without knowing for sure). "Oh, hey, Mizuki! Glad to see you!", she beams, tilting her head sideways to briefly look past the Undine.

    Naniko turns to look back at Mizuki. Her lips tighten and she huffs slightly before realizing, "Oh, Mizuki. It's been a while, hasn't it?" She turns to look at Uta and says, "I was going to ask if I might join you, but if you know Mizuki, perhaps we might all sit down for something."

"Sure!", Uta beams in response to Naniko. She gestures at the free seats at the table, "I like those things. Both 'all sitting down' and 'something'." After a short pause to catch up with her own thoughts, she continues, "So you know Mizuki? Cool," she smiles, while she picks up another bit of meat with her chopsticks, and places it into her mouth, followed by some rice.

    Mizuki is already sitting down at the same table. "Glad to see you too! Man, I just noticed... it seems like I don't have a lot of clothes... And maybe I should do something with this hair..." After setting down her food, she tries to run a hand through her hair but her fingers just get caught in tangles before she pulls them free. "Wait, how much clothes do people normally have? I mostly just see you in the martial arts nurse outfit..." Mizuki looks to Naniko and up and down her low-contrast dazzle-camo-pattern clothing. "......You don't wear anything else, do you..." She furrows her brow in thought.

    "W-well, how have you two been? This business with the Palace Landers taking away peoples' wills is really concerning... It's scary, but I guess threats like this are the price we pay for living out a fantasy..."

    Naniko looks at her poncho and cloth bracers covering who-knows-what. "There are certain items of outer-wear I am rather attached to," she says. She stands a little taller and says, "Doesn't mean I don't wash it or change what I wear under it, though."

    Mizuki takes a long look at Naniko while chewing her food. She doesn't notice that the question and answer perhaps missed the point.

    "...So how's it going? Trying to figure out... who you are here? Haven't seen you in awhile..."