Another Night at the IR

Hifumi is cooking at the bar as he so often is. The music is playing and people are chatting. Unlike usual there is another man in a blue shirt behind the bar along with the bartender. Hifumi is actually hands off not doing the cooking himself more watching judging and occasionaly repremanding the man working the eel on the grill.

Gwen has been meaning to get out and resupply on instant noodles from one Hifumi. She also at some point wishes to improve her cooking skill too. She also needed noodles, she needed more noodles, so many noodles.

She would come in, in good she was clad in her Nei costume today too.

"Master Hifumi! Hello!"

    Hifumi looks up from his student to turn and bow "Greeting Gwen, how are you? Come sit tell me if this fool has managed to make eel that is edible." he says with some disparagement in his tone. The guy working the grill grins sheepishly but doesn't argue.

Gwen says "I'll be happy too but eel was more likely to be used as bait honestly." She smirks a bit and will move to sit down. "Still I'd love to see how your skills are progressing. You have one heck of a teacher."

The towering woman would sit down with a grin on her face.

    Hifumi snorts at the indirect praise and nods to the man who puts on a last coat of the eel sauce on the grilling eel. He himself sets a small bowl of shreded dark greens that looks somewhat like seaweed. A sour pickled smell comes from the bowl along with warm nutty sesame scents and there look to be very thin slivers of nut mixed into the salad. The new cook places down three skewers of eel covered in the sweet savory sauce, the fat practically melting fromt he eel onto the plate.

    Hifumi smiles at Jazuhanzu and lifts a hand in greeting. "Come join in tasting my newest student's graduation assigment." he says with a wide smile.

Gwen will look down at the food with inrest as the eel is being cooked. She takes a sniff she likes what she spells, she'll even do a proper inspect before she'll start to eat the first of the eel.

"Looking pretty good so far here, oh I need a load of instant noodless before I leave." She seeming to like the eel so far!

    Hifumi nods "Well, much like some others have opened schools... training one cook at a time is taking too long, but I've got enough who are barely adequate like this one." he says pointing his thumb at the new cook who looks very pleased at hearing it. "So I'm getting a cooking school started, maybe I can get some more of the adventurers capable of feeding themselves on something other than noodles." he says with a smile. "And teach more Landers proper Niponese style dishes."

Is that JAZZ?! What's she doing here. Actually, it's a good question. She's rarely stepped foot in this place. Gwen is located quickly by her scanning of the room. And she's going *towards* Gwen. Seems Gwen is her actual destination! She's got head slightly down on the way over, clearly uncomfortable here for whatever reason.

Gwen looks to the young cook and grinds. "You got a hell of a teacher and if he didn't think you were worth it? He'd not have taken to teaching you. I'm just redneck back woods cook when you get down to it." She's clearly enjoying the meal still. She looks over to Jaz and pauses for a moment. "Hello, Jaz never expected to see you here."

    Hifumi smiles a little when the cook isn't looking. He's a pretty harsh teacher but he just teaches the way he was taught, from the ground up and with faint praise. "Glad you like it, for being a taste tester feel free to ask the old man for whatever youw ant to drink, on the house."

"Yeah, well. I was looking for you. I want to hire you for something."

WAIT WHAT?! Jazz wants to hire *Gwen*? What is this? Has the world spiralled into madness?

"...to provide a new uniform for some sailors that'll be working on a project back in Shibuya." HEr tentacles twitch a little. She glances towards Hifumi. Gives him a curteous and appropriate bow.

Gwen says "I'll take a cup of the best you have then!" She looks to Jaz for a moment "Humm now this is something I didn't expect bnut i can do that. I presume practical over flashy then?"

    Hifumi nods and the old wolf gets out the best the Golden Lush dominion sells. While Hifumi relaxes and gets his news apprentcie working again.

"Practical," is Jazz's reply to Gwen, but then Gwen is having to step out. "WE'll talk about it later," she replies, shaking her head. Hair is flipped over her shoulder with a sigh. It's long, and to be honest, she kind of clearly finds it annoying. Tentacles wiggle freely hangingo over her shoulders and she flicks *them* back too with annoyance.

"Garçon?", calls out a tall gentleman in a jacket and top hat, as the latter is removed and its rim held between his hand and elbow. "Seats for one." He looks around. "If the place is too booked, I am willling to share a seat."

A few confident strides later, he's standing right next to a certain Undine. "Oh, that's... miss Jazuhanzu, if I am not mistaken?", he offers, with a snap of his hand as he recalls the name. "Gorge of Death. Poisonous monsters. Great times. How is life treating you these days?"

"Hm? What?" Jazz's bangs have fallen down in front of her head. The sudden call to her causes her to whip her head up and look over there, giving her a classically anime-touseled look for a moment in which her amber eyes are staring at the tall gentleman through a shroud of purple hair.

"Oh. Right. You.. I ... thin kwe met once." A sow blink of her eyes. "Yes, right. That. That was ... not terribly fun. Typically, I'm the most toxic thing in a given room." Her tone is dry.

Shenmi lets out a restrained ho-ho-ho laughter, the kind one would expect from a posh Santa. "Picking up alchemy? Summoning venomous monsters?", he asks, rubbing his chin. He darts a glance sideways, notices a couple free seats, and resumes, "I cannot help but notice that the tone of your voice is a little dry. May I offer you a drink to hopefully help with hydration? Hydration is essential, especially for Undines." With a smile, he steps back, and sweeps his arm towards two seats at the counter, with a flourish. "It's on me. I've been on other people's tabs for about a month now, it's only fair that I treat someone else for a change. Pay it forward."

'Ho ho ho'.

Jazz mouths it in response after he did it. She wants to facepalm, even if she doesn't quite do it. "Sure, dad," she mutters, darkly.

"YEah, okay. I'll have a drink or two." She drops into a seat threafter. Might as well enjoy a drink while she's here. She's going to be on the road soon enough again.

A waiter is flagged down, and Shenmi places his order. With a chuckle, he adds, "I apologize if I sounded condescending. It was just an attempt at some small talk, is all." Or possibly smol talk, given it's Jazz. But, thankfully, that's not what he says. "It is understandable that the predicament we Adventurers collectively find ourselves thrust into may not be the most copacetic. Conductive to jubilation, it is not," he chuckles at Jazz's dryness. There is a little moment of silence as he drums his fingers on the table, and then, with a nod of his head, he continues, "But I am probably being tedious with these platitudes. Please feel free to steer the conversation towards subjects that you feel would be more, as the idiom goes, your cup of tea."

Stare.

Unblinking eyes on Shenmi for a long moment as he speaks so. She stares for a long moment when he's done, before she sinks back into her seat. "Dad jokes," she lets out a sigh, slowly, and then has aher tea. A sip of tea seems to make her feel much better, really, than anything else might right now. It's even good tea.

"You know," she finally says, "I was never much of a tea-drinker back home. These days, I find it a little more comforting than I did. I don't know why,."

"One cannot deny that tea fits the overall aesthetic of this whole chic show," Shenmi comments with another sweep of his arm, this time to gesture at the world all around. "Legendary times of Yore. Tea is thematic. No matter how much we cling to our upbringing, we've effectively moved to a foreign country. And no mattter what, when in Rome, you cannot help but pick up some of the habits of the locals." He cranes his neck, and mimes distractedly glancing in the general direction of the Palace Lands. "In Kallamore they even have a fighting Arena..."

A glass of beer is placed in front of him, and he picks it up by the rim, holding it there for a moment. "Things change, and we change with them. We cannot pretend that we are just strutting into a new world without expecting that the world will strut a little into us. Staring into the Abyss and all that. Action and Reaction."

He chuckles and leans back. "Unless some lady somewhere is keeping some pretty important bit of information secret from me, I would say that I am rather unqualified for dad jokes."

"One can make a dad joke without being a dad. It's a genre, not a statement."

Jazz shrugs her shoulders, nodding along with the rest of what he had to say, though, before continuing, "We'll evolve. The question is in to what and what will it do to us when we get out? If we get out?" She spreads her hands to either side of her, then adds, "It's not that, though. Not with the tea." She looks down, running a finger along the rim of her cup.

"No, it's that it connects me *with* back home in a way that I didn't connect with while I was there."

Shenmi sets down his glass with a quiet 'thunk' of glass on wood after taking a sip. "I'm optimistic." he states over a focused stare in the middle distance. "Scale Emblem seems to know what they're doing, and we're making progress." His stare ahead veers briefly into a sideway glance to Jazz. "And I prefer not to think how it will change us. As you are certainly aware of, you guys in Yamato had it easier. We had people being mind-warped, drained of memories, even killed to the point of believing themselves Landers or even not respawning anymore."

He doesn't load those words with accusation, they sound more like a tactful reminder dropped just in case, to someone who does not really need it.

Big swig. Louder thunk of glass on wood. Exhale. "I am confident. We will get out."

He finally turns to face Jazz, and resumes his polite smile. "So, that is interesting. How does something new to here and not really a thing back home... connect you with back home specifically?"

"Through the people I remember," is the reply from Jazz, though there is some scoffing as Shenmi elaborates before hand, if only because she did not, in fact, need to hear it. The troubled look, however, at people no longer respawning did linger. She does not add anything else for a moment, instead choosing to study the tea.