[D3 EE] Scratch Two (Scratch bar)

[Jean Wellspeak]

Jean saw her playing with her hair, tossing her hair around, not entirely sure what she was doing, but attributed it to her sex. Women had done strange things in the 15th century, women had done strange things in hell, and women kept doing strange things in the 21st century. Simple man, Jean simply stuffed everything into bins and assumed everything to behave like his idea of the bin did. Her comment about women being chattel. Jean shook his head. "No, women were not property. Houses, cattle, serfs maybe. But not high-born women. I am afraid you are mistaken." He had lived there. No woman had complained to him about being possession and quite a few had caused a ruckus. Jean of Arc to name of of them. "Maid of Orleans led an army! She was touched by Virgin Mary herself!" Jean rushed to explain. "She was our hero." Fortunately, Jean had been hitched to Arcadia before Jean had been burnt on stake. "What's flirting anyway?" He had idea what courting was, but not knowing half of her question distracted him from the topic. "Most people I knew, knew whom they married. Small towns and such. Not very well, but that's what the marriage is for. Nobles and kings maybe. They never got asked who they are going to marry."

"Um... I think you are still acting high and mighty with all of your knowledge on the witchcraft and latin." he interjected, looking a bit upset. "All the explanations, none that make any sense to me." Well, some bits made sense, but for the most part it was a mumbo-jumbo of words and concepts he could not really grasp. "Iso-dopes and neutereds and whathaveyou. Will all this help when they day of judgement is upon us? I think not." Check-mate Jean would have thought, had he been able to play chess.

"How much is a million anyway?" he asked, trying to make sense of the numbers. "Hundred times hundred? Pretty sure the Englishmen had that many people besieging Orleans. More, even." Jean nodded, sounding entirely serious. "Ha, that saddens me. But the Holy Roman Emperors were always a devious lot, playing the English and French against each other." Or at least this was Jean's perception. "But I am grateful for the kingdoms of England and USA for saving my home."

"How. There were demons, there were flames, and there was anguish. And it went on and on and on." Jean argued. "If that is not hell, I don't know what is." He shook his head. "Why I am here, now? My faith in God redeemed me. See, I am unblemished unlike you lot. Imogen looks like a demon herself. You, you look more angelic but that is nothing but a blight on the soul, hell-touched as you are." Jean explained with a certainty that arose from having a small mind. "Who said hell had to be just fire? There was plenty of fire there too. And pain." There was a smidgen of sorrow in the knight's eyes as he stumbled on his words. "God would not suffer a place like that to exist unless it was to punish the wicked." When she touched him, he pulled back and gave her a strange look. So much for promises .

"Yeah, you say sorry and yet you keep doing it. Makes me to wonder if your heart is in your words, Tiffani. Well, even it is up in your head, it doesn't have to pass through your tongue, does it?" he huffed, thinking he was pointing out the obvious. "We are not in a church, nor school. You don't have to like me either. It's fine. God is with me and in Him I find Salvation. This time is wicked, wicked beyond Redemption. The Second Coming must be nigh."

[Tiffani Noelle]

Tiffani ignored Jean for a time. So it was going to be like that, was it? Now she just wanted to get drunk. Really drunk. Like that time she and her friends went to a party at Bedfordshire University. Those were some wild times, she thought, sighing as she compared then to now. At the party, she drank to have fun but ... now? She wanted to drink just to escape. And that was precisely what she was warning Jean about concerning drinking alone. A drinking companion was supposed to stop a person from drinking to excess - not drive them to it.

His reaction was out of all proportion to anything she had said - and she even apologized. But instead of taking it gracefully, he exacerbated the entire issue, blew it up to hyperbolic proportions, and took advantage of the situation to tell her how wonderful and great he was in comparison to her demon-touched self. To make matters worse, he actually sat there and continued to ask her questions and then got angry at her for telling him the answers. What the hell did he expect? That he was going to travel 500 or more years into the future and know everything once he got there?

It did prove one thing, however. That Newton's third law of motion was as applicable to life as it was to physics. She meets Marlowe, who was kind, selfless, and charitable beyond words - so it was inevitable that she would meet Marlowe's "equal and opposite reaction" - Jean.

"I'd like four vodka shots, please," she told the bartender. "Just line them right up if you wouldn't mind." She waited until all four shots where sitting there in front of her before addressing Jean.

"You wanted to know how many a million was," she began in a somewhat flat, almost emotionless tone. "Well, a million is how many things you got wrong with the things you just said." Yeah, she knew she was being facetious, and she figured Jean would take it literally. But she just didn't care.

"It would take me all day and more shots than I could afford to refute them all. But I'll just say this: How nice of you to contradict your own Bible so you could justify your bigotry and pretend you're somehow better than me. And not just me - but all of us Lost. Imogen, Marlowe ... everyone. Oh look at you, so awesome and righteous all because your Keeper didn't change your physical appearance as much as some others. That's ... actually racist in its own way - which makes it all the more important that you learn what the Holocaust was all about."

Gulp. Down goes the first shot.

Gulp. Down goes the second with a little jerk of her head, the little bells in her earrings tinkling soothingly.

"Oh, and just for the record, this time is a far better time to live in than yours, so spare me the nonsense of how wicked we are. After all, we don't burn teenage girls at the stake anymore like your precious Jeanne d'Arc. Now, religion is a personal choice, not a mandate enforced by the state. It's no coincidence that the Dark Ages were presided over by religion and the clergy - and once we climbed out of that cesspool of darkness and superstition, humanity began to make progress again."

Gulp ... and gulp. The final two shots were downed.

"Your lack of knowledge of your own religion is mind-boggling, Jean," Tiffani said in a voice that was almost ... sad? Melancholy? "I doubt that will help you very much on judgment day."

She fishes out a pack of cigarettes from her bag, pulls one out, and lights it. She almost never smoked. Sometimes one pack could last her months - providing they didn't go stale first.

"It was probably a mistake to even approach you. I thought you were one of us. You're not."

[Alan Reeder]

"Put that shit out," the bartender interjected as Tiffani lit the cigarette. A quick glance around would show that there were no ashtrays anywhere in the bar.

[Tiffani Noelle]

"It's a damn bar," Tiffani growled, having absolutely no idea how fascist smoking laws had become since 1985. In her day, if a bar wasn't filled with smoke, it was probably closed. Well, she wasn't going to waste a cigarette she just lit so she pinches off the cherry and shoves it angrily back into her pack. "What's next? A bar where you can't drink?"

Looks like the government didn't learn its lesson from Prohibition, she thought, and ordered another couple of vodkas just out of spite.

[Alan Reeder]

Alan crossed his arms and glared at Tiffani. He'd lost his mother to lung cancer and was unimpressed by the girl's attitude. Besides that, she was starting to look like the wrong end of tipsy, and he didn't feel like dealing with sloppy customers on a Thursday. "You can have your drinks just as soon as you pay for the ones you've had." She'd already had a number of Alabama Slammers, plus the four shots of vodka, the cost was adding up.


You don't have much money, and drinks are expensive, especially cocktails. How do you intend to pay?

[Tiffani Noelle]

As if Tiffani knew anything about this bartender's past or who died or for what reason - it was a bar. Not only that, but she was tired - I mean really tired - of the world dogpiling her. It was as if this bartender decided to give her grief right on cue after getting belittled by Jean because somehow Jean managed to escape Arcadia with almost no physical changes. Gee, bully for him.

All she wanted was a few drinks and a little company and conversation - and instead - yeah. So she lit up a cigarette without realizing you can't smoke in bars anymore.

"Here's an idea," she told the bartender in a thickly coated honey voice, "Next time someone lights up in here - which was an honest mistake, by the way - try saying something like, 'I'm sorry, but there's no smoking in here' or 'could you please put out your cigarette?' And I would have happily complied. But when I get told 'put that shit out' well - what kind of reaction do you expect?"

She counted out a bit more of the money she had - realizing now that Marlowe was her best bet to get to Texas - and tossed it on the bar. "Forget the vodka. I'll go somewhere where paying customers are treated as such - and not like pond scum. Cheers - to the both of you."

With that, she breezes out of the bar figuring she has had enough "small town charm" to last her a lifetime or two.

[Alan Reeder]

Alan chuckled to himself, shaking his head softly as he picked up the cash and counted it before putting it in the register. He knew that Jeremy charged more than he did, drinks were a great way to cover restaurant overheads. He imagined the girl trying to explain to old biker how to make an Alabama Slammer, and laughed again, softly. He cracked open another beer for a regular sitting at the bar, and began to wipe down the counter. He'd have offered Jean a sympathetic look, seemed like the young man dodged a bullet there, but it didn't look like the man was in much mood for idle conversation.

[Jean Wellspeak]

Jean watched the exchange with confusion. Tobacco had not been a thing when he had last walked the earth. Yet he knew he didn't like the smell much. He thought Tiffani had paid for her drinks, but figured that the barkeep knew better. When the girl stormed away, Jean offered him an apologetic shrug, taking out his walled and laying it down next to his drink. Just to avoid any misunderstandings.