RIGHT, NOW IT'S GOING TO EAT HER

The only person visible in the bar is a teenage girl with short dark hair and carefully even breath. She's wearing a threadbare t-shirt and antique jewellery. She has no obvious weapons, nor wounds. She has - not obviously - barely visibly - dried bloodstains.

The blonde girl stares, eyes narrow.

 - okay, so. It does not appear to be eating her more aggressively than it was before. Unless it's waiting for her shield to run down. Or it startled her to activate that and is now drinking the Mals eat mana not thinking about that. She was wrong about a lot of things not thinking about that.

Basira is also staring, wide-eyed.

(There is not a faint shimmer of a bubble visible around her, unless Zephyr believes in magic just because she walked into a magic bar.)

It takes her a minute to start moving again, breath still controlled except for one moment when vocals are suddenly introduced into the background music and she looks ready to find and kill the singer before realizing it's a recording.

Finally, she moves, slowly, looking casual enough, cool enough, as she checks the room for other people. (Still, her eyes keep flickering to Basira.) This wouldn't be a very effective mal check, probably, but it's a damn good check for people, despite her carefully maintained appearance of not caring too much.

And... it seems empty, so whatever this interlude is, she's the first one to make it here. She props the door up with a chair.

The bar seats, with their backs to the room, make her skin crawl.

"So, what's the deal here?" she asks the other girl, keeping a few steps away, but looking as friendly as she can manage without some serious brainwashing putting away the knives.

...oh no she's frosh. No, she's too old. Is she? Does she look psychic-mals-faked or late-15 frosh?

Basira watches the girl, give or take a music change. There's a flicker of something like pity in her eyes before she speaks.

"Figure it's a psychic class mal, they can cause hallucinations. This one is... pretty all-encompassing. It only got me a minute or two before you, if it's not messing with our time perception."

...that is a genre change and she's not even sure what to – weird fantasy? – but whatever, playing along right away seems more satisfying for the viewers and honestly, at this point, easier. Could even make a case for more dignified, maybe, if she (still?) knew what the fuck that word meant.

"What's the plan?" she asks flatly and then points to herself with one of the knives, only hesitating for a split second. "Zeph."

"Basira. I have spells for disrupting them, but all designed for before they swallow you," because at that point we're dead. She swallows. "Physical disruption breaks it sometimes, but physical contact is, uh, still bad."

"...well, I can't do magic, but I can stab things just fine." She throws and catches one of the knives. Sponsors better be going crazy about her incredible acting skill.

???? she's out of mana?

She was dead already, think about no.

"Don't lose contact with the knife, don't make skin contact with anything that might be a mouth." She turns towards the nearest inanimate objects, being a row of wreathed barstools at a solid, invitingly stabbable bar.

Birdsong would probably try to defend the goddamn furniture, pet the literal counter and tell it it's okay.

She has no such qualms. There's not much competence to be displayed at a single stab, but she does what she can, although without any flourishes.

Her knife lands in a suddenly-appeared napkin full of neatly hand-written text.

She glances back at Basira, as discreetly as she can manage.

She's close enough to see there is writing on the napkin. "Is that legible? Letters in the right order, stuff like that."

She looks closer without touching it. "Yeah. Welcome to Milliways! Assaulting the bar would normally be grounds for having you two removed by the security and returning you to your original worlds, but considering the nature thereof let's just make it a warning for now. Please refrain from further use of weapons. Thank you."

Zeph raises an eyebrow.

Basira steps close enough to check if it reads the same to her.

—which it does. Weird, maybe?

"Well, that's a polite threat. Does 'Milliways' mean anything to you?"

Just as she says "No", another napkin appears.

Milliways is the bar at the end of the universe, a refuge for weary travellers in their journeys. Our patrons may enter from many worlds of widely varying nature; most often they open a door and by chance find it leads here instead of to its ordinary destination. First drinks are free, as are all hot drinks during our current festive theme.

Basira alternates reading all of that with checking nothing has oozed out of a crevice lately.

She does not order a drink at this time.

...seriously, what is this genre supposed to be?

"Is this the kind of thing your magic monsters do?" she asks (and there isn't a hint of hope in her voice, Zephyr Earthwater doesn't hope, survivors don't hope).

She takes a while to answer the question.

"Our magic monsters aren't supposed to be smart enough to write. But they're also not supposed to either swallow you and leave you unharmed or rearrange architecture when a thousand wizard kids know how it should be. Or make things appear when you're looking right at them expecting nothing to be there.

"So. What about your world?"

"No monsters, no magic, no combination of the two." Well, there are some, but they probably have several cameras pointed at her right now. "A bit of a battle royale to the death going on, though."

Why does she believe Basira has magic. Does she. Is Zef real. What is a battle royale.

...was Zef also very sure—

"Can't recommend them. I was probably going to die too."

"Well, don't take that off your to-do list yet, I can't promise what happens once the rest of the- competitors find this place."

With something almost like a sad smile, she shrugs, turns back to the counter and—touches it briefly, and only when nothing bad seems to happen, leans against it.

"Can I have—do you have, like, healing potions or whatever?"

She's just... poking at the edges of the interlude out of curiosity. She doesn't actually assign non-zero probability to this being a magic bar. Just wants to know how much effort they put in.