Re: Vendors on Main: Open
Mal had not gone to the party looking for Pirate Kings, or Pirate Queens, or pirates of any stripe, really. He had come looking for an excuse to separate himself from his rig after spending far too much time in front of it over the past few days. Connecting for too long had a tendency to blur the needs of the world his body belonged to. He came back to himself hungry, thirsty, and overstimulated. Lack of progress on his hunt didn't help.
He really was trying to abide by the research that had stated so repeatedly and resoundingly that periods allowed for human beings to execute their most effective work. As there was also no way of knowing whether extended exposure to a psychoneural connection with a computer would just burn his brain to a puddle of mush over time, going to a party and taking a break felt like a good call. He didn't dress up for the occasion, just threw on a comfortable blue sweatshirt with a hole in one elbow. The party was delightful overstimulation of a very different kind - sound and color, blaring TVs, the smell of food cooking somewhere. A friendly passer-by had handed him a very weak, very American beer in a blue can, and he sipped it without really thinking.
Something strange was happening in town. He wasn't oblivious to it, but he also wanted to observe it firsthand, another reason to come to the party. The panoply of costumes on passers-by didn't escape his notice. This wasn't a costume party, was it?
Anyway, he was very much in his own head - about the untied threads of his continuing hunt, of trying to remember whether he'd fully secured the workshop before leaving, of whether he should dump the beer, which really wasn't any good - when a stranger grabbed his shoulder and spilled something pungent on his front, something that smelled sort of like...sherry? Now that was unusual.
"Oh -" he exclaimed, briefly, pulling back slightly, looking up, coming face to face with a beautiful pirate. "Oh. I'm sorry?" Surely this was his fault? Or maybe not. He weakly brushed the liquid that had yet to sink into his close onto the ground in a shower of droplets.