♤ THAT ONE PIZZA PARTY THING

[deal_me_in]

(This here's a very free-form, very belated follow-up to the impromptu pizza party that Tony Cayde apparently planned, just for continuity's sake and if anyone was really angling for some pizza times.

So! Feel free to handwave, or if you want to thread anything out, here's a place for it to be back-threaded to your heart's content, as well as if you want some lighter fare alongside your slice of scary, event-wise.)

[Two hours- probably less by now- wasn't much time to make pizzas even if he knew how, that much, Cayde-6 was certain of. He already has a good idea of who's put him up to the task, although if there's any particular reason for it, he hasn't the slightest. It's just one of those dumb friend things, right? Put your pal on the spot by telling everyone they're hosting a pizza party. Sure!

With comms compromised, Cayde relied on his good ol' Hunter skills to track down Billy, an even better friend to have when one of your besties pulls something like this.

"Hey, can you do me a solid and magic up a crapload of pizzas cuz some idiot thinks he's having a hoot trying to tarnish my good name. Thanks, I owe you buddy."

...WHICH IS HOW those who have been drawn to The Deep End, either by false promises of pizza or curiosity or even doubt will come to find an amazing array of pizzas stacked along the counter with a kaleidoscope of dishware stacked off to the side for some self-service.

Grab a slice or three, take a seat, take in the fish, hey! Even ask for a drink. This here's a bar you know!]

Comments

[fatedsacrifice]

"No." Noctis replied. He really had never served anyone drinks like that and if he really thought about it, the most he would've served someone is a bottle of water or something like that. But he didn't let that get to him as he listened to Cayde. And then he looked around. "So..you made it?"

Somehow he understood the connection that Cayde was making between the diner and the bar, but he shook his head. "People can be alone at the bar?" In his mind people needed company if they went somewhere public like a bar. But then he got asked about his refill so he nodded. "Ya sure..if you don't mind."

[deal_me_in]

Cayde brightened, giving an enthusiastic nod. "Yeah! I mean- the building was like this when I got here with the water out the window and all, but I brought all the furniture in and put all the wood here and there," he said, gesturing loosely around.

He scooped up Noctis's mug and swept up a bottle from the shelf behind him. "Oh yeah, people just sit and keep to themselves, think...or lose themselves in a few mugs. Or they can sit and watch the fish," he said with a nod towards the makeshift aquarium windows. "Here you go."

[fatedsacrifice]

"Had to be a pretty big project but you got it done." Noctis said. He really liked the vibe of the place, it didn't seem like it was a bad place to come after a day.

But then his mug disappeared and he sat down to listen to Cayde as he explained about the atmosphere of the place. Of course the king's head turned to the fish because well..fish. And when the man spoke again, his dark head returned and saw his mug full again.

"So people can come here any time, right?"

[deal_me_in]

"It was something to do. It's weird having so much free time on your hands all of a sudden." He laughed. Building a bar had never been something he'd ever thought he'd undertake, but then having the time to do it hadn't been something he thought he'd ever have either.

"That's the point," Cayde nodded. "Even if I'm not around, people can help themselves." He pointed to the handwritten sign perched on the corner of the bar that he'd long since stopped bothering to remove.

[fatedsacrifice]

"Ya, tell me about it." Noctis agreed. Normally there was a mission to do, or somewhere to be, but that was all over now, driven home by the silence of an empty apartment. The guys had moved on with their lives and here he was..by himself.

But he looked at Cayde and at the sign with a sigh. "But the bar needs restocked, right? D you just automatically come in to redo that?"

[deal_me_in]

Cayde nodded. "Well, there's only so much restocking to be done from around here. I took advantage of when we were able to travel elsewhere, so I at least hope the stuff I got lasts some. Probably a good thing there's only so many people."

[fatedsacrifice]

"Elsewhere.." Noctis echoed. Where the hell was elsewhere? Well he didn't know every single inch of this place yet so maybe that's where Cayde was referring to, somewhere he hadn't been as of yet.

But his eyes slightly narrowed at the people part. "I hope no one else shows up. I mean, we're stuck as it is."

[deal_me_in]

"True, true," the Exo nodded. "Unfortunately we don't have much say in things so far as people coming and going. But we make do, however it turns out." He didn't like to think about when people disappeared, but nor was he very comfortable with more people coming in when they hadn't made much progress with the problem they'd been brought to solve.

[fatedsacrifice]

Noctis sighed and didn't want to bring anything unpleasant up. He really wished there was some way to save this world and folks could go home. But he hadn't discovered a way to do that yet.

So as he waited for his drink, he sat down. "So how often do we go..elsewhere?" He had no idea where the destination was, but maybe he would find some answers there.

[deal_me_in]

"Not nearly often enough!" Cayde laughed at that, if a little dryly. He preferred to have the means to travel when he pleased, especially now that he had a valid excuse not to be stuck in the city back home.

"It's pretty random, really. Actually when I first got brought in, it wasn't even to this world."

[fatedsacrifice]

Noctis wasn't sure about this other place wherever it was, but then Cayde threw more fire down by saying he wasn't even brought to this world when he first arrived. It was like a huge jigsaw puzzle that the king was more than sure he'd never have all of the pieces to.

"So you were brought to that other place?"

[deal_me_in]

That was pretty much how Cayde felt most of the time with everything they found out here, except he was sure that the puzzle pieces probably belonged to different puzzle sets and they were none the wiser.

"Yeah. I think the reason was that the Agrii felt the 'He Rows' needed something of a vacation, and whoever pinged their search parameters or whatever at the time just ended up being 'ported right over to that place. Guess in a way I was fortunate that I got a chance to do some shopping, seeing as how most of my usual stuff didn't come with me. If I'd known I was gonna have to set up a bar I would've picked up some liquor then as well," he laughed.

[fatedsacrifice]

"No liquor will present a problem for a bar." Noctis agreed. But he wondered about how serious the Agrii were about their he-rows. If something catastrophic happened to their world, would they try to protect the ones they'd summoned here? Or would they sit and do nothing? It was puzzling as to what their wills were or if it was something far more on the collective sort of side of things.

But he just shook his head. "So how often do we get to fly in the ships? Or is that something the Agrii tell us in advance?"

[deal_me_in]

"Not too often. And it's not so much telling us as it is we either just find ourselves drawn aboard our assigned shuttles or just wake up already en route somewhere," the Exo said with some distaste. "I'm not a big fan of it. Although I guess the time they were in trouble they did kind of ask us to come out and help at least, so there's that."

He'd prefer it if they asked before hand for a lot of things, really, although part of him wondered if it was all the Agrii's doing or their less friendly manipulators.

[fatedsacrifice]

Dark blue eyes slightly narrowed at hearing how the Agrii 'convinced' everyone to get on board the ships. To him it didn't sound as if it was a request, but then again the king had to wonder had it been a request if anyone would simply up and acquiesced to such a request.

"Come out and help by not getting on the ships?" Noctis asked with a sigh, wondering if this was something of a different scenario altogether.

[deal_me_in]

"Oh, no- there was something going on back on the big one they all live in. Gary- she's the main one who contacts us usually- she was saying that they were under attack. So we were all given access to the ships in expectations to fly to their rescue." Cayde shrugged.

"We did, because this was the first time in, well, ever for some of us that the Agrii had even directly contacted us. It took a while because the ships don't have the speed most of us familiar with space-faring are used to, but it wasn't a false alarm. When we finally got to their home-ship the whole thing was in disarray, systems haywire, and weirdly- all but one of the Agrii were missing."

[fatedsacrifice]

He listened as Cayde went on, talking more about how the people here were asked to do something. But it sounded more like the Agrii were asking for help for themselves and not their world.

Well that wasn't he was used to. Why did Tony mention saving the place then?

But Noct refocused his attention on the other and shook his head. He himself hadn't seen any pleas for help from the Agrii or maybe he just wasn't paying attention at the time which could be a thing considering Noctis wasn't sure what to even do with himself back from the dead and away from the only friends he'd had.

"Where were they?"

[deal_me_in]

"Okay, so it gets complicated. When we arrived, there were two other ships outside of theirs- which we assumed right off the back were like, enemy ships, right? But we don't get attacked right off the back, which we see as a good sign, so we dock in the main ship, split up and try to find any Agrii, or the invaders if they're around."

Cayde moved some of the boxes of pizza so he could lean against the counter some. "We find these little squat-looking bear-dog guys with guns wandering around this kinda garden area of the ship, but something's kinda off about things, so we don't immediately set off attacking them. Communication kind of fails because of language barriers, and then there's the whole hallucinogenic spit they got." He shook his head. "We manage to incapacitate 'em, another group finds Gary- and then we get systems under control and our other group lets us know they've found the missing Agrii- aboard the supposed enemy ships in some kind of stasis or something, I dunno. So our next job is to move a bunch of sleep-induced Agrii back to their main ship because guess what? Suddenly the alert goes off to tell us that those two ships are set to explode."

[fatedsacrifice]

Somehow Noctis wasn't prepared for a long story, but as Cayde went on, that's exactly what he was getting. He wasn't mad though and just continued to try and imagine the events going on as they were being described to him.

Hearing about the ships was interesting enough and it made him wonder how people managed to stay in space so long. Noctis had a feeling he might get claustrophobic or something if he couldn't move around as freely as he was used to doing.

"Bear dogs?" the king asked and he couldn't help the disgusted look on his face as he heard about them prowling around with guns. And then his dark blue eyes got wide at hearing about the hallucinogenic spit. Gross and worrisome really.

"Explode?" Noct asked, now just about horrified.

[deal_me_in]

The Hunter did love his stories, but this one he felt particularly important to relate that he didn't embellish as he usually tended to.

"They're called the Graq. Not bad little guys, but they're not used to technology and stuff. Someone nabbed 'em from their home which happened to be a nearby planet, gave 'em guns and dropped them off on the Agrii ship to play the part of the bad guy. They were just confused and wanted to go home. They stuck to the garden because it had trees in it." He held up a finger. "You been to the other city? That place has traces of previous Graq habitation everywhere."

The Exo grabbed a slice of pizza, eyeing it before he popped it into his mouth. Maybe it was strange seeing a mechanical being eat regular food, but apparently it wasn't anything new as Cayde polished off his slice with minimal mess. He dabbed his face with a napkin. "Yep, explode. Someone else set everything up, and now they were just upping the ante to see what all we'd do. We managed to get everyone off those ships because we couldn't deactivate the settings, all the Agrii, the Graq who were put on those ships- packed 'em all onto the main one just in time."

[fatedsacrifice]

"So all of the Graq." Noctis paused over the unfamiliar word. "Went home?" He wasn't sure if he'd seen anything that resembled creatures like that but in his head all he could picture were the ones summoning Garuda all sitting rather cross legged.

This was a really odd story but then again the ones he went through back home would probably seem weird in the other's eyes. So he chose to not say anything about that. After all, who would believe him about talking spiders and mindflayers and all sorts of other things he had in his world.

[deal_me_in]

"The ones that must've lived in the other city out here? No idea. We didn't even know the Graq being here was a thing until we were able to explore the other place, and the Agrii didn't seem to recognize them at all. Of course, no telling whether the Agrii we know are the same that used to originally live here either."

Cayde shrugged. "But the ones we met in the ship, we helped them back to their home planet. That's why some of us found things so familiar out in the other place. Like the quarry, and all the trees, the way the buildings are made. The Graq'd use their spit- gross, I know- to melt rock basically, to a point that it's moldable so when it's hardened again it's even tougher than before. They make their weapons that way. I got a knife from them."

[fatedsacrifice]

"That almost sounds pretty complicated." Noctis observed. To think the spirits of this place weren't the originals and had no idea about visitors or the link. That really made his brain hurt.

Well using spit for weird things hadn't been that out of the ordinary. He'd heard about how pearls were made and what they were made from. But he wasn't going to get into all that, nor about how spider silks were made that he used for his fishing line.

Some things totally went better unsaid.

So he nodded at Cayde. "Guess a lot of things are still kind of odd."

[deal_me_in]

Cayde laughed. "No 'almost' about it." He would hardly blame Noctis for getting a headache over it all.

At least he was no stranger to the use of spiders. He'd been the one to come across the cave full of them along with Moonshade, after all. Pouring himself a drink, the Exo smiled crookedly as he shook his head.

"The place only gets weirder. Best we can do is try to keep on our toes and see if anything starts to clear up."

[fatedsacrifice]

"I have a feeling you're right." Noctis replied with a sigh. Nothing to him was weirder than being in a strange land and among the living again. He'd made his peace with death and all that entailed, including leaving his loving and loyal companions behind.

He'd expected to be reunited with Luna, and that hadn't happened. Instead he was talking with a man pouring a drink and having pizza of all things. Who in the hell would've thought that?

"How often do we encounter the Agrii though?"