Dancing Fox Inn XI: The Menu's Made Up and the Drinks Don't Matter

[Devixer]

Aiden sighs again and rests his head on a hand. He isn't too good at this whole "looking tough" thing. "I don't know," he says. "I have no clue what you would want to say that about anyway."

[Deathkeeper]

Mist shrugs, leaning back a bit.
"Oh, I'd probably just lightly tease you for saying you dislike Nexus weirdness but having almost exclusively magic and/or nonhuman friends, then make fun of something involving your relationship with my former boss and current employee, and then you'd sigh and I'd laugh and then I'd make you a really crappy cup of coffee to make you feel superior because you do that about a hundred times better than I ever could. That sound about right to you?"

[Devixer]

"Yeah, I didn't realize we'd hit that point in our itinerary," Aiden says. Well, at least he's smiling now, even if it's barely a half-smile. He's looking at the bar now, though, in that "I'm thinking about something that's probably stupid" way.

[Deathkeeper]

"Well, clearly I'm not one for keeping a consistent schedule." a pause. "You thinkin' about something, Aiden?" he asks with a curious flick of the ears.

[Devixer]

"...No, nothing." Aiden says. He's certainly not thinking about Naku, why would Mist even ask that?

[Deathkeeper]

Mist sighs.
"Aaiiiden, I know we're basically throwing out the itinerary, but you already did 'stare off and think awkward romantic thoughts about Naku.' We can't go repeating steps or it throws off the whole groove of things!"

[KerfuffleMach2]

Nick shakes his head.
"No no, don't worry about that. It's no trouble at all. I've had plenty of time and ways to get over my own issues. I don't have trouble with that sort of thing. I've always been a Present-focused sort of guy." he assures her.

Alysha perks up a bit again.

Well, that's good. No use dwelling on what happened, right? Gotta move forward!

She enthusiastically thrusts a fist into the air.

[Devixer]

"Well, it's kind of hard for me not to do that," Aiden says, before having anything resembling a thought about that. "Oh, damn, I said that out loud, didn't I?"

[Deathkeeper]

Nick laughs.
"Yeah, I hear ya. Have to go though, don't always have leave, you know. Nice talking to you, Alysha. Here, if you ever need help saving this world, give me a call. I'm probably a little faster than the normal Union help line. " he says, pulling a tiny business card out of his helmet. Yeah, he has those. Honestly, for exactly this reason. Nick likes to have people know he can fly in at a moment's notice. Or get permission to do so if he's on duty.
"Oh, or if you figure something about about those path-unlocking things. Fortuna really would probably want to take a look at that." he says, standing up (which requires getting off the stool) and collecting his helmet, starting to strap it on and adjust the strap and goggles.

---

Mist smiles a big, toothy smile as he lays his muzzle down on his folded hands again, the most sly of sly grins on his face as he languishes over the word,
"Gotcha."

[Devixer]

"Shut up," Aiden says. Now he's resting his head on both of his hands because he knows he just lost the stupidest of contests.

[Deathkeeper]

Mist nods.
"Oh, but of course, Sir. I should be not hearing the end of it right about now, yes?" he says subserviently.

[Devixer]

Aiden just rolls his eyes. "Whatever, just drop it." Yeah, like that's gonna stop Mist.

[Deathkeeper]

"Ah, and what would you prefer to talk about? Or are you too lost in your own emotions to know?" he asks.

[Devixer]

"Right now, I just wanna go home and play Earthbound. Not that that's ever happening," Aiden says.

[Deathkeeper]

Mist smiles.
"Oh, I always liked that one. Could never really beat Mother 3. Probably because even with a fan patch you have to emulate it, which throws off the rhythm attacks. Still, I always liked Dragon Quest, and it has a very similar style, if you don't mind the Toriyama designs and the ridiculous amount of puns in the English translations. Not that EarthBound is missing those."

[Devixer]

"Would you believe that Earthbound's still rare here? I still can't find a copy." Aiden grins a bit. "I guess that's a universal constant."

[Deathkeeper]

Mist shrugs.
"Yeah, I found plenty of services that sell digital versions, but I really prefer a cartridge. That's why I dug up that Super Metroid."

[Devixer]

"Ugh, don't talk about Metroid..." Aiden says, visibly cringing.

[Deathkeeper]

Mist raises an eyebrow.
"What, they're pretty good if you ignore pretty much everything that came out after Prime 2." he says.

[Devixer]

"Well, Prime 3 was alright. And... well, there's a reason Metroid's all but dead where I'm from," Aiden says. "At least every other game is still really good."

[Deathkeeper]

Mist's ears go flat. "Don't say that. If there's an alternate universe in which Indiana Jones got up to the sixth movie and stayed good, there's one somewhere where Other M didn't have its head up its own ass and the series is still going strong."

[Devixer]

Aiden makes a noise of some kind that resembles a sigh. "Man, wouldn't that be nice. Maybe Lucas can still be in Smash Bros too."

Oh dear, I don't think Mist knows that one.

[Deathkeeper]

Mist makes a vulpine whine, probably not a sound Aiden normally hears.
"Aw, did they cut him? There's so many different versions out floating around I wasn't sure which one is which Earth's."

[Devixer]

Aiden might just make that same noise himself. "Yeah. Ice Climbers too." He couldn't care less about Wolf or Snake, though.

[Deathkeeper]

Mist waves a hand.
"Bah, they're terrible anyway. Never cared at all about 'em. Did they bring Mewtwo back or are they still feasting upon the Melee elitist's salty tears?" he says, clearly not a fan of Melee elitists.

[Devixer]

Aiden sighs again at that. "No, now they're capitalizing on them. Mewtwo's DLC, last I checked." Maybe he got cancelled and replaced with a new, non-bad character.

[Deathkeeper]

Mist chuckles.
"See, now that always confused me. People moaning about no Mewtwo and Ganondorf being bad in the third one, but you go to any Melee tourney and you'll see Fox, Marth, Fox, Falco, Fox, Marth, Falco, Fox, and Fox."

[Devixer]

Aiden rolls his eyes. "I hate Melee so much now," he says. "In a way, I"m kinda glad games aren't so popular around here. I have yet to run into some entitled gamer who thinks he knows how to make a game perfect."

[Deathkeeper]

Mist nods. "I think lots of people play games here, but there aren't that many big game developer groups here, because there's too many alternate universes of Nintendo pouring in better games than they could ever produce. They make some interesting hardware here, though.

[Devixer]

"Yeah, I suppose so," Aiden says. He'd be lying if he said he didn't miss his old game boy advance, though.