Terrans Served Here
They are never, Dairine thought as she eyed the alien standing over her as scathingly as she could manage, given the circumstances, ever, going to let me live this down.
Dairine Callahan, brought low by a reading comprehension error.
It could have happened to anyone, she tried to reassure herself. That sign was ridiculously ambiguous!
It didn't help. Dairine had prided herself from a young age on not being just anyone, and now, having been summarily knocked unconscious, trussed like a pig for the slaughter, and, to top it all off, having had her wizardry blocked, that pride was taking a severe blow.
All this because you had to go to the stupid bathroom.
"That should be the last of it!" Sker'ret said, an hour earlier, several of his eyestalks waving in a Rirhait expression of delight. "Thank you, cousins!"
Dairine, in the middle of taking a swig from the water bottle she was now very glad she had brought, shook her head and gave him a thumbs-up. Filif, therefore, took the responsibility of being the vocal one. It was no problem, Sker'ret, we were happy to help!
Even Roshaun, surveying the concourse with what appeared to be a look of satisfaction—that Dairine herself was very familiar with, as there was no better feeling than wizardry well done—spoke up. "We would have been remiss not to offer our assistance, the damage was extensive."
A few of Sker'ret's many eyes twisted to peer in the same direction. "That it was. Thank the One that incidents like that don't happen often…"
What had started as an ordinary visit to the Crossings for some shopping and eating had quickly turned sour when two aliens brushing by each other happened to mistake each other for someone they weren't and start very vehemently trying to kill each other, right in the middle of the main concourse. To make matters worse, they were both from a species gifted with a rather virulent, destructive power that involved, from what little Dairine had seen of it before Crossing security intervened, rainbow flames.
And thus the recreational portion of their excursion had been cut short as Sker'ret was called to duty as Stationmaster and the other three followed because, well, what were friends for?
Even with four wizards working together, it still took several hours before the last of the damage was repaired and normal traffic flow was at last able to resume on the concourse floor. But it was done, and Sker'ret was happy, and Dairine, now that the exhaustion was starting to wear away, was absolutely famished—a fact her stomach decided to make loudly known in that moment, causing the other three to turn and eye her with varying expressions of bemusement. Dairine, for her part, at least managed to look somewhat sheepish.
"So, Sker," she said conversationally, finally putting aside her water bottle and swiping a hand across her mouth. "Any chance of that lunch still happening, or is there anything else you need help with?"
Sker'ret laughed. "Security can take care of the rest of it," he said. "I agree, food would be lovely right now. Let's head into the third wing, it should be a bit quieter, since it wasn't part of the detour…"
Filif and Roshaun were making general noises of agreement, and so, "Lead the way, O Stationmaster," Dairine said, waving a hand in an 'after you' gesture.
Thankfully it was a matter of only a few minutes' walk to find a café that would suit their needs. There was a brief jostle over seating arrangements, but with the Crossings' requirement of auto-adjustable seating it was soon sorted, bipeds on one side, and Sker'ret and Filif firmly ensconced in rack and large trough of soil, respectively, on the other. Dairine tapped her information into the tabletop embedded menu and settled back against the booth with a sigh, taking a moment to close her eyes while she waited for it to sort the various food options. Roshaun, beside her, raised an eyebrow. "Was the repair work truly that tiring?" he questioned, as he too inputted his information.
Dairine cracked one eye at him. "I've been working on a project on one of Uranus's moons," she said, with just a hint of annoyance. "Today was, except for the transit, supposed to be a recharge day. See how well that went." And she closed her eye again.
"I am sorry for that, you three," Sker'ret piped up across from them, looking faintly guilty. "Today was supposed to be for pleasure, not work—"
"Sker, don't," Dairine said, opening her eyes as she heard the soft ping that meant the menu had finished sorting. "You couldn't have predicted it, and Roshaun was right: what sort of friends would we be if we didn't help out?" She bent over the menu, debating the merits of essentially pigging out—hello, again, famished—with the price to be paid later.
Filif rustled in a way that sounded somewhat amused. That seems to be a pattern with us, though, doesn't it? Wizard holidays…
"Careful, or you'll jinx it," Dairine said absently as she finally picked out a few dishes—though she wasn't disagreeing. They never seemed to get a moment's rest, recently.
Beside her, Roshaun raised both eyebrows. "Is it wise for someone of your…stature…to order that much food for yourself?" he questioned, and Dairine flushed hot. She could just hear the smirk in his voice.
Roshaun had recently gone through the last of the rapid growth periods associated with his species—bringing his total towering distance over Dairine to a little over two feet. And he'd not missed a single opportunity thus far to needle her about it in his infuriatingly smug manner.
Even Sker'ret and Filif were snickering, damn them, though they quickly assumed innocent expressions when she turned a glare on them, Sker'ret busying himself with finishing his own selections on the menu—Dairine couldn't help her own snicker at the thought of the panicked aliens in the kitchen when that order went through, "it's the Stationmaster!"—and Filif shifting in his trough, he being the only one that had no need of the menu. "Watch me," she said in response to Roshaun's jibe, wishing not for the first time to be able to wipe the smug grin off his face.
(There was of course, the small part of her that refused to admit that she liked this Roshaun, the sarcastic, teasing one, much better than how he'd been when they first met, or how he acted when he'd been dealing with the Wellakhit court for any extended period of time, his manner as king seeping over into his manner as a friend and making him a right pain to be around-)
"Oh, I will," he returned. "…though from behind the safety of a shield, for the inevitable explosion."
"Har de har har," she muttered sarcastically. "You're a barrel of laughs, Roshaun, really."
"…I fail to see how something as immaterial as laughter could be contained in a barrel—"
"It's an expression," she cut in. rolling her eyes.
Your native language seems to have no end of curious expressions, Filif said, and Dairine couldn't help but laugh. "You've no idea," she replied, shaking her head. "Some of them make absolutely no logical sense…"
She would have gone further, having not much else to do until their food arrived, but at that moment she became aware of the fact that her zealous water-drinking from earlier had caught up with her. Whoops.
"Crap…be right back, guys," she said, standing.
"Where—" Sker'ret started.
"Quick date with a biological function," she answered. "Don't eat my food!"
Emerging onto the concourse, however, Dairine was quickly faced with a logistical problem; signs indicated that the nearest public facilities hub was a half mile's walk away. She was not going to walk a mile for a bathroom. Therefore, she began to walk along, looking for the small signs restaurants and shops displayed if they possessed their own restrooms, hoping to happen across one that could service Terrans.
About an eighth of a mile along, she found it; a small restaurant with the prerequisite restroom sign displayed—right next to a small sign that said "Terrans served here."
Jackpot! she thought, and was so focused on imminent bladder relief that she hurried inside with scarcely a second thought given to the odd specificity of that sign.
The inside was dim, dim enough that she had to squint a bit as she looked for the restrooms, dim enough that the fact that at least half a dozen sets of eyes locked on her within moments of her entrance also went largely unnoticed.
Restrooms, restrooms, c'mon restrooms—
"Can I help you?" a voice with a slight hiss to it asked behind her, and she turned to face what appeared to be a large purple snake with two spindly arms, ending in clawed hands with eight fingers each.
"Uh, yes," Dairine replied, once again thankful for the Speech allowing understanding between her and an alien species. "I was looking for restrooms…?"
A strange glint came into the alien's faceted red eye. "Restrooms? Right over here," it said, gesturing towards an unmarked door near the entrance to the kitchen. "Apologies for the lack of distinction, we don't like too much non-customer traffic…"
Dairine laughed as she headed for the door. "No worries, I understand. Thanks!"
Just as she had thought nothing of the sign, she thought nothing of the alien practically following her to the restroom—the kitchen door was nearby, after all—until she opened the door and found absolutely nothing like a restroom.
In fact, if she didn't know better, she'd say it looked like a—
The back of her neck prickled in unease. She turned, a protective spell leaping instinctively to her lips—
—too late.
Something crashed across the back of her head, and her world went dark.
Sker'ret, Dairine has been gone for quite some time, should we worry…?
"The nearest facilities hub is quite a distance from here, I'd give it another few minutes."
Alright…
Dairine woke with a splitting headache.
Ugh, that's it, time for a break from the Uranus project, those long-haul transits are messing with your head—
She groaned softly, went to sit up, intent on heading downstairs to get some aspirin—
—only to find she couldn't move.
Come to think of it, this was much too flat and hard to be her bed.
Abruptly it came back to her—the Crossings, the incident, the café, the looking for a restroom, the alien, the room that was not a restroom—
Her eyes flew open, and she found herself staring into the face of the serpent alien from earlier.
"Awake at last!" it hissed. "Such a weak constitution you Terrans have, but at least it's easy to eat—"
It turned away, moving out of her vision, and Dairine frowned, trying to think straight around the splitting headache. She was strapped to a table, she discovered, and when she went to reach for her wizardry, intent on blasting her way out of this, she found—
—nothing at all.
Dairine went cold.
"Ah ah ah," the alien said, chidingly, as it returned. "There will be no wizardly escape for you today, little Terran. See that bracelet?"
Dairine managed to lift her head, just slightly, and spotted a glowing chain of Speech characters wrapped around her wrist.
"Binding, courtesy of one of your colleagues that passed through. A personal project, apparently, but in the end he didn't have much use for it."
Dairine didn't want to contemplate what that meant, but she had to. "The sign—" she started.
"Delightfully ambiguous, is it not?" the alien said, all too cheerfully, moving away to what she could now see was a giant pot. "They can't prove it means what it actually means. Draws in so many, though admittedly, you're the first in a while, but that's alright, I haven't had a new special in a while—"
Dairine scowled, and pulled—futilely—at her restraints. "I know that on some planets my species is considered a delicacy," she snapped, "but cross-species serving is illegal here! Not to mention, you can't just kidnap patrons of the Crossings!"
The alien shrugged—or at least, that's what she thought that strange undulation was. "They've not caught me for the last ten Sunsweeps, I don't see why they will now."
"The current Stationmaster is a close friend," Dairine threatened, aware as she was of exactly how threatening she looked at the moment. "And kind as he is, I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of his anger when he finds out what you've done."
The alien looked bemused. "I'm sure he is," it said, patronizing, "And I'm sure I won't. Now, how's that water—"
Dairine scowled even more fiercely. If there was one thing she hated, it was being patronized. Guys, c'mon, where are you—you can't be that dense—"
"She has been gone too long," Roshaun said, standing up from his meal that he had scarcely touched.
All of Sker'ret's eyestalks were drooped in worry. "I agree. Even accounting for the distance, she should have been back some time ago—"
You have access to non-wizardly location routines as Stationmaster, correct?
"I do—" Sker'ret poured himself down out of the rack, barely remembering to enter the code for payment deferral into the table's data pad before he was out the door, headed for the nearest information terminal, Filif and Roshaun at his many heels.
(The café staff breathed a sigh of relief.)
Sker'ret quickly keyed several codes to gain access to the administrative server, and then several more to enter Dairine's information into the location routine. There was a long pause while the kiosk processed—in such a large facility, seeking one person could, unfortunately, take some time.
Perhaps she stopped at a shop—?
"She would have messaged us," Roshaun said in response to Filif's tentative suggestion, shaking his head. "Even she is not so irresponsible, for the most part."
A ding sounded. Sker'ret leaned into scan the readout, whilst the other two attempted to peer over his shoulder, though Roshaun did his best to appear as though he wasn't.
They were both surprised when Sker'ret abruptly began to curse in his native language, something neither of them had ever heard him do.
What is the matter? Filif asked, alarmed.
"We have to hurry. She's in a restaurant that's been under suspicion of cross-species serving for several years, but there was never enough evidence for a formal investigation—"
They all ran.
Even Roshaun.
Okay, Dairine would admit to being scared, at this point. Sure, she'd been scared before in her life, but there was something different about this, about being completely helpless to stop what was coming.
Which was apparently, in this case, being turned into a goddamn soup.
It might make her laugh if it wasn't her.
"Small," the alien hissed, making Dairine glare—must everyone comment on her size—"but the young of your species always is, and young is good—"
Dairine wondered how many innocent people had done the same thing she had, come looking for a restroom or maybe just a bite to eat—only to discover that they were, in fact, going to end up being the bite to eat.
Things were starting to look just a bit dire. She'd tried worming out of the restraints, while the alien's back was turned, but they were too tight. She'd even tried reaching out telepathically to the others: no dice. It made her angry, being this useless, facing death and having to rely on others to get her out of it—
Christ, guys, even you have to realize it doesn't take a human this long to go to the bathroom—
Oh. Apparently sometime during her introspection whatever preparations the alien had made were completed, because it was now coming towards her with what looked like a very large knife. She gulped.
Powers, what a way to go—main ingredient in alien soup, all because you couldn't read a stupid sign right—
"Now, let's start here—"
The door burst open, and a voice rang out, "Put the knife down, if you desire to have a hand with which to hold anything ever again, never mind a knife."
Dairine let out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.
And the cavalry arrives. Better late than never.
The next several minutes were a blur. Sker'ret hit the alien with a binding spell of his own, Roshaun — he being the one that had originally spoken — released Dairine from her bindings, and Filif took great pleasure, Dairine thought, in tearing the fabric of the binding bracelet to shreds. She sagged slightly in relief as she feels her wizardry returning to her. Crossings security is called to arrest the alien, detain several others, and cordon off the entire restaurant as well as take her statement, and by the time it's all over, another hour has passed and Dairine is tired, annoyed, and still famished, and still hadn't gotten to use a restroom.
To top it all off, Sker'ret won't stop hovering guiltily, again.
"Dairine, I apologize, I knew this place was near here and that you likely wouldn't want to go all the way to the nearest facilities hub and that this was the first obvious stop along the way—"
"Sker'ret, with all due love and respect, put a sock in it!" Dairine said, rolling her eyes in exasperation.
Sker'ret's eyes blinked. "…a what in what?"
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "In—never mind, it's another expression. Just stop apologizing already, okay? Just like the thing this morning, there was no way for you to predict this, it was my own stupid fault for reading the sign wrong, not yours, so please stop acting like it is!"
Sker'ret looked like he wanted to argue with her, but the look on her face stopped him.
You are sure you are alright? Filif asked, sounding worried. "Filif has a point," Roshaun added. "That was a powerful binding, to say nothing of trauma—"
Dairine rolled her eyes again. "If I'm traumatized, believe me, you'll be the first to know. Now I'm going to go use the restroom, finally, and then what's say we go back to Earth and get some McDonald's or something, because I still haven't eaten and if I see any more alien food today, or this week, really, it'll be too soon."
[fin]
(BONUS:
"I must question where he got the notion that you would make a substantial meal—"
"Roshaun, I swear by all that is holy, one more short joke and you'll wish he'd made me into a meal, because when I'm through with you—")
...yooooo, everyone. Yeah, I'm well aware I haven't posted here for a while. Most of my recent writing (little though it has been) has been being archived on Tumblr, though I do occasionally have these bouts of remembering "oh, yeah, maybe I should cross-post that." This is actually a fic from about a year ago, written for the first annual Young Wizards Christmas in July fic exchange on Ao3. (The second one just finished up, which unfortunately I did not participate in due to spacing out on the sign-up deadline, heh.)
Anyhow, the original prompt:
"The Sponsored Noninterventional Excursus gang have long been among my favorite characters, and I'd love to see some work or other in which they feature substantially. As I'm rather a science fiction and space travel junkie, something Crossings-oriented would be nice, but a mall crawl on Earth would be no less appreciated. Anything goes, really!"
So there you have it. Hope you enjoyed! There should be another few cross-postings coming today/this weekend, and furthermore, I am working on some of my older stuff, though it may not seem like it...
Erin