Omake Week 2021, Day 4: It just can't be Omake Week without a Phantasy Star story. This was the series, after all, that begun my descent into writing omake in the first place, way back over two decades ago.

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"You know, Garn, I'm starting to appreciate why the bars in town see hunters as an undesirable element."

Given that Alys Brangwin was sitting in the bar at the Hunter's Guild, and that she herself was Motavia's most celebrated hunter, her statement might have come off as being a bit hypocritical, or even offensive, to some people.

"Yo, Alys, babe!"

Those people would not have been familiar with Joss Howland.

The hunter who strode through the swinging doors and towards where Alys sat at the bar looked like the popular conception of a hunter: a tall, rugged, square-jawed, handsome mass of muscle, right up to and including between his ears.

"Hello, Joss. What brings you here? The new pao-pao dancers don't go on stage for another hour."

"What, you think that I'd be checking out some other girl?" he said, a look of genuine hurt on his face.

"Hope springs eternal."

"You know that you're the only woman for me, Alys."

"Well, at least you won't be breeding."

She wasn't making these comments under her breath. For the one point, Alys didn't care if other people knew her opinion of the man, and for the other, she could have screamed it from the rooftop with large, brightly-painted signs for visual aids and he wouldn't have actually comprehended the message.

Not having room for more than one thought in one's head, she supposed, made it easy for a person to maintain their self-esteem.

"So what brings you here today?" she asked, hoping to move things along so that she could get back to her drink.

He grinned at her with the hopeful eagerness of a puppy that had learned a new trick. Alys reflected that this was probably why she'd never done him any serious and permanent harm (or pushed to have him locked up). There was no malice in him, not even the kind of self-righteous, jealous possessiveness some men could get over women they'd set their minds on. He was just too stupid to process that "no" meant "for all time" instead of just "for today."

It wasn't enough to make her actually feel any regret for the outcomes of his antics, of course, but there were degrees.

"Just wait until you see this! Fenris said that you'd never be able to figure it out!"

"Fenris—my friend and occasional drinking buddy Fenris—showed you a stunt and told you that it wound stump me?"

"Uh-huh!" Joss's head bobbed up and down like it was on an elastic band.

Something was not adding up properly. Fenris had a sense of humor that could be called "impish" if one was in a good mood, but she was also well aware of how Alys felt about Joss.

"She said if you couldn't figure out how it worked, you'd be sure to take me out on a date!"

"That doesn't sound very much like Fen," Alys reflected. On the other hand, Joss was too stupid to lie. He was barely bright enough to remember one story, let alone two. Which added up to…what?

"Hey, Garn, do you have a funnel back there for filling bottles or something?" Joss was rushing ahead of himself, meanwhile. "And I've got a coin here somewhere…she said it'd work better with a one-meseta piece though a five would do…"

He rummaged through his coin pouch while Garn got out a mid-sized metal funnel from under the bar.

"What, exactly, is the point of this trick?" Alys asked.

"Ah, got one!" Joss held up a one-meseta coin and shoved the pouch back into his pocket. "You lean back like this and balance the coin on your forehead, then try to tip your head forward so it falls into the funnel."

Alys picked up the funnel.

"What, like this?" she asked, miming the head-tip motion. "That doesn't seem that hard."

"No, no!" Joss said. "Not holding the funnel. Here, let me show you."

He took the funnel from Alys and shoved it into the waistband of his pants, then leaned his head back and started to get the coin balanced just so.

It took about two seconds for it to go flying off sideways and land in someone's fried-ammonite soup, but Alys didn't hold it against Joss. She would have been very impressed, indeed, had he kept steady after she'd poured her entire drink, crushed ice and all, into the funnel and therefore on a direct path into the front of his trousers.

"I guess I should know to trust my friends," Alys said as Joss danced away, clutching his frozen privates and yowling. "I hope Joss won't be too mad at her."

"He should probably just be happy he didn't try it when you were drinking a Flaming Kaite," Garn reflected.