A Place To Call Home [Tris]

[Vivian Thrace]

[Ariel, February 22nd, 2523. 1800]

Vivian Thrace pushed open the saloon doors of the bar and glanced around. This was a place where all the travelers came from other worlds. Most of these patrons weren’t the clean cut version she’d come to know of the general Ariel population. Her thumbs hooked into her faded blue rucksack that road high on her back. She kept her Walther-ppk tucked into the back of her trousers just in case. Her impressive collection of weapons had been stashed elsewhere, however that didn’t mean she came unarmed.

The ‘Verse had made Vivian a rather suspicious creature that rarely trusted anyone upon first meeting them, but she hadn’t always been so prickly. Vivian glanced around subtly and sidled up to the bar and ordered herself a whiskey. She set down her rucksack beside her and paid the bartender for her drink. She didn’t drink it instead seemed to be staring into the amber liquid thoughtfully as she moved the glass around on the bar watching it make water ringlets on the counter.

A large man who smelled of stale beer and cabbage approached her and placed a dirty hand on her shoulders. “Hello there lass,” he said slurring his words, “You’re a pretty thing, ain’t ya,” he grinned to show a few gold teeth, and one of them missing.

“I’d kindly remove that hand if I were you,” Vivian replied in her lyrical accent, then when he didn’t she turned her head sharply, “Or I will removed it for you.”

“Hey, now, there little girl,” he chuckled sloshing his drink around, but didn’t remove his hand.

Instead she did it for him. Vivian grabbed his wrist and wrenched it around his back, slamming his face onto the countertop. The man cried out in pain as she had broken his wrist. “I’m not a little girl,” she told him harshly, “Now get outta here before I decide to really take that hand off ye,” she said releasing him. The drunken oaf staggered out. She sat down again as if nothing had happened and downed her whiskey.

((ooc: Not that it matters but Vivian is wearing this minus the dog, hehe, and her bag looks like this one And by the way, Vivian sounds like Katie McGrath, so her pretty Irish accent!))

[Tristram Kelly]

Tristram sat at the bar slowly working on the bourbon in front of him. He didn't drink like he used to, but it helped sometimes. He was alone on a foreign planet. Everyone he knew was either gone or in a coma. Every now and again he just liked to forget the world for a while. He absentmindedly adjusted the his shoulder holster under his jacket. He was traveling light tonight, and decided to go with the most concealable of his armory. Halfway into his third drink, a young lady came in and sat down next to him. She looked delicate enough, but there was something about the way she carried herself that told him there was more to her than met the eye. He watched her out the corner of his eye while she ordered ('Hm. A girl who drinks bourbon.'), then returned to his own drink. This being a bar, and her not exactly being unattractive, he was sure some buffoon would try his luck sooner or later.

Sooner.

The interaction lasted only a few moments. The girl dispatched the drunk with surprising skill. As the man stumbled to the door, Tris took a few peanuts from the dish on the bar and threw them at him. "And that goes double for your mum!" He finished his drink, then turned to the girl. "Are you always this happy, or is this a special occasion?" Though his words could be taken for lighthearted, his tone was flat, and his face set in stone.

_Outfit

[Vivian Thrace]

Vivian shoved her empty glass across the bar and asked for another of the same. The bartender nodded and turned around to get her what she had requested as she fished around in the pocket of her jacket for payment. It was then that the voice of the man sitting next to her caught her attention. She paid the bartender and then turned her head to look at him. Vivian was more than little distracted, she vaguely wondered how she was going to pay for a place to spend the night when she had just spent her last piece on another glass of whiskey.

She smirked, taking the fresh glass of whiskey from the bartender and began sipping it this time. She wanted to savor the remainder of her money. “This happy?” she repeated, “Why, yes I am generally always this happy,” she gave a half chuckle at the idea of anyone calling her happy. Prickly or austere was more like it. “Are you always this chatty?” she asked, she would have preferred nosey but decided to choose her words more wisely. She had learned that being overly blunt or speaking her mind without thinking first, or censoring herself, even just a little bit, wasn’t always the best tactic.

[Tristram Kelly]

A wry smirk crossed Tristram's face as he brought his drink to his lips. "Not usually." Though it had been quite some time since the disease had claimed half the crew, it still bothered the young gun. He had taken to brooding on the frailty of human existence. It seemed it didn't matter if you were strong as an ox, like Sid, or young and full of life, like Kalli. If fate decided to take you out, you'd have a snowman's chance in Hell of avoiding it.

He was about to end his interaction with the girl when he saw the man from before burst in with a couple friends in tow. 'Oh, this is gonna get ugly.'Tris knew he wasn't any good at fighting. Hell, that stunt that got him hired on Trinity's crew was a drunk bit of luck. Not wanting to be smack in the middle of a barroom brawl, he got up and walked to a table a few feet away. He watched as the three men walked toward the girl, nasty intents glaring in their eyes. He waited until the lead man was only a few patrons away from his target, then he kicked one of the chairs across the floor and in front of the brute. Sure enough, he didn't see the chair slide into his path, and he went careening into another barfly.

"Watch where yer going, ya ruttin' oaf!"

The angry patron, who was obviously very intoxicated, pulled back and punched the thug square in the jaw. The youth sipped at his whiskey as he watched the chaos unfurl.

[Vivian Thrace]

Vivian smirked and glanced sidelong at him over her glass of whiskey. It was then that she heard the saloon doors open. She heard the clink of boots, three pairs of footsteps to be exact, but didn’t bother turning around to see the faces belonging to said footsteps. Instead Vivian noticed the man beside her move away. From the look on his face she gathered the man whose wrist she’d broken earlier was back, and he had brought a few friends this time.

Obviously the other guy wasn’t much for a fight, she assumed as the man who had been chatting with her momentarily found himself a table far from where Vivian was seated. She took another slow sip of her drink, “You couldn’t stay away could ye, come back for another beating have ye?” she said swiveling around on her stool to see the ruddy faced man who’s wrist she’d broken careen into another patron over a chair in his way. The two men began to brawl needlessly as the other two burly ‘friends’ who looked more like the smaller robust man’s brawny bodyguards advanced on her.

“Well hello gentlemen, what can I do ye for?” she asked taking her last sip of whiskey. One of the men slapped the glass out of her hand before she could drink it. The glass shattered onto the floor. Vivian followed the whiskey glass with her eyes and then looked up to the man with fierceness in her gaze. She whipped out her pistol before he could flinch and shoved it in his face, “Hasn’t anyone ever told you never to take whiskey from a lady,” she growled. The other one made to grab her but she shot him in the arm. He shrieked and held his bleeding bicep with his free hand. Vivian returned the smoking barrel toward the other one. “Well?” she inquired.

The man seemed to stammer for a moment, “Not so tough now are ye?” The man appeared to recover at her insult and grabbed the gun out of her hand twisting her into his body and wrapped an arm around her neck in a choke hold. Vivian responded by slamming her heel into his foot then kicking his groin. He let go immediately and doubled over. She whirled around, held his face up with her left hand and punched him square in the nose with her right. The lumbering man fell backwards moaning in a fetal position. Vivian looked up. It was chaos. Everyone seemed to be fighting everyone. In the mess of it all Vivian spotted her pistol on the floor. Someone kicked it and she dove for it. Again she missed. She cursed. Crawling in front of a pair of boots she finally managed to snatch her pistol and looked up into the face of the man she had been talking to previous. She smirked. He was still sat there calmly drinking his whiskey. She found herself a tad intrigued. With a sigh she asked, “So what’s your name?”

[Tristram Kelly]

Tristram didn't seem to be paying attention to the girl, now at his feet. He just rolled his eyes, stood up, shot down the rest of his whiskey, and whipped the glass toward the bar. It hit the man with the shot up arm, who had pulled a knife and was advancing on the girl, in the bridge of the nose and knocked him down. He grabbed a couple chairs from a nearby table, setting one near his for the girl to sit in, and the other in front of his own. As he sat down, he motioned for her to take the seat. He watched as one of the brawlers turned to grab at something to hit his opponent. Unfortunately for him, there was nothing. Tristram let out a quick whistle, which got the other man's attention. He kicked the chair towards him and pointed at the first man. Taking advantage of his rival's distraction, the second man picked up the chair and broke it over his back. With a dry chuckle, he leaned his head slightly toward the girl, so he might be heard over the ruckus. "Tristram. You?"

[Vivian Thrace]

Vivian looked at the man with a slightly perplexed, partly suspicious expression on her face as he offered her a chair. She picked up her gun and held it close to her, ready to use it at a moment’s notice. It was safe to say that Vivian didn’t trust others easily, or at all. She smirked at the scene and this man’s particular flavor of fighting skills. She was more than a little amused by it. “Vivian.”

((ooc: Sorry this was so short I really didn’t know where to go with this.))

[Tristram Kelly]

Tris took note of the girl's name. "So what's a girl like you doing in a place like this? Shouldn't you be home, where it's safe and quiet?"

_{OOC: This is short too, just so we can move on.}

[Vivian Thrace]

Vivian looked at Tristram, her eyes narrowed. Then her grimace slowly parted in a smirky grin as she laughed and glanced at the men before her. Some of them hadn’t even been in the fight but they were throwing chairs and breaking bottles over other people’s heads, “Home was never really a safe place to begin with.”

Her parents had both died in the Unification War. Her home was under the guardianship of a military man, a friend of her father’s, and the man who had taught her everything she knew. In a way she was a born and bred warrior. When put that way someone might think she was from the Alliance, but she was as drastically different as an Alliance official could be. Her guardian had been a proud retired independent General, and she was just as proud. “Besides, I find safe and quiet to be fairly boring,” she said turning her head to look at him again. “Why aren’t you home where it’s safe and quiet?” she asked.

[Tristram Kelly]

"Is anywhere safe?"

He pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper and wrote something on it. No use in beating around the bush.

"If you need a job, come find me here."

He handed the paper over. It had the Trinity's docking information and the times he would personally be at the ship.

"I can't pay too much, but room and board is included. Think it over."

He stood up and skirted around the edge of the fight, stopping only to trip a man as he drunkenly charged the youth. Before he could actually get into a spot he couldn't get out of, Tris quick-stepped to the door and exited the building. Straightening his jacket, he headed for home.