Scouting Penrose (07-10-2011) [Keoki, Lugh, Aemilio]

After what could've been a long walk but proved to be a fairly short cab ride Keoki, Lugh and Aemilio arrived in the town of Penrose.
"I'll pay," Aemilio announced as they got out of the cab. He paid the man the money and promised him a big fee if he could be at this exact point in about 2 and a half hours so he could serve as their ride back to the mansion and they'd be in time for dinner for sure. The man was happy to oblige and wished them all a good time and "see you kids in a bit!"

"So..." Aemilio said as he turned to Keoki and Lugh, "whereto is this pub of yours?"

"Just off the town square," Lugh replied pointing up the road towards the fountain, "take a left and your practically inside." he continued as he started walking "What do the pair of you want to drink then, seeing as I'm buying?"

"Ah, nothin' too much before dinner," Keoki replied, following behind Lugh. She was mostly taking to looking around the town. No giant apartments or office buildings, and still a ton of trees. It looked like for the most part, there was just houses, so it was just rural. "This place seems so calm and quiet, hah, it's crazy. So, are there any other places of interest as far as you can remember?" She was kind of regretting not bringing her camera, but if there was anything particularly interesting, she had her phone in her pants pocket, and that would do for the time being.

"Well the university, night club and cinema are all new additions." Lugh replied noting the two large buildings they had passed on the way, "Other than that there are a few pubs, a gym and the park, along with the local high school, the hospital and the town hall, although the latter three might not be what you’re looking for. And obviously there’s the houses and flats." he said, continuing down the street until they arrived at the Pubcrawler. "Yeah Penrose is rather peaceful even with the new additions. Well here we are." he said holding open the door for the two of them.

((Sorry, going to get an early night, try and get my brain back in gear.))

"I'll have a double espresso, thanks," Aemilio replied, much like Keoki studying the sight of the small, peaceful town called Penrose as they started walking in the direction Lugh'd pointed out for them.
He looked at Lugh expectantly when Keoki asked about other interesting places he might know of; it was never a bad thing to know all the ins and outs of a town when you're new.
Though he could barely believe anything interesting happened in this isolated little town at all... there was near to no traffic, just some people on bikes, maybe one or two cars passing by, apart from that everyone seemed to walk everywhere - children were just playing in the middle of the streets for *** sake! And maybe it had to do with the weather but everyone he saw was smiling and greeting each other... did everyone here know each other? That would make sense.
There were very little people of their age around, which was disappointing. He just hoped they were all away on vacation - he knew he'd leave this hole every summer if he lived here!

When Lugh named all the things the town had to offer he was pleasantly surprised, specially about the night club and the cinema.
"I'm feeling more at home already," he stated satisfied.
When they arrived at the pub he nodded as a thanks to Lugh for holding the door open and entered. Strangely enough, it looked exactly like he'd imagined it. "Ladies first," he told Keoki so she could pick where they sat.

"Well, it seems like a nice place," but it was far too easy to be noticed here as well. The people were nice, but they all knew everyone, so anyone new could easily be picked out from the rest. That much was just going to be annoying... but at least it didn't take too long before they made it to the pub.

"Such gentlemen," she pointed out, with Lugh holding the door and Aemilio letter her go first. She moved inside, stepping away from the door for the other two while she looked around. Considering Lugh knew the owners, Keo assumed they'd be taking some seats at the bar, but Lugh might as well pick where, since he wanted to say hello to his friends here.

"Well then let’s see if the old man's still here?" Lugh said walking towards the bar and placing himself on a stool. "Come on you two." Behind the bar a large middle aged man was bent over, seemingly adjusting one of the taps. "The quality of service has dropped a bit." He said a cheeky smile on his face. "Hold your horses." The man replied "Bloody young upstarts" he added in aside.

"Now what do you want you ungrateful litt... Lugh!" the man said raising to eye level, face changing to shock as he did "You could have let us know you where coming back to town." He chuckled "These friends of yours? He asked pointing to the others.

"Ah yes, Keoki, Aemilio this fine gentleman is Paul Fermagi, proprietor of the Pubcrawler." Lugh said introducing the pair.

Aemilio raised an eyebrow as he studied the man behind the bar. He didn't exactly look good and obviously had a bit of a grumpy side but to Lugh he acted like a nice guy. 'Note to self,' Aemilio said to himself in thought, 'stay on this guy's good side.' It was simple math: small town, 2 pubs... best to have the people running the show liking you or there might just be a lot of boring saturdaynights in your future.

"Hey, nice to meet you," Aemilio said to Paul, raising his hand in a short, single wave, "nice place you're running here."

Keo pulled her cap off before taking a seat beside the boys, as she usually did, placing it on her lap. She didn't seem to mind the grumpiness, a bar was a bar, as long as she was allowed to get a drink, that'd be good enough. But she nodded with a small smile after Lugh introduced with, "Pleased to meet you. Lugh was looking forward to coming here, can't blame him. Must be nice to have friends around here. Aemilio and I just got here."

"Ah, she's my pride and joy, might not be much of a looker, but there's no place finer." Paul said pride filling his voice "Aemilio and Keoki eh? Nice to meet you, take it you're here for the white elephant?" he continued referring to the university.

"I'm not surprised, he spent most of his time in here the last time he was around." Paul said frankly "You make it sound like I'm a drunk" Lugh replied pointing to one of the pumps "The usual then? Well I'm not sure how it's a state you never seem to end up in." Paul said retrieving a glass and began pouring. "It's because you water down the booze" Lugh said getting a clip around the head in response "Hey! He's lying through his teeth. Now what would the pair of you like?"

"And an espresso for Aemilio, and Keoki?" Lugh replied "How's Gabriella doing of late then?" Lugh asked as Paul put a pint down in front of him before going about Aemilio's espresso, "The Mrs? She’s fine off visiting the In-laws today, the Niece is just had her firstborn."

Apart from a nod to confirm the espresso Lugh ordered for him, Aemilio just sat there and listened to the 2 old friends exchanging stories and waited for Keoki to order; it never hurt to know what a lady's favourite drink was.

"Haha, yeah, we're staying at Meinoir in the meantime. So," she looked over at Lugh "You can hold a good few drinks, huh? Man, I should test that some night," Keo said jokingly, before going back to her order. Considering that it wasn't even dinner, it'd probably be a bad idea to have more than a small drink, "Ah, too early for anything nice, so I'll just take a light beer, please."

"I can hold pretty much anything you give me, and you're welcome to try." Lugh said chuckling "I'm not sure he's human the way he drinks. Sure thing love." Paul said still making the espresso "So what are you going to be studying?" he said looking to Lugh "Well I'm here for my doctorate." Lugh said knowing what was coming next "Aren’t we fancy? and what about you two?" he asked placing the cup of coffee in front of Aemilio, turning away to one of the fridges to retrieve a light beer for Keo.

"Thanks," Aemilio said smiling when he got his coffee. Then he listened to Lugh's impressive drinking history, and Keoki inviting him for a night of drinking, which all made him feel like a bit of an outsider. He didn't drink because of his medical condition. Every drink he had hit him 4x as hard as it would a normal person, and there was also the fact that because of that he never drank alcohol so he also had zero build-up tollerance.

Usually he didn't really mind it all that much - if he was at a party or something and didn't want to be the only one sober he simply took a couple of zips from one of his friends and bingo, he was tipsy. The times he did mind were for example when someone challanged him for a drinking competitions and called him yellow because he wouldn't compete. Or another example, when the people he was with started exchanged all kinds of experiences about drinking or made drinking plans for the future.

He was glad when the topic shifted to education; "jurisprudence," he replied before taking a zip of his still hot coffee, "I'm in my 3rd Bachelor year now."

"Oh wow, not even human? That's something alright," which was all the funnier since as far as Keo knew, she was the only one that wasn't human. But unlike Lugh, she didn't have any kind of immunity to drunkenness. Sure, she had a decent tolerance, but it'd still catch up with her.

"As for school, ah, I'll just be starting my first year. Studying film, heh," comparing that to the other two, she felt a bit behind. Hell, she was only going to school at all because Anna asked her, she'd been fine before. Hell, maybe Anna was just bugging her about it because Keo's parents weren't around to force her into college instead. She let out a small huff, but hoped no one noticed, instead just taking a sip of beer and thinking of something to talk about, but nothing really came to mind. Now that's just great.

"Jurisprudence and Film eh? Well good luck to the pair of you." Paul said as another customer called him over "I'll speak to you again later Lugh. Oh and Keoki, Aemilio. Welcome to the Pubcrawler!" He said as he left.

"Heh, he is a character." Lugh chuckled "So what do you think?" he asked before noticing Keoki making a noise "Something up?" He had also noticed Aemilio's period of quiet, and guessed what it was about, seemed the boy didn't drink and was feeling left out, or so Lugh deduced.

"You haven't seen the last of us yet," Aemilio called after the bar man with a smile as he left them, then he turned his attention to the other two (and his coffee) again.
He was also curious to the noise Keoki'd made but wasn't sure if he was suppose to ask about it so was pleased when Lugh solved that dilemma for him. Another thing he wanted to know more about was her education; "film hurh?" he asked Keoki with an interested smile, "no wonder you offered to fix the camera work for the belly dancing show. Why d'you choose that?"

"Hm? Nothing. Just, ah, thinking about my parents, I guess," she smiled lightly, but it was mostly just to make them think she was fine. Keo was glad when they went off that subject, though it was still about her. "Hah, I'm not sure you'll like my answer, Aemilio," she started, leaning forward slightly.

"When I was younger, I used to hang by this old building, mostly because it was abandoned, no one ever bothered going there. But one day I started hearing all these weird sounds. So, I took my family's camera and left it in the room overnight. The next morning I checked, all this weird stuff was on it, I had no idea what," now she was starting to lie, but at least it was still sort of like what really happened.

"I don't know, I just thought it was fascinating. I wanted to see if I could get something else like that on camera. Then I started learning about special effects and the film industry. Hell, I could make things like that... So, why not?" And so she finished her only partly-true story. Aemilio already showed disbelief in her and Lugh's talk of the super natural... and here that's what started her on her film track anyway. It'd be funny to see what he thought.

"Parents? It's a little bit early to get homesick don't you think? Come on cheer up otherwise it'll be one long year." Lugh said unaware how long it had been since Keoki had been seen her parents." When Keo started talking about what got her into film two thoughts ran through his head, 'I'll have to be careful around this girl.' and 'What exactly did she get on film?' "Would you mind showing the footage, I'm curious to say the least." he asked, although he didn't think it would be enough to convince Aemilio it might encourage him to heed Lugh's warning.

"I see," Aemilio said in reply to Keoki's story about filming, "well I guess sometimes you just have to run into your future accidentally huhr?" He didn't want to go on about the weird noises on Keoki's tape, afraid they might end up back at the topic of haunted forests and other supernatural nonsense. Unfortunatly Lugh went there anyway.

To Lugh's commentary about homesickness Aemilio couldn't help but agree; "indeed. To be honest, I'm rather glad to have my dad and my stepmother out of my hair for a while. Specially my stepmom," he muttered after it under his breath, to then hope Lugh and Keoki hadn't heard (he didn't want to come of as the bad guy in the difficult family situation that he, his father, Axel, and his stepmother were in).
So he coughed immediatly after muttering that last and took a zip of coffee to cover it up.

"Haha, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that footage was taken years ago, and off a camera I no longer have, so it's disappeared," she was actually telling the truth on that one, but seeing as the footage was her own transformation, it hadn't taken much to replace the original. And she had added other videos to her 'collection' over the years. Not that she'd tell that to Lugh, better off people think she has nothing. She took a sip of her drink and continued, "Haven't found anything like that again, but I've still messed around with filming, so yeah, it's just worked out."

Then Aemilio went back to the subject of family, though she didn't catch the last part, "Really? Hah. I guess you can say my parents haven't really been there anyway. The last few years I've been on my own. And while it's certainly nice to do what I want and go where I please... well, I guess people have homes for a reason." She had to admit, sometimes she just wanted a place to settle down. But, she would be stuck at Penrose for a while... the only problem being the exact reason she did move around. If she turned and attacked someone or something, in a small town like this, there was no way it'd go unnoticed.

"Ah I see." Lugh said partially disappointed and partially relieved, 'If she hasn't anymore footage then maybe she's not actively looking.' he thought. "It's the people not the place, problem is places stay still easy to return to, people not so much." Lugh said displaying his own views on the subject, "So drag someone with you, then you're never far from home."

As much as he was trying to be cheerful the turn of the conversation towards family drew Lugh away from the bar and into his head. Thoughts swirled in his head; of his friends in Otherworld, of his own parents, of his sisters particularly Fódla and Danan. But weighing the heaviest on his mind and heart was Anann, his hand moving unconsciously to where the silver pendant lay, covered by his shirt. "An lá is faide leis an mí is giorra. I am beidh mé ar ais.*" he muttered before returning to his pint and present company.

((*The longest day to the shortest month. In time I will return.))

Aemilio wasn't sure what to say, probably because he got the feeling his two companions had a far more serious family history than he did; his family-related tragedy was his father marrying someone he didn't like (as his stepmom made him do work around the house, thereby ruining his easy luxerious lifestyle) who had a son he didn't like either (because Axel was too much of a goody-goody).
So he considered he might find as well find out what was bothering Lugh and Keoki. Lugh's family history was particulary interesting as he didn't seem to want to talk about it - not to mention he just said something in some strange language in a really dramatic way.
"What did you just say?" he therefor asked Lugh.

Keo listened to Lugh's advice... but it didn't really help that much. The only person she'd ever traveled with was Anna. Now that they'd parted ways, it was just lonelier. But their conversation as a whole wasn't turning out to be a very happy one. She finished off her drink as Lugh said something in another language, she had no idea what, but maybe he didn't want to say either.

Shifting slightly in her seat, she looked over to the other two, "So, Lugh, you remember what kind of stores are around here?" honestly, she kind of felt like taking a look. As girly an idea as that was, to run off shopping, it was a nicer subject than getting all depressed over the subject of family. She checked her wallet anyway, to get out the estimated amount for her drink, "There'd better be a place that sells sweets, or I'll be pretty disappointed."

"Nothing really, well I suppose that’s not quite true, something akin to a wish or a prayer." Lugh answered not really wanting to explain. "The town may be small but there's a store for just about everything you can think of. and as for sweets there's a really quaint traditional sweet shop down a road on the other side of the square." he said before downing the last of his pint, "And put your money away I told you I'd pay for the drinks." he said as Keo took out her wallet, almost sounding offended.