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no cover charge, come as you are...

CHARACTERS: Jo Harvelle & YOU
LOCATION: Space Babylon
WARNINGS: Drunken Shenanigans
SUMMARY: No special occasion here, just an open post for anybody that frequents the space bar. mix and mingle, friends. put up open threads for your characters, or talk to ~~Wichita~~ Jo, or. whatever. anything goes!

[ when she'd texted Wichita about asking for her job back, the last thing she'd expected was to be told to take it over for a little while. But this was Wichita, and Jo trusted her privacy enough not to ask questions. the bar will be here when you get back and that was that. So for those who frequent the bar looking for Wichita, you won't find her. Instead, you'll find this blonde here who you've probably seen walking around - she's the only other bartender at this joint, after all.

And now she's running it. Which isn't as difficult as some might thing - sure, she's used to running this place with at least one other person (even back home, at least she had her mom), but Jo's had a lot on her mind and keeping busy helps her keep her head clear. She's bustling around the room, most likely, humming along to whatever vaguely eighties mix she's been able to put together. It's either that or she's behind the bar, mixing drinks and chatting it up like all good bartenders do. Or try to do. ]

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Beer for now. Somethin' dark. [Harder stuff could wait, for now. There was still plenty of time left in the day, after all.]

Oh, an' a glass with ice for the bird.

Comin' right up.

[ Jo leans down behind the bar to pull out exactly what he asked for, setting that and the glass of ice down in front of him on the bar before she lets her eyes drift to the bird at his shoulder. ]

Does the bird have a name?

[The ice is a useful distraction, he's found. It gives the bird something to play with, that keeps him out of Mordecai's drink, or off of his head, or from doing various other attention-seeking behaviors while his human partner is trying to have a nice time at the bar. For now, though, Mijo isn't interested in the ice, and preens instead.]

Well, not a proper one. I was callin' him mijo an' it kinda stuck, so now it's his name, I guess. I was always bad at comin' up with names, though.

Mijo?

[ Jo's a little distracted with watching the bird preen, having never really seen anything like it up close. She shakes herself out of it after a moment, though. ]

Don't see anything wrong with that as a name.

It's just a contraction for mi hijo, though. Half term of endearment, half insult, heh. But it's not like he knows the difference.

[He has a drink of his beer, then looks over at the creature which to anyone from Earth probably looks only half-bird due to those bat-like wings - though the sharp beak and talons and fierce forward-facing eyes mark it clearly as a predator no matter where a person is from.]

That spanish?

[ There's that, and the fact it seems perfectly fine with being around people. Calm, trained maybe. It makes her curious but she also doesn't want to get too close. ]

Where'd you find him?

Yeah.

[Close enough, anyway. Pointing out that technically it's Truxican and nobody calls it Spanish anymore unless you're from Earth is too complicated for most of the 20th century Earth dwellers that make up the majority here.]

Got him outta a nest back on Pandora. Only a couple weeks before I got here, so to him, this ship's home.

[ Twenty first century, thank you. But spanish is close enough, right? So it works for her. ]

Can't imagine he likes that. Not a lot of free room to fly around in.

Well, there's the gardens, the rec rooms, the hallways, I dunno. He manages just fine. It's not like he knows anything else. What he really enjoys is hunting, an' the genetics lab has plenty of rats to keep us busy.

[Though they are smaller than what the bird should be capable of taking on. Still better than nothing.]

He doesn't eat those things, does he?

[ Jo remembers going down to the genetics lab, got bit by one of those rats herself. She distinctly remembers coming down with some kind of illness as a result, too. ]

Cause last I checked, they were kind of diseased.

Nah, he gets meat from the deep freezer an' chicken I raise in the gardens. Chicken's kinda fatty though, so it's more of a treat for him. He kills a rat, he gets a chicken wing, or whatever.

[Birds like Mijo might be trash eaters and corpse feeders and whatever else people on Pandora call them - they have strong stomachs, that's for sure - but with no vet on board and no way to know for sure that the bird could eat rat without getting sick, he's not willing to risk it.]

Sounds like a fair enough trade. Especially if it's basically an extermination service.

[He nods, then has a long drink.]

Gives us both somethin' to do, an' that's worth a lot here. I think I was startin' to go stir-crazy before we found that lab.

[ Jo can't help but nod in agreement to that. ]

Wasn't even here a month before Wichita asked me to help out here, and I was already going crazy.

[Mijo stretches, then steps sideways down Mordecai's arm to grab one of the ice cubes out of the glass and drop it on the counter, then curls a foot around it and chips pieces off with his beak. He might be fully-grown by now, but he still has a babyish appreciation for what he considers a toy, and Mordecai watches for a moment, chuckling, before looking back over at Jo.]

So, what'd you do before you got here?

[ There's a little smile playing at her lips as she watches Mijo play with the ice, turning back to look at Mordecai for a moment before returning to the ice when he asks. ]

This, mostly. Some waitressing...moved around a lot, so getting anything more permanent wasn't an option.

[ Also, hunting, but that's a little more complicated to bring up. ]

Did a lotta traveling, huh? What for?

[He's no stranger to that, certainly, having been on his own, moving constantly from place to place, since he'd left home as a teenager. Couldn't say he'd ever met a traveling bartender, though. Mostly a lot of bounty hunters like himself.]

Never liked staying in one place for very long.

[ at least, not when she finally got a taste of it. Nineteen years under one room was plenty. ]

Plus the work I did tended to change locations, depending on what I could find.

Yeah, same here, on both accounts. I never did like to stay put.

[He finishes off his drink and looks at the label out of curiosity, then sets the bottle down.]

Never was much for space travel, though. It's too much sittin' around. Shame there's no other good way to get from one planet to the next.

[ Jo reaches under the counter, pulls out another for him and sets it on the counter. ]

Did you space travel a lot back home?

Now, that's good service. I'd tip you if I had anything to tip with, here.

[He smirks and takes a drink from the new bottle.]

Anyway, no, not a lot. Not when I could avoid it. But you gotta get from one planet to another somehow when the job prospects on one get slim.

[ she smiles a little at that, shrugging. ]

I like to hold myself to a certain level of quality.

So it's easy to do where you're from? [ a beat, and then she continues

If you got the money, sure. Tickets are as much of a racket as anything else back home, though. But worth it, if you ever wanna see what's outside your backyard, y'know?

[Because while he certainly understands the poverty that a lot of people live in means they'll never get to leave home, he'd figured out how to beat the system when he was young. It's a damn shame how many people don't know anything else beyond what they're born into, he can't really blame them. A little ingenuity goes a long way, but the ultra-rich who run the megacorporations are really the ones at fault for putting people down and keeping them there.]

Back home for me meant getting in a car and driving.

[ though that wasn't really her problem, was it? she was the one that stuck around, ran back home when school didn't work out. getting in a car and just driving was hard if you didn't actually have a car, but she'd managed. there were always ways. ]

Space wasn't as popular, I guess.

[He raises his eyebrows in surprise at her second comment.]

But you actually have space travel, back there? Puts you a step ahead of most a' the people here. You have fast travel, too?

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