[PS] Bar/Theatre/Arcade

[Zangya]

Suddenly, she felt excited—she couldn’t comprehend it, but throughout the teleportation, her fear seemed to be sucked out of her body. The jade-skinned warrior princess felt… energized to be a part of Dante’s Abyss for a second time. Even though her participation wasn’t yet certain, she felt as if she was about to cry from pure happiness. Just a short while ago, she had felt scared, afraid, hesitant—she had felt lost, and now, though this is perhaps the most cliché way of putting it, she felt found.

Something inside of her had risen up, and now, she felt her muscles tense with impatience for the competition to begin. She felt her brain attempting to calculate any strategy they could possibly form, and her mind suddenly was in game-mode. She was in it to win it this year, and no one was going to take that mindset away from her anymore. No one. Not Garlic Junior, not Bardock, not Celipa, not Retane, not Raditzu—no one was going to take it away from her.

She soon discovered that her feet had led her to the bar—a place that, she had to admit, she had failed to visit the previous year. A mistake, to say the least—this was probably the most relaxing room she’d been in so far. It had a nice, simple set up, with a long bar stretching across the room, as well as plenty of booths and tables and such. The bartender sat solemnly on a stool behind the service table of the empty saloon, and when Zangya entered, his eyes brightened.

“Why, hullo thar, missy!” he exclaimed, leaping from his stool to go and begin mixing a drink. “What’ll a purty lady like you be havin’?” Zangya blushed, but it was merely from flattery—this man was quite the charmer, true, but he was a human, and Zangya knew better than to become romantically associated with humans. Especially with one who had such a tender intelligence as this man, whose words were slurred together much like a drunk’s, and severe lack of grammar signaled lack of knowledge.

“Just give me a shot of something,” she commanded gently, in the way that a kindly patron of a tavern would. The bartender obliged, and quickly poured in a random drink and slid the tiny cup across the table to what appeared to be his first customer of the year. He was rather excited, much more than Zangya could say she was, despite the interior monologue that preceded the action in this short account of her travels in the Dante’s Abyss Pre-Show Area.

“Well, go on, now, missy,” he urged, “Take a drink!” Following his insistence, she did just that, and quickly downed the miniature glass of alcohol. It was rather sour in taste, whatever it was, and something that she just did not prefer—but she couldn’t bear tell him that. The past year had humbled her, and so she wasn’t just about to go criticizing him off the fly. Zangya nodded in faux approval, and the ecstatic man took the shot and refilled it, sliding it one again into her fingers. She drank it again.

“It’s very good,” she lied after her second shot had passed, “What is it?” The bartender simply laughed; obviously, he was either quite amused that she was actually falling for whatever joke he was playing on her, or was simply much too euphoric that she was actually taking pleasure in his own little concoction, which, to say the least, she was not. The least he could do was repay her for the kindness she was showing in sparing him the truth about his mixture.

“Oh, it’s my own little secret,” he laughed, taking it up again and refilling it for a third time. She reluctantly drank it once again, this time refusing another, claiming she was rather full—it was a filling drink, to be sure, she told him, and he ignorantly obliged, thanking her for her compliments. At this, the man whom Zangya had deemed quite unintelligent decided to offer up entertainment in the form of a card game. “Feel like playin’ blackjack, missy?”

“Why not?” she replied—blackjack had, after all, always been her favorite card game. Throughout her year of being a nomad, the green traveler had played blackjack with herself quite often. It was a card game that was equally entertaining when playing in solitude and playing with someone else. She had a small inkling that perhaps this indulgence in the game during their lonely moments was something that she and this human man shared. She smiled wearily. “You deal,” she insisted.

“Alright,” he acknowledge, and the cards were played—a deck was somehow materialized from his pocket, and the human man handed out two cards to each of the players. The Ader looked at her top card. It was a ten. She looked at her bottom card—an ace. What a perfect hand! How could she resist toying with the man? The truth was, if this had occurred last year, then she would’ve been ruthless. But now, there was something inside of her that compelled her to be kind to him. He was a weak soul.

“Hit me,” she remarked, knowing those words to be losing commands. He laid down an ace—ah, why did he have to be so cruel as to lay down the one card that, when she busted, he would discover her pity? Nevertheless, she sighed, “Bust.” The wide-eyed bartender looked at her curiously. He seemed astounded—she knew that he realized what she had done, but she said nothing. He took up the cards quietly, and as he did so, a smile came onto his face.

“Play again?” he offered.

“Why not?” she agreed.

“And this time,” he said, “Don’t go easy on me.”

Zangya smiled. “Agreed.”