Issue 1 Downtime

Skeiron was back in the kitchen area of the small mess hall, placing a few bottles in a pantry closet. Between the kitchen and mess hall was a small bar, generally used as a place to pick up food if someone in the safehouse was preparing a meal for everyone, which was kind of...rare. It even had a couple sturdy old barstools.

"So, what's going on in here?" Will said, poking his head in.

John walked in. "Oh thank God. I so need a drink."

"Who goes there?" Skeiron turned quickly, looking back. "Oh, it's you. Hey. Not much, just puttin' away some uh, spoils of war." He smirked at John. "Ya came to the right place. We don't have the, uh, most well-stocked bar in the world, of course. What do ya want?"

"Under these circumstances, the strongest you've got." He smirked, "... except the absinthe of course."

"Hell no. That shit's for me." He yanked out the newer bottles he had put in and looked for stuff that had already been opened.

"Tell ya what. There aren't too many occasions worthy of this stuff, but today just might be one of 'em. Glenfiddich Distillery Edition. 102 proof." He fetched some glasses scraped some ice out of an old icebox, pouring some of the whisky on the rocks.

John took a seat.

"Don't get many time travelers then?"

He shook his head with a grunt. "Don't get many reasons to crack out the good stuff and celebrate either. But you can prob'ly see why."

"I certainly can," he answered with all due respect to the situation. He then took a swig...

... and coughed. "Sweet Jesus that's strong," he coughed.

Skeiron laughed. "Big baby. It's only a little over half alcohol." He took a long sip from his glass without flinching. He looked pleased at the taste, in fact. "What do you wanna drink, then, eh?"

"A beer might be better," he chuckled.

He picked up John's glass and set it in the icebox. "Waste not." Then a found a bottle of dark brown beer from the pantry, setting it in front of John. "Suit yourself, but I can't even taste that that crap anymore."

Naida entered, stopping at the entrance momentarily before she found her target. She waltzed right over to her father. "I was looking for you Father." She said before eyeing the bottles. "Don't you do anything else but drink?"

"Shouldn't you cut back a little, Rick?"

"I'm sure he's not that bad."

"Of course, sweetie. I break into flatscan stores to get more booze," he joked. Well, sort-of joked. He pulled his daughter into a one-arm hug.

"It hasn't killed me yet," he remarked to Will.

She giggled and leaned down to give her father a kiss on the cheek. "You just need to start stealing my favorites more often."

She looked away from her father and to the the others there with them. "So, these are two of the time travelers huh? Hheeyy. Robin's dad was super cute when he was younger."

John chuckled lightly.

"A pleasure to meet you Naida."

"Nice to meet you..." he said, cocking an eyebrow.

"Oh yeah, guess I should introduce ya. This is my daughter, Mar--well, we all call her Naida. Naida, you know Will, and the good dragon fella is John. It's...it's been a while since I've seen you," he mumbled, looking at John.

"I heard..." he said solemnly.

"Is it... is it okay if I... ask how it happened?"

She smiled at the two then looked at John. "Nice to meet you both.." She said with a smile that slowly faded as John asked how it happened. "Well..there were stories. You were helping some people escape..and then sentinels came.."

She sighed. "Despite the number..you bought everyone some time to escape.." She glanced over at her Father, waiting for him to fill in on any details since she hadn't been there herself.

He nodded, taking another swig. "That's pretty much it. I wasn't there either. Unfortunately." He glanced back to Will and John, his features hardening. "Both of you were wrong, y'know."

At least I died bravely.

John raised a brow. "About?"

"The fucking flatscans. All those worms ever wanted for us was a big enough pit to dump our goddamn cold dead bodies in the ground."

"Not all of them."

He waved a hand in dismissal. "Not enough to count. The ones who give two shits about us're not exactly well-liked by the bigots. I've seen enough sympathizers die. Trust me."

"What happened, Rick..."

"To what, Will? Everything's gone to hell."

"What caused all this!"

"Princess Louise was assassinated. Everything snowballed into a giant shitstorm after that happened," he recalled, downing the rest of his whisky.

"Assassinated? By who?"

"Mutant supremacist group."

"Killing a poster-child for tolerance... brilliant move there. I guess they thought they could win the war they started."

Must have been from Genosha.

"Can't argue with ya there. I can think of plenty of politicians who shoulda been offed before her. 'Course, the rest of the humans were just shakin' with glee for havin' a reason to go after us in one big ol' genocide that woulda made Hitler blush."

He was getting worked up just talking about it, and thus poured himself some more.

John sighed.

"Do you know what's happened to Kaylee?"

"Is that...Outbreak? If I remember correctly..she really took your death hard..and kind of disappeared.." She smiled slightly. "I don't think she's dead though...every now and then I hear the humans get hit hard with random outbreaks of disease and boom, their numbers drop. Probably with one of the more offensive groups out there..or the terrorists."

She took a swig of the beer. "Could say shame on her..but this isn't the time to play nice and friendly and hope the humans suddenly change their minds after all this."

John didn't like the thought of Kaylee resorting to terrorism... but he understood.

"I'm sure if it wasn't for her, I'd never have lasted that long."

Skeiron's eyes briefly flared cyan as he picked up his glass, and everyone in the room would distinctly feel a cool breeze blow past them.

"I miss that girl. I'd be doin' more of the same as her, though, if I wasn't here tryin' to rescue more mutants. Not that exterminatin' some of the worms isn't part of the job." His lips curled into a dark smile as he drank more.

John almost contradicted Rick, but kept his mouth shut.