“It’s kinda refreshing.”
“The hobo out there seems like a nice guy.”
“Billy Vine? Yeah, he’s a cool guy. Very respectful.”
“Apparently he got into some legal trouble and that’s why he’s like that.”
“Really?”
“He could also just be a very nice crackhead, though.”
“I have a cousin that lives like a hobo, actually.”
“Really?”
“It’s a bit complicated though.”
“Problem is, his family has tried to get him to live with them, but his pride won’t let him accept their help.”
“He’d rather live on the streets for some reason.”
“You can’t tell with some people, sadly.”
“Why did he become a hobo in the first place?”
“Bad investments and debts. Bank evicted him from his house.”
“Oh…”
“It’s a serious problem because he has epileptic attacks but refuses to take his medication.”
“I just don’t get what’s up with him.”
Yet more Dorothy stuff.
“Hoooooneeeeeyyyyy. Some seeeerviiiiice heeeeeeeeere.”
“I’m here. Don’t scream.”
“Just talking.”
“Is that what they call it these days?”
“…what do you want?”
“Something soft, something sweet. No alcohol, please.”
“Wouldn’t it be the same if you just grabbed a soda from a vending machine?”
“But I like you-u-u-u-u-u-u.”
“Do you dislike my presence so much?”
I don’t know about Jill but I certainly do.
“…”
“Sweet and non-alcoholic, you say? Alright…”
“See? You don’t get this kind of treatment from vending machines!”
“…unless you’re Lawrence.”
"But he has this weird idea that good service is the same as serving lukewarm cans of cola.”
“Lawrence?”
“A friend of mine. He’s a vending machine.”
“Oh…”
“Oh, but how impolite of me.”
“Hm?”
“I’m lovely and my name’s Dorothy. Dorothy Haze. Nice to meet you!”
“Oh. I’m Alma. The pleasure’s mine.”
“Dorothy, you say?”
“Eeyup, why?”
“Nothing, I guess I’ve heard about you before.”
“Really? What kind of stuff! Tell me! Tell me!”
“Mostly about your…umm…pluckiness.”
“And here I was thinking it’s because I’m a sex worker.”
“…so much for trying to be subtle.”
“Hey, I take pride in my job. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it.”
“Isn’t it dangerous?”
“I know how to take care of myself, thank you very much.”
“Where do you work, Alma?”
“I’m a hacker.”
“Really? A full-fledged hacker?”
“Not the kind that sees a computer logged into some account and says that’s hacking, right?”
“No, of course not.”
“I’ve always been curious about how being a hacker works.”
“Do you just start typing really fast while waiting for something to happen?”
“No…”
“I can explain, but I don’t know if you’ll get it.”
“We don’t know until you try, right?”
“Last time I said that I had to jam the plastic replica of a halogen light bulb up a grown man’s ass.”
“It was a success!”
“ahem Okay then…let me try to explain in general how it works.”
“Let’s say I have to retrieve information from a company’s database.”
“Alright!”
“First I do some research on the target. OS, servers, how the information is stored and all that.”
“There’ve been a couple occasions when I’ve had to go in blind, but they’re the exception rather than the rule.”
“First, I secure things from my side.”
“I start working behind proxies, website, and through other more vulnerable computers I find on the way.”
“Uh-huh…”
“After that I start testing the networks.”
“I go through the basic protocols, try known exploits as long as they don’t trigger any alarm.”
“Once I’ve tested the ground, the fun starts.”
“I go through all the security protocols and look to bypass them.”
“Sometimes I have to look deeper into the code for the password itself.”
“I-I see…”
“Then, when I’m finally in, I go and retrieve user privileges.”
“After that, I go and try to become a super-user and get what I need.”
“H-How…do you do that?”
“Well, there are a couple of ways…”
“I can use a premade program to hack into an already existing account.”
“I can use info someone already gave me…”
“But the usual way is using a buffer overflow.”
“B-Buff…”
“What happens next?! WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!”
“I…create a backdoor in the system before leaving and covering my tracks…”
“…I-I can’t…”
“I can’t handle it anymore!”
“Alma, hack me! Hack me like you’ve never hacked anything before!!”
“E-Eh?”
“Make my buffer overflow! Create a backdoor in me! Escalate your user privileges! Find flaws in my securityyyyy!!”
“…”
“…”
“S-Sorry…I got carried away.”
“No shit. What happened?”
“Have you seen those movies or books where a couple does something like paint a picture or cook…”
“…but they make it sound like they’re having sex instead?”
“Suggestive scenes, yeah.”
“Well, that whole thing was kinda like that for me.”
“Really?”
“I guess humans don’t really get it because their minds don’t upload to networks or anything…”
“But trust me, if you recorded yourself giving a REALLY detailed explanation in a really sexy voice…”
Pretty sure that’s just called ASMR.
“You’d make millions. Horny Lilim are an underexploited market.”
“I see…”
“Oh, looks like my ride’s here.”
“Your ride?”
“Yup, my brother-in-law came to look for me.”
“Is it alright to ask that from him?”
“It’s okay. I’ve known him since preschool. It just so happened that he got married to my sister.”
“Hey Dorothy, you need a ride?”
“Can you drop me by Third Street?”
“Sure, it’s on the way.”
“Yay~ I’ll take your offer then.”
“Bye, honey!”
“Take care.”
(“The street seems…noisy.”)
(“Oh, a client.”)
“Hello, welcome to Valhalla. What can I get-…”
“Truly, an oasis of spiritual drinks in the midst of the suburban desert.”
“A place where lost and corrupt souls can gather to forget their troubles for a while.”
“A nest where everyone from the most pathetic scum to the vilest trash-junkie can just sit to kill their insides.”
“Truly, a real Persona Non Grata.”
“That’s Latin for mysterious place, by the way. I’m so smart and philosophical.”
(“Alright! We got ourselves a Persona Non Grata here…”)
“What will you have then?”
“Seventeen.”
“E-Excuse me?”
“I said seventeen. Seven plus teen.”
“What does that mean?”
“What does it mean to YOU?”
“Just to be sure…17 is about the drink you want, right?”
“Only if you want it to be.”
“…”
“The total of ingredients here add up to 17.”
“Beautiful.”
“And what brings you here? Mister…”
“I’m Armandio. Virgilio Armandio.”
“See? I introduced myself using the Asian order because that’s a lot more polite.”
“Riiiiiiight.”
“And I came here looking for an…otherworldly experience.”
“I was passing by and saw this place is called Valhalla.”
“I wanna see the souls of resting warriors, the wounded spirits of noble souls.”
“The golden halls full of never-ending banquets, the lively Valkyries looking over them…”
“…we have some arcade machines on the corner.”
“No no no…you’re taking me too literally.”
“You see, I’m being poetic. I’m giving a mystical air to a mundane affair.”
“I wanted to see drunk people, I wanted to see waitresses and food.”
“I wanted to see the bar in all of its decadent glory.”
“Well, you’re out of luck. Today’s been quite the slow day.”
“Not that I’m very surprised, given how things have been going in the streets, though…”
“Humans are a nasty bunch, that much is true.”
“Making a ruckus, coming at each other…but that’s to be expected from the only mammal to kill its own.”
“I’m no zoologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.”
“Oh yeah? Then give me an example, not-zoologist bartender.”
“Like I said, I don’t know exact details, I just know that isn’t right.”
“If memory serves right, once a lion takes over a pride, every cub born from another lion is killed, or something.”
“Pffft…”Takes over a pride”, you can’t take over pride. Pride isn’t a tangible thing.”
“You need to stop making things up, not-zoologist bartender.”
“…”
“But going back on topic, do you know what the number seventeen means?”
“The atomic number of chlorine?”
“No, and Chloe is a name, not a number, you know?”
“The group where halogens are in the periodic table?”
“Stop making words up like “halogens”, “periodic”, and “table”.”
“Okay then. I give up.”
“Seventeen is us.”
“Eh?”
“Every human has seventeen pairs of chromosomes. That number is the whole foundation of you and me.”
“It’s…23.”
“What is?”
“Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Not 17.”
“Well, they’re both primal numbers, so it’s the same idea.”
(“Primal…”)
“…”
“Do you want anything else?”
“I’d like a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man’s hat.”
“Okay.”
Turns out the Simpsons reference was relevant after all.
“Ha! You didn’t…wait, you did.”
“Enjoy~”
“I will, I’ll drink this…umm…perfume.”
“…”
“…you don’t really have to…”
“Yeah, that’d be silly. You win this round, bartender.”
“Hey, bartender. Have you ever thought about death?”
“How?”
“What if we’re already dead? Both of us?”
“…what?”
“What tells you I even existed before I entered that door?”
“How can you assure me that this “reality” is real and we were not, in fact, in heaven or hell all along?”
“What if everything up to this point is just some stupid story written by an unemployed 20-something in his room?”
(“I could punch you to make you feel reality.”)
“I don’t care about any of that, actually.”
“This reality’s real for me and that’s all that matters.”
“Such a close-minded way of seeing things.”
“You need to…get away from the factual facts. Open your mind to things beyond your reach.”
“You’ll never reach enlightenment if you don’t start…”
“The Habanera has started! It means “twilight of the gods” in German, by the way.”
“Um…what?”
“Oh hell…”
“Let me take a look out the window.”
“Be careful.”
“…”
“I see lots of flashes in the distance. Most likely gunshots.”
“Jill! Come here a sec.”
“What?”
“…about 5GB of reports proving that several White Knight squads have been used to cover…”
“Illegal actions were released to the public by an unknown anarchist group.”
“We’re receiving reports of several units going rogue…”
“…and using their weapons to hunt down anyone they find on the street.”
“Several counter-terrorism forces from neighboring cities have been dispatched in order to subdue…”
“…the crazed units after a plea from the vice-president.”
“We’re still waiting for a declaration from Zaibatsu Corp’s CEO on the subject, but until then…”
“Things are ugly in and outside of that bank, it seems.”
“I’d recommend you stay here tonight. It’s too dangerous to even think about going outside.”
“What if they break in?”
“They won’t. Even then, the bar has quite the security system.”
“And I’ll be here protecting you, as an added bonus.”
“sigh…yeah, I guess I’ll stay tonight.”
“I’ll get you the spare mattress I have. Do you mind sleeping in my office?”
“No, I guess it’s fine.”
“Good.”
“sigh Let’s hope everything gets solved by the morning…”
“I’ll have Zankantou on hand, just in case.”
“The metal bat with nails?”
“There’s nothing it can’t bash!”
“Heh…”
(“Sei…Gil…Fore…”)
(“Hope everything’s better by tomorrow.”)
