"What if they don't let us in?" Vespiir asked worriedly. "Are we not barred from such premises until an accepted age of acension?"
"Relax" Samantha said as they arrived outside of the pub. "One, we're in college... we're expected to find a way into a campus bar. Two, it's St. Patrick's Day, so it's practically against religion not to go drinking, and Three, I'm fabulous, Kerry is Irish and you're green, half-naked and stacked. There isn't a bouncer on Earth that will stop us today."
"Fear not" Harlagaz assured the Caphan. "I have followed the local custom and procured Fake ID's for us all, complete with mythical alter-egos to assume. 'Tis an odd custom, but if it doth lead to drunken merriment and tests of honor to catcheth the eye of a lusty mead-wench, then it be well worth the forty dollars." He held out the cards for each of them.
"My name is Ragnhild Flos Jorljllrsson?" Kerry growled. "Ragnhild?!"
"T'was the name of mine great aunt" Gaz noted encouragingly. "She didst slay a ravening horde of Bjadgers with naught but a half-eaten wallaby. None would dare bar her path to alcohol."
"The doorman won't look at it too closely" Denial assured them.
"Exactly" Samantha agreed. "We're young, out from under any adult supervision, and loose on the biggest party night of the year. Tonight's all about us."
"Hallie!" Tandi squealed over the noise of the bar, grabbing her friend and dragging her into the center of the throng of admirers that surrounded her. "You came!"
"Yeah" the virtual woman replied, awkwardly engulfed in one of her friend's trademark enthusiastic hugs. "I invited you, remember? For back-up? This was the night of my art class, and some of the students wanted to meet down here for drinks to celebrate St. Patty's day..."
"Oh! Right!" The robot woman released her friend and smiled widely. "It's just... you never want to go out drinking..."
"I don't drink" she answered. "I also don't eat."
"So why did you come this time?"
The virtual woman pushed a stray lock of dark hair behind a lightly tanned earlobe and leaned in towards Tandi confidentailly. "They don't know I'm not human... My classmates. Or, um... the university..."
The robosapien's eyes widened. "You're not green! I just noticed!" In fact, the A.I. blended in easily in a simple tight white top and jeans.
"How many of those have you had?" Hallie asked, pointing to the daquari in her hand. "You couldn't have been here for more than... Gah!" She leapt briefly and then spun to confront the frat boy behind her.
"Not wearing green..." he noted with a smirk. "Gets you a pinch." He leaned in close to her. "Unless you got something green underneath you want you show me..."
"Oh, she's got green underneath" Tandi assured the guy. "In some very interesting places... which means you owe her a drink."
"What if I want first-hand proof?" he countered.
"Then you better make it a strong drink" Tandi grinned.
"Tandi!" Hallie hissed as the guy headed towards the bar, grinning.
"What?" the robogirl asked, confused. "You just said you wanted me here as your wing man. Wing woman? Wing robot?"
"That's not what I meant!" the A.I. argued. "I just wanted your help looking normal! I don't do the bar thing..."
"Well, yeah... and when a cute guy gropes your butt, you can either clobber him or get a free drink out of him" the former sexbot explained. "Electrocuting him is not nearly as common of an option, and that really wouldn't have kept your cover going."
"Clobbering him would have been fine."
"This way is more fun..."
"I'm not here to pick up guys!" Hallie stressed. "I can't even do anything with the guy I want, let alone with some drunken frat boy. And I can't drink whatever he brings back either."
"I can!" Tandi volunteered quickly. "But you should have something too... you'll look weird in a bar without one."
"Right, okay..." Hallie noted. She glanced around to make sure no one was looking, then created a virtual margarita to hold in her hand.
"Great! Now knock it back for courage!"
She was going to protest, then shrugged. Tilting her head back, she downed half the drink while Tandi cried "Whooooooooooooooo!" A roar of approval went up from the men in their immediate surroundings.
"Guys find you really popular when you drink a lot!" Tandi noted.
Hallie wiped her lips, watching as her friend downed the last of her daquari while bouncing to the music in her miniskirt and plunging blouse. "I can't imagine why" she noted.
Tandi smiled as a guy offered her another round. "Oh pooh..." she said as she turned back around, pointing over Hallie's shoulder. "It looks like your frat boy is giving your drink to that Caphan girl over there."
The choke Hallie made while knocking back the second half of her margarita was especially convincing.
"I lost Gaz, but I got us a round..." Danny noted, pushing through the crowd as he returned from the bar with some green beers. "Unlike the beer at the Fatal Toilet, this batch is only green for the holiday." He realized the group had expanded in his absence, and was noticably more tense. "Say, who's your friend?"
"Undercover narc" Kerry growled.
"I'm not..." the black haired woman began heatedly, then paused. "Well, I'm not a narc, anyway."
"Jeez... is that...?" Danny blinked.
"We have been caught breaking social rules by Mistress Hallie" Vespiir nodded, ashamed.
"Whoa... she's your mistress?" the frat boy asked, impressed.
"She is revered by all the slave sisters of Lemuria."
"Awesome... is she your mistress too?" he asked Kerry.
"Don't even go there if you want to keep your short hairs from igniting" Kerry growled. "She's just my..." she paused, considering it. "Damn, but my family has gotten really confusing since I moved to Parodiopolis."
"Heh" Danny chuckled. "It's gotta be awkward running into someone who's practically your stepmother in the bar you snuck into."
Both woman turned blazing eyes on him.
"Hmmm... you know, on second thought" Denial said hurriedly, "...I think I never even came back from the bar."
"I'm dating her older brother" Hallie clarified.
"My much older adoptive brother" Kerry clarified. "And she's the mother of my niece and nephew."
"Dude, I don't mind..." the frat guy said. "I'm totally into MILFs, and I like the domination thing..."
"What part of dating my adoptive brother did you not understand?" Kerry growled. "And Ew." She turned to Vespiir. "Why don't you go see what's keeping Danny and Gaz at the bar, and take HornyBeered-upFratBoy! with you."
Glancing at the two women staring each other down, the Caphan gratefully retreated.
"Okay, so you caught us..." Kerry stated. "How long until Vizh gets here and humiliates us all at our new school?"
"Dammit Kerry, I'm not here to..."
Tandi came up behind Hallie. "Sorry, I got hung up watching this really cute muscular foreign guy play darts. Do you know if the wall behind the dartboard is load-bearing? Either way, luckily nobody was using that particular urinal in the restroom behind it." She smiled brightly. "You're Kerry, right? What are you doing here?"
"Why shouldn't I be here?" the Junior challenged.
"Because you're underage?" Hallie asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Well you're overage" Kerry countered. "I"m pretty sure Cougar night is on Thursdays."
"I'm not "overage"! I'm twenty six! That's a perfectly acceptable grad school age!"
"And you've been twenty six for, what... twelve years now?" Kerry argued. "You can virtually botox yourself all you want, but you're totally *not* student age. So what are you doing here if you're not spying on us for the Feeb?"
"I'm here with my people from my art class!" Hallie argued, pointing to the table in the corner.
"The group Samantha's hanging out with instead of you?"
"What?" Hallie asked, turning to check. "Is she sitting in my professor's lap?" She shook her head and turned back to the Junior. "That's not... Look, I'm not here to spy on you, or to butt in on your territory. I know what a big deal it is to go out into the world on your own."
"But you just happen to be hanging out in a bar on Parodiopolis U on a school night" Kerry stated dubiously.
"We're here so Hallie can fit in with normal people" Tandi supplied helpfully.
Kerry scoffed. "Good luck with that." She hesitated as she saw the look that briefly flashed through the virtual woman's eyes. "Alright, so maybe you were here first..." she allowed. "Let's say I believe you that this is a total coincidence, and that Vizh and the rest of the Legion aren't going to show up and totally ruin our reputations for our entire college lives. For tonight, we'll just stay out of each other's way. And if either of us gets a little drunk, it stays in the bar."
"Very generous, considering I can't get drunk" Hallie reminded the Junior.
"Oh!" Tandi exclaimed. "I have a 'drunken' subroutine! You can use mine!"
"I... You do?" Hallie asked hesitantly.
"Sure! Professor Pervo spent a lot of time perfecting it... it's one of the best inebriation subroutines out there." She took another sip of her daquari. "It's warmin' up right now."
"Uhuh..." Hallie said. "Well, that's really quite generous, Dee, but..."
"But what? Afraid to lose control once in a while like a normal college student?" Kerry challenged. "I thought you were supposedly here to experience life?"
"I'm running the majority of the systems of the mansion, fielding and routing all calls and monitoring a worldwide alert system 24 hours a day" Hallie pointed out.
"So, you're not at all a control freak then" Kerry answered with a roll of her eyes. "Jeez, I know for a fact that you're entitled to the same time off as the rest of the mansion staff, and that you can automate all of that stuff you just mentioned. Mag and Griff are visiting Mom... what other excuses have you got?"
"I... I don't run the same code as Tandi. I doubt it'd even work..."
"Actually, those subroutines are pretty standard..." Al B. Harper noted, passing by with a beer in each hand. "Considering how your own code is designed to gather information, it should have no trouble adapting and applying a simple subroutine from Tandi. There might be a few glitches, but nothing too serious I would think."
"Al?" Hallie blinked in surprise. "What are you doing here, aside from being so damn helpful."
"Yeah" Kerry added with a dark look to the virtual woman. "What an amazing coincidence."
The scientist shrugged. "I was invited to give a guest lecture to the physics department, so I made it on mathematical improbabilities in quantum field fluctuations as pertaining to the Hiesenblorg Uncertainty Flux."
"That sounds... interesting" Tandi noted gamely.
"Really? I picked it so nobody would attend" Al noted. "The few who did left in a hurry once the first pie chart prepared by the Manga Shoggoth hit the overhead projector. All in all, a full lecture fee for 5 minutes of presentation."
"Is that ethical?" Hallie asked with an eyebrow raised.
"Certianly more so than allowing the lecture to progress to the Venn diagram section" He noted, pushing off through the crowd towards a back booth.
"Who do you suppose he's with?" Tandi asked curiously, straining to see over the heads of the various students and faculty.
"Maybe he's just a two-fisted drinker" Kerry noted. "Some people aren't afraid to cut loose."
"I'm a little past the point were peer pressure is going to make me cave" Hallie stated. "Especially coming from the underage ward of my boyfriend."
"Aw! I've never heard you call him that before!" Tandi noted. "That's so cute!"
"Really?" Kerry said. "It kind of made me gag." She shook her head. "Fine, keep on pretending that you're not a middle-aged digital soccer-mom making out grocery lists in your head. Me, I'm underage, Irish, and in a bar on St. Patrick's Day. I'm going to go get real."
"Hey!" Hallie called out after her as the Junior disappeared towards the bar. "I'm real too, dammit."
"Aw... that's so cute!" Tandi noted again. She held up her empty glass. "I'm getting pretty tipsy" she announced loudly, "...but I sure would appreciate another drink!"
There was a small stampede of unattached men towards the bar.
Hallie chewed her lip thoughtfully. "This subroutine... it has an emergency off switch, right?"
To be continued by anyone else who might like to, or might find their characters bar-hopping.
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