Parleys

The barroom Cha entered was huge and lavishly furnished with sofas, couches and all manner of soft furnishing, with some tables rearmost. The plush pile on the carpet deadened the sound of her bare feet. It was very crowded.
Cha caught an escaped hairtress back into her ponytail, settled herself down tidily at a table - and started getting extremely nervous.
Perhaps a casual trouser suit would have been more suitable for the interview. Less fussy and constraining than the slim line knee length skirt and white blouse she now wore. She crossed her bare feet back under her chair, in hopes noone would notice. Ahh - she should have just been sticking to her pilot suit, just like most of the visitors here did - more appropriate for an action lady. She put on the serious professional smile she had been practising in front of the mirror and waited.

Clearly the Hellcat's pub was one of them fancy, newfangled social networking sites. She sat in a cacophony of conversation, with her future colleagues immersing themselves in subjects as wide-ranging as the prospects for the total annihilation of a rifter to the pending eradication of an aeon. Nope, she definitely wasn't surrounded by a flock of mildminded sheep.

She smiled at the person next to her. When he asked what was wrong, she told him she was glad he was her new friend. He smiled so happily back to her, that Cha wondered whether she had worded that in the best possible way.
There was another gentleman all over her, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet. "Ahoy me hearty!", he grinned. She thought of an appropriate answer, like "Avast, young brigand, is that a yardarm in your dungarees, or are you just glad to see me?" or "You are giving me the desire to haul some keel in vacuum space", but she refrained. She smiled sweetly.
Another person, clad in a somewhat disorganized uniform, walked up to her table and pointed to her in unsteady manner. "Real pirates have chest hair. If you cannot grow chest hair, you are either a cabin boy, or a Hellcat." Dousing oneself in beer obviously was a perfectly acceptable replacement for a shower. If the stout fellow's breathing would increase even more, then Cha would run screaming for the exit. She informed him that he was a scurvy dog.
When the bartender told her that he was out of kafak, she felt a terrible rage build up inside her, spreading through her limbs; and when it would get to her fingertips she was going to jump out of her chair and start hitting him again and again and again. She told him a Quafe would do.

After some time and varying entertainment like described above, she started wondering where the Hellcats were. Or rather, that was not the question. "Why am i here, that is the question," she asked herself. But she was blessed in this, that she happened to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone was clear. She was waiting for Mynxee to come.*

And as if those musings were a heavenly sign, the pub bar doors slid automatically open and she swept in, nodding queenly greetings about when being met with various forms of adulation.
Cha raised half from her chair, trying to decide if she would have to curtsey or not. With a swanlike assurance, effortlessly and swiftly covering the distance from the entrance to her table, Mynxee glided towards her as if being carried along on a magic carpet, rounded the table and graciously shook Cha's hand.
Cha was truely dazzled.
Mynxee was in a very good mood, full of energy and smiling expansively when she turned to Cha. Her grey eyes focussed like a bellicose on hers. "I am nothing more than a little heap of bones in the presence of a legend", Cha knew in all modesty. Mynxee cocked her head and scratched her chin. She was of undefineable age, and had an accent straight out of Evati. Her voice soothed like a lullaby, but Cha sensed that she could beat one silly if she had to. She interrogated Cha briefly, questioning her about her capacities and many other things, and at the end she told her she could not let her in yet.
"Just because the job's a bit unusual doesn't mean we shouldn't observe proper procedure", she said, and Cha completely understood.
"You will be picked up in due time, and you will get some proper educations", she said, and Cha nodded.
"We will know soon if you're a true pirate", she said, and Cha agreed - indeed: you arrr, or you arrr not.
Mynxee abruptly rose from the table: "And now, i go shopping!"
Cha knew she just had learned her first code. For it is clear that a pirate does not "go shopping". Unless by "shopping", you mean remorseless bloodshedding.

Soon, Cha would go shopping too. Soon.


* paragraph and boot problems shamelessly stolen