Monday night. The only people in The Wrong Turn are lay-abouts, drunks, people in the service industry; and Arlo Warsz.
He was actually quite good with customers.
Sure, his resting face was an easter island head, but once he actually started talking he was kind. Almost weirdly kind. The worst customers would get nothing but a smile back, an offer of a free drink, told incredibly politely to leave, when they got really bad. Never was a good heart so easily revealed as Arlo Warsz', should have been a therapist, or a counselor, a teacher, a priest. That's why the best bartenders aren't bartenders, they found a louder calling before the subtle notes of 'cocktail shaker' come to mind.
Why those subtle notes appealed to Arlo, is not the question. The question is: why The Wrong Turn?
"You're a sweet kid." The pause was thick with 'how do I word this'. "Why do you work here?" Myriad enquired on the previously silent smoke break.
"..." The king of non-awkward long pauses takes his throne. "Well, it's..."
"I like the range of humanity you can see here." Not a lie, not the full truth. "In a lot of places, people make up an act they think they need to perform to be there. Here, there's already this preconceived notion that, no offense, illegal shit is happening."
"None taken, and it is."
"So people are just; themselves."
Some people- as themselves -suck. Myriad liked the answer in theory, but couldn't bring herself to agree. She smiled and took another breath of her lung killer.
"I suppose that's as good an answer as any. I hope you're right, honestly."
The sun was long gone and the clouds had begun to part for a starry sky and Arlo, now haloed by a flickering streetlamp and serenaded by drunk chatter within The Turn, nodded his completely clear face in the way an old grizzled man of war would and turned around on his heels.
"What about you, Myriad?" There was something pointed in that wording, and Myriad worried she'd upset him, but not enough to stop herself from answering truthfully.
Painfully earnest, the Leift twins, no escape from their their real boot trodden footsteps and the dragging marks that led them here.
"I lost a few too many games, got myself in a bad set, Eugene helped me out and just got himself caught in the flurry."
Arlo marked the guilt and masked anger she felt towards Eugene. She really cares about him, as he does her, and didn't want to drag him down but Eugene would have rather died than watch Myriad burn like that. He didn't know how to respond, he felt the desire to tell the full truth but it was overshadowed by self preservation- so he kept his mouth awkwardly shut.
She took this silence as him agreeing with her blame, and saw nothing wrong by it. Myriad was guilty of course, so why should she expect to be absolved?
In perfect timing, or the most garbage timing, depending on who's perspective you're glaring through, Echo barreled in through the alleyway. They were covered in blood and the blue cooling fluid that ran down their arm in two winding tubes, now ripped from their channels. Myriad was quick to dash inside and alert Eugene of the injured rogue, as Echo dropped to their knees. Arlo, assuming Myriad was running away, froze in a stance of confused terror.
Eugene successfully disconnected the mechanical arm before it began to leach off the heartrate they probably needed, removed the chunks of glass lodged in the other arm and cleaned up the cuts before Cillian arrived to fix the arm.
