Hello?

Anwen was miserable. The cheery sounds of clinking glasses and the occasional drunken slur reminded her of home and she wondered why on earth a society 3000 miles away from Ireland would make such a big deal out of saint Patrick's day when saint David's day passed by without any acknowledgement... surely they knew that the welsh drank three times the amount the Irish do, anyway... saint David's day would be disastrous. Feeling absurdly patriotic and homesick, Anwen made a mental note to find out when saint David's day was and celebrate it next time it swung around. Noticing her empty drink and wondering if any of her friends would allow her to go home now, she tapped her roommate on the shoulder.

"Can I go now? I've had a drink, that's what you said I had to have."

"Oh shut up Wen. Here-" Her roommate shoved her hand into her bag and collected a few notes from the bottom of the bag "-Go on, you get some drinks, and for the sake of saint Patrick- talk to someone, there's some good-looking guys up there"
Anwen rolled her eyes, grabbed her crutches, and hopped over to the bar where she waited impatiently for some attention from the barman.

"And what can I get for you sweetie?"
She recited the five drinks she was to order for her and her friends. As soon as she started talking, however, the barman's eyes lit up. He grinned, stuck a very large hat onto Anwen's head and rang a bell.

"IRISH"

"Oh Jesus"

Anwen rolled her eyes. She got her drinks free though- she wasn't going to correct anyone. A couple of free drinks, and a couple of mistaken Americans later, she was a little happier. Her roommate was in the corner snogging a boy she had never met, and Anwen was stood alone at the bar, thinking about how her accent was literally close to not being understandable anymore. Then she heard a smash; and turned to her left where someone appeared to have dropped their drink; and was staring at the space in front of them; their eyes wide and their hands shaking. Looking around for the source of their distress, she saw no one and walked over to the shaken person, who turned suddenly to look at her, edgily running their hands through their hair.

"Erm, Hi! Ar-Are you okay mate?"

Coke. Coke all over his shoes; brilliant. Absolutely--

--people looking at him. A woman; she must have thought that he--

--he couldn't allow that to happen. It's not him, and she mustn't think that it is. He twitched his cheek and went into Damage Control mode. "Man." He spoke evenly, clearly. "I guess this place pays its gravity bill." Yes, that was good; drunk people don't say things like that. That ought to have dispelled any gathering notion...

The whole thing was a gamble with fifty-fifty odds; people come to a bar either to socialize or to get drunk, but Mike only wants to do one of those things (and, apparently, he's ill-prepared even for that). Coming to The Commons that night was a lark. An adventure, really, into unknown territory. But, hey--you only live once, right?

So, to hell with it. This was it; he was on stage. He was in. He's not what you expect. Time to shine.

He thrust out his hand, grinned a lopsided grin. "Mike Cano. Clumsy, but not a drunk."

Very important, he observed in the confines of his mind, to have included the word 'a'.

Not a drunk- she was glad. Anwen laughed. The man wasn't, as she had before thought, having a fit or a panic attack- he was talking to her. Her roommate would have been proud, if she wasn't a little to occupied eating some guys face. Anwen was talking to someone. A guy. Granted the guy was a little bizarre and he had just randomly dropped his coke on the floor, but he was a guy none the less. And he seemed pretty normal. And a handshake. She'd missed that- the tentativeness of Britain. It seemed Americans were more touchy.

It suddenly occurred to her that she knew nothing of social protocol, never mind American social protocol. It also occurred to her she hadn't actually been talked to a stranger at a party in well, a while. She should probably shake his hand- that's only polite. He said his whole name, should she? And he was making jokes- she could never do that quick enough. Five minutes after the convocation, yeah... but not in it.
The third thing that occurred to her is that she should probably react because all she was doing right now was over thinking everything.
So she took his hand and shook it- probably in the wrong way, but hey.

"Anwen Thomas. A little tipsy, not Irish." she smiled at him.

Alexandra walked into the bar desperately in need of a Hennessey and Pepsi, because she had just finished a two day long study session preparing for a massive psychology exam and in need of liquid courage to face her impending model shoot she had coming up.

she walked in the bar smiling seeing the drunken stupidity that was reserved only for today... she smiled again relishing the cold polluted mixed drink wash against her full lips.
She sat in an uncomfortable wooden stool and an accompanying table that looked like it was never cleaned. She sighed taking off her sun shutter shade glasses revealing her deep brown eyes. Alexandra crossed her legs and looked at a menu as it was brought to her.

“What can I get you mam?”

There wasn’t a thought that had crossed her mind she knew what she wanted.

“Hennessey and Pepsi, please.” She smiled softly looking at the elderly man’s face.

“I’d need to see some ID first please.” She chuckled as she began searching through the endless and bottom device that was her purse.

A verbal “AH-Hah! There you are you little bastard!” “Excuse me mam?” the older gentlemen questioned as if she was talking to him.

“Oh...” her face flushed with the red hue of embarrassment. “I’m sorry.” The Wizened barman shook his head in response and understanding. She handed him her ID and off he went.
Alex looked around and flipped her hair watching was everyone else was doing.

"I think I picked the wrong day for my first time in a bar." The bartender was not paying attention to him; he wasn't sure that the red-haired woman was, either, but Mike spoke to her anyway. He was poking his head -and his prodigious hair- over the throng at the bar, doing that awkward, choppy dance that people do when they're not sure how to get someone to look at them. He kept speaking to the woman. "When I get this man to look at me -- sometime in the distant future, when...when I have a jetpack or something -- can I ask him to get you something?"

A thin black wire spilled from inside his jacket and swung near his knees, an impossibly-thin hammock. He didn't notice, or didn't care. "Hey, fella, I just -- look, I'm sorry about the glass, OK? Can I get another Coke?" Then, to the woman: "I don't think he's going to give me another Coke. Did I make him mad?"

Anwen laughed, amused by the guy with the strange hair's... no, Mike Cano's. actions. He seemed to be as new to socializing as she was; she relaxed a bit. She shook her head no when he asked about the drink, she was still holding a mildly alcoholic beverage she had gotten earlier for being 'Irish'. Sitting on a bar stool to rest her leg, and motioning for Mike to sit with her- she joined him in his efforts to get the rather brutish barman's attention. She giggled while listening to him talk, noticing all the little words and phrases she only understood because she watched 'friends' as a child.

"It's funny because, where I'm from 'mad' primary means insane, but you mean angry, right? But from where I'm sitting..."- she glanced over at him, sweeping up Mike's broken glass with a sour expression on his face "...I think he might be a little of both"

But now she was looking, he did look a little angry. She coughed awkwardly and looked away, politely suggesting that they order their drinks from a slightly-friendlier looking barmaid, who was wiping something up across the bar.

In her haste to swivel around and face the bar, however, Anwen completely lost her one-legged balance, and fell, in the most ungraceful way imaginable- into the glamorous looking woman sitting next to them, knocking her drink out of her hand and all over her lap.
"Ow! 'n chwith , 'n chwith!"

She had to tell herself to speak English.

"Oh my gosh... sorry love, I didn't- I've got a broken leg, see- Oh god, your drink, oh, erm- sorry... erm"
She hoisted herself up and looked nervously at Mike.
"Sorry..."

"Not here ten minutes, and already women are falling over each other."

"Sorry about what?" He pointed over his shoulder as he helped Anwen steady herself. "We established the gravity thing back there... You OK?" Then, to the other woman, "I hope you're no offended. I can vouch that, in all the time that I've known her, I've never seen my brand-new friend do this willingly."

She smiled and then jumped up with a horrifiing looking on her face.. she was also sopping wet now..

"oh my god!"

She looked up at the pair whipping off her pants with a sour face wondering how she was going to get her clothes dry

Should he? He wondered. It would be shocking, or at least incredibly perplexing, if he did...and it would attract attention.

Or would it? The bar was loud, and there were dozens--no, scores of people here, milling about, minding their own, inebriated business. So they might not notice...if the women involved would only keep quiet. IF.

But this might be the best way to avoid a scene--to cloak it under another. Hmm. Choices. Ahh, but how many lives was he guaranteed...?

"Excuse me, miss. I'm sorry about your pants but I think I can help. That is--if you will please only keep calm." Slowly and with careful detachment, he reached into his jack pocket and extracted a 1980s-era Toshiba personal stereo. "Both of you, please--very calm."

With a press of a button, the stereo flashed with a sudden reddish light--and the woman's pants, as if by magic, were dry.

He started to put the device back into his pocket. "Calm."

He took out a mini stereo... it seemed vaguely familiar...and then he pressed a button and the lady's trousers dried themselves.

Wait... what?

"I had two drinks...two bloody drinks..."

Anwen seemed torn. She was either hallucinating, or she'd had more alcohol than she originally thought, or it actually happened. And judging by the serious look on Mike's face, it did. Or she was completely mad. She had had a lot of pain killers in the last week...

But her trousers magically dried themselves

She turned her head erratically, stuck in a stunned silence, turning from the stranger's legs to Mike's face. It was probably some kind of scientific device... he seemed a little dazed... maybe he was a scientist? That could...no, okay.

"I'm sorry, Mike... I think I might be seeing things.... Did you just, I mean, did you- what?!"

She breathlessly turned and downed the rest of her drink before she shouted or freaked out.

"I mean... 'cause that was a cool trick you just did there..."

"It's...complicated. Well--"

He stopped himself. He didn't want to be that guy...

"--the way that this thing works is complicated. And it's really not a trick, but good on you for questioning what you just saw and not just swallowing it wholesale. Critical thinking is good."

He turned to the bartender. "Another Coke, please, sir?"

He was so calm, collected and strange. She wondered if her drink had been spiked and she was hallucinating. Although that would be a little extreme... no, probably, well... he seemed to know- Anwen wasn't going to walk away without the mystery of the invisable drink being explained. She righted herself on the stool and got her third free drink of the evening from the barman who still seemed to believe she was Irish.

She sipped it slowly, worrying they had fallen into an awkward silence.

They had in fact fallen into an awkward silence.

"Are you going to explain then? I'm listening. Wizard, alien, or stolen MI5 stuff? No, hang on- I've seen men in black,it's FBI here isn't it? Bit torchwood. I love torchwood, obvious why really... oh god I'm rambling, sorry... I, erm... Go on then."

Smooth.

"Honestly? No idea. --Oh, thank you." Finally the bartender had given him a Coke, but Mike grimaced at it. "Dammit, I said 'No ice'..."

He shrugged at Anwen, who was the only one who seemed to be paying him any attention at the moment. "Here's the sum of what I know about this thing: I bought it in 1983, right after my 19th birthday. Over the next four years, I discovered that I can do crazy stuff with it. I think that maybe I focus my will through it," and here he mimed shoving an invisible coin tray into an equally-invisible coin-op washing machine, "or maybe it reads my intentions and it...does...things. Oh, and it hurled be a quarter of a century forward in time once, so I have to be careful how and when I use it. Small stuff, like the drink on the lady's lap? No big deal, as long as that's all I do. I want to use it to get the ice outta my Coke, but if I do that, bad stuff might happen."

He turned the device in his hands, not so much examining it as re-discovering its well-known edges. "Also, it makes Duran Duran sound a hell of a lot better than they do now, but I attribute that to the copy of Seven and the Ragged Tiger that I have in it. Man, they really scratched it up after Arcadia..." He put the device back in his coat.

"Say, Anwen. Why did we lapse into silence, and should we get out of here before I destroy something else?"