The Grimy French Café of Life's Hardships

Lt. Commander Richie

Disclaimer: Written as a fill for a prompt in Round 3 of the kinkmeme on LJ. Prompt was rather long, but basically it asked for H2G2 and the Avengers. I immediately thought Wowbagger. It's short, but enjoy!

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They were in a quaintly grimy spaceport somewhere in the vicinity of Odorbus Fellibrox XII. It was quaintly grimy because that was how the Garbatrex Corporation fabricated their spaceports- to give the full experience of a seedy backwater spaceport where all sorts of dirty deals and nasty other things happened. Of course the magic was rather ruined when one learned that all the drug dealers and slavers were in fact paid actors, but very few people actually go to a Garbatrex Co. spaceport for either of those things so the point is a bit moot.

Back to the original train of thought, 'They' happened to be three Avengers and their three-armed purple guide, a rather pleasant being by the name of Doloroxical that they had saved from the bureaucratic queues of the Vogons.

They sat at a small, quaintly grimy Odorbus Fellibrox XII equivalent of a café, which was remarkably like a small grimy French café on Earth. There isn't really anything strange about that, though, since most of the inhabitants of France had been immigrants from the Odorbus Fellibrox system to begin with before the Vogons went and blew the planet up to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. But that shouldn't be much of a surprise either. France was practically another planet anyway.

"Thor Odinson? Son of Odin, ruler of Asgard?" the man in question turned around in his seat, his companions also looking up from their small shots of espresso and chocolate-dipped biscotti wrapped in paper napkins.

"Yes?" the Asgardian asked. He smiled, and several small creatures across the spaceport throughway took pictures. Another two became pregnant. Somewhere very far away from Odorbus Fellibrox XII, a man named Arthur Dent ducked and an attempt on his life went completely unnoticed.

"You are a vapid, self-absorbed idiot. The only thing between your ears is your hair, and even that isn't very impressive. You are the no-good Prince of a no-good backwater rock, convinced of your own nonexistent importance. You also can't spell," the alien said.

"You dare-?" Thor stood, reaching for his hammer, but the tall gray-green skinned man lifted one hand and looked at his datapad with the complete nonchalance of someone who simply could not be brought to care about things like imminent danger and horrible demises. The surly-looking proprietor of the grimy little café gave a pained wail at the state of his chairs, but when nothing was done about it for him he simply went back to reading his newspaper, drinking his overpriced wine and smoking his thin cigarette.

"I'll be back for you later," Tony looked up from his small cup of espresso and his chocolate-dipped biscotti at the rather disaffected-looking tall gray-green skinned fellow in the gold robes, who was pointing rather ominously at him with one long finger. The expensively-dressed human gave the expensively-dressed gray-green fellow a bit of a humoring sarcastic smile, and went back to his drink.

"I will not have you mock me or my friends!" Thor bellowed, and went to grab the alien by his funny-looking alien collar. Said alien moved out of the way and calmly made his way to the exit of the grimy little Odorbus Fellibroxian café, perusing his datapad as he went.

"Of course you will. What'll you do, stop me?" without even so much as a farewell the alien was then gone, the little decorative wrought-iron gate in the café's patio fence swinging shut behind him. He paused a large creature covered in bluish-green fur on the throughway, delivered an insult in a bored tone, and then continued on through the crowd.

Thor set his chair to rights and sat back down, returning to his small cup of espresso and his chocolate-dipped biscotti wrapped in a paper napkin in a way that conveyed rather nicely that he was, in fact, surly about the entire exchange.

There was a small argument later about how they were going to get off the quaintly grimy spaceport ('they' being the three Avengers and their three-armed purple guide), but that's not really important right now.