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Boadicea walked into Rudi's and looked around. This was much bigger than the house-things she'd stolen food from. This looked like the kind of place where food could be bought instead of stolen, for once. A grumpy, wiry, animesque redhead sat with her back on the bar, giving Boadicea a once-over. Finola Galloway considered how her evening had been so far, then waved to Boadicea.
"There's a free stool over here."
"Great," said Boadicea, taking her helmet off and sitting down. Finola took a sip from her Duff beer and put it down.
"Finola Galloway, Department of Floaters."
She held out her hand.
"I'm Boadicea. Um, what's a department?" They shook hands.
“So you’re real new here, then,” she said. “Do I gotta explain what the PPC is, first?”
"Yes,” said Boadicea. “I've been here for a few days, seen a lot of little house-things with people in them, some of whom came after me with baseball bats when I stole some of their food, and found my way here."
Finola made a mental note to ask Tolin if any of their food had gone missing recently.
"Huh. Right. So...
We're the Protectors of the Plot Continuum. That means we stop people fu-, er, messing with the plot of things. Books, movies, that kinda stuff. Am I making any sense here?"
"Uh, how would they mess with all that?” Boadicea looked confused. “I've read a few books on my homeworld, and the only way I can think of messing with them is tearing them up or writing over them or something? What are movies? Are they things that move, like monsters or something?"
Finola’s eyes went up, and back down.
“Hoo boy. Okay, so-
Look, how’d you get here in the first place? That’d go some way in helpin’ me explain things,” she said.
"I fell down a hole in a cave, and ended up here," Boadicea answered. That was how she'd arrived, but she didn't think that telling Finola the whole story would be the best idea.
“Or not. Figures.”
Finola glanced around for ideas, then kept talking.
“So, you know what a book is already. Our job is uh, protecting the characters in books. Because people try and mess up their lives. Or kidnap them. Or, uh, make them run bakeries. Whatever. So, uh, if it gets too bad, we go in and do our jobs. Which usually involves shooting things.”
Boadicea was still confused. "Meaning you have books about people instead of books full of spells and stuff?
“Uh, yes. You don’t?”
"No. There aren't actually a lot of books in Terraria, and all the ones I've read are about how to cast spells and things like that, but I know how to shoot stuff and use various other weapons, if that's what you want. Is it some sort of thing where you travel to other worlds and fix stuff there?" Boadicea asked.
Finola opened her mouth, paused, thought for a second, then opened it again.
“Uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s it. So, sounded like you want to join up?”
Boadicea shrugged. "I guess so. Going back to my homeworld probably isn't a good idea." She mangaged not to say especially because they probably think I'm a murderer now because Seth is dead and now the world is even more messed up than it used to be . She ran her fingers through her hair, but gave up after a few seconds because of the tangles. I could use a bath right now , she thought.
"Recruiter should be out, uh, somewhere.”
Finola took a last swig of beer, stood up and started feeling her pockets for some bills.
"If we wander around enough we should run into one."
"Great." Boadicea realized that she'd been so busy talking that she hadn't got herself a drink. Oh well. Maybe she could find her way back here later. She took her small coin bag on a string off of her neck, and took out a silver coin with a tree stamped on either side of it. On one side, the tree looked healthy and growing, but on the other, it was bare and the branches stood out. She put it on the bar.
"Will that be enough? Do you people even use gold and silver coins?" she asked Finola.
Finola glanced at the coin. "Yeah. We do. Thanks."
"Well, come on. Don't have all day."
She started out toward the door.
"You're welcome." Boadicea followed her out.