“Eeehhhhhh,” was all Nalia could say in response to Axle’s question. “Not exactly. He’s more a celebrity, but not even from my time. He passed away when my sister and I were kids, but somehow ended up here only just recently. This Convergence really fucks with my head sometimes, I swear.” She relaxed in her stool and took another sip of her water.<br/><br/>That’s when she heard Axle address somebody new. She looked up from her glass and didn’t even notice the small mage to which he was speaking to initially. But she did hear him say<i>his</i>name and it was enough to make her heart stop. Her eyes, which caught glimpse of those cat like ones, immediately turned away to stare at her bar, avoiding any more eye contact with the general. Why me, why him, whyyy? She whined in her head as she hopped from her seat to try and find something else behind the bar to keep her attention. The stock! Neither she nor Axle counted it and it needed to be done. Especially after she broke that one bottle, Nalia knew there was some ordering for more supplies to be done.<br/><br/>“Excuse me. I need to go take inventory. If you need anything, just come on downstairs and ask.” She announced to her patrons before leaving a bottle of her cheapest, but also one of her smoothest, liquors, along with a line of four small glasses. “Help yourself if you want a drink.” And with that, she raced out of the room, through the door next to her bar on the back corner wall, and into the basement stock room.<br/><br/>She spent the time not even counting, just pacing, as her mind raced. It raced through all her thoughts, how she made a fool of herself earlier in front of him, how she thought she was going to die a second time, how she thought Freddie would get hurt because of her, then hearing how he was compared to a kitten only confused her further. Okay, sure, his personal life with women...or men apparently, was never showed on screen, so maybe she had assumed wrong about him in that department. But there was something else different.<br/><br/>Either way, she needs to apologize to him. Confront him, explain to him where she was coming from, and then put this whole mess aside. But then his image appeared in her mind again and she groaned into her hands as she covered her mouth and face in them, bending over as if in pain. It felt like having a crush on somebody and only just finding out their heart belongs only to somebody else. She did have a crush. A twenty year long crush. “Never meet your heroes.” She whispered to herself, remembering what somebody once told her way back when she was alive and she met the man who gave Sephiroth his voice. That meeting was wonderful, though, so she’d forgotten all about that advice, thinking it stupid. How wrong she was.<br/><br/>With a sigh of exasperation she forced her mind to count her stock, standing in front of a cabinet of whiskey, and jotting down the count on a small notepad she kept in her pants pocket. As she moved over to the next cabinet, her mind began to drift again mid-counting and she just stood there, staring at the same bottle of vodka while her mind flew elsewhere.