This is hilarious. He wants to tell the Spirit that he didn't mean it literally but actually? Actually? He digs it. He absolutely digs it. He loves that the Spirit literally turned him into Astolfo. He starts giggling and he giggles in a very girly way and for a moment this is kind of dysphoric and then he rememebers he is Astolfo and it is no longer dysphoric at all and is all the way back to being hilarious.

He grabs his phone—he still has a phone, good, and it is his phone, his family and friends are still there and pictures and all that—and looks at himself.

...okay this is bizarre, actually. Not the part where it's not his normal face, he was mostly braced for that, but the part where he's—anime but not? Like, his eyes are informing him that he's anime, he's definitely being drawn, he's not 3D and realistic, but his brain is insisting that this is a normal human person there. He tries to peer at the edges between his animeness and the nature of the rest of the environment around himself and if he tries really really hard and pays a ton of attention he can notice the incongruence but mostly it just looks normal, in a weird way where it's not normal at all. Except it is.

He wonders if other people would even be able to notice that he's anime or if the metanarrative would make them not. If he were to guess at how this works, it'd be that people would mostly not notice and would continue not to notice until he pointed out and then they would. That seems like a sensible way for this to work, in his opinion. It's a little bit of mind control but, like, not really? It's more like perception control, and it's not making anyone believe in things that are false or act in ways that they normally wouldn't, he thinks, probably. Or, well, if he were designing the way this works that would be how it does, and since he is who he is and the powers are what they are he is now certain that that is in fact how they work. Good enough for him, and lets the author or animator or whatever not have to worry about trying to turn him into a realistic version of Astolfo. He bets that'd have been hard or expensive.

But also: he doesn't like the braid. Everything else is Gucci but the braid has to go, it's actually irritating and inconvenient to have something this long and heavy attached to his head. So with the sureness that only a Mary Sue can have, he runs his fingers through his hair just as the braid is off-camera and then it is gone. Now he just has cute animegirl not-quite-shoulder length pink hair and everything is fine.

Next item on the menu: where the heck is he?

In a bar, with no bartender,

and exploding stars out the window.

...huh. He's... alone? In a magic bar of some kind? And... no door? No door. There are stairs?

"Hmm, now would be a narratively appropriate moment for whatever is going to happen next, I'm done with the navel gazing."

A napkin appears out of nowhere on the bar.

"Excellent, thank you." He walks over to the bar to look at the napkin.

Welcome! First drink is free, can I get you anything?

Another talking inanimate object. He did not expect that.

"Should I assume you're able to hear me or should I be writing?" he asks, settling on a stool.

I can hear you just fine, I just write instead of speaking aloud myself. A new napkin, appearing atop the first one, slightly askew so he can see the corners of the first.

"Oh! So you're not the napkin. Are you, uh, the whole bar, or an invisible bartender, or...?"

I'm the bar. Call me Bar.

"It's nice to meet you, Bar! I'm Peter. As for the first drink, I'll... have a menu actually, that would be the smart thing to do rather than assuming you'll just have whatever it was I wanted to order."

Oh, I definitely have whatever you wanted to order unless it was a menu. I don't get along with the concept of menus.

"—really?" he says, sounding delighted to his own ears. He's going to need to get used to that. "Well now I think I'll want... a strawberry and banana smoothie from that one place I always get it from—actually I'm just assuming you'll know the one I mean, should I specify in more detail?"

Voilà.

Oh excellent and he doesn't even need to worry about his figure.

"Thank you! So, what's this place, why are there exploding stars outside?"

It's called Milliways, and they're decorative!

"Wait, Milliways as in the bar at the end of the universe from the Hitchhiker's Guide?"

The name isn't a coincidence but I couldn't tell you precisely how. I will not serve you a cow that was bred to want to be eaten.

"I don't actually remember enough, or didn't remember enough, about the original one to remember that anecdote but yeah no thank you.

"And what's the deal, here? I assume there must be a reason I got sent here of all places."

I couldn't begin to speculate what brings you here today. You didn't come through the door, which puts you in a minority, but doesn't shed much light on the situation.

"Oh, so there should have been a door there and isn't?"

There is! It's right over there; the star-side one is where people usually come to the establishment in the first place, and the back door opposite it leads to the backyard. But you didn't come through it.

He blinks and squints at it. "That had not been there a minute ago," he says, pouting. "...do people from all over the history of time come here, like in the books?" That could be a plot hook, someone from somewhen or something.

This one is more of a people from any universe situation.

"Oh there we go, that makes a ton of sense. How does that work?"

While you're in Milliways, time generally does not pass in your home universe; you return through the door when and where you left from if you came in that way to begin with. As long as the door is closed, it may substitute itself for any conventional door in any world, and someone may come through, hold the door to call over friends, spend any amount of time here, etc.

"—huh! And you say usually people come through doors and don't just appear, does that mean they sometimes do just appear?"

Yes, sometimes. Or through the lake, forest, or cave system in back.

"Do the same rules apply for them, usually?" Sip sip oh he missed this smoothie, it's so nice. "Original world paused, et cetera?"

It depends on why they have appeared, but more often than not, yes.

"That's excellent," he exclaims, grinning. "So what usually happens if someone who didn't come through the door then tries to exit it? —for that matter, how do people who come through the door, uh, come through the door? Like does Milliways disguise itself as a random bar in a seedy part of town or..."

Not as an entire building, no. The door substitutes itself for other doors - people may encounter Milliways on their way into the bathroom, out of a closet, through a hallway, etcetera.

"Just, like, randomly? Going about their day and suddenly boom they're in an interdimensional bar that pauses time?"

Yes. Some people can get doors slightly more volitionally than that but that's the standard case.

"Oh I bet I'm one of those people. But anyway yeah is there any sort of pattern for what happens if someone who didn't come through the door then tries to exit through it?"

Generally it will place them at their home or one candidate home if there are several and again some people can control details.

Once again he bets he's one of those people. It's just such a Mary Sue thing, really, most people never get doors and most of the ones who do only do so randomly except some special snowflakes can do it volitionally, and in the other direction too.

He sips some more from his smoothie and hums thoughtfully. "So then what's the, ah, usual thing that happens here? I assume there's typically more than literally just one person and you at a time?"

Usually, yes. I don't control the door, or the flow of time where it differs between non-interacting parts of the establishment, so I can't directly send you interesting people to meet, but someone should be along sooner or later.

"Wait, non-interacting parts of the establishment have different flows of time? How's that, just, like, you can spend five minutes in the bathroom and then come back here and it's been five hours for other people?"

Well, not if in those five hours they would have come to join you in the bathroom, but yes, more or less.

"Huh. If you don't control that, or the door, who does?"

The Landlords, but that's just a word referring to 'whoever or whatever it is that does that'.

The authors, then, gotcha.

"—hey, speaking of, you said the first drink is free, how do people pay for further drinks, is there some interdimensionally recognized currency of some kind? And for that matter do you sell anything other than drinks, can people have a dinner party here too?"

I sell any medium-sized nonmagical harmless nonliving object and can sometimes bend some of those limitations. I can take any currency and charge reasonable currency-dependent prices for things. Some patrons also choose to run up tabs.

"...that was pretty broad, do you sell, like, books? Clothes? Computers?"

Yes! It really is very broad. Also undamaged items may be returned for a full refund, so I function as a library.

"Oh that is so broken, whoever's writing this has given me a whole treasure trove. How do you index stuff, do I have to know in advance what I want and then ask for it specifically or can I ask for any kinds of catalog, you said you didn't like menus...?"

I don't like implicitly limiting the range of things I can provide. I don't mind giving you copies of menus or catalogs made for some more limited situation, but a menu of things I can offer would not be medium-sized.

"Is the list of universes you can pull things from similarly unlimited, here, could I request a warp drive or something?" Is a warp drive even an object? He's not sure, he didn't really watch Star Trek, he only vaguely knows about it through osmosis.

Not medium-sized. If you'd like a textbook on warp engineering I can do that.

"Oh wow. How precise do I have to be to ask for things, like, could I go 'every book I've ever read' or 'every book I've ever owned' or 'every book I currently own'?"

Well, my knowledge of what books you've interacted with is the barrier there.

"I... think I understand? Maybe? Or, no, wait, you did successfully reproduce this smoothie," he shakes his empty cup to demonstrate, "from just a vague description of where I meant, how exactly does your knowledge of these things work here?"

I'm especially good with foods and drinks. There are only so many degrees of freedom in a strawberry banana smoothie as enjoyed by someone from your source world by someone who speaks your language and is possessed of your comestible-related biology.

"I think I see..." Part of him wants to go into the fine details of what and how much knowledge Bar has about individual things but actually he's sure everything will work in sensible ways whenever he needs it to. "And how do I, uh, pay for stuff I buy?"

You can just put money down on my surface, or give me a card number.

"I'm kind of a new character, though, and I don't really have any money on me, or a card either. I just have a," vague handwave, "metanarrative guarantee that I can afford whatever I want."

Well, you're welcome to open a tab, and pay it back later if you come by a more concrete representation of that guarantee, or don't - it doesn't bother me either way, though there is some reason to think the landlords might prefer people to have settled up their tabs.

"Or maybe they'll just come to an arrangement with the Spirit. We'll see how that goes. Say, does this bar have lodgings of any kind?"

It does! There are hotel rooms upstairs.

"And do I keep a—hmm. Actually how does that work with time shenanigans, do I pay based on the subjective number of days or...?"

Yes, that's right.

"Does that mean I can't, say, keep renting a room if I leave here because there's no guarantee I'll ever come back?"

If it happens to be the case that you will return to stay in your room, it will not have been rented to anyone else in your absence and you will continue to be charged only by the subjective day spent in the establishment with access to it.

"That is extremely convenient. In that case I do believe I want to rent a room, please."

Of course. How large a suite do you prefer?

"Is there a meaningfully largest suite or do they just keep getting larger and larger forever in spatially confusing ways?"

Definitely the latter.

"Alright, how about, uh, something about as large as a large suite in a five-star hotel in Paris, is that sufficiently specific and/or vague that we can run with it?"

Oh, hey, now he can say "/" without actually having to say the word "slash", that's neat.

Certainly. A key appears. Room 705.

"Thank you very much! I'll go check it out, back later!" For some indefinite value of "later", he supposes.

Enjoy!

He finds his way to the relevant room and he's not bowled over but mostly because he was expecting it. Four Star Daydream indeed. The bed is huge, there's a ton of closet space, and the bathroom has an enormous bathtub. Which is a sort of vague description, he supposes, but he wants to leave space for future uses of this room to have whatever specific features the narrative will happen to want or need whenever he brings other people behind the curtain to show them the real magic. For the moment, it's enough to say it's very comfortable and will eventually make for a great base of operations and storage space. He's not sure what he'll need it for, but that's a problem for future Peter.

Now, there's one thing he's been wanting to do ever since he saw himself on his phone earlier, and which works best with a mirror. Since now he has access to one, he walks over to it and frowns thoughtfully.

He's feeling it. The Astolfo aesthetic is awesome. He kinda loves it.

But that's not the only Peter he can be.

He only needs a moment to himself, right? And so he might want to change his hairstyle, and his makeup, and definitely the clothes he's wearing...

And now he's masc Astolfo.

...Masctolfo.

He'll see himself out.

Except he's... not quite? Does he look different than Astolfo? He didn't mean to, he just wanted to change clothes and hair and stuff, he's—

—oh.

He's 3D again. That's what's happening here. Yeah, if he doesn't focus too much on the details his brain is happy to inform him that it's the same face, it's just that for some reason he is... no longer anime.

What is the medium he's embedded in, here??? Why did turning into masc Astolfo make him stop being anime????? He is so confused.

Whatever. He's still pretty.

Another moment to himself and he's pink and anime again, and ready to rumble. Time to go back downstairs, and if there's plot waiting for him there then great and if there's not he'll give that door a go and see where it lands him. He trusts in the Spirit.