"—no this is totally the right place, come on in, I'm surprised."

"That is very much a supply closet."

"...wait, you can't see it? Oh fucking hell."

"...ah. Well, that's one way to keep the clientele exclusive."

"Well. Hold the door open? I want to see if you see me go through any walls as I walk in or what, that'd be funny."

Edmund dutifully holds the door!

Once Pete is in the bar proper, the door wobbles concerningly, and is closed.

Figures.

Well, time to test some stuff out.

And he's out. "What happened on your end, on my end the door wobbled and closed."

"Passed through some kind of invisible wall and vanished. Not entirely unanticipated."

"Reasonable. Anyway I'm a phoenix." He also doesn't have the pointy ears anymore.

"A phoenix! Are you liable to combust?"

"No but I can set people on fire and have that heal them rather than hurt them. ...I can do that to myself, too. I don't know how many times a day, though, I don't know what my CHA score is. Prestidigitation is still a cantrip, though! And the ears were a Disguise Self. All signs point to this being a Pathfinder sorceress."

"...point of confusion, is Dungeons and Dragons called Pathfinder sometimes in your world?"

"Oh, no, they're separate things. ...well, separateish, there's this overall system that I think was originally introduced by D&D third edition called d20 and there's some other games than D&D that use it and Pathfinder is one of them. You guys not having it makes sense, though, it'd be weird if you happened to have the fictional version of the system that spawned some actual historical person."

"Admittedly! Though I don't think anyone had connected her to D&D, either, her deeds were too mythologized for anyone post-Gygax to say hang on, was she just casting Fireball? ...it makes sense of a few contemporary accounts, though."

"Man I kind of want to skip ahead to the part where we've solved all of the interpersonal issues and whatever other plot there is and we're a happy harem and I can share magic with you all, the whole 'being the most special' thing is getting old very quickly and it's only been a couple of days. But I guess that'd be a 'bad story' or something." It also doesn't escape him that not wanting to be the most special is about as anathema to the concept of a Mary Sue as it could be, but he supposes he can reframe that as being the source of a bunch of people's magic still being pretty special.