systemcritical | [CLOSED] mod miniplot

The summer glazes brightness and saturation over Los Angeles. Cars spin wheels down winding highways and frequent exits, in and out and through the city that stretches and sprawls wide, between ocean and desert and mountain. The sky is bright blue except for the strange, hanging presence of brown smudging smog, man's contribution to weather. Tall structures of silver buildings form clusters between long spreads of urbanity, with cheap identical parking lots at every corner, like that in itself is a glitch. Lazy world design.

Zoom in. A street, rows and rows of stores and restaurants of Korea, Mexico, India, the air filled with traffic, radio blasting from an open car. In the midst of the 1990s, there are no smart phones, no tablets, no Bluetooth earpieces. For others, this place is saturated with technology, with architecture, with modern clutter, with too much noise and trash, and different kinds of dirt to which they were accustomed.

No magic, either, but something else. A woman busks for money with dance, fire trailing from her fingertips, smoke rising from her feet. Most admire the display; some scowl in displeasure.

The sheer vastness of the city, overflowing with people of all kinds, makes an easy cover for operatives to explore, to practice their powers, whether out of sight or in view. It also means that should an Agent detect their presence, it will require immediate action, because while they must conform to the laws of physics, they can sink their programming into any unaware human and take their shell for their own, like a targeted disease. Fortunately, while they keep to themselves, the operatives won't find trouble.

[ ooc ; this is not a GM'd or NPC'd portion of the plot! please feel free to use this thread to acclimate to this particular Matrix amongst yourselves. ]

Edited 2015-06-11 10:48 (UTC)

"It's weird," Skye offers as they make their way through the blazing L.A. streets. Weirder still that the sidewalks are sweltering in the June heat as if that sun in the sky were real. The fact that it's even summer seems like some kind of twisted joke from a higher power when juxtaposed with just how out of time they are: the 90's were a while ago even in her own Matrix: they're ancient compared to reality.

But that's not what leads her to speak. Glancing around, she side-eyes a street performer using real fire. It reminds her of Scorch, as he'd called himself. Reminds her of the world she'd escaped. "Seeing everyone be so open about it." Realizing she needs to lend context, she glances back at the others, "It wasn't like that where I came from."

The sweltering weather is Fenris's only comfort, because it's the only note of familiarity in an otherwise alien landscape.

That, and the brazen use of (what he presumes to be) magic. He stares with open contempt at the street performer, his mouth curled in a sneer. Fenris is back to himself here, back to a lean, elvish body and bright, extensive tattoos. He can feel power running through the lyrium markings again, and though he knows now that it isn't real, it still hurts.

"Your world had more sense, then," he says, gaze flicking back to her, tone unkind.

"Mine neither - at least not in this kind of city." Emily seems more relaxed in the Matrix than she generally does in the Real, but part of that is having a weapon and part of it is having a job to do. (And part of it is the ability to feel the metal around her, a low-level sense that she's missed more acutely than she realized.)

"Then again, maybe it'd have come to this. It wasn't the '90s yet." She runs a hand through her hair, long enough to do so with a bit more satisfaction than she's yet managed unplugged. "I mean, I guess at least it's helpful. We would have stuck out too, where I'm from." Some more than others. "At least here people are taking variety in stride."

Dark hair whipped around Skye's head as she cut a look at Fenris, snappish and untrusting. He wasn't the first person she'd met to take issue with powered people: hell, even SHIELD left a lot to be desired in the way they were treated. But he was the first to be so unapologetic in his disapproval. Her hand closed into a fist at her side, restraining her anger.

If she didn't keep her cool, she could blow this whole thing. She didn't want to let Kate down.

"Yeah?" She looked more interested in Emily's remark, overlooking Fenris' cruelty in a flagrant, deliberate manner to cut her a curious look. "What year was it in your Matrix?"

"1978. Not far off, in the grand scheme of things, but..." Far enough. Emily's not much more thrilled at Fenris' contempt than Skye is, but she lets it pass. She needs to work with him beyond this one mission, and he'd be far from the first colleague of hers to feel similarly. It's not as if she can access the powers she still thinks of as hers back in the Real anyway.

"How about you?" She's given up guessing what people expect the year to be, for the most part, and has taken to just asking. It's worth comparing some notes, now and then, to get a sense of a similar frame of reference.

She's listening, but she keeps her eyes peeled. They are, after all, here on a job.

"2015," Skye remarked almost wonderingly. She glanced around, noting the phone booths on the corner with an amused crinkle of her nose. "I was just a kid when the world still looked like this." Her eyes flickered upward to check the heights of the buildings. They'd get taller. L.A. had been her home, once. Or maybe that was just a particular of her matrix, not a matter of time.

"God, if your world had a version of me, I hate to think what she'd be up to by 2015," Emily says, wry.

Assuming she lived that long, probably still getting into trouble. It's an illusion, of course, thinking that way. But it's sort of fun to picture all the same.

"So. Are we getting right to it, or do people usually accustom a little first?" (Just because she hasn't engaged with the grumpy racoon doesn't mean she hasn't noticed.) Emily feels more herself, not less, but she realizes not everyone had the powers they've been equipped with before.

Nervousness bubbled in her gut. She hadn't been back in the Matrix since she was unplugged, primarily because of superpowers. Of all the missions to jump back in on, it had to be this one. The last thing Skye wants is to kickstart a disaster movie because someone was hoping she'd show hers if they showed theirs.

"We've got a mission here: let's not waste time." She made her excuse, glancing around the group with an implicit expectation of agreement.

The others includes Rocket, unfortunately. Who doesn't want anything to do with conversation, or comparisons, or heart-to-hearts, or listening to anyone's crappy life stories. Who rolls his eyes, hugely, and looks the other way--dismissive, not to preserve anyone's feelings or anything.

"Jeez." Barely under his breath, he folds his arms over his chest, upper lip twisted on one side to reveal a single pointed incisor. Speaking of being so open, here he is, a raccoon in tiny 90s clothes, cool jeans and a t-shirt and jacket. He's been spared a cute hat, but that just means the flat and sarcastic position of his ears telegraphs real clear. "You know this is a mission, right? Not a friggin stroll through your memory."

"Dude, if you want me to take anything you say seriously, it's gonna have to wait 'til we're out." Laughing through his dismissal, Skye just shook her head at him, glancing down at the oversized vermin that kept stride alongside them. Something about the words coming out of a freaking raccoon made it hard for Skye to afford them any weight.

"What?"

Walking along beside her--all upright but still a little round shouldered, with his tail lifted just enough that it's not dragging on the pavement--Rocket squints up. And up. She ain't that tall, by Terra standards--human standards, whatever--but it's still up to him.

"What the hell's that supposed to mean."

His confusion stopped Skye in her tracks to look more seriously down at him, eyebrows arching sharply on her forehead. For a moment, she left it, hoping her silence might fill in the gap, but when she realized it wasn't going to …

"It means you're a freaking raccoon. What do you think it means?"

Towing the line between blank and belligerent, Rocket returned her stare all through that beat of silence. At her assessment, his eyes narrowed.

This again.

"No I ain't." Four years of being unplugged had at least taught him what the hell a raccoon's supposed to be--but that don't make it any righter. "And I don't just think what it means, okay, I know what it means. It means you're makin' unfair assumptions about me based totally on appearyances. In other words," and for punctuation he pointed right at her, tiny paw manipulated into a fist and jabbing finger, "you're prejudiced."

"Unfair assumptions? All I'm assuming is you look like a wee forest creature." She gestured to him wildly to prove her point, as if he somehow hadn't checked out a reflective surface since they got there. "It's not prejudice, I'm sure you can be just as annoying like this, I just can't be held responsible to not laugh when it's coming out of a little raccoon mouth."

"Hey hey hey hey." Briskly, Rocket held up a paw, interrupting her just short of her conclusion. "Hey. Lady. I ain't no forest creature, okay? What you're seein', is me. So let's just clear that one up right away, huh. No raccoon, no wee anything. I'm me. Got it? Good. Remember it, so I don't gotta hurt you."

Dropping his tone to a grumble, he picked up his pace a little, and pulled ahead in a lead (that would probably last about two seconds, thanks to her way longer legs). "We'll see who's laughin' then."

"Hey!" Skye hurried on after him, though she didn't need to hurry too much, given the height difference. Her arms flopped out at her sides, indignant and apologetic at once. "Hey! Look, I'm sorry. It's nothing personal, okay? Maybe this is more normal to you, but in the Matrix I came from, the only anthropomorphic animals were in video games. Why do you think I told Star Lord you might have been a program?"

"Yeah, well--" Rocket didn't even bother to look up at her as she caught up. He could see enough of that weird arm flapping out of the corner of his eye, enough so that he huffed a short breath, almost a laugh. "Maybe you should think a little harder before tellin' people their friends are programs. Expand your horizons. Think outsidea your Matrix. Look, don't make me keep on with the cliches, okay, I'm startin' to feel kinda sick just listenin' to myself."

Wait, and he also called Quill his friend. Well, whatever, Rocket thought to himself, defiant, so what. It ain't anybody's business if he meant that or not.

More importantly: "And I ain't anthro-pop-morphic either, okay? Jeez. Get your terms straight, lady."

"Okay, okay, expanding my horizons. So what terms should I be using? You're a little out of my depth. Or … under it." She finally came up beside him, glancing down pointedly to mark his height.

"I'm glad you got that short joke outta your system, 'cause the next time I hear it from you, I'm gonna kneecap you."

Just sayin'. His scowl fixed firmly on his face, he looked up at her again as she caught up.

"You can call me by name. Which is Rocket, like I told you before. Think you can handle that one?"

The look on Skye's face debated relenting under his threat. She pursed her lips, ready to cave, but—"On principle, or because it's all you'd be able to reach?" No dice. A wide smile flashed her teeth and she clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Come on, Rocket. We're all on the same team."

Yep. There she goes. Like he didn't see that coming. With a scowl, Rocket shouldered off that hand--which took a lot of extra action, since her hand was actually way bigger than him.

"A ha ha ha ha," he pronounced, a clear ennunciation of laughter, with extra teeth, "ha ha ha. You are so friggin hilarious. Like I never heard that one before. If that's your idea of team spirit? Keep it yourself."

"Oh, come on!" Skye rolled her eyes, pulling her hand back. "Rocket, it's a joke. I didn't take you for being so bothered by this stuff—if it gets to you, couldn't you just program your Matrix appearance to match the Real?"

"What--look like a person, just like everyone else? All pink and naked? No--" And he did another compulsive lift of his shoulders, rejection, pushing it away- "--thank you. This is me. Just like this, just how I am. And just 'cause I don't want to take a lotta crap from you don't mean I wanna look like you."

"Except it's not you," The correction came a little bleakly, and she shook her head. "Not really. Like it or not, dude, you're human."

Human. The word twitched at his ears, and then made them flatten a little. "That ain't," he informed her, briskly, "what counts. That ain't what matters. I didn't spend all those years as me--"

As this, and he thumped a paw against his chest for emphasis--

"--just to end up bein' some naked fleshy person somewhere in a tube. This? It's got significance. I ain't lookin' to make some big speech, okay, I'm just sayin'. What I look like, out there? It's real. But there's more to it than that."

More to it. Skye looked down at her palms, turning them over as if to look through them at something else there. They curled into fists after that, and she lowered them reluctantly to her sides.

"Yeah. I guess so," she admitted with some reluctance as she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket.

Not exactly a ringing agreement, but hey: whatever. "Yeah. I know I'm right. I been out for a long time, sister, and lemme tell you--"

Rocket nodded, back over his shoulder--inclusive, taking in everybody eyes. The rag-frickin-tag team they had, people still all plugged in and hopped up on the bullshit that their Matrix was feeding them--all of 'em.

"Just 'cause they don't agree with me? Just 'cause you don't? Don't make me any less right." Confirmation again, he thumped a paw against his furry chest: "I know. I mean, hell. You thought I was a friggin program. Look how wrong you was."

"Hey! I was working off of what I'd been told about the Matrix. Not all of us have been out a bajillion years." Despite her defensiveness, Skye seemed to take him seriously, glancing around to watch the people milling about. "And it's not just me: the rehab center, the Council, it seems like they all want people to let go of what ties them back to the Matrix they grew up in once they're unplugged."

"And you're gonna listen to them?" Rocket met her gaze as he shot another glance up at her, his upper lip curled back away to expose his little teeth. "I ain't sayin' you gotta run back to it with open arms. I ain't sayin' kiss ass to all them machines. I'm sayin'--"

And he stabbed a finger up at her, like he was gonna pin her down--

"Don't forget."

At her sides, Skye's hands curled into fists, dispersing the tension of the memories. In a flash, she watched Trip crumble before her eyes again; she could remember how the Earth felt shaking beneath her, the tension pressing through her as she confronted Raina in the temple, her father calling her Daisy, Ward falling to the ground. And Coulson. She could remember falling to her knees beside Coulson, apologizing through tears.

"I don't plan to," She agreed through gritted teeth, trying hard to keep her heart rate even, just like May taught her. Guilt and general distress stowed in a dark corner of her mind, she picked up her walking pace, as if ready to leave the conversation behind them both. "But we're not here to reminisce. We're here with a mission."

Oblivious to her internal reverie, Rocket snorted again. He didn't pick up his pace to match--not by much, anyways. Scrambling in the wake of some long-legged chick isn't what he does, okay, he just walks. Maybe a little faster so he didn't get totally left behind.

"Oh, yeah, now you wanna talk about the mission. Great. Hey, you're the one who started with the personal remarks. Not me. I was keepin' it professional."

Said the raccoon in the tiny jacket and t-shirt.

"Ugh, it stinks."

But at least he's back in a more normal shape. Rocket ain't ever going to admit it, and it ain't like he misses it--but come on. This is so much easier. Walking with a tail? Feels like walking on goddamn clouds. That's how i-freakin-dyllic it is. Like it's just a little more right.

Except he's still getting looked at. No matter how many ladies are zapping fire out of their frickin' fingertips, no matter how many kids are runnin' around with all sorts of weird shit going on--spitting acid, for god's sake, sizzling the lid of a trash can--even in the middle of some Terra city where everybody's doing whatever the heck they want, people are still lookin' at Rocket.

Or maybe that's his imagination. From just inside the mouth of an alleyway, Rocket glares out at LA. arms folded over his chest. He's already suited up, ready to roll. Waiting on everyone else's slow asses, thanks. With a dismissive sniff, he thumbs his nose. (Yes, his thumb is more or less opposable.)

"Do you smell it? Like gas, and-- and I dunno. Trash. Burning trash. Is that haze 'cause of that fire lady, or is something on fire?"

(It doesn't occur to him that the stares he was feeling might have been from his new temp crewmates. Like, he didn't tell them that he was gonna look like this. But so what?)

Edited 2015-06-12 04:00 (UTC)

Because he is extraordinarily (...happily) boring in comparison to Fenris or Rocket, Hawke's most significant adjustments once jacked in register much closer to the surface. Mostly his center of gravity makes sense again, and he's not full of creepy holes.

Since he's not dealing with much else physically, he has plenty of time to be beset on all sides by a barrage of details: everything is impossibly tall, for one thing, and like Fenris he's pressed to combat the idea that displaying abilities like these right on the street is something a person can apparently do for tips, as opposed to brazenly courting arrest. Or being Templar'd to death, possibly.

Also, there's a talking raccoon. Just as an aside. So there was a slow head swivel and blinking initially, because that's ...new, but Thedas is a place that seems to produce new and improved horrors with each passing uh, second; as such that passed pretty quickly. So just now he's pretty much free to concede there is a veritable buffet of olfactory delights available, and by delights he definitely means 'pollution.'

"If I had to guess," which of course he will, mildly, "I'd say every third thing in arm's reach." ...it's Los Angeles, it is entirely possible that every third thing in arms reach is on fire. "Reminds me of home, actually. At least in terms of 'you probably shouldn't touch that'."

"Oh, good. So if I gotta set you on fire, you're gonna fit right in."

Because 'fitting in' is top priority when plugging back in to the Matrix, yeah? The weirder you are, the easier you are to pick out as an anomaly--the more memorable you are--and the more likely you are to get you some unwanted attention.

Not that Rocket gives a shit.

Also he probably isn't gonna actually set anyone on fire. Not his thing. But it don't hurt to make the threat anyway, it's just like--making conversation. He folds his arms over his chest, impatiently. "Okay, but this? Reminds you of home?" That's sad, man.

"Zero to immolation in a single statement, huh." Somewhere between amused and nearly impressed, one eyebrow trekking idly toward his hairline That level of vitriol is ...something special, and deserves due credit. Apparently casual threats do qualify as casual conversation, which probably says more about where Hawke is from than comfort with the many icky miasmas Los Angeles has to offer ever could.

Meanwhile there's not much to argue re: the precept that that is indeed, sad, since the gentle colloquial phrasing regarding Kirkwall contends (correctly) that it's 'a bit of a shithole.'

Hawke shrugs. "Never been fond of anything you knew was terrible just because it was yours?"

Edited 2015-06-19 23:54 (UTC)

"There's one sleeper trapped inside," the programme had said. As far as programmes go, he didn't seem dangerous. Small and neat and tidy, a black man with shot-white grizzle down his jaw, and a Catholic priest's uniform, a clerical collar marking distinct under his chin. Found in the church on the corner of the same site they're about to investigate, he had led them to it as sundown threw a darker blanket over the city. Traffic was minimal, as far as Los Angeles went, but not completely unpopulated.

The building itself is a tall and incomplete structure, with the kind of ambiance to it like it was never going to get finished in the first place and has long since been reclaimed by the wildness of the city, condemned. It was going to be a mall. "All I know is, we can't finish fixing it until you get the human out of there, and we don't want to bring harm to them." This is matter of fact, rather than kind. There is a peace to be maintained.

Otherwise, the Brother was not forthcoming. He doesn't know how it got to be this way, but he doesn't sound surprised. Sometimes, programming just doesn't do what it should. If it did, there wouldn't be maintenance programmes like him in existence.

***

Inside, the last of the sunlight barely penetrates the dark, shadowy gloom of the floor-level foyer. In front of them, sloping walkways connote the escalators that were never install. The elevator shafts are empty of carriages. Imagine a five floor mall, stripped down to its bones, dead before it was ever even given life -- its carcass now reappropriated by those that need some shelter. Graffiti marks the concrete walls, the floor. A bonfire from however long ago scorched the rim of that metal trashcan, over there. Scattered evidence of human life litters the floors in the form of cigarette butts and beer cans. A woollen glove. A cracked pair of sunglasses.

A noise. A rustle of paper. Through the middle of the foyer, a draft seems to be disturbing a piece of newspaper, tossing it to and fro, dancing gradually about several feet before it suddenly contracts and disappears, like one might imagine a deletion would look like.

Five seconds later, it reappears where it started, blowing along the cement floor, only to be deleted once more. And on the cycle goes.

The program's instructions come from a place of pragmatism rather than compassion, which settles strangely in Skye's chest, at odds with her own programming as she figures it. That unease follows her into the dusty, condemned foyer of the building.

"Our glitch is a homeless dude?" She asks aloud. Her voice echoes off the high, empty walls of the building—what's left of them, anyway. The gutted remnants of the structure hardly warrants the title of building.

Grabbing a discarded wire hanger, she bends it out of shape and approaches the newspaper, popping a low squat and poking out at it with the hanger from a couple feet away as it restarts its loop, trying to get some idea of what happens when they interact with the unstable quote-unquote-reality around them.

"Definitely possible," Kate replies. She's seemed to take Brother Program more or less at his word-- even thanked him for his assistance-- but she still leads the way and she still has a gun in her hand, and she skirts the edge of the anomaly carefully after watching it loop for a moment or two.

She keeps her weapon drawn at her side, close at hand and ready to aim but once a scan of the foyer and a quick search has revealed nothing else of note in the immediate vicinity she stops to watch Skye's little experiment. "That or a kid messing around. Tagger. Drug addict. Skateboarder. Who knows? But this tells us we're in the right building. Let's keep looking." She motions them on, pulling a flashlight out of a pocket and picking a course straight ahead for the time being.

The newspaper snags on the reaching coathanger for a brief moment, an interaction that makes sense by the laws of physics, before it seems to stutter, the print scrolling incomprehensible across the rumpled pages, before phasing with a jerk through the metal wire. Continuing on its way, in the same pattern of tumbling over itself in its loop.

Ahead means around the skeletons of escalators, and into a wide open space that might have been a foodcourt some day. Instead, its just empty, trashed, grey, and with long shafts of fading light filtering filmy through distant tall windows, the even more distant skylights, the looping railings of the rest of the floors rising above them. Around them, short, flurrying gusts of wind seem to come from no apparent, sensible direction, blowing grit and dust.

Nothing moves. But it's getting slowly difficult to walk, as if the floor has tilted without them noticing. The structure of the world and the building itself remains static, but each step forward seems to slide gravity to the left, as if walking on a gradually tilting 30 degree angle, boots starting to slide on the floor.

And noise, drifting. Traffic, of cars and people, that does not so much as distant as it does all around them, and muted.

A softly impressed look cut through Skye's impression as she watched the newspaper tumble straight through. Her eyes lit up, wide and awed, and she lifted her gaze to the other operatives to try and share a did you see that?? moment. Realizing she was the only one who cared to take in the sights—because she was the only one new to plugging back in—Skye straightened up and dropped the hanger.

"Right," She acceded to Kate's order and followed after, pulling her own gun from its holster and holding it at her side. Shoulders squared, she hikes onward—and then really hikes. She stopped after a few moments of trying to fight against the gravity, looking down, trying to get her bearings. "Something really doesn't want us back here." Nothing supernatural, perhaps, but whatever the glitch was, it sure wasn't making itself easily accessible.

Emily's interest in the Matrix around them is, if no less sharp than Skye's, more subtly expressed. That said, she frowns a bit at gravity warps, bringing both difficulty in moving and disorientation. Focus, Finch. She's curious, but she also has a job to do.

Her weapon isn't out, but it's accessible for a quick draw when she wants it. (Quicker for the fact she can effectively magnetize her hand.) Instead, she studies the structure of the ruined building around then. "Keep pushing forward, you think, or try to get up?"

If she'd come in here looking for shelter, she'd have wanted higher ground. (Of course, if the sleeper was strung out on drugs or otherwise impaired, trying to guess at motivations would be much less helpful.)

It's not just Skye's attention that's been caught by the looping newspaper. Back on the ship, as data on the operator screens, it's a bright string of code that's far too distracting in how it breaks down through the spill of green and disappears, only to restart all over again a brief moment later.

It's enough that Deuc is tardy in truly examining the rest, thinking it one notable glitch on a standard backdrop. As the paper phases through Skye's improvised hook, he realises what had at first glance appeared to be a crowd of people around them is nothing but scraps of sensory data, sound and motion woven through the makeup of an entirely empty scene. He taps in a few quick commands, slicing out portions of the code into download, not willing to waste time on immediate analysis - there's the more pressing concern of their movement being impeded, slowed, something that looks a hell of a lot more like a technical error than any glitch he's seen before.

A few more attempted commands don't fix it, and his brow knits in frustration, knowledge whittled down to only a good old-fashioned full reset. Firmly crossed out as an option, for obvious reasons. He turns in his seat, voice raising enough to carry as he asks, "Any thoughts on amending sync errors?"

This is the third but not last witness that the crew of the Atalanta are tracking. Something had already gotten to the last two; their memories wiped of the incident. One of them -- an older man who beggared some streets over from the Hollywood Boulevard -- simply did not remember the building, becoming agitated at any kind of insistent questioning, as if fearing they were trying to blame him for something he didn't do. The other was a younger man they found on the rooftop of the apartment building his family lived within, and he hadn't been of much help either; whatever had been done to him had stopped him from talking entirely, bringing on a strange catatonic quality when they had tried to steer the conversation in that direction.

One way or another, for better and for worst, neutralised.

This third target was not their third inquiry. The third inquiry had been another man with a short article in the paper about being involved in a police shooting just yesterday. Dead.

And so the third witness is the third one still alive -- a woman in her twenties, her hair a flame red from dye, finishing up her shift at a diner a fifteen minute drive from the airport. Skinny and little, she is wiping down tables before she's done for the evening, and the night is such that the diner's insides are exposed with bright, cool light, and she can't see very well beyond the wide windows where the crew of the Atalanta are. Wherever they are. Perhaps watching from the inside of a car, or simply standing, or perhaps entering the diner.

If there is an Agent presence, the operator is not able to indicate as such -- but better safe than sorry. At least this witness -- Suzie -- seems to be functional as well as alive.

Fenris is on edge. This is a world of magic and powers and 'wondrous' things, but his body remains out of place. There's talk around him; looks he doesn't appreciate, whispers that make his ears burn. Confused thoughts squirm in the back of his mind: is he not human, too, according to Zion? His features, a fiction, his race, a false dream?

He shoves those questions aside, sets a hand on the glass of the diner's door. Time to be a diplomat. If the woman has something to say about his appearance, he'll just have to deal with it.

Hopefully no one's been foolish enough to set him on this task alone, though.

...well, no, but they were foolish enough to send Hawke with him.

Just kidding--but really. He's certainly noticed that the concept of race in this particular Matrix indicates 'variety of humans,' but how much he brings that up with Fenris depends, as ever, entirely on Fenris. Right now they obviously have bigger fish to uh, ideally not fry.

So he similarly sets aside furtively eyeing Fenris (in the figurative - and alliterative! - sense), in fact leaning on the building beside the door. "Would it be optimistic or just inviting trouble to hope this goes better than the other ones?"

This is a rhetorical question.

Don't worry, Kate isn't letting her tiny baby operatives do really anything on their own. Help with the questioning, explore 90s fashion, play with superpowers, sure. But all under her usually-watchful eye. She's right behind Fenris, or rather was until she stopped at the corner of the parking lot to argue with Rocket.

"Look," she is hissing at him, technically under her breath but in that sort of whisper that travels just fine to those within a few yards, despite the traffic rolling past toward the airport and the dull roar of planes overhead every couple minutes, "What I'm saying is people definitely aren't freaking out any less because you're a talking raccoon, and freaking out less is what I need. If you want to come inside and do this, you need to look human. Otherwise, you stay out here and keep watch and no, I am not bringing you take-out and no, you cannot shoot at cars, not even the parked ones. So figure it out."

She pivots on a heel and heads up the two steps to the door, saying, "Both," to Hawke as she pushes in after Fenris. She gestures the elf toward a window booth in what she guesses is Suzie's section, but doesn't get in just yet, waiting for the rest of their party to join them so she can take a seat on the outside. The only comment she's made regarding Fenris's appearance is to insist that yes he really should wear shoes. Pointed ears don't really have the same effect on people as talking raccoons, she's found. Finding.

"Hi there," she says to the waitress with a smile that's on the friendly side of polite. "I'll take a coffee, please. And if you have a minute, we'd actually like to ask you a couple quick questions if that's okay."

No longer furry but all man once more, Rocket enters a little later than everyone else, and slides into the booth. It is probably the world's most resentful slide. He looks more or less the same way he does in the Real--no pointy ears, no whiskers, no tail or anything that might suggest he is not what he seems. There is a tiny hint of black to his nose, almost a smudge--faintly shiny, like very old and worn leather. Obvious to this tell, he folds his arms over his chest and slumps, resentful, in the booth.

Number one, he hates lectures. Number two, he hates being told what to do, especially when the telling is coming from someone he ain't learned to respect yet. Number three--

Well, there's a number three. He can't remember it, but it's something.

"Askin' her if he we can ask her questions is askin' a question," he points out, without looking any less sulky. This mission should be a success, because it's easy. "Do we really got time for a coffee?"

And, silently added, do we really got time for tellin' people they shouldn't look the way they was meant to look? He sniffs, still not totally over it. 'Cause, seriously.

With only a half-step of reluctance, Suzie arrives at the table, holding her little notepad and pen and apparently rationalising to herself that this is but one more table before she can skidaddle officially, get home, get safe--

Noting down a coffee and stepping aside instinctively as Rocket claims his seat, Suzie only snaps a guarded look up at Kate asking if she can ask something. The newcomer making up this foursome is not exactly wrong, but his assertion of what they have time for gets another glance.

Is this what they meant, she is wondering to herself, heard as an echo in Kate's telepathic range. Along with an image of two generically nice looking white men with square jaws at her doorway. In sunglasses, and suits, and earpieces.

"I was at the end of my shift, actually," she says, forcing perk into her voice. There's a glance to Hawke and Fenris, and her thoughts barely ripple in response of the latter -- there are stranger people, in this world, than some guy with weird tattoos and pointy ears, then back to Kate. "But, you know, if they're quick."

Edited 2015-06-18 10:47 (UTC)

[CLOSED] mod miniplot | glitched.

PART I: Acclimation

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

tags in separately and recycles prompt to avoid ruining the other more productive convo

LMAO BLESS

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

PART II: Glitched

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

PART III: Witness

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject