strangetrip | [EP] a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life*

Yasmeen "refused to be bored, because she wasn't boring."**

She'd read that in a book in Gotham. But then, Gotham had a library, bookstores, and her Lady. Not being bored was a lot easier. So, when the city opened, Yasmeen all but bolted through the portal into the wet jungle heat in search of anything interesting to do.

It didn't take long for her to discover there were no airships, no weapons modern even by her standards, and very little for non-natives to do. But there was always work in a port city, even in a river port, and she knew how to find it.

On day two, she met Ek Sothea, a young woman with a gift for spotting an opportunity. By day three, she'd agreed to front her the gold for a salvage operation in the river. It barely touched the reserves of what Yasmeen had with her when she arrived from Gotham, but it was enough to finance the operation and get Yasmeen a tip on a bar by the docks where Ek Sothea had gotten the initial information and the name of the man who'd supplied it. Soksan.

The third night, she staked out the bar and by the fourth, she'd met Sar Peou and his contact Hu Chariya who needed an ancient and valuable map retrieved from the business partners who'd kept it after a deal went bad. Early on the morning of the fifth day, she'd slipped into the third floor above the Phann Raksmei bank, picked the locks on the safe chest, and obtained the map. On the evening of the fifth day, she met Sar Peou at Soksan, slipped into his back corner booth and delivered the map in exchange for a healthy payment that covered her investment in Ek Sothea's salvage operation.

Business transacted, she bought herself an ale to nurse while scoping out her next job.

~*~*~*~
* Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf
** Zelda Fitzgerald

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Really? Because you play darts like you are," MacCready teased a little, nudging Ignis just enough to be playful and not to knock him off balance. "So were you like...government or whatever where you came from?"

Darts was a form of combat practice, not intended as a sport... of course, the same could be said of many sports, so Ignis declined to argue the point in favor of answering the question. "I was a member of the Crownsguard and a direct retainer to the Crown Prince. Chamberlain, advisor both military and economic, cook, driver, bodyguard. So, yes. I was government."

If it hadn't been obvious already, those couple sentences just dripped with Upper Stands bullshit. "Right..." he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "You know, sometimes our worlds don't seem so different and then..." He shook his head. "Then you say some stuff that just might as well be Chinese to me." Ignis was real good at making him feel stupid without even trying to. "Cart's about fifteen feet ahead of you."

"Yes. Well. You did ask." He wasn't the first to ask, or the first to regret asking. Mac wouldn't even be The first to decide Ignis Scientia was too different or too much work. Ignis didn't hold any of that against anyone; he knew what he was and wasn't, and among the things he wasn't was 'good with people'. "Any recommendations?"

"Not upset about asking, just more worried you're not gonna be willing to teach so I can understand. I know I'm not smart," he said quieter, looking over the cart. "There's some meat on a stick that looks pretty good. And some meat on noodles. Not like Takahashi's soup or anything, just like meat and stuff on noodles."

"Hmm." Noodles were difficult at the Inn or at least a fair amount of effort in many cases - might it be possible to buy a stockpile of premade noodles somewhere in this city? "The noodles, I think. And I can't imagine you'd find most of what I know to be very interesting or relevant." He wasn't talking down to Mac, or decidedly didn't intend to; the politics and economics of Eos was often dry at best, and of no practical use outside that world.

Rather humbling, to realize that his only broadly-useful skills were those of his more domestic services. "I could teach you how to cook, I imagine. But I've very few other practically useful skills. Ones I could teach, anyway." It would be mind-meltingly difficult to teach knife fighting to someone whose form or movement he would never see, after all.

MacCready shifted some of his gold and got them both a bowl of the noodles covered in thick white sauce. "I'm trying to get to know you, Ignis," he said, finally realizing that the guy probably needed to be hit over the head with some sort of bludgeoning weapon and words were better than the commie whacker since Ignis wouldn't even be able to see the damn thing to know why it was funny. "I'm trying to get to know you because I- I like spending time with you even if I ain't done it much. I don't... I don't usually feel judged by you and you're nice to look at."

He handed Ignis the bowl and a fork, glad that the other man couldn't actually see his blush, but sure he could hear the nervous edge to his voice. He wanted to believe that deeply sure part of Vax that seemed to believe that MacCready deserved something good like a future. He was pretty sure he didn't, but he couldn't- He couldn't forget the tone in Vax's voice when they'd talked about it or the look in his eyes. "I'd like to learn how to cook," he added, "I still don't know what most of the stuff that shows up in your pantry is."

"Oh." Ignis blinked behind his shades. Ordinarily he'd have asked why, but Mac had already supplied the reasoning. Certainly at least the last part was... awkward, wasn't it? Surely? From what he could remember, Ignis didn't remember himself being hideous, but he'd never been worth looking at, either. "I apologize, I'm difficult. And, I assure you, not terribly interesting. But I can definitely teach the contents of the pantry."

Almost absently, he poked the fork he'd been handed into the bowl and tasted the contents. Hmm. Pepper... probably white pepper. Some sort of cream base - unusual, but perhaps due to noodles rather than rice - some sort of meat. Beef, or something close to it perhaps. An unusually hearty fish? It would probably take multiple attempts to get right, assuming none of the ingredients were Songrun-specific. "Rather like stroganoff, I think. Hmmm."

Right. Well. That was that then. MacCready found a nearby bench and sat down on it. "Preciate it," he said, poking at his own food. He took a few bites, glad as always for warm instead of cold. Iggy looked pretty lost in trying to figure out what they were eating anyway. He didn't wanna ask what stroganoff was.

Once again, Ignis followed Mac's footsteps to find the bench as well. Then, bearing in mind that Mac wanted to learn about food, continued his thinking out loud instead of in his head. "Traditional stroganoff is sautéed beef with mushrooms in a sour cream sauce. This I think is ordinary heavy cream - non-sour if you will - a variety of vegetables, and... lamb?" One would think the protein of a dish would be the easiest to identify, but in the company of other flavors and with the seasoning... not so much. "It's difficult to say. I thought some kind of fish at first, but the texture is wrong."

"Chews like radscorpion," he said, just a hair on the tough side, but nothing that really bothered him. He might've guessed mirelurk, but the taste of mirelurk wasn't something anyone could hide under any kind of spices. It was like soggy armpit and just stayed in your nose for weeks. "Bit tougher than bloatfly, more meaty than stingwing."

[EP] a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life* - backdated

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like

Re: Yasmeen definitely, anyone else if they like