1: Firemoth

[abtakha]

Who: Cassie and YOU
Where: your local meathead gym, Sky Park and the parks and suburbs below it, and various pubs of varying clientel, depending on the prompt you choose
When: any time from early afternoon to mid evening, during the week
Warnings: probable swearing and possible heights

1:

The first place she'd sought out on arrival was a gym. It wasn't perfect. People tended to stare or ask questions about the low and contorted Pentjak Silat djurus she was practicing. But it had ropes she could scramble up over and over again, like some crazed arboreal rodent. And punching bags, which she went at with no handwraps or bag gloves, making them jangle and move on their chains a remarkable degree for someone so small. Still not perfect though, she thought. Bags didn't hit back. Or react like a human.

Ultimately her workout left her unsatisfied, which was hardly surprising, as she was trying to subliminate her culture shock and the sudden, unexpected and unwelcome feeling of missing her fellow Caballeros into it.

2:

She sought out as many pubs as she could that regularly broadcast the news. Of course she could get news in her own apartment's tri-D, but that told her only the very surface of the story. What she wanted to know was what people thought of it, what rumors were going around, and most especially, who was hiring, and for what. She'd secured a part timer waitressing for the guy with the ridiculous ears, but an opportunity to pick up danger pay was more what she was after. Nothing quite like that feel of putting yourself at risk and getting paid ridiculous amounts for it.

3:

Of course when you're looking for excitement, sometimes it's right there in the open, where you least expect it. Like the gliders people rented from Sky Park, touching a little danger by leaping off a cliff, adding some excitement to their relatively protected lives. Cassie took to it immediately, and was soon eating into her savings with flight time and performing sickeningly dangerous stunts with them...such as dismounting, at speed, into water. Or trying to perform immelman turns twenty feet off the ground. And if you're down there, trying to walk through the park or around the lake, you might see her dismounting into the water and swimming to shore, glider dragged by the harness around her chest. Or trying to dismount onto a tree branch. Sometimes she even succeeds. How she's not dead yet is attributable to FASA author fiat anyone's guess.

Comments

[mookwarrior]

Jim is getting quite heavily drunk in one of them, playing with his omnicorder between drinks. Apparently, beer is his weapon of choice, and there's a great deal of food scattered around him in various states of eaten. He is a largish man, muscular though with some extra weight on him too, clearly caused by his own seemingly prodigious appetite. He doesn't appear to notice her initially, too busy getting red-faced from all the beer he can swill.

[abtakha]

Cassie is pretending to be a college student (the alma mater sweatshirt has never gone out of style in a over a millenium). Her hair (fake, of course) is brown, curly, and tied back in a ponytail. Makeup has been applied to change her complexion a bit, disguise her heritage.

She swivels in her stool. "Wow, that's pretty impressive." She says. Her body language says 'go ahead and talk to me'.

[mookwarrior]

"You have an odd idea of impressive. More like overindulgence." He blinks at few times, blearily at the college student in front of him. "Sup?"

Jim always knows exactly what to say. Orrr... he doesn't know what to say at all, outside of a fight. Probably the latter.

[abtakha]

"Maybe I just have a thing for men who can hold their liquor." Laying it on too thick, she wondered? She wasn't even sure what she wanted out of him. But her years on the streets had taught her that you sited a mark first, then decided what you wanted to get from them.

"I'm Ila." She'd taken the time to memorize a list of common, but not too common names for the locals.

[mookwarrior]

Jim narrows his eyes at that. Nobody says that kind of thing to him. Could it be a reporter? Probably a reporter. He's had a lot of run ins with those. Easy on the eyes at least. He'll the band play on for a little while longer.

"Nice to meet you Ila, want a burger?"

He'll wave a waiter over for just that purpose, then drain another mug of beer.

[abtakha]

There is no point at which Cassie, ex street kid with the metabolism of a shrew, does not want a burger.

"...Yes. Thanks."

She thinks she's figured out what she wants from him. And it comes in rare to well done.

"So. Drowning your sorrows or just burying them?"

[mookwarrior]

"A little bit of both, but its really more frustration than sorrow." He will get another burger from the waiter, and another beer shows up for Cassie as well, and more beer for him too.

[abtakha]

The way she tears into the burger and washes it down with generous gulps of beer might betray that she's not the spoiled college slummer she's portraying.

"Frustration? Job problems?"

[mookwarrior]

Jim's not so drunk as to not notice that, but again, chalks it up to her actually being something she's not.

"That might be too harsh a word for it. More like stuck on the wrong part of my job, and not getting to do the part I'm actually good at."

[abtakha]

Cassie instantly knew what that would mean. She pretended to think it over as she took a few gulps of beer.

"You're..." She cast around for the local equivalent of 'dispossessed' "...grounded."

[mookwarrior]

"Yeah. Too good at my job so now I'm stuck flying a desk."

[abtakha]

Too good...Now that was noteworthy. Where she was from, mechwarriors didn't get booted upstairs because noone would dream of keeping a general from his beloved Battlemaster.

"So you're expressing that by sublimating it into consumption." She looked down at her wrist, where a study-holo band rested, looked back up at him, a little guiltily, as is she were hoping he wouldn't notice her 'obvious' desire to take notes.

[mookwarrior]

"You're either a psych major or a bit more insightful than you initially let on." He grumbles, and drinks another beer.

"Yes. I know it is an unhealthy expression but I'm at a loss for how to deal with it otherwise."

[abtakha]

"I bet you say that to all the girls." She flashed him a smile and knocked back another few swigs. "But it's more the first. Organizational PsychoHistory, actually. I can't really help you like a shrink could...but maybe just talking about it might help?" And maybe it might help her get her bearrings and/or leak some valuable stuff about the Fleet military.