No Names

Sepúlveda

There is a bar on Champa Street called Bar. Bar Bar, to be more specific, and if you're there for the coffee you might call the place Carioca Cafe but from the outside it looks like the sort of cash-only pool-shark haven that turns into a mosh pit after dark.

During business hours the place is populated by alcoholics and unemployed and day drinkers. One of the best places to go if you're looking to slum it. Nobody in here is here to slum it but it's hard to tell from looking at some of them.

The guy at the end of the bar when Arianna walks in looks as if he just got here. He could look as if he's been here a while. He's wearing eyeglasses with black metal frames and a bomber jacket over most of a three-piece suit. His prematurely-graying hair is a mess and he hasn't shaved his face in several days.

His resonance is strong enough for Sleepers to notice it. She should have no trouble. 'Should' being the operative word.

Giametti

[Awareness, for formality's sake]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Giametti

For most of the city, it has been a long day.  There have been noses to the grindstone and pipers to pay; there have been looming deadlines or strained expectations about the coming of Spring. It has been a long day, in a string of long days, which has grown into a month of misgivings, or even a new year of regrets.  They are here to forget, or to comiserate, or, for a select few, even to connect.

Ari is not here for any of those things. When she sweeps into the dusklight of the Bar Bar, she seems immediately out of place.  Her clothes are too nice, subtle cues give away the quality, and when she pushes her sunglasses up to rest upon the top of her head, only the finest of crows lines edge her eyes. They are deeper when she smiles. She is not smiling. Perhaps the clearest cue that she does not belong her is the white-brightness of her coat.

There is a tug from the end of the bar, a sense of something Other and almost as misplaced as she is.  It draws the edge of her attention, but doesn't command it wholesale.

"Whiskey. No ice. Double," she orders in a collection of crisp and almost forgettable syllables.  She pulls up a seat two stools down from the man at the end of the bar, with his greying hair and his bomber jacket.  There is a stool between them still, but it will almost undoubtedly remain empty given the pooling of his resonance with hers.

Two mages walk into a Bar...

... hey, isn't there a joke that starts like that?

Sepúlveda

[bc rolling awareness is the polite thing to do]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Sepúlveda

Nothing makes for the maintenance of both distance and privacy like pooling together one's resonance with a complete stranger's.

As far as strangers go these two don't look as if they come from complete opposite sides of the tracks. One of them is polished and poised and looks as if she not only wandered in by mistake but decided to stay for the sake of asserting her right to exist in dingy places, chromosomes be damned. The other one, barring the suit, looks as if he could live in the neighborhood. The suit and the rumpled academic air about him.

He's yawning and removing his cellphone to respond to a message when the newcomer sits down near enough for him to notice but not enough for him to suspect ulterior motives.

For his part he feels as if he has recently used the Spheres of Matter and Prime. He currently has a Life effect going to counteract the effects of sleep deprivation.

When he puts his phone away he says, "You're not drinking a double of well whiskey are you."

Giametti

That is a little bit of how it happened.  But then, her type has a way of using stubbornness to over-ride any sense of wrong-doing or wrong-having.  It is a time honored tradition within the Tradition.

"I should hope not," she says, fixing the bartender with a pointed look to ward off that very happenstance now that the man has brought up its likelihood.  Once that is sorted, in a disturbingly firm and also oddly polite manner, she turns to him again.

"Thank you for sparing me the indignity."  The cadence of her words is formal, but there is a spark of mischief to her eyes.  Her posture is looser than her language would imply.  "Forgive me the turn of phrase, but you feel a little like proverbial Hell that Hath Frozen Over."

Sepúlveda

"Ah, shit."

For his part, the stranger is chasing tequila with cheap Mexican beer right out of the can. Tecate, it looks like. His last shot is sitting empty and filmy by the rubber spill-stop mat. That mat hasn't been cleaned in a few days and the smell of spilled cola and beer is not yet cloying but with the weather warming up it will be soon enough.

It's worth mentioning that he has a faint accent. Child of immigrants or else someone who has spent enough of his adult life in an environment where he hasn't had to give the fucks necessary to shake Mexico from his English. Some people never get rid of their accents.

His eyes are green. He doesn't shy away from meeting her gaze even if hers glint a bit.

"What are you, with the Order?"

Giametti

His eyes are green; her eyes are green.  His speech is accented; her accent is hidden.  She calls out his resonance; he calls out her Tradition.  This is better, then, than how she had supposed things would go.

"Better the Order than the Union," she says, there's a note that goes up at the end, testing him.  She does not out and ask him if his shades are mirrored; if he is a Company man, down with the crunchy rabble-rousing deviants, soldier of Englightenment. It is clear, though, in those few shared words, which side of the great divide she stands on.

Her drink comes, and she wraps long and graceful fingers around it.  She glances over and lifts her chin a little at the bartender in gratitude.

"Look, I came in for a drink and not looking for trouble. I'm rather good at trouble, though, if you take my meaning. But I just got here; and it would be rude; or some other reason; and besides... you need another drink," she lifts her glass a little in his direction.

Sepúlveda

They are both initiated members of traditions with storied histories. No way to tell from his resonance which one claims him. Maybe she'll be able to start hazarding a guess the longer they speak but right now he could very well be a Conventionalist and if he is then he's one of the ones who isn't out to convert every reality deviant he sees.

He does need another drink.

"'Not looking for trouble,' she says."

That exchange seems to signal the bartender. He wanders back over and indicates the empty shot glass. Yeah okay might as well. While the 'tender's back is turned the stranger says, "Hey, lady, you don't want trouble, that's... that's totally your right, it's in the Constitution and everything, trouble is an opt-out clause."

Giametti

Something he says brings a smirk-curlto the corner of her mouth.  She shifts a little on her barstool, draws her drink toward and takes a generous (but not impolite) mouthful to hold, savour, and then swallow.  There is no self-congratulatory breathing out at the sting of it.  She has long since become accustomed to the burn and progress.

"That's an unusual sentiment these days," she says, and the tone of her voice has shifted toward something more casual. He hasn't offered up his Tradition; she hasn't truly confirmed her own. There is a decided lack of formal introductions. He could be a Conventionalist; she could be ... something. But after the initial press its set aside.

"It occurs to me," she says, with a sort of rue-soaked smile.  "That this is not, perhaps, the place for whiskey.  When I move on to my next drink," because, no, he isn't getting back the peace and quiet of his end of the bar just yet, "What would you recommend?"

Sepúlveda

"What do I look like, a connoisseur?"

Some combination of his lack of height and the forced perspective she being two seats away from him and he being at the corner of the bar and all may have led her to believe he's been sitting down all this time. He has not been sitting down. He has been standing. He steps away from the bar for the sake of putting himself one seat closer to her but he does not sit. Hyperactivity and sitting are a poor combination. Leads to mind-wandering. At least if he's standing he can focus on standing and not falling down.

He has not smiled the entire time they have been talking. His eyes seem to have a spritely bit of energy to them but it isn't translating to laughter or actual movement of facial muscles.

"I'm drinking cheap beer and silver tequila, but, eh, I don't know the first thing about whiskey."

Giametti

[Empathy.  Because you're kind of twitchy.  Is there something going on, or, you know, do you just like to drink standing up?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Sepúlveda

[He's a little hyper on a good day. Today is possibly a good day. He just likes to drink standing up. Drinking standing up is also the hallmark of a career alcoholic. You can't get dizzy when you stand up if you don't sit down to begin with.

BONUS 2-POINT READ: Other than the fact that she can pick up intelligence but no real dominant emotion from looking him in the eye, Ari can safely chalk his weirdness up to the fact that... uh... he's weird. Stay tuned for more details.]

Giametti

If Ari were more of a people person, perhaps she would have noticed that he was standing and not sitting before he moved. Perhaps, but probably not.  It's even less likely that she would have cared, see, she is excellent at The Game but she is not currently playing -- one does not come to this sort of place to play The Game.  One comes to decidedly not play.  And yet, here they are, dancing around the heart of something, spiraling into it like children walking the labyrinth.

Another drink, then, and the warmth of the whiskey is bracing. It is familiar and steady.  He has not smiled, but she has. 

"Cheap beer, and silver tequila," she repeats it. As if trying the words on for size. And then Ari, in that perfect white coat, in this seedy Bar Bar, with her whiskey dwindling, looks to him a little more carefully.

"Can't say I immediately see the allure..."

He looks like he might fall into her lap if he stopped paying attention and that would be regretable; we could not have that.  She pushes the barstool between them out a little with one toe. Not shoves, but nudges. Gently.  The better to keep this stranger, whom she should probably have left alone and not poked with that pale excuse for an introduction, at bay.

"But I'll try it," she says, very caution-to-the-wind and unaware of consquences, which seems to summon the 'tender.  And, utilizing the universal symbology of alcoholics everywhere, she manages to order one of what he's having.

 

"Are you..." she isn't very good at this; she doesn't really care; she finishes the sentence differently than she'd intended to, "Acquainted with the locals?"

Sepúlveda

All she said was she can't see the allure. She didn't ask him for his opinion. With one stool between them now he's perfectly happy to just lean on his forearms and continue alternating between staring straight ahead and sparing her his attention.

For the record: he is not drunk. Slightly anesthetized perhaps but he is still in control of his physical faculties and his mind is clear enough that he can function. Sober enough to drive or at least sensible enough to recognize when driving is beyond one's capabilities. The bar is pretty low when one can sober up instantly.

So she doesn't see the allure. He knocks back his tequila like that is in itself a response and then on they go. Here's the bartender. Another of what he's having. Might as well get another shot for himself since he's got the good fellow's attention.

"I am," he says. Now that they're close enough to each other and he's screwing around rearranging glassware Ari might be able to see he's wearing a wedding band dulled by time and exposure. He taps the offending band against his can onetwothreefourfive times because lord knows what sort of backlash will happen if he actually stands still for the entirety of a conversation. Goes on, "A few of them, anyway, you missed a bitching party a few weeks ago. What'd you do, just get off the boat?"

Giametti

Too drunk to drive was a different thing than drunk enough to warrant avoidance.  One of these days she might mark the difference in degreesof inebriation.  Tonight isn't the night.

The wedding ring is noticed. That's all. She's busy debating, inwardly, the proper order for drinking cheap beer and cheap tequila.  Probably the tequila first, to damp the taste of the beer that is so pale it might ought have been water.

"Yes, actually." To being new here.  To the rest:  "And I'm not really big on meetings," she says. Casual indifference. "They cast off responsibilities and action items in their wake.  It's unseemly."

This is punctuated with knocking back her shot of tequila, which does, this time, bring a crease to her brow and a wrinkle to her smile.

Sepúlveda

"Hah!"

That's the closest she's going to get to eliciting amusement from him it seems. Or else the word 'unseemly' resonated with him. His tradition is not exactly known for their powers of elocution so resonance is the closest some of them get to expressing themselves in a way other people can understand. Pointing to the word in question and endorsing it.

She still doesn't know his tradition. For all she knows she's having drinks with the enemy right now.

So she does feel as if she's drinking alone he picks up his own shot. Since they're drinking together he lifts it in silent toast before thunking its base on the bar and only after that whole ritual does he knock it back. Muscle memory. He doesn't often drink in group settings and when he does he does not often treat it as a communal experience. It does not make him frown as it does her. Time and experience.

"Tequila," he says as he picks up his can of beer. A toast? "From darkness, there is light."

If she will clink her can against his, so will he clink his against hers. He does not drink to cleanse his palate though. It's just there for hydration's sake.

"Eh. Maybe you're onto something. Meetings are a waste of time." He kills what was left of his beer and sets it down on the bar with a terminal clunk. "Okay, lady, I'm going to shuffle off. You're welcome to join me, but..."

He claps his palm against the bar. Bracketed punctuation. But he knows she isn't going to.

Giametti

Well, that's something. He's amused. There has been something a little more human pulled out between the two of them than the puddling of resonances and the tug of active magics.  She does, in fact, clink her beer can against his and it seems to please her in some small and ritualistic way -- or maybe because she did, against all thoughts and inward claims to the contrary -- come here for communion of one sort or another.

"And those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them."

He kills his beer, and she glances over, but no, no she does not rise to leave with him. Neither does she offer him her name.

"Go well," she says, and it echoes older tidings.  "I have a feeling I will see you around..."

So he goes. And she finishes her beer in solitude, pays up, and wanders her way out of Bar Bar.  Perhaps to call Pen to pick her up with the Car Car.  Or to walk off the coming buzz-drunk until she feels right enough to find her way back to the house of Hyde and Mars on her own.