Logs:Burning the Midnight Oil
| Burning the Midnight Oil | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-08-19 "I ain't filled out the proper form for leaving a teammate out as bait." |
| Location
<MAD> The Midnight Oil - Lowtown, Madripoor | |
True enough to its name, the fact that it is very, very late hasn't stopped this tavern from being busy. It's an old place, and it looks it, stone walls blackened from fires past and etched with generations of graffiti. Though there are actually plenty of lights around the place they seem oddly specifically positioned just to elongate the shadows in every corner, the better for some of tonight's patrons to properly lurk. Jax is, it must be said, not a world-champion lurker. He's attracted quite a few stares as he goes to fetch his companions a round of drinks at the bar, a cheerful bobble of glow following in his wake as he skirts the room's shadows. He's not dressed in his usual colorful attire -- sturdy boots, quick-dry hiking pants, a black quick-dry tee -- but between the ink and the hair he is eye catching all the same and would scream not from around here even if murmurs of Who That Is weren't going around the room. He's gamely ignoring them as he drops back into his seat, lets his little fairylight wink out (the shadows close in just a little murkier around their table, now) and slumps back. "So where we at, then. Maybe they gone off to be ninjas an' maybe they're flying around in some kinda airborne pirate ship? I don't think Scott's gonna love this report." As lurkers go, Joshua is mid-tier. His perpetually morose look adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the way he drags his beer in and hunches over it, but the way he's been folding a bar napkin into an incredibly shitty and lopsided boat in order to whoosh it through the air in front of him suggests his heart is not fully in the lurking. He didn't really dress for the occasion, either, jeans and sneakers and a lightweight blue-grey kurta that is really minimal on places to conceal weaponry. "Did not know airship pirate was a viable profession." This sounds even more morose than his expression, perhaps at his missed opportunities in life. Blink would be the ideal lurker if this were a fantasy roleplaying game and she were there to dispense plot about or get recruited into adventuring, or more likely, both. Her tunic and pants are of some airy dark purple fabric trimmed in lavender and distantly Hanfu-inspired, though in addition to voluminous sleeves and generous drape that may conceal any number of weapons, it has a deep hood that is currently concealing her elfin ears and strange coloration in both hair and skin, though the fact that her eyes are almost entirely forest green with little visible white is pretty striking now that it's too dark for sunglasses. She somewhat ruins this mysterious wayfarer vibe by bobbing her head and flashing a smile at Jax in gratitude for her ~~mead~~ cider. "I could probably go undercover as a ninja recruit, but the mystic initiations might take a while." She salutes Jax with her glass. "You can pull off the pirate look, easy. You..." << ...(have some experience) -- stop that think about -- >> She's plotting a path across the tavern as though it were a 3D platform game and the floor were lava, but then the game is accidentally Portal 2. << -- (getting kidnapped for research) -- oh God I hope he didn't see/hear that... >> She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a big gulp of her cider. "I was not serious, but should we consider...bait...?" "Our pirate airship ain't gonna be pirating people, though, right? Like, I just gotta check. Oh I do have some pretty great pirate sims in the DR if..." Jax shakes his head like he's trying hard not to derail himself. He's got a cider, too, and his fingers taptaptap light against the side of the stein as he watches Joshua's boat. He's squinting over towards Blink -- "Wait, is that serious?" as a few images of various X-Kids flash through his head in rapid and horrified succession. "Oh m'fair sure we could lose our accreditation for that," before he catches up to, "wait you mean you?" His expression is scrunching, contemplative, and there's bright (bright) glowing purple-portal flashes across the bright (bright) surface of his mind. "Shhh." Joshua sits up just a little straighter. He's glancing over towards one exit and then another in quick succession. "Sriyani might hear you." He sets the paper-napkin-boat down and picks up his beer, slouching lower in his seat. He sips at it, eyes cutting to Blink. Nostrils flaring. His snort is quiet, at least. "Could branch out. Try some whole new flavor of kidnapping." "What --" Blink's eyes go wide enough that the whites do show, and the effect is disturbing, which does at least harmonize with the horror in her mind. "No no of course I mean me. I can look very obvious and I'm..." Queasy dreamlike snatches of a surreal landscape flit through her memory, and she can't muster the focus for mind-gaming to cover it. << (not as hard to contain as I thought) >> "Anyway, obviously we would be the airship pirates who fight the bad airship pirates. Make them think they have competition or something." Jax does dart a quick look at the doors at Joshua's caution and though he totally! really! didn't actually expect Sriyani to be spying on them, he does look a little relieved that the room still only seems filled with a motley crew of more or less adult ne'er-do-wells. He gulps at his own drink, mouth twisting uncertainly to the side as he juxtaposes Blink against Nevaeh's flickering uncertain future-static. "I ain't filled out the proper form for leaving a teammate out as bait an' we definitely ain't filled out none for flying an airship. I think we oughtta collect what we do know an' get back else Scott's gonna have the most let down face." "Could we tell?" asks Joshua, whose expression has not changed from its gloomy droop this whole time. Blink doesn't quite hide her smile behind her glass. "Yes, Sir." Her expression changes several times and finally relaxes from a displeased scrunch to a lighter, more thoughtful one. "But after that he gets to make up new protocols, which he likes." She sighs. "We probably wouldn't be able to tell that, either." Jax is fully derailed by this yes, sir, brows knitting for several long moments as he puzzles over how exactly he is meant to interpret it and whether or not he's being mocked. He doesn't come up with any satisfying answer and doesn't entirely get his train of thought back on track, slowly sipping his cider while he tries to refocus from his nebulous anxious confusion. "I did already send him an email yesterday with a real quick update," he ventures, slower and a little more cautious, now, but though this thought was vaguely considering ending in, so there'll probably already be some kinda form waiting, he thinks better of saying it. His teeth click at the lip of his glass. His brows furrow. "Don't none of it really answer why Nevaeh couldn't even see nothing at all, though." Joshua glances to Jax, and then Blink, and then back down to the table. He flicks a finger against his misshapen paper boat, sending it twisting in a lazy circle. "Ninjas are sneaky." Blink is also considering for a moment, hazy distant memories of other smugglers she'd never really thought of as pirates or slavers at all, though she fled them anyway. Then decides it's not relevant and drags her thoughts back to the present. "Oh wait, it's supposed to be 'aye aye, Captain'. I'm new to the whole pirate thing." She sobers now. Or at least, her face does. The rest of her is probably becoming gradually less sober. "Maybe the -- buyers have someone with a power that can sort of scramble clairvoyance? Or technology. There's been all kinds of weird new technology. But sooner or later they have to come here to pick up." She pauses, comparing an extremely random mix of different Final Fantasy airships and present day advertising blimps. "An airship is probably kind of hard to miss." Jax is eying a door again, imagining Sriyani all the way in New Haven and also on the direct other side of it, moving from this to contemplating Blink herself with a kind of do they, though? inward musing before the dismisses this thought with some vague idea that it is Extremely Silly to think just anyone can whisk people through portals at the drop of any hat. "I'm the last person to assume anything is what it looks like," he ventures aloud, light and amused. He's drinking deep from his large stein of cider, then contemplating the rest of it with a scrunch of his brows. "We ain't flying back tonight, are we?" "Hell no." Joshua is draining his beer in an impressively long pull. "I got next round." | |
