ArchivedLogs:Free Agents

Free Agents
Dramatis Personae Horus, Joshua, Tag, Tian-shin
In Absentia	2015-04-03 "City-birds get bold as fuck, yo." (Soon followed by Horus's return.)
Location <NYC> {Funhaus} - Harbor Commons - Lower East Side
The house might have started out looking capacious and respectable, but it has since moved through various incarnations, always colorful, but never colorful the same way for longer than a few days. There is little in the way of what most people would call furniture: a sectional couch buried in fluffy cushions, three bean bags of varying sizes, a scattering of bookshelves, what looks like a human-scale cat tree in one corner, and a low, square table surrounded by zafus. The floor plan is largely open, criss-crossed by rope bridges linking small elevated platforms to the landing of the second storey, beyond which lie the bedrooms. The kitchen is separated from the living room only by a long counter, lined with stools. Even the appliances are decked out in unexpected hues, edged with designs that change on a daily basis. A row of tins and jars runs the length of the breakfast counter, none of which match and all of which bear brightly colored text describing their contents: teas, coffees, mates, and various herbal blends. This week, Funhaus looks like a sci-fi wonderland set in the heart of a nebula. Great wisps of pink, purple, blue, and gold sweep across the deep dark star fields of the walls. Glimmering translucent creatures reminiscent of jellyfish cavort in and between these bands of color, and an occasional spaceship punctuates the star-studded black. The beanbags look like asteroids, and the couch like some sort blocky deep space freighter. There was not a Joshua in the living room and now there /is/. It's very abrupt. But it often is, just -- *POOF* -- here is Joshua. He's in uniform, still, all dark dark blue and button-down and booted and he doesn't bother stripping out of any of it before collapsing onto a couch. Thud. "Mmngh?" perhaps suffices by way of both greeting and question and announcement of his presence. Bustling about in the kitchen, Tian-shin also looks like she has not changed since coming home, though she wears a black apron decorated with a angle shot of Saturn's rings over her pearly pink blouse and gray pencil skirt. She has several pots going at once--a sizzling wok whose contents smell powerfully of garlic, a sauce pan simmering on the back burner, the electronic rice cooker emitting a steady plume of steam, and a large pot of clear-ish soup. Into the last of these she scrapes a heap of bamboo shoots. "Welcome home," she says, glancing across the counter into the living room briefly before moving on to chop an exceptionally larger carrot. "How was your day?" "Hey!" Tag pipes, looking up from his task at the counter, a small heap of tofu on a cutting board. "How was work?" Bobby pins hold his magenta hair out of similarly magenta eyes. He wears a t-shirt covered almost entirely with hypnotic rainbow swirls save for the black Rebel Alliance symbol front and center, an eye for the colorful storm. His flouncy circle skirt looks subdued by comparison, dip-dyed with deep purple at the hem fading up to lavender before disappearing beneath his shirt. "You want something to drink?" he asks as he hands the cubed tofu off to his sister. "Hope you're hungry, Tian-shin went kinda nuts making dinner." "Long as hell." Joshua is busily dragging a pillow over his face like he's preparing to smother himself. But he yanks it back off at the mention of dinner. "Fucking /starved/." He rolls up to his feet, starting now to strip off his shirt, boots, pants. He leaves sort of a trail of clothes along the living room as he meanders towards the kitchen, pared down to undershirt and boxers by the time he arrives. "/Sweet/. Thanks. How was yours?" He leans over to pinch a piece of bok choy out of the wok, tossing it from one hand to the other and blowing on it quickly before popping it into his mouth. "Thank you." Tian-shin sets aside her carrot for a moment and accepts the tofu from Tag with a nod and a smile. "I had the best day in weeks--the contract I've been working on just ended." She tips the cutting board into the smallish pot of dark red sauce, stirring steadily as they go. She looks back at Joshua and drops the--luckily empty--cutting board, catching it with the other hand before it hits the floor. "Oh! Um. That's hot." Her cheeks flush deep red. "The ah, the vegetables. Are hot." "You know, /I/ don't usually celebrate with a three course dinner when I get unemployed." Tag flashes a crooked grin and hops over to rinse his hands off in the sink. "I got to do actual /fun/ colors at work for a change. One of my regulars' daughter, wanted bubblegum pink hair." He tucks himself out of the way in a corner of the kitchen and sips from an iridescent black teacup. Then nearly sprays his beverage at Tian-shin's stuttering explanation of her warning. "Hot damn!" he adds when the threat of choking has passed, "Make a dragon wanna retire, man." "Oh shit congratulations you're a free agent now." Joshua leans in to offer Tian-shin a fist bump. "What are you going to do with your new liberty?" A smile catches at his lips, and he plucks out a mushroom from the wok, this time. "But delicious. Totally worth it." He leans back against the counter to suck the mushroom from his fingers. "How /do/ you celebrate unemployment?" Tian-shin overcomes her embarrassment enough to bump the proffered fist, but not enough to stop blushing. "The job was obnoxious, but it paid well, so I shouldn't need to find another like it for a little while, at least. I want to take some pro bono cases, study up on some chemistry, and cook a ton of delicious food." She finishes slicing the carrots and dumps them into the wok, as well, picking the whole thing up while she folds them in to the sound of renewed sizzling--and renewed blushing. "Glad you like it, but I haven't even added the seasonings yet. It's just onions, garlic, and oil." "You could rent an office, put up a plaque: Hua Tian-shin, Attorney at Law." Tag punctuates this with a sweeping gesture of his hand that leaves the faintest ghost of a grey rectangle in the air, though it dissipates immediately. "I could design a logo for you. Base it on your name. Not sure words like 'flower,' 'sky,' and 'heart' really screams 'litigation,' though." He drains the rest of his tea. "Last time I got fired, I went on a Firefly binge. I guess that's kinda celebrating. Oh hey!" He brightens, vivid blue creeping into his hair from the roots. "Since you have time now, you should totally play Ingress with us!" "So long as the food's still a part, I'm supportive." Joshua reaches out, flicking a finger at Tag's hair as it changes colour. "Feel like half your life consists of celebrating, dude." When he drops his hand back to the counter there is blue on /it/, too, streaked in tiny hair-width wisps across his fingernail. "Tian-shin'd make a good rebel. How do you feel," he asks her -- /critically/ -- "about aliens attempting world-domination?" "You may design a logo for me, but /please/ don't go the flower-sky-heart route." Tian-shin dumps a small bowl of pre-crushed spices into the soup pot and stirs it thoroughly. "I recall being subjected to a part of that particular celebration. You should have told me at the outside the show got canceled." She affects an exaggerated moue of disappointment. "Aliens? Not on my watch. This is /our/ world to screw up." Setting down the ladle, she turns to face her housemates, leaning back against the counter. "This is that augmented reality game, right? Funny story, Tag installed it on my phone, then a week later a /bird/ flew off with it!" "Oops!" Tag's fist traces a circle over his heart. "I guess I subconsciously wanted you to experience the same crushing disappointment that fans experienced when it first aired? But yeah, any excuse to celebrate. Or no excuse at all." His hair is now predominantly blue, with streaks of magenta. "Oh yeah, she's totally Resistance material. The Enlightened are /way/ too Chinese for us." There's a oddly fey quality to the grin on his face that makes it hard to discern just how much of this is meant in jest. "Well, that sucks, but you have a /new/ phone--wait." He tilts his head like a quizzical dog. "Did you say a /bird/ took it? Was that here? What'd it look like?" "Shaper glyphs do have that same faux-wisdom quality Ancient Buddhist Proverbs in the west tend to have," Joshua muses. "Possibly they read too many fortune cookies, got a little confused. The news about Tian-shin's phone just puts an amused twitch on /his/ lips, though. Twitch-twitch. /Twitch/. He gets a pair of chopsticks this time so that he can fish out a bamboo shoot from the soup pot and steal /that/. "City-birds get bold as fuck, yo." "I didn't realize this game had so much narrative." Tian-shin dips a ceramic spoon into the ma-po tofu on the back burner and tastes it. Her brows furrow lightly for a moment, and then she reaches for the hot sauce and dumps in a generous amount. "But sure, I'll give it an honest try. That bird, though..." She holds out her hands, palms horizontal and three feet apart. "It was /this/ big--maybe bigger--and had a kind of shimmer to its feathers, like some pigeons. I've never seen anything like it. It got stuck in the house, and when I opened a window to let it out," this with a nod at the living room to indicate the window in question, "it literally snatched the phone from my hand. I'd show you a picture, but..." She smiles and shrugs. "...maybe the bird wanted to keep its identity secret, huh?" << (Sh) >> whispers into Tag's mind, quiet and washing in on a ghost of laughter. << I'm totally inviting him for dinner. >> Tag's face lights up with a kind of childlike glee, his mouth dropping open to let slip a quiet squee. << Oh man oh man, how do you expect me to keep a straight face?! She's going to /die/ of embarrassment. >> But aloud, he merely says, "Wow, that's pretty wild. Well, you were overdue for an upgrade anyhow. The game will run much better on the S5." He busies himself with emptying the teapot. "The narrative...honestly it's not even mandatory. You /can/ play it like one giant elaborate capture-the-flag game, but the story adds some color to it. As long as you don't take it /too/ seriously, it's great fun." << Pfft. Nothing about you is straight, dude. >> "Maybe the bird wanted to check his email. Or maybe he was secretly a dragon adding to his hoarde of phones." Joshua shrugs a shoulder. /His/ face is pretty deadpan. Focused concentration, he's pretty much intent on stealing another bamboo. "Some people take it hella goddamn serious just never go on the fucking. Forum -- google page thing it's ridiculous. There's pretty much new threads every week with /some/ asshole complaining about someone from here. Everyone wants a no-teleporter rule. For some reason." "Oh, New York." Tian-shin snickers, stirring the ma-po tofu again. "Even the wildlife here wants to keep up with the times. I can almost believe he was part-dragon, though. He must have escaped from some 1-percenter's private menagerie. I've had enough brushes with gamer culture to know I'd do poorly on the forum for any game. If I can play and enjoy it, that's good enough for me. " She picks up a brown sauce mixture set aside in a measure cup and pours in into the wok, stirring briskly all the while. "There we go. We can eat as soon as the rice is done." << Ha! Well, I hope he isn't /too/ much more terrified of her than of the world in general. >> "Yeah, we have mad Seer and Guardian badges." Tag beams. "Uh, you have no idea what that means. Basically, we've somehow managed to discover a lot of art immediately after it shows up in extremely inaccessible places. Which is cheating in some players' view, but really, there's some folks will complain about /anything./" He shuffles over and peers at the LCD on the rice cooker. "Seven minutes until dinner is served." "Just because we travel a lot and Tag makes great art --" Joshua shrugs a shoulder. "Some people are mad jealous." He draws in a deep breath, poking a finger at the tofu and licking it clean. Straightening, he meanders back out of the kitchen, wandering back through the living room to collect his discarded trail of clothes and pull himself up the furniture towards the second floor. It takes not much time at all for him to return, still in sleeveless undershirt but now in pajama pants; he stops on the way back to the kitchen to open a living room window. "All I've had the whole goddamn shift is Doritos and one shitty streetcart kebab that I'm /pretty/ sure might have been made from rat meat." Tian-shin has, in the meantime, pulled out her phone--so new even the case looks immaculate. "Well, I've installed the game again, and picked the Blue Team." She pulls a stack of bowls from a cabinet and sets them on the counter beside the stove. "Have some soup first, if you'd like. Don't need to wait on the rice for that. It is 100% free of rat meat, to the best of my understanding." There's a rustling outside the window. A dark shape -- mostly black, with kind of an iridescent oilslick sheen to his feathers, though his natural shading has been somewhat kept in lighter and darker highlighting -- flutters in the opened window. Swoops down through the living room, snatches the phone from Tian-shin's hand. Darts back out the window. Whoops.