ArchivedLogs:Polarities

Polarities
Dramatis Personae Parley, Regan	2013-06-19 '
Location Some coffeeshop, Somewhere
There's a lull, in the city; it came overnight as quickly as the violence had. It's not peace so much as a tense-wired halting of hostility; the atmosphere is hardly /pleasant/ but for the first time all week mutants are walking down the streets without (... as /much/) fear of death-by-cop. This odd tense ceasefire comes on a beautiful day. Regan is actually sitting /outside/ on it, tucked under an umbrella at a metal table on the sort-of-patio of a coffeeshop in the Lower East Side. It's just a few blocks from where three people last week died at a /different/ coffeeshop but the place seems untouched by the recent tensions; there's a bustling crowd inside though currently Regan is the only one who's elected to sit at the sidewalk tables. The young woman has a laptop in front of her, casual attire on -- strappy white sandals, knee-length denim skirt, a lightweight white blouse. Her fingers fly over the keys; whatever is on the screen is lines of code that might be wizardmagic or might just be erlang. Same difference, really. Like a rustle of leaves, or the rush of a car on the street, it's all so much white noise and background snippets that mark an arrival at the table. Parley is folded across from Regan with a book held open by splayed fingers, a cup of coffee suspended under his nose, where there had been an empty seat not long before. Written text or computer code, all so much language meaningless on a circuit that understands only verbal - /wizardmagic/ is what he'd probably consider it. "It's gotten quieter." He comments. Regan's fingers freeze, hovering over the keyboard. Her eyes tick upwards, stopping on Parley a long quiet moment as startlement shifts to annoyance shifts to recognition shifts to curiosity. She closes the lid of the laptop, picking up her own half-emptied cup. She sips it while continuing to regard Parley, quiet and neutral in expression. "For now." "Can you tell?" Parley closes his own book as well - a second-hand introductory Russian textbook that's already been written in - and turns his head to watch a couple jogging across the street, each with earbuds supporting bouncing wires. "If it's an illusion?" "There are schools of thought that say this entire world is one." Regan's long manicured fingers unfold towards the street, then drop back to rest at the edge of the table. "Just so many veils layered over each other." She turns to watch the joggers, shifts her gaze to a man walking an eager black lab in the other direction, shifts to a woman struggling to push her stroller up towards the cafe they sit at, juggling door and stroller and cellphone and looking like she perhaps needs extra hands. "It is what people think it is. If people want quiet, I imagine it will stay, a while." "And your school?" What Parley picks up empathically is a low undercurrent; not d "Did it hurt them--?" Parley so slightly raises his brows as he sits down, demonstrating his meaning by raising a hand in the L-shape of a pistol and kind of... /letting off/ a silent round past Regan's shoulder. A spark of entrenching fascination swells up - and then fades to a weary-even again as he sinks back in his chair. "...hhah. At the time. One of them was--." He flicks a hand off, across the street, through the buildings, far away. "Actually that young man that was shot in Tribeca." He recollects his coffee to -- swill it around, adding, more subdued, "He was a neighbor of mine."eliberate but existential, like a nuance of flavor that fades in and out with intensity. His high turtleneck, cotton, gray, is held together down it's left side by three black buttons, black slacks, messy hair, dark-rimmed glasses - he slips from his seat as the woman with the stroller rolls up, to open the door for her to pass through, somewhat absently. City habit already has him leaving his free hand /occupying/ the back of his seat at a stretch, territorially, even without /threat/ of it currently being taken. "Some people will want it," muttered low, not likely with dear hope. Not disparaged either. He sits back down. "You thought quickly. Back at Evolve. I never got to ask if you were harmed." "I'm not much given to philosophy," Regan answers, as the woman kind of grateful-harried thanks Parley, wheeling her slumbering toddler inside. "I thought angrily. But people were on the verge of doing something stupid." There's a small tick of space before her lips curl upwards into a not actually very humoured smile. "-- /er/. I had a bad cough for a day. It passed." She looks over Parley, perhaps /assessing/ though turtleneck and slacks do not allow much by way of revealing potential injuries. "You? The people you were with?" "Did it hurt them--?" Parley so slightly raises his brows as he sits down, demonstrating his meaning by raising a hand in the L-shape of a pistol and kind of... /letting off/ a silent round past Regan's shoulder. A spark of entrenching fascination swells up - and then fades to a weary-even again as he sinks back in his chair. "...hhah. At the time. One of them was--." He flicks a hand off, across the street, through the buildings, far away. "Actually that young man that was shot in Tribeca." He recollects his coffee to -- swill it around, adding, more subdued, "He was a neighbor of mine." "They thought it hurt them," Regan adds with offhand disregard and a small hitch of one shoulder. "I'm sorry." Her tone carries all the requisite polite-mild-concern appropriate to such news from a stranger, though the internal cataloguing that accompanies it is an odd detached thing. Pensive. Tallying this death among many others. "They've swung the other way now, or so the news tells me. That he didn't do it, after all. I wonder if they'll issue his family an apology." Spoiler alert: she doesn't really wonder this. "-- Or the families of any of those killed," and now her mind ticks over cages, not bullets. Parley shrugs for the apology, the side of his mouth twitching. Instead, he flourishes his coffee cup, "You can do physical affects, then. Can you make this taste sugared?" He tips up one side of his mouth, watching the shape of her mind curiously - would it change, if she does? "I'm sure it will depend on who ultimately gets blamed for it. So many pleasing mouth sounds to come. Mmh." ALSO a pleasing mouth sound. Or a pleased mouth sound? Made while he sips? "Has anyone you know been caught up in this?" "They have sugar," Regan answers mildly, one eyebrow ticking upwards. She gestures with her own cup towards the coffeeshop door. "They don't even charge you extra for it." Her eyes lower to her cup; she regards it for a moment before sipping. Hers is creamed and sugared. Mmm. "I'm sure they'll find someone suitably involved to rap on the knuckles. I don't think there are many people in this city who /don't/ know someone caught up in it." Her mind turns this over, thoughtfully, with an absent flicker-imagery of a group of young men beating a yellow-eyed purple-skinned girl in the street. It's detached as well, not overmuch /investment/ in whoever it is she is thinking of. "It makes for a lot of anger floating around out there." "I don't actually want sugar," Parley admits, sinking behind his cup. "People have been angry for a long time. Perhaps now they're just..." He skims his eyes along higher-up windows of the buildings. "Being honest." "Are you?" Regan asks this mildly, her cup tapping against her teeth. "Angry." "Probably." Parley's eyes drop to Regan's, "Are you?" Regan answers this with a quiet huff of laughter. "Probably." Though if there is anger it doesn't quite show through in her mind. Determination, perhaps. "Anger gets a bad rap. Anger can be productive. /Undirected/, it's destructive. But it just needs a proper focus to it." "It's," Parley lays out a hand against the table top, sliding his palm over the surface, gaze focused on this point, "...Intimate. A powerful resource. Exploitable but -- You're not wrong. Perhaps all of this will come down to a matter of who's angriest." His hand stops sliding, and the fingertips drum there. "Or louder about it." His eyes move back to Regan's face, "I'm called Parley." "Regan," she answers, watching the slide of Parley's hand, the drum of his fingers. "Oh, I think we're angrier." This comes with a mild sigh. "The focus is more problematic. /Loud/ anger works better with numbers on your side. When you're outmatched, you need more /finesse/ to your --" Regan's lips curl upwards, thin and quick. "Rage. Husband your resources more /carefully/." "Rage smarter, not harder?" Parley seems almost almost charmed, sinking into his seat yet deeper, until the prop of his elbows is what keeps him from melting off into a puddle on the floor, "Some of them are smart as well, though. Perhaps there are times when, what you cannot get by /volume/, you could gain by..." he pulls in a breath, lets it out with a tired word, "quiet." A car drives by, pumping music over the roar of an abused muffler. Parley closes his eyes against it until it passes, "--It will be interesting." "Oh, they are definitely smart as well. All the more reason for caution," Regan says with a press of chin to the back of her curled knuckles. "Mmm. We do live in interesting times." There's a note of humour to her voice, a note of humour to her /thoughts/. "What would you do. With a lot of rage. Where would you aim it?" "At this?" Parley glances up the street, in the tell-tale direction of the burnt-out Evolve. "Mh." The napkin that he'd brought along with his coffee is plucked off the table, and he begins to make small micro-tears in it. "...individual actions are symptomatic. The cause being -- What? Fear? Or would that be a symptom as well? How do you overcome a primal instinct?" The bits and pieces he's tearing off, he sets in a neat row along the table, one at each sentence, as though they were representation of thoughts. "Jackson Holland. Norman Osborn. Iolaus Saavedro. Tony Stark. Luke Cage. - All very different men, with very different goals... as /individuals/. But as a group, you could say these are names of people /battling/ the same fear; brave faces, calm voices - each charismatic, in their own way." His eyes are slightly narrowed. But oddly vacant, staring irreverently down at his little row of paper shreds, pausing for a moment. "Instincts can be overcome. Most things can be overcome." Regan sips her coffee, draining the rest of the cup and setting it down alongside her computer. "Harder, though, given that it's hardly an /irrational/ fear. They're not wrong to be afraid. Everyone always has been, I suppose, when their comfortable positions at the top are threatened." She dabs at her lips with her own napkin, turning her eyes to Parley's line of paper. "Interesting men to keep company with each other," comes with its own low hum of amusement. "Do you imagine they'll find much success?" "They haven't so far, have they?" Parley pushes a 'hff' of non-humor through his nose. "Holland and Cage are constant targets of harassment and ridicule, Saavedro is endlessly bound up in red tape and litigation, Oscorp is at odds with its own shareholders. Stark..." As he lists these names, he's now pushing each bit of paper /out/ of its neat little queue, into a different territory, pausing on the last one, "--is new." He'll leave that bit of paper /there/. Moving on to a number of others that he doesn't name, "And all of these people walk in different circles, tending the symptoms as the machine cranks them out." With all of the pieces separated like a small constellation, he leans back, pressing his cheek into a fist. "...but success or no. They're necessary." He breathes in, then out. And leans forward, dragging a few pieces and setting them in far far orbit of the other little shreds, one to the far left, one not far from Regan's plate, two to the far right. One, remains in his hand, but he's ignoring that one for now, "Then there are the polarities. The terrorists. The brick throwers. The bombers. The government. The vigilantes. The police." Since there is no rise nor fall to imply positive or negative, the dispassion in listing this /last/ one doesn't suggest /which/ polarity the police might occupy." And now he sits, with this vast array of possibilities and a slate-hard sharpness in his narrowed eyes. "...all making this great. -- /argument/. For the human collective consciousness. The serpent eating its own tail." "Saavedro's clinic has seemed on track to open. Even with a rather hefty," Regan's teeth bare in a thin sliver of smile, "donation recently. All press is good press; I'm sure they'll find more soon. Holland seems to have found himself in with some rather powerful bedfellows. Cage is as much a hero as laughingstock. Stark and Osborn --" Her lips twitch, head shaking. "They're necessary, certainly. But excavating the /root/ of the problem? That'll require a more /radical/ approach. If," she muses, "it's even possible. The history of the world is so many boots on so many faces. Sometimes I think it's not so much a question of stopping the oppression as making sure it's not. /Your/ face." "And so. We all take turns." Parley smiles over his coffee, head tipped down. "The mighty rise and fall. Every boot needs /something/ to stand on. And in a way, /being/ that necessary ground surface is its own importance." He shrugs, and the last piece of paper he just - tucks into an inner pocket. "We're a fickle society. Maybe all of this," he sweeps out his arms and begins to gather the whole mass of shreds together into a single pile, "is necessary, in its own way. Saavedro, Holland, Osborn - none of them seem to particularly enjoy the ground they're walking on. But for this scale to stay balanced, they do - it's not fair, but we need them to." He wads up the mass of paper into a ball - it is /trash/, after all. "And while they do. Others need to provide the /ground/ for them to walk on, to make sure they /can/ keep doing what they're doing. The human mind needs all these arguments, maybe. Just." He stands, to throw away his trash in the bin outside, so his voice has to raise - a light, higher tenor when it's projecting. "With some volumes /reduced/. And some," hi, he's back. But only to pick up his book. And smiles, thin. "Maybe a little louder." Regan watches that last piece of paper that he tucks away, a quiet note of curiosity surfacing in her thoughts. What she says, though, is only, "Mmm. For the scale to stay balanced," though in her mind's eye it is tipping, first one way and then the other, never even. She nudges her cup a little more aside, opening her laptop back up when Parley picks up his book. "It's gotten quieter, for now," she remarks with an open hand tipped out towards the sidewalk. "Kind of a perfect time for /someone/ to be heard." "And I'm sure someone will." Parley concedes, tucking his book under his arm. "It's been interesting, Ms. Regan." Or did he say 'Regan-san'? The overt non-English element of the suffix doesn't seem as foreign. As he moves to take his leave, he withdraws the bit of paper still in his pocket, and sets it down alongside Regan's computer, leaning over it briefly to scribble down an email address - colloquy@gmail.com - in a neat, but very /small/ hand. And then he withdraws, "Be safe." "And will continue to be, I'm sure." Regan doesn't return the well-wish but she does smile, quick and small. Her fingers drop to rest tips against the slip of paper, and she pulls it in closer, pocketing it herself. Her eyes linger on Parley a moment longer, and then return to her keys.