ArchivedLogs:Trouble

Trouble
Dramatis Personae Charlie Torres, Daken	15 April 2015 '
Location <BOM> Kitchen and Dining Room - Main Lodge - Ascension Island
Though equipped to feed and seat a few dozen people, these rooms lack an institutional feel. A large stone fireplace along one wall has a wide mantelpiece above it; the walls and floors are smooth blonde birch and darker grey stone. The solid wood tables are circular, designed to seat six apiece. The lighting overhead is soft, stained-glass hanging lamps over each table and recessed lighting studded at intervals into the walls. Though the tables all match, the chairs do not, an assortment of styles from extravagantly ornate high-backed oak to plastic-and-metal folding chairs. The kitchen adjoins the living room through a large pair of swinging doors. Recently refurbished, its new appliances still gleam. The giant fridge and freezer to the right are generally well-stocked, as is the large cool stone walk-in pantry set alongside them. Its back door opens out onto the gardens. The center island is a long granite counter, the cabinets underneath it stocked with pots and pans and cooking dishes of all types. Three sinks are set against the left-hand wall. Overhead, numerous cabinets hold dishes and glasses and mugs for actual eating; the drawers below have utensils for the same. Hooks on the walls are available for hanging -- dishtowels, oven mitts, severed body parts, whatever is in need of hanging. Mid-afternoon is a good time for a break from the day's work. Charlie is, again, in dirty worked-in clothes: camping pants and a navy-and-cream ringer shirt today. Her work boots were left outside along with their greater quantities of dirt, brimmed hat tossed over on one of the tables in the dining area. Her long ears are more visible, even tucked into her longer brown hair, without a hat over everything. Hands and faced washed up from the worst of the sweat and soil from outside, she has set about putting together a rather impressive turkey sandwich and located a bottled root beer to go along with it. Daken heads in from the pantry. He doesn't have any food, so there isn't any real indication of what he was doing in there. "Howdy, howdy." he stops himself there, tugging the notepad out of his pocket and strikes something out. "Never saying that again." He turns for the fridge, digging through until he finds a container with his name scrawled across it. There's a disappointed sigh as he opens it. "Somebody ate my quail. Anywho, how's it going?" he finally asks of Charlie, flashing an easy enough grin her way. Charlie takes a moment to put tuck the unfinished veggies and other foodstuffs away in the fridge, washing the knife and cutting board she had used before taking her lunch to a table. "You /auditioning/ greetings now? Literally got a list? You on some kinda radio talk show or sitcom, need a catch phrase?" One eyebrow arches incredulously as she plunks into a chair. "Never had no quail in my /life/. Where you even get that?" "Prefer raising them when I have time. And since I'm waiting for the investigation on those assholes that tried to mug me to pass over." Daken says with a slight shrug. He turns his attention to the freezer, tugging out a zip-loc bag filled with murky liquid before taking it towards the stove. "And just trying out something uniform. So far I've scratched that and 'what's up bitches' out. Who the hell even says that? Not sure why I thought it would work." "Someone tried to mug you? An' so you're gonna raise birds?" If there were any questions of what Charlie's 'confused' face might look like, they're being answered now. "I'm not sure where you pulled those from, neither. Ever tried maybe just saying hi, hello, hey, how are you? Any of those things? Just go with something natural and not off a...where you even /get/ that list from?" She reaches into a pocket for a bottle opener to access her root beer. "No, two people tried to mug me and Anette. I cut one's hand in half, and shot the other in the spine. So I'm waiting out so I don't go to jail. Or get deported. And I have a /lot/ of free time on my hands. So the list just kind of happened." Daken says, brushing the excess water from the freezer onto his jeans before he sets out to find a pot and oil. The stuff in the liquid is soon revealed to be the breasts and legs of a few very tiny birds. "And I haven't raised birds in years. But they taste better that way. Should see about getting a few cages so I can do that. Might have to take another contract and kill a syndicate boss to pay for all the stuff I need.. But it'd be worth it." "Shit. Sucks that someone tried to mug you. But, yeah, that's a stupid kind of risk to go maiming and shooting people on the street, you don't want law trouble. They still alive? That was the only way you could think to handle a couple of muggers? Is Anette lying low, too? You know even if she isn't the one did those things, they'll still be happy to blame her, they get hands on." Charlie's head shakes slowly, honest concern on her features. "You all do anything to keep this from coming right back on your heads?" She pauses to sip from her root beer. "Man, you even listen to yourself ever? You gonna go 'round killing more people so you can set up some bird cages? Seriously?" "I did that to them because they shot me. Twice." Daken turns to face Charlie long enough to point at his kidneys and then his heart. "If they hadn't of tried to kill me, I'd have just broken their faces. I like to think I taught the little gang bangers a lesson. To do a little research, and not just try for the flashiest looking mark you see." Then he's heating up the oil and wrapping the breasts in bacon. "And not just for bird cages. Funds running low, haven't had a job in a while." "That's less just a mugging and more a shooting, then. Man. Is Anette okay? Still gonna be trouble if the punks ended up at a hospital with gunshot wounds. That always comes with an alert to the cops. Or dead, that's even messier." Charlie takes a large bite of her sandwich, chewing it over before looking back to Daken. "You know how to do anything that isn't killing people? Other ways to make a buck, you know. Not always /easy/. Get some kind of job, even if it's under the table. Steal if you have to. Don't always got to go straight to murder. We got people here help make sure you don't starve or go homeless while you figure yourself out, you know?" "I should be teaching a self defense class to a boxer and his friend. Well, I think it might be his boyfriend. Not positive, haven't heard back from him yet. Could sell drugs or weapons too. But I don't have to worry about starving, technically I'm already homeless. But I can afford gas and a few splurges here and there for another month or two," Daken rambles for a bit as he finishes up with the birds and adds them to the oil. "But like I said, killing people is what I do. For the most part anyway. Been up to it since I was a teenager, trained with one of the most feared world war two generals in a camp up in Canada. Was his best student. Also I killed everyone else at the camp except for him, but I that's only because I had strict orders not to." "They gonna pay you for that? That's a thing you can do, then. Nobody dying." Charlie's eyebrows continue their workout in lifting at the other 'options'. "Man, you just want every kind of trouble you can get into. I'm not saying you always got to keep your nose clean, but maybe if you're gonna do risky things all the time there should be a damn good reason for it? Otherwise you just inviting disasters for...what?" Another large bite of sandwich disappears into her mouth, another pause before she speaks again. "You're around here an awful lot. What you mean by you're homeless? Not enough roofs between here and all the safe houses for you?" "I help out here and all, but it isn't a place of my own." Daken's shoulders rise and fall as he leans near the counter. "Should work on that, even if it's just a room over at the sunrise building." "There's a difference between not buying your own place and being homeless. Enough homeless people out there will /tell/ you, man." A few more bites have the sandwich nearly gone on Charlie's plate. "You gotta realise the difference between being stuck in a situation and making /choices/ that put you in them." "I meant more homeless in a sense, that if I didn't stay here I'd have to rent a motel room. Why I said technically homeless." Daken reaches up to cover his face and hide a yawn before checking on the birds he's frying. "Find anything to do off the island yet?" "You mean homeless in the sense that if you don't stay at your permanently available place, you gotta stay at a temporary one? Like most of us? I live here, too, you know." The last bite of sandwich follows the others, Charlie's head shaking slightly as she chews. "Furthest from homeless I /ever/ been." Her shoulders give a quick rise-and-fall shrug. "Go out from time to time, need something from a store or stop by a safe house or Evolve or wherever. Spend most of my time around here...don't gotta wrap myself up like I'm allergic to sunshine to /exist/ here. Been getting the gardens going, the big ones. And around my cabin, some stuff for me. I like plants. And I got a job doing text translations. Spanish-English. What keeps me in a little money, at least, and don't nobody ever have to worry what I look like." "I suppose punching a bigot in the face wouldn't smooth over too well. Probably just get you shot by police." Daken muses, arms folding over his chest. "And I should see about getting a cabin here. When I'm staying here I usually crash on one of the couches, or down in the training room." "Yeah, I don't waste my trouble on things that aren't changing anything. And honestly, sometimes you just want to go get a coffee without having to /fight/ your way to it. You think anything that happens, cops get involved, it's anything but my fault? I'll get into things, but I want a /plan/ and a /purpose/ behind it. No good to anybody locked up or dead over something stupid." Charlie washes down the sandwich with the dregs of her root beer bottle, then moves over to the sink to wash her plate and add it to the drying rack. "See? Not homeless. Didn't even have to kill anybody." "I usually have a plan. It might not be there until the last second. But I usually have one." Daken fetches a bowl and lines the bottom with napkins before retrieving the food from the hot grease. "Speaking of plans, I need to get some information on the Syndicate. Kind of cheated me out of a good bit of money fifteen years ago. Wonder if they still have that mind control mutant working for them. Should check in on his family." "I think it goes against the whole definition of 'plan' to be doing things at the last second, man," Charlie returns with a little chuckle. "I don't know anything about any of that. Syndicate sounds nice and evil and corporate in a movie villain kinda way. You have fun with that." Once she's dried her hands off on the towel, she lifts one in a small wave. "I got work to do." A detour takes her by the table to collect her hat on the way out. "Crime family in Chinatown. It's their version of the Yakuza or the Mafia." Daken explains before tapping out a two-fingered salute. "Have a good day and all that."