Logs:Hammers and Nails

Hammers and Nails
Dramatis Personae Flicker, Hive, Malthus
In Absentia	2019-05-28 "I presume you realize that you cannot 'talk' someone into growing up."
Location NYC - Home - East Village
Nestled into the heart of the East Village, Home is an unobtrusive place, with an unobtrusive name to match. A nondescript storefront opens up into an equally nondescript cafe, plain tiled floors, an assortment of veneered tables with plain wooden chairs or booths with cracking vinyl benches. What it /does/ have to recommend it is the food, hearty solid breakfast and brunch served twenty-four hours a day, with a wide variety of menu to cater to specialized diets as well. Well-known to locals and little frequented by tourists, its friendly serving staff tend to remember their regulars, giving the place a warm feel that lives up to its name. The diner is not very crowded, late on a Tuesday night; it's not the most popular of times for evening hangouts /anyway/ and even less so with the drubbing rain that's currently falling outside, keeping many people from venturing out of their apartments. The scant few other patrons is just the way Hive likes it. At the moment he looks reasonably relaxed, slouched in a chair in a side booth, fork scraping against his plate where he's slowly been chipping away at a half-eaten eggs benedict. His large mug of coffee, recently refilled, steams beside him. He wears a dark red tee with the Greek letters Theta and Tau written across the chest in gold, a faded old pair of blue jeans. "I keep meaning to give season two a chance," he is currently lamenting. "I /want/ it to be good. It just --" The man who steps into the diner at this hour has one very prominent feature: His scar. It's a snarl of long healed flesh that starts at the ridge of his right brow and continues down through the eye, rendering it a functionless gray orb. It continues, penetrating the upper lip and splitting it, exposing a sliver of straight, white teeth. The old wound twists his mouth into a sneer -- one that contradicts his behavior. There is a serenity to him; a gentle patience that carries through his gait, posture, and tone. Despite this, Robert Malthus is capable of appreciating life's potential for brutality. The one-eyed military veteran once described violence as 'America's most valuable resource'; one that 'must not be wasted, but applied with precision and without remorse'. He has a tattoo on his left arm, hidden under his coat: DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR. It is not intended to be ironic. "You believe this shit?" Shortly after Malthus is seated, the man behind the counter is bringing him a mug of coffee. The television above them plays a news story about Ryan Black's ongoing coma since the May 6th incident. "Some false flag op -- muties tryin' to make themselves look good by going for one of their own." When Malthus doesn't reply, the waiter hesitates, then adds: "Read about it on Infowars." "Mm." Malthus... does not look impressed. He is watching that television, though. "Isn't?" Flicker's long since finished his /dinner/, whatever it was, but the slice of cherry pie in front of him is enormous, as is the mug of hot chocolate beside it. He is dressed -- for work, from work? Crisp red and black of a Mendel Clinic guard, the clinic logo stitched small but clear on the front of his uniform. The sleek matte black arm he wears on his right side is very clearly a prosthetic -- segmented and tentacle-esque, it makes no attempts to resemble flesh. "It had its moments, but the Wachowskis --" The rapid flutter of his mental landscape -- snapshots of /Sense8/, an automatic sizing up of Malthus when he walked in, a somewhat exhausted replaying-debriefing of an incident at work that he (could have) (should have) handled better, a back of the mind worry about how much time he'll have for studying when he gets home (immediately pushed aside to focus on /enjoying/ -- this time -- this pie -- this company --) -- all coalesces for just a moment into bright and hard annoyance. His eyes shift to the television. << Give me a /break/. >> He just snorts. "Infowars?" Hive doesn't glance up at Malthus's entrance -- he has Flicker's brain, for that! -- but he does look up and over at the television. His brows lift, his eyes rolling as he swivels in his seat to face the server who spoke. "You're kidding me with that shit, right? Turn the fucking channel, dude. How long do you think you're gonna last at this place with that attitude?" Malthus's coffee steams, untouched. The man behind the counter continues -- whether or not he heard Flicker is visually unclear (he did, but he's pretending he didn't; he is also aware of Flicker's uniform, but pretending he isn't). "I mean, c'mon. It makes no sense. And you know muties could do it, too. With all that weird shit they can pull off, magnets and shit like that --" "Mm." " -- they could probably like, heal him if they wanted to. They can do all sorts of shit like that, y'know? But they're milkin' this. My cousin told me one of them was workin' in that clinic, usin' his powers on just muties, refusing to help real people --" When Hive interrupts him, the man looks briefly taken aback -- as if he's shocked someone would talk to him like that! A few of the patrons are now watching, their attention drawn to the commotion. Their annoyance and general displeasure at the recent hire is palpable; flashes of awkward exchanges and irritability flutter through their minds. But the waiter appears oblivious: "Excuse me? I'm just --" "Shut the fuck up." The words are spoken so quietly, so softly, that you'd miss them if you weren't close or straining to hear. Malthus lifts his coffee, black and unsweetened. He takes a sip. "And change the channel." Now finding himself thoroughly outnumbered and abandoned by what he presumed to be an ally, the man turns a bright red, blusters something under his breath, and goes to change the channel. Flicker slices a wedge off the corner of his pie. Chomps it hard. "Thanks," could be to Hive -- Malthus -- maybe even the server, once the channel is changed. The coiled end of his metal and plastic tentacle rubs at his temple. << God, but Joshua /already/ half kills himself trying to keep everyone alive -- >> "I'm sorry," he's dabbing gently at his mouth with a napkin. Looking up with a small lift of brows. "But what kind of people exactly do you think we /are/, then?" "I'm pretty sure that you're at least /part/ synthetic," Hive points out lightly, /flicking/ a forefinger against one segment of Flicker's right arm. "Unlike /real/ people who are grade-A organic through and through. Shit, but I'm all meat parts." He shakes his head, lifts a hand to push shaggy dark hair back from his eyes. "You know, if you got your news from somewhere other than conspiracy theorists you'd know some human terrorist group /bombed/ that gala." The server's a little young; maybe 22 or 23. White, a little heavy-set -- the sort of person who looks like he vapes 'ironically'. He changes the channel several times before arriving at a harmless reshowing of Wheel of Fortune. At Flicker's question, he winces and turns, stepping forward to say something -- at Hive's follow-up, the words shift into a spirited, angry defense. But before he can even get out a word: "I'll have a hamburger. Naked, save for onions. Raw. Side of fries." The server scowls at the interruption. He wants to continue -- but there's something about staring down a one-eyed man who wears the same expression whether he's shaking your hand or skinning your family alive that disrupts your chain of thought. Instead of continuing, he grunts something, grabs a pad of paper, scribbles the order on it, and briefly disappears behind the diner's kitchen door. Malthus takes another sip of his coffee -- speaking to the two in the boothe behind him without turning: "I presume you realize that you cannot 'talk' someone into growing up." The tentacle coils around Hive's wrist when he's flicked. Gives it a lazy shake. Not even a very /earnest/ wrestling. "Not over a slice of pie and a cup of cocoa, sure." Flicker's mind has settled back down into its usual background whirl. "But I'm pretty thankful for --" A riot of images, here. Hive /prominent/ among them. Many long late-night hours up talking with Dusk and Ian. /Spirited/ arguments with Ryan and Jax. Peace's fiery expression. "A lot of people who had the patience to talk me into it. There's some people who can't be talked to, period, but most? I like to think they're reachable." "You can talk people into all /kinds/ of shit if you --" Hive pauses, lips pressing together into a thin line. He eyes Flicker's arm, tugs his own hand /experimentally/ back from it. Also not particularly earnestly. Ultimately just picks up his coffee in his free hand, relinquishing his other to the tentacle. "-- have the patience of a fucking saint. I'm not that person. But I watch my friends talk sense into all /kinds/ of people I wouldn't have thought possible. Guess there's a lot of paths to --" He scowls at his coffee. One eye twitches. It sounds deeply grudging when he concludes, "Changing the world." Malthus's mind is akin to a placid lake. Words and thoughts drift across it like swans skimming its surface. There is a hint of something, however, under the surface; a vague shape. A silhouette, barely discernible -- as if there were teeming hordes of pirahna hidden below. "I see," he replies, and he takes another sip of his coffee. "I agree, at least, that there are many paths to changing the world. But, in my experience..." His functional eye drifts back and traces Flicker's uniform -- then the prosthetic. He does not linger longer than would be polite. "...words are not the most /effective/ route." The tranquil pool clouds. Frustration colors its surface -- swirling with the memory of words. Expended thoughtlessly, uttered pointlessly; countless words spent pursuing meaningless platitudes from empty-minded men. Flicker looks back over Malthus, his gaze flitting down over the man's scarred face -- briefly -- then lifting back to the television. He isn't paying it much attention; across his mind is a tumult of memories that zip freely between the screaming chaos of a Promethean lab -- (the searing burning that left his own face twisted with scars) -- to the angry face of a skinhead prowling the Lower East Side -- to the flash of a knifeblade in the hand of a protester outside the Clinic doors. He lifts his cocoa, sips it slowly. "No," he agrees, mildly, "not always the most effective. It's good to have a range of tools for different situations, though. Not get yourself stuck in a place where if all you have is a hammer --" He shrugs one shoulder. "Hrgnh." Hive makes a disgruntled sound around a mouthful of eggs benedict. His eyes turn up to the ceiling. "You're not wrong, it's just." His shrug is small, a jerky hitch of one shoulder. "There's fucking /nazis/ out in the streets every week, you have to admit the world seems awfully full of nails lately." A hammer. This, it seems, amuses Malthus -- though it is hard to tell from his expression. The coffee is nearly finished. At Hive's comment, something tugs at the right side of Malthus's mouth, granting him the scarcest ghost of a smile. "Full of nails," he agrees, but then adds: "Or full of hammers."