Scenario Entitled: Autumn Leaves And Coffee GroundsCharacters:
Chax, GB Pilot cruelly chained to the Infantry, and Chef-Extraordinaire.
Rooke, budding caffeine addict, and trouble-magnet.
Location: Freedom Plaza East, The Park
Date: Norand 2nd, 109 P.A.
The park is full of gold today, as the Plaza caretakers gather leaves into large piles on the grass. But it's an uphill battle, with random kids, as well as a few full-grown fools, who insist on playing in said piles. Rooke is not one of those fools. She's seated atop a picnic table with her feet on the bench, head propped in her hands, and watching those fools with a glaze-over, faraway expression.
Chax's irregular gait is one of someone who is either extremely tired or a bit on the tipsy side. The large man nearly collides with said caretakers who give him a rather snide glare. Chax doesn't notice as he lines up at the SimuCaff shop and waits his place in line for a cup of artificial coffee substitute. As he stands he runs his fingers through his hair and a frown settles itself onto his features. The person standing in front of him edges a bit away. Again, Chax is oblivious to this reaction. Periodically as he stands he covers his mouth, and judging by how much his eyes squint, the action is to conceal mammoth yawns.
A chase ensues across the faded green, as a caretaker finally blows his top and takes off after a couple of teens, waving his leaf-mover. A rake? A blower? Just a big spatula? It's all those things and more, my friend. Anyhoo, this seems to bring Rooke out of her stupor, and she sits up a little and folds her forearms across her lap. There's a brown paper shopping bag between her feet, and she takes a look into the open top, before panning her gaze around. Her gaze stutters to a halt near the synthetic coffee shack, and she stares for a moment, thoughtfully. If this is because of Chax's presence, she's not saying, at the moment.
Chax gets to the front of the line, and Chax orders his synthetic coffee beverage, and walks away with a large cup of something sure to wake up even the dead. Chax takes a sip, gags for a second, looks at the line, "How can you all drink this stuff regularly?". Of course no one answers. He doesn't even notice Rooke, which for him is rather odd. He watches the caretaker take off after the teenagers, allows a smile to fleetingly pass by, then the frown sets back in as he goes about the business at hand, to wit, find a table.
Rooke gazes rather hopefully at the stall, and mumbles, "..could be worth a try." There's quite a few people lined up there, after all, it seems, and she adds, starting to shift to her feet, "How bad could it be?" At that point, her gaze falls upon one patron, whose grimace and shudder after tasting, rivals Chax's own previous reaction, and she sinks back and resignedly drops her face into her hands, sighing. All this over a drink, sheesh.
"Stoppem! Hollemduwn!" rages the hot-tempered caretaker, a wild-eyed D-Bee whose lanky frame tends to shamble in its baggy uniform. He seems to be directing his calls towards Chax, as the teenyboppers rush in the tall java-drinking man's direction. Rooke cocks her head to look, dropping one hand from her eyes... never one to miss out on a beating, it seems.
Chax looks over at the caretaker, this time he smiles for real, and the large man moves with pretty amazing quickness as his left foot lashes out, tripping up the youths. Chax grins at the Caretaker, "They're all yours, sir." The lanky D-bee should be able to catch up with them now, "Just don't beat them too badly, I'd hate to have to arrest you." With his spirits seemingly lightened by this incident, he steps over the youths, careful not to make any further contact with them. He spots a person looking at the line, then looking disappointed. NOW he sees Rooke, and his smile widens as he heads that way, mug o' stuff in his hand momentarily forgotten.
The kids exclaim in startlement as they tumble over Chax's long leg, one of them turning out to be an extra-gawky girl as her hat falls off, and crunch through a thin layer of leaves before rolling to a halt. The D-Bee huffs, "Thanksees Meseer!" as he charges past, or rather, shambles right quick.
Rooke's attention strays off of the leafy situation, and she straightens her posture up and smiles towards Chax. The bruises have faded to yellowed marks on her skin, the cuts to thin, beaded scabs. "..'mornin." Her gaze zeroes in on his large cup, and she asks with some interest, "What's that you've got there?" She sniffs the air.
Chax has gotten more observant in his old age, as his first question he asks is, "Are you okay? You look like you've been in a fight?" His voice is ringed with concern, his own trivial problems (who really needs to pilot power armor anyway?) forgotten. Handing the cup over towards Rooke, "It's some poor substitute for coffee, I can't make my own as my stove broke, and therefore, I'm reduced to these conditions." He continues to study Rooke's marks.
Beyond Chax, the caretaker has turned the full power of the leaf-mover on the kids, which seems to knock them down whenever they try to stand, without even touching them. The D-Bee is releasing a litany of foreign-sounding phrases on them as well, but it's probably not magic taking place. Just a Crazy Leaf-mover Attack.
Rooke chuckles over the synthcoffee and says conspiratorially, "There /is/ real coffee to be had out there, you know." Her gaze lifts to his eyes for a moment, noticing his attention on different parts of her face, and she shrugs a little. "Yeah.. it was a fight," she acknowledges in a no-big-deal tone.
Chax nods to Rooke, "I know, I have some, but being unable to boil water makes it difficult to make." He sighs, "I'm not going to ask you who, but if you're in trouble, let me know, I can probably help. I can at least offer you a safe place to stay, and my stove will be fixed tomorrow, so there's free food in it for you, if you like." He gives Rooke more than a casual glance, more like a professional 'once over', "Is there anything I can do?"
"Uh.. hum.." Rooke pauses over Chax's remarks, her gaze faintly amazed, definitely bemused. "You never saw a fight before or something?" she asks in a laughing tone, then notes, "There were no guns involved," as if that would help Chax understand things better. She studies his fake coffee again, and asks, "So... that stuff's... not coffee in any shape for form.. except for taste?" She squints a little, remembering what she saw. "..or maybe not even?"
Chax grins at Rooke, "I've seen plenty of fights, Rooke, but when it's a friend of mine, I get concerned." He looks again at the cursed cup, "It is nothing like coffee in any shape of form, in fact it tastes exactly unlike any sort of coffee you ever tasted. The only thing I'm relatively sure of is that there is a stimulant in there of some sort." He lets the topic breeze over, he's not one to press a closed topic, "So aside from the occasional brawl, what else have you been up to?"
Rooke ohs, a little disappointed over discovering that synthcoffee still has the 'stimulant'. She hands the cup back over to him, and pats the length of table beside her, inviting him to have a seat. "Oh, not much.. just doing a lot of training and sparring over at ye ol' gym in the northwest quadrant." She makes a small shadow-boxing gesture to illustrate, then adds, "I'm taking a sort of vacation from managing Random Acts, too... say. Are /you/ all right?" She seems to only now notice how tired he seems.
Chax flops down on the bench with the bare minimum of muscle control, "I've been doing maneuvers for the past 48 hours, I'm absolutely exhausted, I think I've had two hours of sleep, and I've been told that I'm still not up for power armor review yet. It seems like I'm never gonna pilot my suit again. If I'd known that, I'd have never surrendered. I swear, military operations are all the same. I am not infantry. I am a pilot." He leans back, his lids starting to drift a bit closed, "Then again, I'm not surprised. The only general you can trust is a dead one. You can always tell when they lie, too, cos their lips move when they do it." He twists his lips into a sardonic smirk, "This is the life."
Rooke listens with a touch of sympathy, nodding slowly at certain parts, and giving a soft snort of rueful amusement halfway through, around the part where he said that he never would have surrendered. She threads her fingers together between her knees, resting her forearms on her legs, and flexes the joints. "Hum," she says suddenly, looking up and around. "Guess you don't like.. or trust.. General Caldwell?" she muses.
Chax shrugs, "I've never had a lot of trust in those whose hands have ceased getting dirty. I like him just fine, though, and I'll obey his orders, as long as they make sense and don't get anyone killed that doesn't need to get killed." He looks towards the eastern horizon, "I just miss my armor. I feel naked without, powerless, actually. It's hard to explain, but when you've trained with something for over ten years, it gets to be part of you. It just frustrates me to no end."
Rooke examines Chax's eyes while he talks, an unusual gesture since she's often so difficult to look directly in the eye. Nodding slightly, she says quietly, "I can see that. The Militia's so powerful, though. They didn't get that way by keeping qualified personnel out of the positions they're best for.. for long. I'd think," she adds, with an apologetic shrug. "When's the next review coming up?"
Chax doesn't avert the eye contact, he has nothing to hide, "I have no idea. When I left the de-conditioning camp, they assured me it would be a year, max. It's coming up on four. I hold out hope, though. Eventually I'm sure it will happen,though. I'm just impatient. I don't want my skills to get rusty." Sure, like he's not constantly mentally rehearsing and studying his tech manuals, "I am glad to be part of the militia, I just wish I could be part of where I belong." He forces himself to his feet, "I probably should hit the rack, before I become a fixture here." He gives Rooke another concerned smile, "Let me know if there's anything I can do for you. I like you, and I don't really want to see you get hurt. You know, I know few hand to hand techniques myself."
Rooke turns her head to follow Chax's movements, dropping her hands to either sides of her hips and peering through the autumn breeze at him. She smiles back, the edges widening out by a few, at the frank admission. "Thanks," she nods in cheered acknowledgement. "Maybe.. if you ever get tired of running around the Militia's no doubt highly effective facilities, you could come by the ol' civilian hang-out and see how the rest of us engage in self-torture," she drawls, smile widening further into a grin. "Co-ed locker rooms.." she sing-songs teasingly, then blinks and clears her throat, as if unsure of why she even mentioned that part. Blush.
Chax grins at Rooke, and gets a bit bolder, "Co-ed? Let me know when you're there, and I'll be sure to be there." He offers a wink, probably to say he's mostly teasing. He pauses mid stride, "You know, I've been meaning to do this for a while, but, would you like to have dinner with me sometime? I have no idea if you're involved with anyone or not, but I'd really enjoy an evening out with you somewhen." Okay, so the man gets a bit tired, and a minorly suggestive comment, and look what happens.
Rooke rolls her eyes to gaze skywards, and laments, also mostly kidding, "Me and my big mouth." Then she chuckles less apprehensively, and leans forward with her elbows on her knees. She looks at Chax quite intently while he poses a dinner date, her expression fluctuating subtly between worry and enthusiasm. "An evening /out/? My gods.. you're actually going to allow someone /else/ to do the cooking? I'll send a repairman over to your place -rightaway-!" she grins again, then shuffles her feet on the benchseat. "I guess you could say that I'm involved, but it's nothing that means I can't have dinner with anyone I please," she adds.
Chax grins at Rooke, "A casual evening it is, then. I enjoy your company." He waves as he injects himself into the crowd and eventually he is lost in the morass of being-amity.
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