kissthatgoodbye | |: 001. Video/Spam : Feels Just Like I Don't Try :|

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    [It's not unusual for transmissions to start en route to whatever they'll eventually show; this one follows the floor for a moment, spins its focus past a wall, shows a glimpse of common room.

     Shows a partial view of a possibly familiar face, frowning in concentration, muttering more or less to himself.]

     Number of things nowhere near as simple as they should be: two so far. Well done, Admiral. Catch up to the twenty-first century, huh?

     [A few more small adjustments, and Alec is fully on screen, standing mid-corridor on one of the hallways. He beams, pleased with himself.]

     There. Now. Floor numbers go up or down? Is this thing actually on?  Hello?

     [ Spam : Open ]

     [Once his presence is successfully announced, it frees Alec up to investigate his new environment more thoroughly - and explore it he does, once he confirms what his research alone in his cabin has already told him: this place is nothing like Manticore. They seem to pride themselves on it, even. Additionally they're recovering from some kind of unusual crisis, and that leaves him a unique opportunity he doesn't intend to waste, especially not with what else his reading of the network has shown him.

     He covers his barcode with the collar of his jacket, and separates the Barge as he understands it into a grid, sets out to fill in the blank spots. He can be found poking around in the dining hall, the infirmary, the gym, the greenhouse, the art room, and lingering outside the pub, the maintenance office, the engine room. He even wanders down near Zero just to make sure he's left no corner uninvestigated.

    It's simple: act like he belongs here, see who takes the bait; he's friendly to everyone he sees, smiling easily, often waving in greeting if anyone looks at him. Evaluate, adjust, advance. As long as he has new surroundings to investigate, as long as he has new rules and social angles to learn, he doesn't have to think about why he's here, what it means, or what he means to do once he's sure of himself.]

     [ Private : Dillon Cole : A few days later, after this ]

    [No fumbling this time. He wants to be taken seriously and he expects this Dillon person is already familiar with X5s, too - enough to know that a few days is more than enough time for him to become competent with the communicator anyway, if nothing else.

     His speech is a little more formal, too, although he doesn't bother with being as starched and rigid as he's seen his clone on the network; he can, but he only needs the vague connection in this case.]

     Good afternoon, sir. I was told to contact with you a possible employment inquiry.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Alec puts out a hand to stop the chair, sinks down into it with a resigned, demonstrative sigh.]

Fantastic. You should put that on the sign, it's very encouraging.

[But however uncomfortable he might be with this entire situation - and he is - he settles perfectly comfortably in the chair, slings one elbow over the back, raises his eyebrows expectantly.

Every appearance of confidence gives him an excuse not to break line of sight with a potential threat.]

Is the meter running? I'm not sure how much nothing I've got in me to talk about.

Maybe I will.

[So. So. It's still performative, still utterly polished. But it's there. Like trying to pick up a glass figurine someone spilled oil on. There's no purchase, but it can be done, carefully.

The polish is its own tell, tactical, trained, ground deep. There it is, like the corner piece of a puzzle, or the first word filled into a crossword. The rest will fill itself out.]

Couple minutes, maybe. Have you got an opinion on penguins?

[Instead of I've never met anyone as perfect at deception as you, but I guess I've gotten better at this. That would be - not nonsense.]

Does anyone have an opinion on penguins? Be honest.

[The trick of it, he learned a long time ago either by sheer luck or by instinct or by having a particular knack for it, is not to become something so completely different from himself as to be utterly unrecognizable; the trick of that, then, was to pick someone to be because none of them got so much as the chance at Manticore. He picked as shape and he hung the clothes he wanted on it, and he hid the rest under that, locked it away, scrubbed until the surface was smooth and free of flaws.

But it's there, and beneath that, there is more: locked doors with light shining under and noises bleeding through the walls, ugly things and messy things and dark, quiet, shivering things, things half forgotten and things placed just out of sight until they are needed. There is anger at the core of him, bright and hot, that is evidenced nowhere near his skin, his just so casual sprawl, his generally bored and mildly skeptical expression. There is anger in him but it is rigidly brought to heel, held firmly in check, controlled by him and not the other way around.

The closest it comes to the surface is the weight of his eyes, unmistakably intelligent, inherently intent. And over the top of all of that, Dillon asks him about penguins and maybe he complained about filling the time with nothing, but that's all he ever does: fills space with noise that doesn't mean anything.]

Most people haven't even seen one in person. Just inspirational posters on the walls, "Just jump in!" Like anyone really wants to slide belly first down an ice floe and belly flop into water that will freeze their eyes open. So I mean sure, bother having an opinion about them, but don't pretend like it's relevant.

I'll tell you what's relevant to have an opinion on: seagulls. Those damn things get in everywhere, they'll chase you down for your food, and they're loud. You ever heard a seagull in person? They sound exactly like they look.

[He laughs a little, surprised at how easy it is to laugh, to be charmed, even though he knows how it's working.]

I lived in L.A. for awhile. I have tried to fight off an undignified number of seagulls.

[God of all he surveys, half the time, but he did not win all those fights. Fucking seagulls.

There's a marvelously lenticular quality to Alec, Dillon thinks; completely obscure from one angle, but from the right one, it's crystal clear at least most of the way down. His will, over his anger and his identity as much as his bodily reflexes, blinks and swallows, a cloudy-rough industrial diamond forged in the tectonic pressures of his training and retraining, not entirely explicable even to him, but hard enough to cut through anything else. And that's what he wants, here - control over himself, first and foremost, and leverage next, but not to hurt with, just to have, to be ready, to have options. Dillon will have to watch him, lest he decide on further goals, but not a lot would be worth risking the first, to him. That much will keep him halfway reliable.]

That's how they do it.

[Alec wasn't in Seattle long - he was barely there a week, didn't even have an address or a single rally point - but he can take the shared injoke of major coastal cities and their residents and turn it to his advantage, the easy assumption of tone. Something simple and mundane and global such as the struggle against prevalent pests. They're on the same side here, fighting against seagulls, even though he only just now learned that it was a common point between them.

He is watching Dillon as much as in return, suspicious of the way he can't tell how he's doing whatever he's doing, unsettled by nothing he can pinpoint specifically until it eventually rises out to meet him like one of those 3D pictures: he's too well put together, despite not being someone who is well put together. His youth and his posture and his choice in clothing are all too haphazard, but it all fits together too neatly for what it is.

Alec doesn't know what that means. He smiles.]

There's so damn many of them. They don't need to be smart enough to have tactics - even if they still sometimes do, like we need some kind of reminder that doorknobs are all that keep us on top - they just. Breed. And eat, and poop, and squawk, and there's nothing you can do about it but run for cover.

And they bully the little birds.

[And the homeless people, of whom Dillon was one for some time, although even then he had more options than most of them, even with his powers inverted and siphoned and channeled toward destruction.]

Okay. I'm gonna ask the admiral for your speed back, but not strength. I realize you're clever enough to cause plenty of trouble with just that, but also clever enough not to. Yeah?

[Which really means: clever enough not to get caught causing trouble, but as long as he's spending time around Dillon, he doesn't know how easy it is for Dillon to catch him just by looking. So it sort of works out.]

[There is a very, very brief moment, a splitsecond, less, in which Alec hesitates; Dillon will see it because Dillon is looking for it specifically, but anyone else would see the purse of Alec's lips and nothing more. He wants to argue immediately that it's his, but he stops himself, sets it neatly aside, reminds himself nothing is his and to fish for the full extent of the possibilities before nitpicking.

So he smiles to acknowledge that yes, he is clever, and yes, he understands what's being told him, but he tilts his head.]

And my senses? Do I need to explain about those or do you already know that I'm basically a walking diagnostic wet dream?

Are you going to smell cancer like bees? I'm mean, we've got diagnosis pretty covered, I think.

[Oh, what the hell. It is Alec's, it's not especially offensive, and Dillon feels bad for being stingy after that little twitch, everything Alec won't beg for without an angle he thinks will work, even while he stubbornly feels like it's really not his place to give back anything that's not relevant to the job.]

Fine, fine, senses too.

Smell is my weakest, but I need the sight to process the speed anyway, and my hearing is top of the line. Normally.

[Maybe he can sense the waver, maybe he just badly wants not to feel like he has a head cold that never gets worse and never gets better; made worse because as a genetically superior killing machine, it's not like he gets sick often anyway. Once or twice in his life, that wasn't intentionally induced to test his immune system.

He breathes out when Dillon agrees, relaxing some part of him that wasn't visibly coiled tight until this moment.]

How long does that take? And what are the conditions?

Should be a couple minutes, if he doesn't, like, make me haggle about it. The conditions are study what he tells you to, show up for your shifts when I give them to you and help people not die, and if you use the speed to endanger the barge or like, torment anybody, you'll get busted back down to human.

[Dillon has added a condition and clarified the implied one in passing; maybe Alec shouldn't have asked essentially a second time, but he's okay with the minor changes. He's even better with the clearer boundaries, doesn't ask to clarify what "torment" means, confident in his ability to eel sideways out of most misbehavior.]

I can do that. Or... not do that. As applicable.

Thank you, sir. [He's already pushing to his feet before anything about their arrangement can change, but not so quickly as to be insubordinately dismissive.]

[He wonders if saying sir is to discomfit him - probably, Alex certain hasn't forgotten - and why exactly. He supposes it doesn't really matter. Dillon sighs. This isn't a formal contract, but the more he lets Alec pin him down by trying to clarify, the more it will seem like one, like something Alec could hold him to later, this and only this.]

It's Dillon.

[But casually, as if they've already had this not-argument a dozen times. He won't let it go unremarked on, but he isn't going to punish Alec for it either. He's not watching Alec anymore, already getting out his communicator to call the admiral.]

Edited Date: 2015-08-08 02:50 am (UTC)