Rooftop (Not Quite) Routine

[Phoenyx]

The Arrow seems indifferent to the Japanese and apology. Languages were a thing.

"I've had observers before. But if you come to practice, or learn, you do so by doing. You don't sit around much," she says to Briar Rose.

failure

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-04-05 04:22:03		Phoenyx rolls 2 to Obvious lie: Manip+Subterfuge (10 Again)		3, 7		failure

Eyes lock on to Tyche. "I'm fine." There's a sharpness in the tone that wasn't there before. Also obvious lie is obvious.

The Obrimos shuffles. This was getting very uncomfortable. And she knew why.

"I should go. I will set up more training soon. Bye." And with that Phoenyx takes off for the stairs at a jog.

Unless called to stop, Phoenyx bails on leaves the scene!

[Kaze]

"Oh, no problem. If you want, I can do the art model thing for you any time you want," Kaze says un-selfconsciously, "I did that in college for art classes to make some bucks, my athletic scholarship basically just covered tuition, and I had a lot of time when I was rehabbing."


Kaze smiles and nods at Briar Rose's Japanese. "Like it says, 'it only matters that you keep on getting up'." He says. "So, yeah, you totally should go for it. Your Japanese is good. It'll be great to keep in practice, especially writing."


Kaze looks confused and shrugs at the Harry Potter reference, obviously not getting it.


He sighs at Penny's brief tale. "Wow, that sounds like it could have been rough," Kaze empathizes. "I lost my parents when I was a kid, but I had my grandfather; He adopted me, and I had him up until I was in college, so I was lucky."


Kaze completely misses Phoenyx's Obvious Lie.

  failure

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-04-05 12:27:51		Kaze rolls 4 to detect lie (Wits 3 + Subterfuge 1) (10 Again)		7, 6, 5, 1		failure

"Okay. See you later." Kaze says in an amiable tone as Phoenyx starts to leave.


"She's just super busy. She's the only...one in her department at work." He carefully explains, "It's kind of my fault, at least partly. I mean, I used to be in the same department, but the work just wasn't right for me, so I got out."

[Briar Rose]

"Ha, I wouldn't be here if I'd stopped getting up." she says now with a smile, only to groan "Ugg, writing practice. It's just, sure I was going on about calligraphy porn, but the repetition is annoying. i can just type, thank you very much." She shakes her head, and blows against her pink locks.

"Hmm, didn't say I wouldn't. But, I might just want to come to study for my own ends and not just to defend myself." she says, a smile easy as you please, though when the firebird is quick to leave, Briar Rose, arches a brow, and looks at Tyche, then not as obviously, though not truly with any subtly towards Kaze, and arches her brow again.

Then in a show of subterfuge, she says, "Been in the system too." she admits, taptaptapping her fingers on her forgotten sketchbook. They'd probably figured that out when she said that the missing Morgan was her sister, but it meant something to say it out loud too. "From basically day one. Never met my parents."

[Tyche]

"It was shit," Tyche said plainly as Kaze comments on her upbringing, "That's kinda why I jumped ship at 16. The latest fosters looked for awhile. They kinda had to if they wanted to keep that gold star everyone gave them for housing us 'unfortunates.'"

They stopped once the payments did.

"Neat," she offers at the grandfather comment, "Sounds cool. I had a couple friends on the street. Gave me a few things until I got back on my feet. Then I got woke, if y'know what I mean."

  3 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-04-05 19:41:34		Tyche rolls 6 to See the obvious lie (Wits+Sub) (10 Again)		1, 10, 5, 10, 10, 6, 1, 6, 7		3 successes

Did Tyche know Pheonyx was lying? Well, duh. Lying in front of a Guardian ain't always the smartest move though, that was kinda their schtick and little 'Penny' was no exception.

So, Tyche give Pheonyx a knowing look. That way the Arrow knows this mage knew she was full of shit. She doesn't stop her though, best to let her and Kaze....

Wait what?

Kaze just let her roll out on her own. And for him, Tyche's got a big dumbfounded look on her face throughout Kaze's listed assumption about Pheonyx.

Boy. Wow. She stressed, but it ain't work.

When he finally finishes, Tyche doesn't say anything. She just stares at him for what seems like forever (to her) and then she just rolls her eyes and gives an exasperated sigh.

"Ohmygod," she says, mumbling her disbelief under her breath. Then she looks back at the former Arrow.

"Do I need to... like, explain what those two words actually mean or?" she offers, astounded that all of this seems to have gone right past Kaze's head.

At Rose's words, Tyche just manages to grant a shrug.

"I was near 2? I'm told? Don't remember jack shit anyhow," she said, "but, hey, just means we get to make our own family. I think that's the old line anyway?"

[Kaze]

Kaze smiles when Briar Rose asserts her indomitable spirit, and nods sympathetically when she complains about repetition in writing practice.


"It's not really that bad, with a brush and ink." He says encouragingly, "I mean, even if you try, it never comes out exactly the same twice in a row. There's a 'flow' to it, you know?"


He misses the first arched brow, but pauses at the one aimed at him. "Huh?" He says, softly inquisitive.


Then when she talks about her past, he nods sympathetically. "That is rough. So...did you learn Japanese later? Like, learning your heritage?" He asks, interested. "They have better and better gene tests now; I think they can kind of figure out what area of Japan your genes are from, so you could visit. After my grand father passed, I got to see the village in Okinawa were my grandfather was from, well the shopping center and freeway overpass that's there now anyway." He chuckles.


At Tyche's plain speaking, Kaze nods silently, listening and taking in what she describes as her past. He looks at her with empathy, but doesn't say anything.


When she comments on his grandfather, he smiles. "Yeah, he was something else. Career Marine Corps. He did the best he could, better than I realized at the time." He says thoughtfully. "I really don't know how he'd feel about some of my career choices lately...but I know he wouldn't give up on me. He never would."


"I'm glad someone was there for you, Penny." Kaze says. "There's some good people on the street." He says confidently.


When she gives him a look and then mumbles under her breath, Kaze notices. His hearing is excellent, apparently.


"Um, what? I mean, was I 'awkward phrasing again'?" He asks, looking confused and worried about it.


When Tyche says she was two years old and doesn't remember, but that we can all make our own family, Kaze smiles and nods. "Yeah. It's harder, for me at least, without as much experience how it's supposed to be, but...definitely worth the effort. Don't give up on people." He says musingly, to himself more than to Tyche.

[Briar Rose]

"Sure, you do it once, twice, and the you have to keep doing it." she groans out, again. Dragging it around, more for effect then anything else. She's an artist and she has a mountain of sketchpads just for drawing practice of hands and feet. Repetition, familiarity, learning.

"It was more...uh. I liked anime, and i thought the language sounded good. And sure trying to figure out my ethnicity. I mean. I don't know. Dad was Portugaise, think. Mom was some sort of East Asian, but I don't know where from. I mean, I never met them." she'd gone looking, and found one one thing, which lead to the other and why her mom had left her outside a hospital. "And sure, they can 23andme, or Ancestry whatever, but I don't think I'd trust them with my spit." for obvious reasons.

Head shaking she bites her lip, looking at Kaze with some serious concern, the with disbelief colouring her words, "Do you speak girl?"

Shaking her head, "Sure, that's the tag line." she says. It's weird. She tries to say it with a smile, for Kaze, even as she looks up at the Guardian. Not quite believing in the optimism.

Since Pheonyx's roll failed, I didn't since it was an obvious lie, but he's my roll since y'all rolled for it and didn't want to not roll now

  2 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2020-04-06 12:39:32		Briar Rose rolls 2 to Spot Obvious Lie (Wits+Sub-1retry) (10 Again)		2, 10, 9		2 successes
2020-04-06 12:39:08		Briar Rose rolls 3 to Spot Obvious Lie (Wits+Sub) (10 Again)		4, 6, 1		failure

[Tyche]

"Eh, they're alright. Some of them are real shitbags, but that's something that exists everywhere," Tyche offered about her friends in low places.

Then another look of dumbfounded astonishment.

"Awkward phrasing? Wha-?" Tyche begins before stopping herself and collecting her thoughts, "She ain't fine and it ain't work. You know that. Rose knows that. Hell, I barely know either of you and I know that."

Then the Guardian leans against the wall.

"My guess? She's hung up on you and you're hung up on her because the tension between you two is thicc," she said, "And I think you know that. So... you got a plan to address that or?"

Seems ya boy needed Tyche to be blunt. That was fine. She could do blunt. Whether Kaze could handle that or not was on him.

"Yeah, something like that," she offers to Briar, playful sarcasm hitting her tone at the context as she grants a knowing nod in the pink haired Apostate's direction. Briar Rose got where she was coming from it seemed. Tyche wasn't that optimistic. She got where she was by realizing the world is shit.

Apologies wanted to give Pheonyx a chance to post out if they wanted. Looking back their exit seems rather clear. My bad on the delay

[Kaze]

Kaze nods at Briar Rose's description of the drudgery and grind of practicing; he apparently can relate all too well.

"Oh, anime? Cool. Not that I really get it." Kaze says, "I mean, I grew up with a lot of Japanese culture, and lived there for a while, but I never did get into the cartoons or comics. I don't know why, maybe I just have to be doing something instead of watching, I guess."

He listens to the abbreviated story of Briar Rose's research into her personal history. "Yeah. All those DNA tests go into a public database. I have a friend who told me that the law enforcement agencies get way more matches from the public database from those tests than they do from the official law enforcement DNA data bases." He muses. "It's just smart not to donate to it."

"Speak girl?" Kaze says, apparently confused at what to him is a non-sequitur from Briar Rose.

Kaze is quiet, listening with an interested expression when Tyche describes her experience on the street in the barest of verbal sketches.

Then, finally Tyche plainly outs the elephant in the room, as she sees it. "Oh." Kaze says.

He shakes his head and sighs, "Oh."

Kaze looks at the two women and raises his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"Okay, okay. I honestly thought it was the work thing, this time. But...yeah, there's the other thing too; I just didn't know that was what was happening now, here." He 'explains'.

He sighs again. This is going to take some serious explaining and time or else saying nothing at all. He seems to decide that there's enough of a rapport established that he should try to explain or else he'd be shutting a door on being able to talk about things that matter in the future. Besides, not being totally honest was what he did wrong in the first place. Time to put in the work to get better at that.

"Okay, you guys care, right? You actually want to hear about this?" Kaze says. "You asked, okay? I honestly don't want to just, you know, dwell and dump our drama, especially since it's not all mine to dump, but the thing is, we're ex'es. We got here pretty much at the same time, a little over a year ago, working in the same department, living in the same area we worked in, like a barracks, and sparring together. It was intense."

Kaze looks to see if they are following. "Basically we didn't know anyone else, and spent all our time together twenty-four seven, and...got involved. It happened fast, and...got physical, and we didn't really do the talking thing like would be smart before you get into a relationship. Okay, make that me; I didn't talk about a lot of important things, like that I wasn't sure I was in the right work, and I was really kind of done with relationships that just go day by day, and was looking, hoping for the kind of life, I guess I didn't get when I was a kid. Family, home, kids...that whole thing. I was telling myself, maybe we could turn into that, if I was patient and just went with it. Plus, the biggest thing was that I was having a crisis of faith. Actually, no, I was kind of coming out of a crisis of faith, and realizing I was needing to go back to the faith I had before...before my mother got cancer and my father bailed and left us and she died."

Kaze stops, looks at the two women to try gauge whether they were still wanting to know the details or whether they were already getting more than they wanted. He shrugs, figuring he has no idea how to read women, and they will just have to stop him when they have heard enough.

"I tried to talk about some of that, a few times, but not clearly and not hard enough. I was pretty sure that it would be a deal breaker, and I didn't want that. I was still kidding myself that if I could keep my mouth shut, what we had could grow into what I needed. But eventually, I had to. And we broke up. We just didn't want, need the same things in our relationship, even though we still totally care about each other."

Kaze sighs. "So yeah, it was my bad. I shouldn't have let things get serious at the beginning without really making sure we both knew what we were getting into, and what we wanted. I won't talk for her, but...we were coming from totally different places in our life. She's got a family, intact, and this is pretty much her first time away from them as far as I know. I haven't had a family for...a long time, and really want one, like get married and have kids, the whole nine yards. Then there's the fact that I am committed, re-committed, now, to following my faith, religion. It's not her fault that I didn't have this stuff figured out when we got together. It's my fault that what we had is...not a thing anymore, and I am the one who won't go back to the way things were. She figures I lied to her the whole time, and...she's not wrong."

"That all went down last year, during the holidays. Which is lousy timing on my part--which is normal for me--but it was really the hardest time for me to try to pretend I was okay with a relationship that wasn't going to lead to a family, because the holidays are...when I miss that the most."

Kaze sighs and says, "So done. That's the tension. We've been basically just dealing with it or not dealing with it since then. We've tried talking about it, and that just stirs everything up again without solving anything, and I basically have been just trying to give her space, until I showed up on the rooftop here. Anyway, I am not trying to make myself out to be anything but the bad guy here. I just...honestly it's been about four months, and I really didn't think I would be doing her a favor by trying to stop her leaving or going after her. I really should have just turned around and went and found my own rooftop when I saw she was here, but it's not like I don't care or like her. I am hoping we can get to the point where we can at least hang out as friends, eventually."

Sorry for the whole long thing, and no worries. This is a social scene after all. Only good manners to error on the side of making sure no one gets left out!

[Briar Rose]

She did not need to learn all or any of this.

A quick, we're ex's there's baggage, and/or shit didn't end well. Would have sufficed. People tend to want reciprocity when you spill out a lot of their lives, especially if it was painful things.

Briar Rose had already spoken all she wanted of her past. A tie with the pretty Guardian, who'd already seen her in a sorry state. Some spill out with the surprise of the dude called fucking Kaze, knowing Japanese. She needed to get some concealer, she didn't want his puppy dog, earnest, look turned pitiable or mournful if he got a look at her tattoos. Well. One of them.

Shit, tapping her sketchbook, words. She should probably say something even though she didn't want to. Tyche would probably have this in the bag. The Acanthus already explaining things and causing Kaze to spill, while Briar's words, were barely a sentence.

"....Have you offered to let her light your pants on fire?" Like the rhyme, liar, liar. And hey, Obrimos, they were sure keen on the pyrotechnics.

[Tyche]

Kaze spilled the beans, though at this point Tyche was pretty sure he dropped the whole can. Definitely more information than Tyche wanted, but, hey, info is info and she did ask.

"M'kay," she said, "So here's the thing. You wanna be friends? Worst thing you can do is nothing when she skips out. At that point, you're leaving her with her thoughts. And that's just, like, fraying away your hopes for that shit, y'know? You want to show her you care, but you don't want to do anything because you think you'll fuck it up. Tell me, how many times did you learn to trust anyone when they didn't do a damn thing. So step one? Probably consider meeting with her, 'cause this whole eye staring you two got with each other ain't gonna do shit for ya. That advice is free."

Then a sigh.

"And you're gonna hate me for this, but, while the whole finding yourself and building a family thing is sweet, how realistic do you really think that is?" she asked, "How many folks in our Company do you see wearing rings? Now ask yourself how many of those that are wearing them are still with their spouses? I'll tell you right now that in my experience most of their better halves are gone, whether by divorce or worse."

Certified Devil's Advocate here, but sometimes dreamers had to stop dreaming.

"There's a reason why we tend to keep things strictly to dating and while a lot don't date at all, dude," Tyche offered, "The other reason? Safety. For you and those you love. You ain't the first to choose that road, bub. A lot who have find themselves at the intersection of heartache and disappointment. Some even find a lot of pain. And, no, ignoring the things that come with being who you are doesn't make it easier. At best, you'll find a nice girl, but real trust isn't something you'll ever really have, because there will be things you two can't ever discuss. Ever. And it'll eat away everything else. At worst? Well, you know..."

Exploitation of connection and shattered ties. Then? Death, madness, elimination.

"So second bit of advice? Take it or leave it? It's probably best to stop thinking like them," Tyche concluded, gesturing to the surrounding buildings, "Because you aren't like 'em. Not anymore. What we are isn't just a job, man. And you can try to ignore that all you like, but it'll bite you in the ass. You're wanting something you can't have and yearning for it is just gonna make you a target for things you really don't want to face."