AUDIENCE 🚀 BAIKEN

[dropoffs]

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[kabari]

[ hm. disconcerting. baiken does not know how to deal with this. her charisma stat is 8. ]

Hey, you're not gonna cry, are you?

[ this is considerably more gentle than her standard tone. ]

[dropoffs]

[ a sniffle. then a lie. ] Fucking... no. No I'm not. [ fuck yeah finally. found it. pulling out a package of cigarettes and sticking one in her mouth immediately. ] I have shit to do. Ship to help run... people... people to try and keep from dying...

[kabari]

[ gives her a solid clap on the shoulder. ]

Can't help anyone right now with the state that you're in.

[ h...helpful. but look. sometimes your charisma sucks and after a lifetime of not being expressive for (reasons), so this is really the best she can do. ]

[dropoffs]

[ they seem surprised when that happens, turning their head a little bit. ] No... not right now. [ but it does seem to help? sometimes you don't need a high charisma stat when the other person has a pretty decent one. the corner of thebe's mouth twitches, but only slightly as they find a lighter and touch it to their cigarette. ] Right now I just want to drink until I can feel it in my liver implant.

[kabari]

Nothing else to do tonight. Why do you think I'm here?

[ naturally she is the last person to say anything about unhealthy drinking habits. ]

[dropoffs]

[ a kind of watery laugh ] To drink and brood. You're like a gold medalist at it...

[kabari]

I've had to pass a lot of time on a lot of nights.

[dropoffs]

Nights kind of like this...? Where there's no good news, just... people dying all around you?

[kabari]

[ it's a good time for a drink. ]




...More or less.

[dropoffs]

[ she just nods quietly, taking another pull off of her cigarette. baiken can take her drink and she can even say as little or nothing at all as she wants. ] Gotcha. It's not exactly something you just... talk about. I think. I've never really been in this kind of situation before...

[kabari]

[ she gives thebe a sort of appraising look, though it's brief.

they already got this far into the conversation, and baiken is not secretive in the convential sense. she just likes to be left alone, and in a normal situation, company is a bother. an unwelcome nuisance. one she solves through violence. ]

I've been a round a lot of death. Been a part of it, a lot of the time. You stop feeling guilty about your involvement once you've taken enough.

[dropoffs]

[ thebe takes that in quietly, sipping at her beer and listening with the silent, semi-sleepy-eyed attention she usually maintains. ] I see... [ softer ] Reminds me of someone back home. A solider... she'd seen a lot of death in her job... not all of it involving things she could agree with. Or there were things she regretted doing in the first place. [ shaking her head now and taking another sip of her beer. ]

[kabari]

[ they can takes their time, take their drinks. though that's a heavy place to let the conversation taper off. ]

...There's always going to be a heavy price for war.

[dropoffs]

[ a slow nod. ] I'm just a bartender... at the end of the day. What do I know? I can't say I understand all of it. But I listen to a lot of it. I know it sounds like you don't have much you ever want to talk about. [ tilting their head ] But... thank you. For letting me intrude a little on your quiet time.

[kabari]

[ a half shrug. ] If you got too nosy I would've told you to piss off.

[ and of course, she wouldn't have shared what few crumbs she did if she didn't think she could trust thebe with that information. again: it is less about being secretive and more about baiken's inability to express herself in a meaningful way. so maybe, in a way, they've helped each other.

except she's still going to drink like a horse. ]

[dropoffs]

[ in a way it feels helpful. thebe doesn't seem to mind the terse and silent behavior. what falls away is somehow more than enough: ] That's fair enough. My job's not to pry. I just make the drinks and write reports.

[kabari]

[ a little scoff. ] You write reports on things you don't know about?

[ she gets what they mean, but still. ]

[dropoffs]

[ taps cigarette on ash tray. she figures! ] Other planets, yeah. I write about our discoveries while we're planetside. Sometimes the inspiration hits during the boring work so... it's worth it.

[kabari]

It's all pretty boring work.

[dropoffs]

[ tilts head and considers this ] The traveling's nice. My weird collection of liquor has a few interesting additions from it all...

[kabari]

Guess a bartender would value that sorta thing.

This isn't the kinda traveling I'm used to.

[dropoffs]

[ considering, and then: ] It was my grandpa's. Just has a lot of history. What sort of traveling have you done instead?

[kabari]

[ a "hm" of acknowledgement. she'll file that away for later. ]

A lot of walking. There's airships, but nothin' like this. Hadn't left my planet before here either. [ pause for a sip of her drink ]

I don't like this place at all, but it beats digging through the garbage for my next meal.

[dropoffs]

[ they nod slowly in agreement. ] Me neither. Always been city-bound... couldn't really afford to ever leave. It does... provide in its own way. Food's always expensive, booze moreso. People with this kind of money providing for us for the work we do... [ clearly don't care about much else. it's to shut us up.......... unspoken, but real with the slight stank face she makes. ]