2024-06-12: What is a Mailing Address?
- Log: 2024-06-12
- Cast: Koyomi Yamanaka, Van, Priscilla
- Where: Some bar in Nouvelle Tokyo
- OOC - IC Date: 0099-06-12
- Summary: In an attempt to socialize with some of his new allies, Koyomi all but invites Van and Priscilla for drinks. They discuss what to do with their lives, as well as crimes of the food and actual variety.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Dynazenon Team flew off to space today for what Gauma referred to as 'team building' with various Yaman Rebellion pilots. The teens are predictably, maybe, less enthused about the whole thing than he is. Still...they are people in trouble.
Koyomi didn't quite MEAN to invite people over for drinks, but when someone mentioned spending more time, he idly mentioned the place Inamoto had called him to the other day, unwitting of the chaos that would ensue.
Which is how we find ourselves now, with Dynastriker returned to Koyomi's pocket, sat at a low table outside a local bar/restaurant at like ten at night. He tries not to draw attention to it when he stretches out his back. "So uh..." he says, trying to start conversation and coming up with zero, nada, nil for ideas.
"...what do you guys do with yourselves on another world?" he asks, and regrets it literally before he's finished saying it.
<Pose Tracker> Van has posed.
People keep bringing Van to places where there's food and drinks. Pizza Hut, izakaya bars...
This is, of course, fine, if you're willing to watch Van ruin a perfectly good fish filet by putting every sauce and condiment available on it.
As Van spreads the more solid condiments like wasabi over the fish first (he's getting used to Earth's different condiment spreads, bit by bit), he finds himself not having that much easier a time starting the conversation than Koyomi. Working through an unholy number of sauce cups, he...
... surprisingly, doesn't seem to mind the question. "I dunno. I guess it's not that different from here," he says, with a shrug. "Mostly just take each day as it comes." After a little thought, he adds, "Odd jobs in cities I pass through. I try to mind my own business, but sometimes I end up helping people in need."
He slices off a piece of fish and brings it to his mouth. "WHOA!! REALLY SPICY!!!" he declares, at the top of his lungs.
<Pose Tracker> Priscilla has posed.
Team building is important! Especially when your 'team' you've built up spans several galaxies at the very least. Earth being so eerily similar to Terra helps, at least for Priscilla... but she can't say she doesn't appreciate being shown around by some of their very few actual Earth-based contacts.
Being invited for drinks is a surprise, but she supposes she is a few years too old to really be peer to the high schoolers and middle schooler on the Dynazenon team. And it's as good an excuse as any to spend some quality time with Van, so sure, why not?!
Thanks to her excursion with Tavelle Adzvin on the moon... she actually isn't wearing some variation of her pilot suit for once, opting for a casual yet stylish fit you'd typically wear to a restaurant slash bar - a high-waisted red-plaid skirt paired with a matching crop top.
...Well, perhaps meetings like this are inevitable to be kind of awkward, as Koyomi draws blanks for conversation starters. She has a little more difficulty answering, giving Van a quick stare, as if to ask, '...What do we do?', then giving Koyomi an awkward smile.
"Honestly, sometimes I don't think I really have much going for me except for fighting." She admits. "...But I like helping people out, too. There's always gonna be people who need it."
She's about to start on her own noodle dish, when Van does... what he keeps going whenever they go out to eat. "Aha... ha... Van, should we put in an order for an extra fill of water?"
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Gauma's weird, but he's not Van weird. Koyomi watches Van prepare himself with a kind of horrified fascination. "Really does just eat like that, huh..." he says, sort of logically to Priscilla but really mostly to the will of the universe. "Yeah, the wasabi'll get ya."
He's got what amounts to bar snacks, takoyaki and a fish of his own, but it'll keep him going. Better than whatever Chise's probably having tonight. "Sounds...not too bad," Koyomi says. "Can't say I have much going on either. But..."
There's a small lift to his expression. "I guess...working with Dynazenon counts as helping people, right? And I like that thought." A small inner voice filling in for Chise reminds him it's not a job until Gauma starts signing checks, though.
<Pose Tracker> Van has posed.
Van is wearing the same swallowtail suit he wears every day. It is hard to be certain if he owns any other clothes (he does not). He sticks out like an incredibly sore thumb in Nouvelle Tokyo, though somehow less than he would in regular Tokyo, so that's something, at least.
Van remains completely oblivious to any interest Priscilla has in him beyond combat peer. That space in his brain is occupied with vengeance. He does acknowledge her, though, when she suggests another water fill. Through gritted teeth, he agrees, "Yeah," before taking a long drink of his... milk. Yeah, milk, neat. Here. At least Earth people are less judgmental about it.
... the conversation seems like it's gravitating toward work, and Van can go with that. "Hey, reminds me. You know how I can get a mailing address? Never had one back home, but pretty much everywhere around here asks you for one." He stops to take a bite of fish again, after pushing it around the sauce. ... It's still spicy, and yet, he keeps doing it.
<Pose Tracker> Priscilla has posed.
Priscilla offers Koyomi a passive smile that suggests 'don't worry, you'll just have to get used to it' at his abject horror towards Van being Van, before just taking a deep breath, focusing on her own meal, while avoiding thinking about how Van's must taste.
"It's not bad, really. Sometimes I wanna branch out a bit, but.. it can be good to stick to what you're good at, right?" Priscilla agrees, just stirring her noodles around a little. They're a little spicy - but not THAT spicy.
"Course it counts, why wouldn't it?" She chimes, when Koyomi says he likes the thought of helping people. "You know, I was wondering what brought a guy like you to Dynazenon in the first place, but... I think that's a pretty good reason." Even if she wishes they were getting paid for it, too...
Van has a good question, though. Mailing addresses... they're essentially living day-to-day wherever they can find, after all. "Ahh, I could use some help with that myself. Hey, since we're both looking, maybe it'd be more efficient to share one?" It's not even entirely much of an advance - her living situation back at home lends her to thinking about these problems in a more utilitarian, communal way.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Sometimes people in Nouvelle Tokyo just have really reliable, obvious fashion, which they wear basically every day. You just kinda get used to it.
Koyomi has a beer because it's just about the only way he can make himself think about looking this many other humans in the eye without Gauma or Yume or Chise or Yomogi around.
"Chise and I were just, walking. The news was reporting the kaiju attack and she wanted to go see it - kids, right? And then Gauma somehow just...made it appear. Picked up him and Yomogi and Yume, then found me nearby, I guess. Couldn't really call it anything but luck."
He chuckles, faintly, tipping his head down and letting those blue eyes peer out of the fringe of his bangs. "Still...It's something I can do," he says, with the edge of a smile on his face.
Then he blinks up, thoughts clearing enough to catch Van's question. "Oh, uh, address? Uhm--" koyomi has never in his once thought about how to do that.
Then, rather than say something sensible like looking up PO boxes on his phone, alcohol helpfully lubricates two neuron connections.
"I guess you could use my place?"
<Pose Tracker> Van has posed.
"Huh. Didn't think about it, but yeah," Van agrees with Priscilla as she pitches sharing an address. "Beats running around trying to get dozens of 'em." That's all he offers for a few moments; he is still eating. Fresh water is a win here too. The monstrosity Van has created is perfectly edible and even has a few things in its favor... but definitely cannot be faced unarmed.
"Just fell into your Armor, huh." (As far as Van's concerned, that thing's an Armor; it's sure not a Mobile Suit.) "Guess things work out that way sometimes."
Koyomi offers to let Van -- and possibly Priscilla? -- use his house as a mailing address. "Sure." (Here's hoping Van, the Homeless Hedge Trimmer doesn't somehow stick to him even after this one.)
It's been... a long time since Van had to think about things like 'a home.' It feels a little alien -- it treads just a little bit close to things he simultaneously doesn't want to think about and doesn't want to ever stop thinking about.
<Pose Tracker> Priscilla has posed.
Priscilla is inclined to think about Dynazenon as an Armour too - she's seen many weird shapes and sizes of them as a fighter, and hey, it's not all that different from Team Eldora's walking refrigerator! "That's a pretty crazy story, you know, but for some reason... yeah, I believe it." She replies, hearing the story of how Dynazenon came to be.
"Guess it really does boil down to luck sometimes, huh?" She slurps some noodles down, absently thinking. "It's just up to you whether it's good luck or bad luck," she adds, though from Koyomi's tone, she assumes it must be good luck for him.
"Plus it keeps everything in one place," Priscilla asides to Van, about sharing an address. "That's definitely a win when it comes to a group as scattered as ours." Poor Koyomi offers his own place, and Priscilla glances over to Van, and back to Koyomi. "Well, if it's not too much of an imposition... you don't live far from here, right?" She nods, and then considers something for a moment. "Do you live with anyone else?" She asks, out of sheer curiosity.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
Koyomi is the kind of guy who keeps his eyes down usually. The beer has loosened him up a little, but Van has introduced some exciting *other* reasons to keep his head down, so he for a moment he just ruminates and eats his own piece. "Grabbed me with its hand, even."
Priscilla puts a thought in his head: It's Up to him how this unfolds from here. ...
Not fully thinking, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls Dynastriker - toy-sized - out, giving it a serious, ruminating look. "Been trying to avoid that," he mutters, his thoughts far, far away. "But...might not be so bad..."
He jolts a little "Oh, uh, sorry, was--y, yeah, I'm pretty close. Not a long trip, anyway." 'Distance' vs 'travel time' are wildly unrelated things sometimes in a city like Nouvelle Tokyo.
Then, Priscilla asks the cruellest question in the world and he flinches. "Ah. That's, ehhh...y-yeah," he says, deflecting with all the grace and elegance of a manhole cover; "But I can handle some extra letters, that's not a problem."
<Pose Tracker> Van has posed.
When Koyomi pulls out Dynastriker, Van immediately gets it; having a device with which you summon your cool robot has become natural to him of late. "Huh. Looks just like the real deal," he says, not realizing that it is, in fact, simply the real deal but very small.
The mention of luck-as-determiner gets Van thinking back. It's easy for Van to look backward or look nowhere at all -- his natural inclination, even. "Luck's a pretty back-and-forth kind of thing," he muses. The same thing can look like good luck one day and bad the next.
He takes another bite of fish -- and needs to recover, which means he doesn't totally catch Koyomi's flinch visually. He does catch the deflection... but, in true Van form, he has no idea why Koyomi would be deflecting about living with someone besides him and the kid. "Seems like a pretty nice place to live," Van remarks, instead.
<Pose Tracker> Priscilla has posed.
Priscilla, tragically, does not have a device to summon a cool robot... but she does have one to control it like it's a real person, so fair's fair. She studies the Dynastriker for a moment, before looking over her shoulder just to make sure no one's spying. "Woah. Must save a lot on parking."
'Luck' is a pretty conflicting topic for Priscilla herself - after all it's the one factor in a match she doesn't have total control over. But if you let every small uncertainty get to you... "Uh-huh. It's all about what you do next, after whatever luck happens to gives you." Is the wisdom she decides to provide..
Priscilla gives Koyomi a bit of a puzzled look when he tries to deflect. "Oh, yeah? That's pretty normal, I think." She'd be more genuinely surprised if he really was living by himself. Van on the other hand, brings up how nice the locale is. "Definitely!" She agrees. "Out of the all the places on Earth we've visited so far," she starts, as if this was some kind of all-inclusive world tour, "I think Nouvelle might even be my favourite!"
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
"It is. It shrinks," Koyomi says to Van, and tucks the Dynastriker back away before he fumbles it into a gutter or something. "We still don't *really* know what Dynazenon is. Sure doesn't do anything on its own anymore, anyway." That darn control stick's a real pain in the butt.
He tips back his beer to think some more, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Chomp on a takoyaki, now that it's cooled a little. "Yeah." A dark stall in an overgrown school bathroom. How long had the package been there? "What you do with it," he says, quiet.
He blinks up at Van's comment, though. "Yeah. It's been a good neighborhood. Like, sometimes the Asian Mafia or Legion of Shadow make a scene, but the Mobile Police and that train guy seem to have all that pretty covered. And the public transit is crazy thanks to the SDC and Senpuuji Corp both being in the area. Come to think of it, traffic used to get pretty bad like ten or fifteen years ago..." nom. takoyaki. carbohydrates. yes.
<Pose Tracker> Van has posed.
Van continues to have seen enough weird shit in his life that 'giant robot that turns into a plastic model kit' is a slight shrug and a scoot along. "Ha. I remember when I first saw Dann... all I wanted to do was get in it and stomp around. I didn't really care what it was." Maybe he thinks it speaks well of Koyomi that he's bothering to think about it already.
"Around here... it kind of reminds me of Zonnet Junction. You can pretty much always see a train," Van reflects about Priscilla's fondness for Nouvelle Tokyo.
The mention of absurd armor gangs really does make it feel even more like home. ... Does he miss Endless Illusion? It's hard to identify that feeling -- whether it's nostalgia, fondness, or something Van doesn't have the words to put to bed yet.
He scoots a piece of fish around his plate lazily. He's still a child at heart. "Organizations like that usually have a lot of connections..." The gears are starting to turn in Van's head, regarding the Asian Mafia. Certainly there are worse places to start shaking people down for information than known scumbags.
<Pose Tracker> Priscilla has posed.
"When I first started riding Brownie, I felt like I was the strongest person in the entire world." Priscilla reminisces, sharing her own similar sentiment. "The world's a lot bigger than I thought but... the feeling's still the same." She admits, with a slight giggle.
"Yeah.. it kind of is similar," Priscilla agrees - and coincidentally, the sound of a bullet train in the near distance punctuates her thought. She misses the people on Endless Illusion more than the planet itself, but she can't help but wonder why Earth is such a similar planet sometimes.
"At that point, I guess it's just routine." Priscilla shrugs, because sometimes a lady just decides she hates natto so much she should throw a giant robot at it. "But even the pettiest ones got to have someone funding them so they can keep on going, right?" She taps her chopsticks in no particular rhythm. Connections... "Hey, Van, do you think any of them might know something about...?" She doesn't even need to finish the question.
<Pose Tracker> Koyomi Yamanaka has posed.
"Seemed like the only one of us who was that put together that first night was Gauma...after that, he's been pretty serious about keeping us on the straight and narrow," Koyomi says. He picks up a takoyaki, and adds, "He's a pretty good guy, I guess," before popping it in his mouth.
As for Van haring off after the Asian Mafia...some part of Koyomi recognizes that Chise and especially Gauma would be all over that. He doesn't entirely notice his posture closing off as the topic turns.
<Pose Tracker> Van has posed.
Something in the way Priscilla talks about riding Brownie... gets Van's brow to furrow. He's still missing something -- those words make him all the more aware of it, too. But what...?
He doesn't get to dig in on that thought once he's addressed, though. "Can't hurt to ask," he says -- and while he doesn't quite smile, there's definitely an energy, a focus that wasn't there a second ago.
... All the more reason for Koyomi to fold in, admittedly.