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WHO: Kaine Parker and Annie Leonhart
WHERE: Nonah House #001
WHEN: Not long after this thread.
WHAT: Talking about Hornets business.
WARNINGS: None, unless swearing in Kaine's narration counts. Also the usual Attack on Titan spoilers.

The text from Annie had come with a sense of relief. Kaine had taken on work as a bodyguard in some kind of hope that he would be able to learn of the various threats in Nonah all the more easily. Unfortunately, the end result had been full days of work and him having to make sure he returned home on a (somewhat, if not completely consistent) schedule to check on the kids in the house. Given their lives and their experiences, it's not like he has to babysit them. But be reliable? He'll be reliable, he supposes. This is the life that he's stuck with at the moment, even if some part of him aches for an escape to Mexico.

But so far, life in Nonah is simple. There are threats on the horizon, but they haven't materialized yet. So, he doesn't run, not yet. He can keep this up. But the moment it turns into Houston 2.0, he's gone.

It's as simple as that. Kaine's not keen on fucking up anyone else's life.

He comes home today and slips in through the window, changing out of the spider costume before he heads downstairs in a normal set of clothes. He can hear Annie in the kitchen, so he heads straight there. In his hand is a six pack of beer. Should he drink, the light weight that he is? No, but he sticks it in the fridge anyway before sitting down unceremoniously.

He might need the beer for later.

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Annie already had tea poured, leaving a second of the more delicate cups out if Kaine wanted any on his own; she hadn't poured water or filled a seeper for him. She was currently embarking on one of many small projects she's set up for herself, related to the use of a modern kitchen. Right now she's attempting to make an egg over-easy. Considering her talent usually lies in making people uneasy when confronting her directly, or otherwise leaving them feeling easy because she's not involved, the description alone tempts her toward amusement.

Annie is midway through attempting her second egg, flipping it in the pan, when Kaine walks by to place his beer in the fridge. As he sits down, the egg lands, three-quarters of the way turned over. Not quite right, but closer than the first attempt sitting on a plate to her left.

"Hungry?" Annie's going for "breakfast is every meal" theory at the moment. She has bread and apricot preserves set out for after the eggs are ready. (Who uses toasters? She plans on using the pan.)

It's one way of sliding in to talking about the Hornets. The technically polite offer before discussing what it is she's heard over the last four months.

Kaine watches the way the egg flips and wonders why she's using a pan. Aren't people supposed to use something to do that? Given his own life—filled with diners, bars, and barbecue joints where they all eat at—he can't be certain, so he doesn't say something. The most he'll "cook" is throwing milk and cereal into the same bowl. He has no desire to put more effort into the act than that.

Still, when she goes to toast the bread on a pan, he'll say something. He knows toast. Toast is easy.

"I'll eat," he says. "How'd you learn how to cook?" It feels like a natural question, especially since she didn't know how to use the laundry machines.

Here skill with spatulas is still in the budding stages. Some day she'll realize that the right kind of spatula helps with these things, but for now, she has herself, her pan, and her reflexes to depend on. The second egg finishes, best as she can tell, and she slides it on to the other plate she'd set out, just in case. Two dirty dishes might be a waste, but she accepted the possible waste of her personal efforts.

Small sacrifices in the scheme of things.

"Here, or back home?" They're related and yet different answers, the clarification asked as Annie slices a thick piece of bread off the loaf and settles it into the pan.

He watches her begin to ... fry the bread. She's frying the bread. Without a word, he stands up to grab the knife and bread, and after slicing away two more pieces, he brings them over to the toaster and puts them inside. The toaster itself is simple, which he counts as a good thing. He doesn't want to explain things. He pushes the lever down, motions with his hand, and indicates that this is easier.

But he doesn't say it. Why say things like that?

"Either," he says finally. "Whoever taught you left some stuff out." That's his only commentary on it.

She watches what he does, though she doesn't move closer for the moment, instead using her fingertips to nudge her thicker slice of bread across the pan. A little grease would help this... or butter, but butter is still such a novelty.

"Other than my time working kitchen duties in the military during training, no one taught me." Another device seems (simple, one part of her may agree, but otherwise) unnecessary, when she can serve the same purpose with the one pan she has in use.

Annie pinches at the corner of her bread, pulling it up and flipping it over. This one? Totally hers. Gets a little extra flavor in the process.

"It's been self taught here, and was self taught when I was growing up. Potatoes, onions, things like that were what we handled most during our training years."

Slice, dice, peel, anything along those lines, and she's as well prepared as anyone else. Actual cooking to any degree has been a personal exploration... and clearly still a work in progress.

"Picking up more from what I read or what I hear, or how things go wrong when I try making them." She still eats the failures. No point wasting food. "It's interesting what you hear when you spend enough time listening to the people with too much to say."

Not so much about cooking, though it can be true, and more on the subject she'd initially contacted him for. Annie hands Kaine the plate with the better looking egg, over easy, yolk unbroken. Mostly a success.

When she hands him the plate, he takes it, admiring the egg. It looks good, but he imagines it would look better if she had used a spatula. He isn't interested in admonishing her again, and he only thinks it would look better. Kaine isn't making eggs. Actually, no one wants Kaine to make eggs. That could end up being a travesty, complete with swearing and saying "fuck it" and storming out to still burning food.

He's never claimed to be competent. He just knows how to do the basic things. There are parts of him that are illogical, and they're the ones he blamed on Peter. (Because if you have Peter Parker as your genetic makeup, of course you'd blame him.)

The toast pops up a moment later, and he sets it on his plate. He grabs out the butter, and after using his melting power ever so lightly on the stick, it's soft enough to spread over his bread. These powers have to have their uses, don't they? He wonders what she might pick up from what he's just done.

"I'm shocked people say a lot about frying eggs," he tells her. But he knows that isn't what she means. "Was it a metaphor?" See, he's even showing that he knows that.

Edited 2014-09-18 20:09 (UTC)

Annie gives him a half-curious look. "More like an allusion. Though I could have made it a metaphor, if you'd have preferred." She turns off the burner, setting the pan to an unused one and heading back to the table. His trick with the butter is curious - Annie wonders if it's related to a manipulation of the butter itself, or to heat.

There's too many ways to skin the metaphorical cat around this place.

"Mind bringing the butter over?" She sets her plate on the table with a muffled tmp, pulling out a chair and setting her fork on the plate. She doesn't sit yet.

"People like gossiping about technique as much as they like gossiping about everything else. The Hornets come up more often than not, and everyone likes to have their theories. A few people even have names for those who say they know something about what kind of nest we're dealing with."

Rumor has it... wrong as often as right, but without knowing the rumors from the people who seemed to have started a handful, it's difficult to start disseminating which are more true, and which are false.

Before he hands over the butter, he goes through that process again, providing her with a stick of butter that is slightly melted on the end so she can use it for herself. He's convinced that his toasted bread is better toasted than her own, but he's already moved on from that thought. Mostly. He does watch to see how well the butter spreads, though.

"Names ... like a group, a gang, or specific people?" People are different from a gang. A gang has connections, and he almost hopes that's precisely what's happening. Kaine figures it won't be as easy as trying to figure out who knows who in the underbelly of the city. He's been through there a few times already and he has some idea of allegiances and territories, but it's still an uphill battle. Back in Houston, he had Wally's help, which he doesn't really have now.

One day, they'll have a toast reckoning. (Perhaps not, but the thought is almost amusing.) Annie accepts the butter, inclining her head to Kaine in a small nod when the butter spreads smooth as can be expected of something left out to settle at room temperature - which she knows isn't the case here.

"Appreciated." One word for recognition. Past that, she's already moved on.

"Four groups, two unrelated specific names. I've pegged one for a man who doesn't live in the area anymore, tending to hop cities along with small time dance-sport competitions. The other I haven't been able to locate. Did you want to hear about them, or the groups?"

He deliberates, taking a bite out of his toast as he considers which is the best approach. They can either go about singular names, or the groups themselves. Groups have organizations, and within organizations, there's someone stupid enough to talk. The individual names within these organizations might mean nothing if they can't be located. Still, if those names got out, they might be the stupid guy, the fall guy, the one who will quiver when the spike from his wrist is drenched in red from their blood.

Just maybe.

"Both," he decides.

"Marco Rodriguez is involved with sport dancing. Particularly ballroom... he used to be one of the people taken under Phillip North's wing before registration was mandated. One of the larger groups is, too - how much they know is debatable. They hold closer to an idea of getting people out of the world they live in." Like Phllip North had, back when he'd been around.

"There's another group that identifies with Song Ki-Duk. Not directly... his is one of the names they talk about relating to not thinking he went home. Several of the more popular imPorts from years ago have that kind of following, alongside the people native to this world."

Accounting for one name, and two groups. "The other name is Myra Jennings. She runs a bar in the shabbier parts of town, one of those people who seems to know everyone. She's been there for over thirty years. How valid anything she says is up to debate, but it's not as easy for me to get in to talk with her directly given my own situation."

Of being both underage and on strict behavioral expectations.

Kaine doesn't try to grimace through every description that she gives, but almost all of it earns exactly that. He doesn't necessarily like any of this information, and none of it is good leads. Still, the last woman, Myra Jennings, strikes him as someone they can track. More specifically, he can track her and see what he finds out. The other two seem like they're leads that are harder to follow.

"I'll keep an eye on Jennings," he says decisively. "We'll see what else we can turn up about Song Ki-Duk." Something about that seems like they should look into it, but he doesn't know why. Maybe it's because it doesn't have to do with fucking dancing. (The truth is that that's one-hundred percent it.)

"What are you doing about the dancing?"

There's a full pause before Annie answers, sounding carefully neutral. She's not sure how she feels about her own resolve. Plans are only her forte in finding information. Tracking things down, listening at the fight places, picking the people to tail.

"Picking up a hobby," she says. "He won't be coming into town before November either way you cut it. There's no rush on that one. With Song Ki-Duk... finding the right kind of hotheads to talk about whatever they think they know might give us something to discount, at the least." Where else they go from there depends on which leads they follow, but having enough names crop up that tied back in to the people who've disappeared since 2008, 2010... that's a decent place to begin.

"A hobby," he says flatly, watching her. "Have fun." There's a degree of sarcasm that seeps in there. Kaine's just glad that he's not the one picking up that terrible hobby. What if he had to dance? It's a good thing Aracely hasn't been informed, or at least, spoken to about this. Kaine doesn't want to be forced into dancing after all.

"I'll look for hot heads, too. If they're around still." Things change throughout the years, and Kaine's betting that some of the traction the Hornets had had been lost when many of the previous imPorts left. "Or if they're anything more than anarchist morons."

"Good to know either way." Trouble doesn't need to just be the for show kind along the lines that were known. The Nonah PD had trouble enough handling what had a face - dismissing those who could be better handled by the city's strained police department in favor of those who were escaping their nets was only beneficial to them all in the long run.

There's more to be said for the ones that can be caught than in pursuing every infraction simply for the fact heated words were behind it at the time.

"I'll make sure to invite you to the competition," she says in a mild tone of voice, biting into her toast. Ah... the simple luxuries of warm meals.

"I'll take off work to come along," he says, fully intending to stand somewhere that no one sees him there. That much is almost clear in his tone, as it's thick with sarcasm. Oh, yeah, he's thrilled. Of course, he gets the feeling that Aracely would love something like that. Her fondness of the rodeo makes him think that she wouldn't think twice before throwing herself into a competition like that ... or into cheering. He hopes it's only cheering.

It better just be cheering.

After that, with the information shared, he starts focusing on eating.

A process Annie is as content to continue as anything else. In fact, she'll continue to eat in silence, standing up and starting to take care of dishes once she's done.

Small talk. Not her forte, either.

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