you're ripped at every edge

[pejoratives]

WHO: Rosita Espinosa & various.
WHERE: various
WHEN: throughout July
WHAT: a July catch-all! some closed starters, some open ones, specifics and will be in the thread starters, more to be added through the month.
WARNINGS: likely reference to death, violence, the undead and potentially cannibalism. Anything else I'll add here as they come up.
NOTE: I tend to do all my starters in prose, but brackets are totally fine! I'll match style with whatever works best for you.



( closed to Walking Dead cast - Heropa. )
( ooc - happy to do individual and group threads, just indicate in the subject line what you'd prefer so if others tag in they know if they can join in or start something new :]b )

Rosita Espinosa is not a famously patient person. She'll hold her silence for days, she'll wait and she'll watch and be as still as a person might need to be to survive world as messed up as theirs, but that doesn't mean she particularly enjoys it. More relevantly, she isn't really a fan of the stupid and the inane.

She's had a lot of those two things this past month, largely in the form of the ridiculous job this place saddled her with, and the absurd contractual obligations that brought with it.

When she's not busy and pulled away and training in things she didn't believe were actual serious things a person ever needed to learn how to do, Rosita is finally flopped in a park, and slowly types up a text that goes to Rick, Daryl, Carl and Enid. She doesn't even know Enid, but she figures she should try to. World might be fucked up and make no sense, but that wasn't a reason to neglect the people that her family considered family, or however they all pieced together.

The text is simple - a place, mention of pizza, a brief comment on being back in town and that work was bullshit, and an offer to catch up. The place is a park, and whenever anyone arrives she is lying down in the sun, freshly collected pizza boxes steaming beside her, and though she looks relaxed she truly, truly is not. The sound of footsteps has her sitting up fast, as if the entire process of lying down was really just a preparation for sitting back up again.

Spotting a familiar face makes her scowl ease away and the corner of her mouth quirk just slightly, briefly, before the evidence of such a thing disappears. "Hey."

Comments

( closed ) Ruby Lucas.

[pejoratives]

Bars are kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand: food, beverages, music. On the other hand: everything else. Seedy bars sometimes were quieter, but they were also a depressing echo of what life had turned into back home. Nice bars seemed like a lie. All bars still felt too crowded, when you were used to the press of bodies coming hand in hand with fighting for your life and watching the people you cared about in danger.

And yet, somehow, this is not the first time she has met up with Ruby for a drink. She is somewhat less tense than last time. She is, at the very least, less heavily armed (only a gun, now, when the last month has afforded her a chance to learn how to use her thorns or... whatever.)

She's waiting for Ruby in a bar, trailing the tip of her finger around the edge of a martini glass that she's otherwise not touched, frowning at it like it tried to insult her mother and did a poor job of it. Mostly she's frowning about everything in the world, and the drink in front of her is just the unlucky target of all that disdain.

[notsheepish]

You know, if they made it wrong, you can just ask for another.

[That poor drink. It never did anything to deserve such treatment.

Ruby sighs as she slides into the seat next to Rosita's.]

Sorry I'm late. You been waiting long?

[pejoratives]

They made it fine.

( So far as she can tell - she's not an expert. She doesn't immediately glance to Ruby, though the familiar voice gets an edge of a smile out of her before it disappears away again.

As for the apology? Rosita shrugs, apparently not too concerned. This isn't home, where lateness meant waiting for hours or for days and just not knowing. That's an improvement, though its funny how improvements become things you take for granted too fast. )

I've survived. How are you?

[notsheepish]

[Ruby accepts the explanation with a raised eyebrow and then a nod. If she says so.]

Not bad. Definitely not bored.

I was at that 4th of July thing that went crazy, if you heard about it.

[pejoratives]

( Rosita rolls her eyes - not at Ruby. )

Couldn't go. Had to do some training for work.

( She's more irritated at being kept from her family than having to work. Work she can handle, and so far as stupid jobs go this one is well paid, at least. Still, she raises her eyebrows a little, and finally picks up her Long Island iced tea to have a sip. )

Have fun?

[notsheepish]

Yeah, it was pretty fun... for the first couple of hours.

[Ruby doesn't really want to get into the ending bit. It was both very weird and a little scary. She'll just stick to the more amusing anecdotes instead.]

I did kinda forget how much the paparazzi love us here though, so there might be some photos of me dancing with my friends and wild rumors about my love life in some gossip magazines soon?

[pejoratives]

( Rosita raises her eyebrows, but doesn't press for clarification. The curiosity slips closer to concern, but given that she looks somewhere between concerned and annoyed much of the time, the differences isn't immediately obvious without paying a fair bit of attention to her expression.

She waits a moment, internally turning the matter over to consider it from different angles before she speaks, and opts to be merciful and not press, though she does not her drink out in case Ruby decides she needs some of it. )

Careful. Those rumours could get worse with me around.

( And the very slightest of smiles. Extremely slight. )

[112ounces]

Carl arrived as soon as possible. He looks around at the park, trying to remember that the clothes Rosita normally wears back home might not be the same down here (with the exclusion of Carl, of course - he has no fashion sense other than what he usually wears anyway).

He goes down at the park until he sees a familiar face lying down next to a steaming pile of pizza boxes. He sits down next to Rosita. "Hey. Enjoying the sun?"

[pejoratives]

For Carl, if no one else, she can smile. "Something like that." Holding out her hand, she looks at it with an expression that's more thoughtful than grumpy. "That power stuff, partly. I feel a hell of a lot better when I'm in the sun a lot."

Of course, there's the flip side that just sprawling in the sun was a luxury rarely won for them, if ever, and maybe it's just the chance to relax a little that had her easing some and enjoying it. Maybe she's over thinking it - she doesn't mention it, either way, and instead opts to flip open one of the pizza boxes. Pepperoni, pepperoni everywhere.

"How've you been?"

[112ounces]

Carl is one of those typical guys who will put all the meat toppings on his pizza, so he gladly takes a slice. "Still surviving. "

He glances at her form, wondering what kind of powers she has that needs the sun. "What kind of powers do you have?"

Carl himself has mixed feelings about his. They are either default useful or potentially deadly.

[pejoratives]

A huff of breath that could pass for a laugh, maybe. "Sounds good to me."

She holds her hand out by way of explanation, knuckles up - the Rosita Espinosa policy is generally not to speak when you can show, and so there's a moment where dark points bloom under her skin before three points press through the skin. No blood, no pain, more like the strange fusion of where a thorn sprouts from the else's stem. The claws grow longer, until they're maybe ten inches long, strong and vicious.

"Thorns," she clarifies, dryly. Someone out there had a sense of humour. "Plants and thorns." She sunbathes to photosynthesise, and it's... not more bizarre than the dead walking, really, but it's the kind of weird that she's pretty sure makes even less sense in the real world. Probably Tara or Glenn would nerd out, and Eugene definitely would. Idiots, she thinks, and it's entirely fond.

"You?"

[112ounces]

Carl looks on, fascinated and maybe a little weirded out. He's glad his powers don't involve his body changing into something different.

"My powers are a little all over the place," he admits. "I got hawkeye vision so I can see far away . . . and I can rust metal and control it to whatever I want."

He rubs the back of his neck before admitting his third power. "I can also turn people into walkers by biting them."

[pejoratives]

She doesn't say oh. She doesn't say much of anything, rather predictably. Her eyebrows raise, slowly, and she sits up a little straighter to look at Carl and try to weigh up what he's saying, to see if he's joking, but Tara and Abraham have the monopoly on off-colour humour in their group. Rosita opens her mouth to speak and closes it again, without ever looking away from Carl. Her head just cants to the side again.

Maybe this world really isn't that much better than their own, if that's the kind of shit it heaps on a kid.

"Are you okay with that?"

[itstheirworld]

[Given that she knows about as much of Rosita as she knows (or should know) her, Enid feels initially hesitant to reply when she sees the message. Yet, with a moment to think on it, she sees it could be nice to try getting to know her like she did with Daryl. And the offer of pizza sounds good, too. So, opening her phone, she replies back with a simple okay and she'll be there soon.

When she does arrive, it's with a bag of chips in hand. She holds them up in a small offering.]

Hey. I brought these. [They're nothing special, of course. Just the regular potato flavor. Can't go wrong there, right.]

WOW I actually have no idea how I missed replying to this already tbh

[pejoratives]

( There's a fractional pause before she replies. Not out of suspicion, that was wiped almost the moment Daryl and Carl both confirmed Enid was one of them. Rosita just takes her time to warm up to people, and she's so accustomed to them all being together, all being a unit. The time displacement and the prospect of meeting someone important to the others and trying to work out how they all fit together didn't make her nervous, she was just conscious of it, aware.

Probably she'd have to get used to that, here. )

Thanks.

( For her part, Rosita flips open the box of pizza, nudging it closer to Enid. ) No anchovies.

( It's part joke, part serious - they're scavengers, survivors. If food wasn't food they liked that didn't matter. But even so - screw anchovies. )

[itstheirworld]

[It comes as no surprise that Rosita pauses for a fraction of a second. Though Enid, too, is just growing accustomed the apparent unit they form. To the fact that now the other female survivor is around, on friendly, speaking terms with her even, which is new. So they both have something to adjust to, it seems.

She smiles just a little seeing the pizza box opened, with the mention of no anchovies.]

Cool, and thanks, I guess.

[Likewise, she pulls open the bag and sets it on the table, turning it a little toward Rosita for her to choose to grab chips from or not. It's only a small offering in the end, anyway, so no a big deal either which way.]

Not a fan of anchovies either. [She states, before taking one pizza slice in hand, looking it over not because she doesn't trust it but to see what it did have.]

[pejoratives]

( It's the offer that counts - the solidarity. Give as much as take, even in small things. Sure, buying stuff isn't normally on the equation, and really she'd not have given it a moment's thought if Enid hadn't brought anything over. The fact that she did? It's a plus, a bonus point. As such, Rosita takes a couple of chips, because taking and appreciating was important, too.

There's no you're welcome, just the flicker of a smile that's gone almost before it's noticeable and the slight angling of her head.

The pizza is simple - pepperoni, mushrooms, olives, but Rosita leaves off taking a slice in favour of eating the chips. )

Weird, right? The minute we have options, we get fussy.

[itstheirworld]

A little. [Or, well, a lot. It really goes without saying that having a choice of foods to eat again changes a lot of things. It's nice, she figures, for the most part. And sooner rather than later she decides the pizza checks out okay for what she is cool eating and takes a tentative first bite, chewing and swallowing.]

I'm not complaining. [About there being options, of course. Besides.] Pizza is good. [She smiles again for all of a millisecond whether Rosita sees or not, and holds up her slice. It's meant as a relatively silent gesture meaning thanks again or something of that nature.]

[pejoratives]

( Rosita catches the brief glimmer of smile, files the information away, and behind her hand - eternally wrapped in fingerless gloves, of course - she smiles one of her own.

She angles her head, a silent sort of yeah, me neither, and with her hand dropping to grab more chips the lingering evidence of her smile is more open, even if it's subtle. )

I'd be a lot less calm if we'd wound up in some world with no pizza. ( Dry, flat, that particularly deadpan brand of humour. )

[dirtyredneck]

"Hey," Daryl responded, dropping his crossbow to the ground next to her before sitting down and joining her. He saw evidence of some of the pizza having been eaten already as assumed she'd either been well on the way to making herself sick, or someone else had recently left.

"What they got you doing?" His opener in reference to her commentary on work being bullshit even as he leaned over her to grab one of the pizza boxes. She was family, he didn't feel awkward about being close enough to almost touch or invading her space to take the food. It was nice to feel a little relaxed again, however brief the moment might be.

[pejoratives]

"Hey." Ah, Daryl and his crossbow. It's a weird kind of relief to see that he still carries it, actually. Rosita has weapons that reach out of her hands, now, but she's still got a gun she keeps to hand. Every so often she tries to go without, and it always makes her skin feel ready to crawl right off.

At least she's gotten better at not pointing it at people. She has zero concern when Daryl reaches across her, only leans back slightly to make his ability to grab the pizza easier, not out of any discomfort. Family is family, and they've all been through too much to get delicate around each other.

"They want me to host a dating show," she says after a weighted pause and a pained sigh, opting to just tear off the damn bandaid. "Themed, and everything. Survival romance bullshit."

[dirtyredneck]

Daryl paused in his pizza enjoyment, slice already shoved half-way in his mouth, to stare at her with horrified eyes. He'd thought the job they'd given him was bad enough. But a dating show?

He chewed the half of the slice in his mouth and swallowed it before asking, "You mean like... on television? Where people gotta see that shit?"

[pejoratives]

Just a nod. A single, and somehow very pained, nod, pointing to him a moment in the universal symbol for you got it.

"Bringing love to the people."

So flat. So dry. "It pays really well. Help keep everyone covered for stuff."

[dirtyredneck]

He continued to stare for a while, half-eaten slice of pizza growing cold in his hand before he blinked slowly and shook his head to continue his interrupted enjoyment of the food. All of them made sacrifices for the group, but that one was right up there with losing a limb... well, no. Not quite that high. Close, though.

When he finished his slice and was licking his fingers clean, he looked back at her and shook his head, sighing, "They got me helping manage a restaurant. El Dorito Golden Cantina in De Chima. Ain't so bad as yours."

[pejoratives]

Yeah, man. Yeah. Rosita doesn't look at him during his stare of solidarity and incredulity and despair (she's not sure which one of those has the greater percentage, but she's fairly confident they're all in there somewhere) instead watching a dog zooming around the other side of the park and simply glad to have something else to actually catch her gaze on and distract herself with. She is entirely with him.

And then he mentioned managing a restaurant, and she slowly turns to look at him, squinting a little bit. "You don't exactly scream customer service," she observes. And, with just the faintest, slightest hint of a smile, "they probably won't appreciate squirrel the way we do."