undergrounds | [OPEN] [May 8th-10th] Busy Bees and First Impressions

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[OPEN] [May 8th-10th] Busy Bees and First Impressions

a. FISHING
Gipsy on the road again felt good, like she always did, with that purr and the hum of the open road. It had been five years of the road in her blood, wild and free with a mission under her belt. Mako might have been at the top of her class five years ago but the road had sharpened her to the finest of points. But for now, she was leaving that behind and relaxing a little - or trying to, at least. Fishing was one of those things that gave her a little breathing room, not to mention a good snack. She had a nice fire pit lit and crackling behind her, the warmth at her back, a rod in hand and an empty bucket for her catches.

A sound, the rustle of bushes, that preternatural prickling at the back of her neck, told her she wan't alone as she pulled a decent sized fish from the water.

" If you are looking for lunch," she said quietly as she put the fish into a bucket, "let me catch another fish and we'll see about that. Meanwhile, you may enjoy the fire."

b. COFFEE
It is difficult, sometimes, to get a cup of coffee that is truly good. Mako stood in line at Cafe Poirot debating her choices. It was like picking some sort of jewel out of a line up of the finest in the world. The cappuccino was good, the machination was fantastic, the lattes were among her favourite and-- She turned to the person behind her at a loss.

"Which do you like from the menu? I am debating on the latte but everything looks so good today."

c. GARAGE
Far more than fishing, working with mechanics of any type makes Mako feel complete. Anything with a motor, anything with gears, she knows how to put it together. It's been like this her whole life. Machines are an intrinsic part of her life, personal and professional. Setting up her garage, her workspace, makes her stay official.

She's very much the newest member of Hillingdon House, now.

Mako even has a little sign that says: Gipsy Danger's Quick Fix. Okay, so it's a borrowed garage and a borrowed workspace but it's off the road and she's had a shower - a long one. It's real enough that she hopes it'll stick. At the moment, Mako was working on restoring an old engine, which has been neatly disassembled and placed on a sheet as she went through each, cleaning them. A noise makes her look up from her work and she stops what she's doing.

"Did you have something that needs to be fixed?"

d. WANDERING HILLINGDON HOUSE
New places are often difficult to navigate and getting the lay of the land is something that Mako had learned to do before truly settling anywhere. She had been wary of it but in rather dire need as well. She moved carefully, looking for the kitchen and hopefully some tea. But mostly, she was just looking. She turned the corner and nearly bumped into someone.

"I am so sorry!" she said quietly, backing up a little. "I am Mako Mori and I am also very new to this place. Is there somewhere that I may make tea?"

e. Wildcard; pick a situation and we'll roll with it.

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Oh!

A ghost with manners. Sometimes ghosts have them, sometimes they're stuck in their own routines. Growing up with ghosts in Japan had taken the fear out of her and her further travels had made her fascinated by them as much as anything. He has got an odd sort of shifting face mask but it doesn't bother her, she has seen stranger things in her travels.

"Thank you very much," she murmurs and is pleased that she didn't go through him because that would have been really impolite of her. "I will be more careful when I walk. I cannot imagine it is a comfortable thing for you when people walk through you."

Rorschach looks behind him as he leads her into the spacious kitchen. He spends a lot of time here. Smell is one of the few senses he has left that has never dimmed. Though he can't eat anything, he likes the scent of food cooking. Especially the baked goods. Oh, he'd sell his soul for just one taste of something like a cookie or brownie.

"Used to it." The gravelly voice that comes out of the ghost is deep and raw, rusty nails and sharp glass coated over a throat. He points out the kettle sitting on the stove and then takes a seat. What comes next in an introduction? Oh yes, names. Right. She's already given him her's, so he should do the same. "Rorschach. Resident Hillingdon ghost."

"Rorschach?" Ah. The mask. She nods in understanding and heads toward the kettle with a smile. Mako moves delicately but she also moves like an athlete and a skilled fighter. "In Japan," she says, "there were many ghosts. Old ones, young ones. Some of them never said a word. It's sad to be so lost."

She turned the stove on and moved to sit next to him, two cups in hand, her hair dark hair swinging and settling around her face where two bright blue slices of hair skimmed her jawline. She studied him for a moment and put the cup down in front of him.

"I'm glad you found a home, Rorschach." Mako bowed a little toward him as she would any guest sharing her table. "Please tell me how you like your tea and I will make it."

Rorschach listens without saying a word. He's not much of a talker and it takes him some time to warm up to new people. He can sympathize with being lost. He'd wandered London for years all alone, unable to communicate with anyone. Even now, he's lost so many of his memories that he wonders how much of his true self is left.

The black pattern spreads upwards across his eyes and nose, forming three distinct blotches. It's a tell that his mood just changed. He's pleased, almost touched that Mako would think to make him a cup of tea. It's been longer than he cares to remember that anyone did the smallest act for him. "Strong. And milky." Even if he can't drink it, the smell can still permeate the mask. Don't ask how breathing through it works. It's magic.

"Black tea or something more fragrant?" she asks, thinking about what she might want if the positions were reversed and she were a ghost. "Hm. I have always wished to try the fermented tea cakes that used to be how tea was served a long time ago. They had fruits and tea leaves and spices in them like you could not dream of and the only way to get all of that free was with milk and boiling water, honey, too for the sweetness."

She rose ostensibly to shove her own nose into the pantry to find the best smelling teas available. Ginger peach, the exactingly British Earl Grey, its softer, more flowery Lady Grey, mint (boring but good for medicine), a spicy and aromatic chai, and a tin of something black and peppery with a touch of anise. She came back with the best of the choices, including some very much plain black tea without any frills.

"That tea, was enough to fill you up and get you through harsh winters," Mako continued before placing the teas far enough away that they didn't blend together. She went in the order that she found them, ginger peach first, and at his leisure. "I like the peach. It reminds me of summer when I was passing through a farm. I bought a bag of peaches and it was like drinking sunshine, I think."

She was usually quiet, herself, but this was different. It was a giving thing, her soft voice quietly offering him a little bit of life and sharing some of her own.

Rorschach listens to her talk. There's something soothing about her voice. It reminds him just a touch of Doctor Manhattan, that otherwordly fae that was a part of the Watchmen he had known so long ago. He wonders where he is now. The rest of them are all old or dead by this point, but fae were eternal. When Mako sets the tea down, he goes through the selection carefully. "This one." He picks the black, peppery smelling one.

Usually, he's content with listening, but he feels the need to share a little of himself, a rarity. "Used to drink a lot of coffee and tea on patrol. Went days at a time without sleep sometimes when I was hunting werewolves." His specialty had been the wolves and they of course tended to operate at night. He'd always said he'd sleep when he was dead. Well, now he was dead, and found he didn't need to sleep any longer at all. A bit ironic that.

"That is a long time for no sleep, especially when hunting something that can be so dangerous," Mako murmurs as she gathers the rest of the tea and puts it away. She will make them both the peppery one and indeed, she would have picked it for herself even if he hadn't. There was something right about it.

"I like this tea, too," she says with a soft smile. "It reminds me of winter and snow. It is just the sort of tea that warms you up after you have shaken the outside from your shoes and placed them to dry."

She neatly, with no movement wasted, began to heat the water and measure the tea for two into a pot before finding a proper tea strainer. Then she found a small pitcher for the milk and some sugar cubes. All of these, the set on the table on a nice tray as the water bubbled away.

"Was always worth to put down monsters." That's all werewolves were in his mind. Furry, dangerous monsters wearing comfortable skins. Every single one of them had murdered someone and many more had done far worse than that. He would never forget the sight of the first werewolf he had killed, the femur bone of a little girl still stuck in his jaws. He'd always hoped he'd spared someone the same pain by putting them down permanently.

"Always cold in New York." One of the reasons he'd worn so many layers as a hunger. Walter had grown up in a shitty tenement with his mother, then a run-down boy's home, and then a series of terrible apartments. None of them had great heaters or AC. Kind of a metaphor for his entire life when he thought about it.

"Did you just hunt werewolves, the ones that became the monsters?" she asks quietly. "Or the ones who haven't killed yet?" Mako was curious if there was a difference between the two in the minds of others.

She moves to pour the water into the pot and covers it to let it steep before bringing it to the table and sitting.

"It is odd that one could become a killer and yet shifters are not viewed as monsters, too."

"Just the first at the start. Was too soft, let them live back then." Then came the Blair Roche case in 1975. It had changed everything about Rorschach. Walter Kovacs had died that night with that little girl. "Knew better later on. Killer's a killer. No mercy for them." So yes, he had gone after the ones that hadn't had a chance to activate their curses yet. It was a preventative measure to prevent more loss of life. Such a stance had strained the partnership he had with Nite Owl to the breaking point.

He leaned forward, gloved hands laced together under his chin. "Shifter doesn't ever have to kill. Not like werewolves and vampires." He'd always thought of shifters as being freaks before coming to Hillingdon. But it was hard to keep such an opinion seeing them on a day-to-day basis, especially with young ones around like Willow.

"Does the reason they kill not matter?" Mako asked curiously and a moment later nodded a little. "The difference between the two, it is disease transmittal, yes? Is there a compulsion to kill with werewolves and vampires? I have not truly had much contact with either species beyond civilised meetings here and there. I can only gather information on each and put it away for further use. I do not wish to be impolite and judge each with a general species label."

Her brow furrowed as she sipped her tea.

"It does not seem fair to me."

"A murderer is a murderer. Could stop anytime they wanted. But they keep going even when they don't have to." He'd started down that same slippery path when he had been alive. Once he'd killed his first supernatural being, he had never seen the cause to stop. In his darkest moments, he wondered where that would have led him had he not died when he had.

He paused and breathed in the delicious scent of the tea. Smells were one of the few pleasures remaining for a ghost who had forgotten most of the other qualities of being alive. He couldn't tell anyone what it was like to breathe or even what it was like to hold objects in his hands anymore.

She frowned just a little.

"Does that mean you are a murderer?" The question was soft as it slipped out and her eyes were searching for a moment until she realised how horrible that question sounded. "That wasn't-- I'm sorry, that was impolite and insensitive. I do not think that I could kill a werewolf unless they were actively harming someone else."

She closed her eyes and breathed the tea in as well, taking the moment to steady herself.

"They are too close to what I am, I think. Or what I should be. It would be nice to run, though."

Despite the mask, the way his posture stiffened and his arms folded left no doubt that Rorschach was scowling beneath it. He very nearly vanished into thin air as he was warrant to do when he disliked the way the conversation was going. He didn't answer, merely making a growling sort of sound in the back of his throat.

He watched Mako for a moment, taking in her measure. "You're a shifter?" His voice sounded neutral as he asked. He should have realized. There was only so many kinds of supernatural beings that could see ghosts.

"Mhm," she said nodding. "I am. I'm sorry if I offended you, I really didn't mean to, I just. I'm just trying to understand how this all works and what it means for me. I am really not sure where I fit, you know?" Mako was as honest and forthright as she could be, her tone gentle.

"From what information I've gathered on my family line is mostly leopard cats from Japan, where I was born."

"You apologize too much." That was Rorschach's way of accepting her apology. He had all the social skills of a mangy alley cat sometimes, and oftentimes, he didn't know how to react to the way people acted. He was socially stunted, something that had only gotten worse in his ghostly state.

"I like cats." He immediately chastised himself internally for not having something more productive to say.

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[OPEN] [May 8th-10th] Busy Bees and First Impressions

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