we must rearrange reality;

[lepetitvoleur]

Date & Time: jan 19 and the week following.
Location: around the hold.
Characters: remy & open.
Summary: teenage thief awakens in post-apocalyptic wasteland and decides to make a profit. or, true life: lost children in exsilium.
Warnings: n/a.

Waking up had been disorienting, to say the least, and as the day wore on the sensation didn’t fade. He thought at first it might be some kind of test, some survival exercise, but it was far too elaborate and far too cold to have come from his family. His next thought was of the Assassins, and the great lengths they’d go to terrorize a Thief, but this was beyond their capability, too. So Remy was forced to admit that this was something far outside his understanding. Once he accepted that, he set to work.

The first day he spends ducking around corners and trying to stay hidden. It’s a mostly futile effort, considering how he’s dressed, and the fact that he knows nothing about the layout of the place he’s in. So he can be found, for the most part, hiding behind doors and darting between shadows. He doesn’t dare venture outdoors, because he’s sure that as soon as he does something horrible will happen, but he does manage to make quite a few rounds of the Hold itself. He’s skittish, when approached, and over-reactive—in fact, most every time he’s found there’s a card in his hand and a glow in his eyes before he stops to say hello.

The second is more adventurous, if not better entirely. Now, the most likely place to find him is swiping food from anywhere he can find it. That means—the shops in the city, the halls of the Hold, and, oh yeah, right out of your hands, if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a quick trick, one he’s been doing practically since he could walk, and so he doesn’t expect to be caught. But, then again, the past few days have been full of surprises.

A few days later, and he’s finally exploring the city for more than food raids. He looks ridiculous, wrapped in his older-self’s trench coat, which is far too long for him. He has the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the thing drags behind him as he walks. He doesn’t seem to mind the rain, much, and moves with the same agility and performance as he always has and always will. But at this age he’s also got a nervous energy, stopping and taking things in, muttering under his breath, and even pausing to stare at passersby.

And so it goes. As the days go on he can be found just about anywhere, picking locks or asking questions, hiding his caginess and fear behind a lot of boyish charm. Feel free to find him wherever you may be, and hope that that doesn’t mean he’s either just blown up the door to your room or stolen the rug out from under your feet.

Comments

[lepetitvoleur]

"Usual, right," he says, nodding. Because obviously he has been here for some time and knows exactly what the weather patterns are like.

And then: "Tailor? What--oh." He looks down at the coat, which he'd found when he work up, and then his cheeks color just a bit. It had seemed foolish to go out in the rain without it. He figured whoever owned it wouldn't miss it, if they'd left it lying around. "Non, I'm fine."

[whatsupcroc]

"I guess the baggy look is pretty much in style." Somewhere. Rappers in the 90's seemed to enjoy it, so it was legitimate enough an excuse not to worry him over something that didn't matter.

She spends a little more time looking him over, opening her mouth to ask one thing before thinking better. "What's your name?" Is a more natural lead, she decides. Followed by her introduction. "I'm Collette."

[lepetitvoleur]

He tries to be suspicious, but she seems so nice he can't quite manage it. Even at this age, Remy... well, Remy like women. Their attention makes him happy, even if its just a simple hello. So he offers her a half-smile and says, before thinking to offer a false name, "Remy. Nice ta meet you, Collette."

[whatsupcroc]

Remy. As in Remy Lebeau? He's younger, but when she really look at him, it clicks. Collette flashes him another grin, feeling part of herself sigh in acknowledgement that this was in fact part of the weirdness lingering from the trip back to the Wild West. She debates if it's something to worry about, that she should remember all these people are usually much older or younger than they appear now.

Nawh. More fun to enjoy what she can about this until it passes, for better or worse. With her track record for how serious she's taken in anything, what's the worst that can happen?

"I'd say it's an absolute pleasure," she says with a wink. "I always enjoy meeting new people around here. Did you just get in?"

[lepetitvoleur]

He straightens up, now and tries with mixed results to look less like a lost puppy in the rain. He may be confused and disoriented, but that doesn’t make him shy. And so he responds to the wink with a smirk, and then pauses to consider her question.

“I dunno if y’can call it that, but yeah. I only been here a little while.” His accent’s thicker, now that he’s younger. It’s not that he tries to hide it when he’s older, but rather that years away from New Orleans have pulled him away from it.

[whatsupcroc]

"It's not so bad, everything considered." What, with the weather, the instability, the strange tendency for trouble to find them all... But she mentally shrugs all that off. There's so much to be glad for, and all of that, the excitement and the rest, is what she focuses on.

"Hey, if you've got some spare time, feel like grabbing something to eat? My treat," she clarifies, "As one transport to another. There's some really cool places here, even if we're living on an exile island in the middle of an ongoing rebellion against an AI."

She sounds fairly cheery about the situation overall.

[lepetitvoleur]

He considers her question with another pause. He’s been scavenging, grabbing food where he can find it, but that’s not nearly enough to fill up a boy his age. He’s grown soft, he thinks despairingly—it used to be that he could go for weeks on what he’d steal, and now he’s too used to being served three course meals with the rest of the family. He has his pride, though, so he says, “I couldn’t impose—”

And his stomach growls, for all the world—or at least Collette—to hear. His cheeks go as red as his eyes, and he tries to recover from that. “We can go, sure. But let me take car a the bill.”

[whatsupcroc]

Collette brings her hand up to cough into it, badly disguising a laugh. She proabably shouldn't find this endearing, and she feels worse, knowing to some extent she's got a hidden upperhand in at least knowing who this guy is from jack. Not that she knows so much more past his name and general countenance -- plus a certain tendency to talk about possessing things like it hit a sweet spot somewhere inside his soul. Hey, if some people liked to lock objects away to stare at in their spare time, or at least imply that they'd like to, whatever floats their boat!

"Sure, fine by me," she says with a grin. "Did you stop by the bank already today?"

Chances were, with how everyone's been shifting timelines, they haven't all gotten the same information as when people originally arrived here. She's not sure if Remy even knows he has a bank account.

[lepetitvoleur]

He pauses, having not even realized there was a bank. He wouldn’t have gone there even if he had known, considering it too obvious a target. But he keeps the surprise from his expression and his voice and just shrugs.

“Didn’t need ta,” he says. There’s a healthy amount of currency in one of his coat pockets, taken from the unsuspecting throughout the day. His morals saw nothing wrong with this.

[whatsupcroc]

Ignorance and assumptions are the root of many things blissful. Assured he had more of a handle on the whole of how the city worked than he did, whatever passed as a guilt conscience with her settled down. "Great! Now, what did you feel like? I've got a pretty good array of places up here," she says, tapping her forehead, "It just depends what you feel like."

None of them being expensive, which was half a miracle in and of itself given what the economy should have been like. It tends to mean less fancy places, which suits her jut find.

She hopes Remy won't mind.

[lepetitvoleur]

"You're the lady," he informs her, one eyebrow raised. "You should choose." This is how it always works with Remy and his ladyfriend back home. He steals the money, she picks the venue, and they sneak out and pretend that their respective authority figure have no idea what they're up to.

The way he explains this, now, one would think it was law. And one that Remy Lebeau actually obeyed.

[whatsupcroc]

In what feels like an increasingly more backward slide into what wasn't a date (but one day, she just knows one day she'll manage one of those with someone), Collette thinks over what feels appropriate. New to the city, easy on the wallet, generally has enough variety to appease most folks...

"How do you feel about mock-Italian?"

She refuses to suggest English food. Over a thousand years in the future and they still serve spotted dick and she's not sure if that's not supposed to be some sort of creative curse rained down on the heads of the unwary.

[lepetitvoleur]

She probably could have named anything, and he, being a teenage boy, would have been entirely okay with it. As it is, he smirks at her decision and nods.

“Pizza’s soundin’ pretty good, right now.” He looks around and tries to stick his nose in the air, but despite his French posturing his tastes aren’t too refined. Though he’s been looking at the city all day, his expression is still all wonder and curiosity. It’s a dingy place, to be sure, but he doesn’t see that as bad.

[whatsupcroc]

For a city filled with ruins and half-reconstructed buildings, Exsilium had its own ragtag captivating interest. Collette's been sucked into exploring it past the bounds of reasonable tiredness in an effort tolearn more about this place that she calls home, for a lack of a better stand-in.

Pizza, on another hand, is exactly what the doctor ordered. "It's probably not going to be like you remember it," she warns, "But it's good. Cheesy, fresh sauce, greasy as ever..."

She's getting hungry thinking about it. "Come on! It's a few blocks north of us, getting toward one of the okay Exile neighborhoods." More buildings had been reconstructed and were holding stable. Relative to others parts of the city, it was definitely "okay."

Collette starts them off, checking back to see if Remy and his too-big trenchcoat is keeping pace.

[lepetitvoleur]

"Well, dat's all the important parts," he says, nodding to make the point. He keeps pace with her easily, moving in strange bursts--he'll walk briskly, then pause for moments to glance around, then slow his pace. There's no real consistency to it, though there's something elegant and practiced to his gate despite the nervous energy of it.

Still, he's following her rather obediently, willing to take her lead.

"So, you do this a lot? Tour 'round people y'just met?"

[whatsupcroc]

She lets him match her after deciding there's no use in trying to predict the whole of how he'll move.

"Yep," she says, pausing at an intersection. Years of ingrained training has her looking both ways, which makes sense enough. Exsilium still had a good amount of vehicular traffic, generally unmonitored. "Mostly at the start of the month. Since September or so, people started getting pulled in all together in groups. It gets confusing, and totally overwhelming. I figure even if someone's going to boomerang back home tomorrow, why not help them feel okay here for today?"

She shot a glance up at him, grinning at her own philosophy. Serious as she is, she knows it sounds a little overly optimistic. Getting people to feel okay took more than a day, if it ever happened at all, and she has a way of confusing as much as helping anyone she runs into.

So it goes. She avoids a standing puddle as she crosses the street. "I like meeting people. It makes pretty good sense to me."

[lepetitvoleur]

He thinks on her response for a moment, before he smiles more warmly than he had, up to that point. He's not jaded enough to take optimism for stupidity, and so just nods.

"That's real nice a you," he says, and means that sincerely. "You're not more worried 'bout yourself?"

People are supposed to be self-serving. The fact that she isn't--or says she isn't--doesn't fit into his basic ordering of the world.

He jumps over the puddle she avoided, then glances at her again. "Guess dat's one thing about bein' here--lots of weird people ta meet."

[whatsupcroc]

"It's the best part," she says with a grin. "Weird people who can do and be the most amazing things. Even lawyers!"

Though she laughs as she says that, considering what she finds most remarkable about the lawyers is that they have any in the first place.

Turning down the sidewalk perpendicular to the way they'd been going before, she hums a little at the back of her throat. "Worried about myself, huh? No, not so much." She lets herself think why, a thought process that becomes externalized as she continues speaking. "I mean, it's not like any of us are so much better off or worse than the rest. There's a lot of us who show up here without friends. Let's not even mention family!"

It comes with a mixture of freedom and the potential for loneliness. For her, applying what she wishes to see in others to herself, being friendly to people who are as lost as she was at first, that is important. Selfish in her own way too, because it means getting to feel like she's made those friends, even if they're only tertiary.

She means what she says about liking people. If she could go further, if she really understood part of what drove it, she'd say that having people be so sunk in weirdness that her own inability to walk just blurs into the background.

"If I can help people feel a bit better about this place, then I figure I'm doing something good. Which is sorta about me too, so see? I'm thinking about me." She winks, laughing and dismissing it as much of a point. Being useful, being necessary, being liked -- she's not the first teen who's wanted all those things. She won't be the last.