revivalproject | You can play the wolf

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You can play the wolf

WHO: Kaz Brekker and you?
WHERE: back in regular Temba
WHAT: Kaz's bad leg is punishing him for Not!Temba shenanigans
WHEN: August
WARNINGS: none anticipated but TBD

Public Kitchen/Inn

Kaz hadn't liked the idea of anyone seeing his weakness, but he would have to find a way to make this work to his benefit in Temba. Besides he was used to keeping company around with thieves, cheats, and murderers. In Temba it was a sight less lethal to show any sort of weakness. So, Kaz had hiimself set in one chair with his bad leg propped up in another. After the punishment he had put it through when exploring Not-Temba it was now throbbing angrily. His cane was leaned agianst the table next to him, while Kaz was looking through the Network posts on his smartphone.

The Deep End

It might be less odd to find him here, but as it had been earlier, there was a seat for himself and his bad leg proppeed on another. His cane was also leaned next to him, too. This time he was still looking at his smartphone, but also had a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass at his elbow.

Wildcard

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Alberto goes to the Deep End on occasion, not because he's interested in the drinks offered, but to refill Cayde's fish tanks with new addictions. Some visitors, namely a small green child with big ears, like to grab the fish for a quick snack.

The young sea monster is wearing gloves to make sure he doesn't get his hands wet, and he's half-carrying, half-dragging a large bucket with different fishes inside into the room. Alberto lets out a sigh when he finally managed to bring the bucket all the way next to the tank, and pauses to look around.

Cayde is nowhere to be found but Kaz isn't hard to spot. He still reminds Alberto of the actors that appear in the box with moving pictures and the posters that decorate the streets of Portorosso. The boy smiles at the view. Forgetting the fishes for the time being, he walks over to the other man, giving him a wave.

"Ey, ciao! Nice to see you again. Do you know if Cayde is here?"

Kaz had actually seen the aforementioned green child and see that child use the Force to catch a fish. He wondered who was restocking the fish tank but was still somewhat surprised to see that it was Alberto.

"No, I don't."

He tilted his head to indicate the whiskey bottle.

"It's self-serve here, so for all I know Cayde's not here at all."

While Cayde suggested in a previous conversation that there was something special going on with Grogu, Alberto has yet to see him use the force. Now, that will be interesting once it happens. He's happy to help the Exo restock the tank, it's not difficult for Alberto to dive into the water and find pretty fishes, both to eat and to keep as pets.

"Ah, okay." He gets the bottle of whiskey a curious look, wondering why anybody would be drinking brown water, then his focus is back on Kaz and his leg. "Did you get hurt in the other city? There were a lot of big plants around. Bigger than I've ever seen."

It's probably for the best that Alberto didn't realize whiskey wasn't just brown water. Kaz didn't drink very often and he had only been drunk when he was 13 once. After brandy made him be sick, he swore off most alcohol. But after he'd broken the bone in his leg, the only pain killer he would use was the occasional bottle of whiskey and only when the pain was bad. Today it was really bad.

Often Kaz would say something rude or snarky to shut down any speculation about his leg. He grimaced a bit at it this time.

"No. Couple years ago I broke my leg. The bone was never set so it never healed right. I've walked with a limp ever since."

What Kaz isn't saying is that it was incredibly painful to try going without his cane for a while, and that cold could make the pain in his leg worse, and that sometimes even when he was using his cane the leg would be painful to move.

He's really not interested in any kind of alcohol, and he's also not about to judge other people's drinking habits. The people in Portorosso often drank wine, and that was one of the few alcoholic beverages he knows because he remembers the color.

Alberto glanced at Kaz's leg briefly and then made a sympathetic face. That explained things. Rather than ask more about it, or say he was sorry about Kaz's bad luck, he tried to offer solutions instead.

"If you had a Vespa you wouldn't have to walk around so much then. I haven't seen any in the city, but we could try to build one. We just need the right parts."

It was a little more complicated than that, but he's been dreaming of Vespas for a long time and wasn't about to give up on the dream of having one just yet. Everyone deserved one.

"Since I'm here, if you need anything let me know and I can get it for you." He planned to stay on the deep End for a little bit, to talk to Cayde or to see the aquatic life through the huge window. Alberto looked around the bar, mulling something. Kaz did say that this place is self-service..."Do you know if there's Espresso?" Why yes, he's asking about coffee.

Kaz didn't actually know what 'Vespa' meant, but maybe Alberto was on to something with it anyway. Horses were a luxury in Ketterdam and wouldn't be allowed in the streets anyway so were very rarely seen. Because in Ketterdam one traveled along the canals and waterways. Because it was something he had to do there, Kaz had carried on doing it here. But if he could ride over walk that actually would help.

"I don't know anything about a Vespa but I'm willing to bet that Stark could make something that did the same thing at the Forge."

Kaz paused for a beat.

"Have you already met him, yet?"

Horses were also temperamental and harder to maintain. Not to mention that getting onto them practically required a ladder. Alberto would much favor something that wouldn't try to bite him on a whim.

"It's a vehicle! Did you see Cobb's post about his speeder? A Vespa is similar, but it has wheels, it doesn't fly, and it's smaller and easier to ride. They can also go really fast, take you anywhere you want to go!"

Maybe if building a Vespa was too complicated, they could go with something simpler for Kaz, like an electric scooter. These didn't exist in Alberto's home world, yet, but perhaps someone here knew how to make one. At the question, the boy shook his head.

"I don't think so. What does he look like?"

"I did not see it, but something that flew wouldn't need to have wheels. I would think that flying would be better anyway."

Kaz was smirking inwardly at what Tony would make of a child willingly being friends with Kaz. Even better was the idea of what Tony would make of Kaz actually being nice for once.

"Tall-ish, black hair and a goatee. He's usually around his Forge or what's called 'the Library' but doesn't have any books in it."

"The speeder really looked amazing. Cobb said it runs on Spaceship fuel, and that we didn't have much of that here, so it needs a more efficient engine. Maybe everything that flies uses that kind of fuel to power up? I told him that his best option woudl be to chage it into something else to avoid having the fuel issue in the first place. "

And yes, Cobb had literally said 'Spaceship fuel', which Alberto had been confused by because back then he still had to see the ships in the Hangar. He already enjoyed speed and making up things with scrap before he got the engineering data point, it was kind of in his blood, and now he wanted to build ALL the things.

As for befriending Kaz...Alberto found the man intriguing and interesting all at once, and he had been talking to him like an actual adult instead of babying him. Of course, he liked Kaz.

"I know where the library is, but haven't visited yet. I'll have to see if I can meet him and ask about the vespa. Do you have a favorite color?" He looked at Kaz up and down and then added. "Black doesn't count."

"Then a speeder that ran on solar power would be the best, but a speeder would still work just fine."

Kaz still didn't know what a 'Vespa' was but he knew what speeders were and had seen a lot of different types on Coruscant. Actually using one of those would be extremely helpful. And one thing Kaz did was never insult people. But if they took offense to something he said, then that was different. Even if Alberto was young, he wasn't stupid and Kaz would think of it as an insult toward Alberto to speak to him any differently than Kaz would speak to an older person. But the question actually made Kaz think for a moment. Everything he owned was black save the shirt Lark made for him. He hadn't really considered another color beyond that.

"...dark red, I guess? Though I mostly do prefer black where possible."

"The sun can power up vehicles?" He had no idea, which is obvious by the surprised tone of his voice. To be fair to Alberto, until a few years ago, he didn't even know that the sun was actually called that. Most sea monsters didn't even know about the big, flaming ball in the sky. A solar-powered speeder could solve a lot of problems, but how to make it a reality was the tricky part. Alberto would have to ask that Stark person Kaz mentioned.

They were both clueless in different areas, but they could learn from each other. Alberto might not be as fond of books as Luca, but he liked learned too when it was something that interested him, and Kaz seemed to be really smart.

"Dark red is a pretty color, and it will look nice with your dark clothes. If it were all black, it would get too hot under the sun."

Steve walked in, still getting his bearings around Temba considering he'd just gotten here and ran off to the Not-Temba location. He hadn't found a place to sleep outside of his ship just yet but this place was as good a place as any to start looking. Walking in however he is distracted by the younger looking man sitting with his leg up. Leg up and with a cane.

Yeah. He can understand days like that.

"Heat packs help a little, if you're havin' a sore day," he said as he walked a little closer. "My joints ain't always agreeable when the weather turns so that pretty much made it so I could walk in the wintertime."

Kaz stayed looking at his smartphone, this wasn't the fir st time someone had tried to give the cripple advice, but when Steve explained that his joints would cause him pain in winter, then Kaz did look up.

"It's not the joint, it's the bone."

When he spoke he sounded like he gargled with whiskey and ground glass every morning; like an grizzled old man speaking from a teenagers mouth.

"Couple years ago I broke it. The bone was never set so it never healed right. I've walked with a limp ever since."

Kaz shrugged one shoulder.

"But the pain gets worse in winter."

Steve winced at the story. "Someone in my apartment block had that happen. Broke it as a kid falling from a tree and no one could afford a doctor. Kept him from serving when the war came."

Steve and he had commiserated about their poor luck when his brother and Bucky both signed up and they were going to be the ones left behind.

"He sometimes said wrapping it tight made things better. Or he got some aspirin that helped. I dunno if we have some around here but I could check?"

There were a few things that Kaz wasn't sure about. But he figured 'doctor' must mean a medic. And he didn't know what 'aspirin' was but suspected it was a pain killer of some kind. Kaz eschewed all pain killers but the occasional bottle of whiskey. Pain killers tended to make everything blunted and Kaz disliked that feeling.

"I wouldn't know what aspirin was, so I probably wouldn't take any I found here. Wrapping the leg tight I had not heard about though."

Granted it was too hot for that right now. Currently, Kaz was wearing black pants, the white shirt that Lark had made him with the heat in mind, a black waistcoat, and black leather gloves.

"Sounds like the guy in your apartment dodged a bullet, literally, if he didn't have to go to war because of it."

"Me and him, we both were keen to serve. It was a bit of a disappointment that we couldn't. Him and his leg and me and..." He gave a rueful laugh. "Well. A lot of things for me. But it's no matter. Not like I can do a lot of fighting over here."

He extended a hand toward Kaz, smiling.

"Steve Rogers, by the way."

Kaz didn't understand why anyone would actually want to be in a war. When Steve offered his hand there was a beat of silence when Kaz looked at the outstretched hand. Since he had come to Temba many people had offered their hand to shake but Kaz had mostly declined the gesture and thereby refused anyone's touch. For a moment he flexed his fingers for the comfort of feeling leather gloves tighten around them. Steve had actually offered something practical before he had even known his name.

Kaz returned the handshake.

"Kaz Brekker."

Steve shook Kaz's hand and released it before it got to be too long.

"Kaz Brekker. That is a new name for me. I take it you're probably not from the places that I am. Earth? Brooklyn? Any of those ring a bell?"

Steve had talked to enough people to know that neither of those things were very well known. Earth seemed to be familiar to many but the variations on it were numerous.

"I wouldn't know where Earth, Brooklyn is."

The way Kaz was saying it 'Brooklyn' sounded like a country.

"I hadn't even thought about outer space until I came here, so I couldn't tell you what my planet is called."

She'd been curious about the bar ever since it was mentioned to her. Perhaps it was strange for a child to be used to such an atmosphere, but then Omega hung around interesting and unusual people.

The place was cleaner than Cid's, but just as empty on an off day. The girl's eye was immediately drawn to the large windows that held back the lake waters contained between the buildings making up the Towers, and she ran right over to the glass, gasping as she peered through it.

Actually it wasn't strange at all to Kaz. Where he was from it was pretty normal for people of every age from 10 to 50 to be inside gambling palaces where there was liquor, cigars, and various drugs also availabe.

He was alone at The Deep End at the moment so there wasn't much else to see beyond a girl being excited over fish.

"I know alien fish might be weird, but it can't be healthy to be that excited over watching fish swim."

"Well maybe you've gotten to see fish up close before," the girl replied, her face near the glass as she tried to keep track of one that had swam by until it faded towards the farther end of the lake. Stepping back, she glanced over at the sole other occupant in the room before she let her eyes rove to inspect the rest of the bar.

"Is it usually so quiet?" she asked as she let her hand trail over a table, trace over the curve of a chair.

Never seen a fish before? Kaz couldn't make sense of that. He just shrugged in reply to her question.

"I'm not here that often to be able to tell. But the bar is self-serve so I'd probably say yes."

The girl continued to wander the rest of the bar, exploring every little bit of it, fascinated by the mismatched chairs, pausing again to look at the additional tank filled with fish. She smiled up at the worn if crooked dart board hung up on the wall.

"Oh. Self-serve?" An odd concept, but she supposed it made enough sense when there were only so many people about. She wandered back over towards Kaz's side of the room. "Is your leg all right?" she asked, head tilted to the side.

...it looked like a dive bar. What was she seeing that Kaz was not? And Kaz would often react with a rude comment, or snarky comment, or even no comment at all with just some silent staring. But this time he didn't do any of that and just grimaced at his leg.

"Not exactly. Couple years ago I broke my leg. The bone was never set so it never healed right. I've walked with a limp ever since."

What Kaz isn't saying is that it was incredibly painful to try going without his cane for a while, and that cold could make the pain in his leg worse, and that sometimes even when he was using his cane the leg would still be painful to walk on at all. The cane looked to be a long black stick with a crow's skull making the handle and it was leaned against the chair that Kaz was sitting in.

She frowned thoughtfully, nodding as he explained. The facilities in Tipoca City were well equipped to make sure healing of any injuries the clone troopers suffered would be taken care of sufficiently that had she never left it wouldn't have occurred to her that not everyone had such access to things like that. Being here on an abandoned world had opened her eyes even more.

"Do you take medication for it?" the girl asked, pulling herself into a chair at an adjacent table so she wouldn't accidentally jar the young man's leg in trying to sit at one of the other chairs there.

"No. All the pain killers in my world are like being drunk, already."

Kaz nodded to the bottle of whiskey beside him.

"The most I'll do is take the edge off the pain sometimes but I usually don't like the way being drunk feels. So most of the time I'll go without whiskey too."

"How about something topical? Like a salve?" Omega suggested. Hanging out in a bar on Ord Mantell did quickly teach her how much those drinks could affect people, so it wasn't too surprising that this happened to be Kaz's personal choice of remedy.

"Then it wouldn't affect your whole body, just where you put it."

And just like that, Omega has Kaz's full and undivided attention.

"Would you be able to make a salve here in Temba?"

The girl offered him a faint smile. "The medical datapoint only lets me know how certain things, mostly for the hospital. But there's signs of old medicines and things, so I think it's mainly getting the ingredients for it. I might have to get the agricultural datapoint or find someone who already touched it, but making a salve should be possible."

"The Datapoints will only stay in your memory one at a time. If you get the one for Agriculture, then Medical will be deleted from your memory."

And Kaz had been resistant to any of the Datapoints for the exact reason that they downloaded and deleted themselves directly to his brain.

"But if you talk to a guy called Tommy at the greenhouse, he does have the Agriculture Datapoint already. Kid, if you could make a salve that relieves pain in just one spot then I'll owe you big."

As in offering up your first born child, big. Kaz made very sure that he did not end up owing anyone favors.

That reminder did make her wrinkle her nose. She didn't much like the idea of that either, really. It wouldn't do much good to lose the medical knowledge if you still needed something of it when making the medicine.

"That's a good point. I'll go find Tommy then," she said resignedly. But Kaz had definitely responded positively to the suggestion. She'd be glad to help him out with that if she could. It wasn't a permanent fix, but it was something. "I'll see what I can do."

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You can play the wolf

The Deep End

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Imagine Mr Burns saying 'excellent Smithers'

rolfmao, fantastic

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Inn

Re: Inn

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TDE

More kids in the bar than the public kitchen lol

they know where the fun's at

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