revivalproject | Coruscant Catch-All

Was it like that? Tommy didn’t shop much back home. But he did frown. That was something he should have known.

“That tends to work better when you’re around only humans. Here it could be grouped with stuff I can’t digest.”

She gave him a reassuring smile. "Good point."

After a brief moment's thought, she approached the nearest merchant and held up the strange fruit, pointing questioningly between herself and Tommy before miming taking a bite. The besalisk shook its head, its wide mouth bunching in a slight grimace, and pointed to a nearby cart filled with small, round purple fruit with magenta blossoms and white stripes, a little smaller than tennis balls. Clarice smiled widely and nodded her thanks.

"Seems like those are our better option."

Huh. Tommy hadn’t even thought about checking with the shopkeeper, mostly assuming the language barrier would be impossible without, you know, a translation guide. Normally when he went internationally, he bought a pocket ‘English to whatever’ book, but here it hadn’t seemed like an option. Still, with her option suggested, Tommy looked over the offered item.

“Looks nice enough. Could be a good idea to add in. I’ll make a note and take a picture of it. And still gotta find some sorta meal or flour or something, but the more fruit and veg, the better. We don’t have everything I’d want to make good flavor profiles.”

Not that he’s a good cook at all. But he fucking tries and no one else seems particularly eager to take over.

"If you're thinking about flavor profiles, at least you're off to a good start," she said encouragingly. "Grains or beans, too. If they have anything resembling rice, it'll keep well and be more filling than meal."

She made a deductive leap as she offered him her hand. "Clarice Starling. Came in on the First Breath this morning. ... Are you the chef on your ship, or just planning ahead?"

tThe fact that he was unfamiliar with the food, but still planning ahead, made her think he'd come in with her, maybe on one of the other ships.

Edited 2021-03-14 22:59 (UTC)

“We can put together rice, I think. But bread isn’t something we have back on the planet.”

Tommy takes the hand and pumps it quickly before starting to gather other things.

“Hello Clarice,” he says. “Tommy Shepherd, Twin Roses. And by some fucked up reason, I ended up running the diner in Temba. Because apparently either people can’t cook or they don’t wanna.”

Which was a bad idea. He wasn’t a good choice for any of it, especially with everyone else not interested or only helping out some.

"Well, then, sounds like you could use a hand, Tommy. I'm no master chef, but I know a thing or two about a kitchen."

She wasn't sure how she felt about that f-bomb: he'd been perfectly polite up until then. Maybe it was his frustration about that particular development with the diner talking. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

"I know even more about navigating a market where you don't speak the language. My beau and I, we did a lot of foreign traveling over the last couple years."

Sorry, Clarice, but Tommy was just a guy from Jersey who had been through so much that cursing was a survival thing. Hope he doesn’t create a problem with that.

“I couldn’t cook at all when I got here. Some would say I still can’t. But I do my best at it, and since I’m also the main person at the greenhouse...”

He shrugs briefly. Very briefly. His shoulders move faster than any human’s should.

“I travel a lot too. But there isn’t an English to whatever phrase book and dictionary for me to work with,” he explains with a frustrated tone. So help is appreciated. Especially since he could be seen as impatient.

It was all context, really. If he swore every other word, she'd just have to adjust how she presented herself to him, relax the professionalism a little. She knits her brows a bit in confusion at the shrug, and wonders if she actually saw that. She had to have, she realizes. She wouldn't have any reason not to trust her senses at the moment.

"There isn't, no," Clarice agrees. "But the taxi drivers here have understood me well enough, and a decent amount of people who look human. It's got to be equivalent, just called something else other than English. The problem is the alphabet."

She gestured to the signs around them, all in angular Aurabesh. "If I could crack that, we might get somewhere. I'm trying but it's slow going. Cryptology wasn't my stronger suit at Quantico."

Quantico. The name results in an instantaneous change in all of Tommy’s body language. Why wouldn’t it, when Quantico meant she was a Fed? Instead of eager and talkative he’s closing down, his gaze distrustful, and there is absolutely a few extra inches between them faster than an eye could blink.

“Pretty sure a language isn’t a solvable puzzle,” he says, not taking his eyes off of her.

He didn’t trust cops, no matter what you called them.

It's not the first time she's watched someone completely shut down and change their body language at the mention of the Bureau, and it won't be the last. There's the tiniest tilt of her head, like a bird before it hops to another branch, as she takes his measure.

"That depends entirely on how you look at it. Even if the Agri hadn't stripped me of my rank, Tommy, I haven't been with the Bureau for years. I understand there are a million reasons you could have to not trust me right now, but not many of them carry over here. You seem like a bright young man. I'd hate to get off on the wrong foot with you because in some other place and time we wouldn't have the opportunity to get to know each other."

She gives him a patient, but but calculatedly unpatronizing smile.

“You don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with me because I could make your life miserable,” Tommy offered with a quick shrug. It needs said

He has to protect himself.

“How did you get booted?”

Those two blunt statements are a one-two punch: a threat, coupled with the coarse 'booted', both threaten to put her on edge herself. In the recessed halls of her mind palace, her younger self still snarls you sonovabitch, but John Brigham steps out from his space there and takes Trainee Starling by the arm, leads her gently away to take out her rage in the firing range there, set with porcelain busts of Chilton and Krendler to shoot to her heart's content.

This act of self-restraint takes her only a brief moment, during which Starling purses her lips and looks off to one side as though thinking of the best way to answer.

"I was investigating a fugitive, and was in line to get some pretty serious accolades if he was caught. One of their victims was a very rich and twisted man, who wanted to catch them for his own pleasure and revenge. He paid up the political line and traded favors to see me framed, so it looked like I was aiding the fugitive. In return, my superior got to watch me hang at the judicial committee, eat my public shame for breakfast like it was an extra side of bacon, and get a bid for senator out of it to boot. They took my badge and, in my own way, I told them where they could put it."

Booted because of politics? Well, that fixes that. Clearly she's not a normal fed. Approved. For now.

"See, I woulda just put it there, because it'd be hilarious. But I'm better at getting away than most people," Tommy laughs, grinning. It's better. He's definitely feeling better now.

"Oh really?" She can tell the laugh and the smile are genuine, and it's a relief. She smiles right along with him, curious. This kid - though really, she should be thinking of him as a young man - seems like he could be trouble, but in more of a 'good-heart-bored-and-frustrated' sort of way. The sort of young man she had had a soft spot for in her own youth, before she'd learned to guard her heart.

"Dare I ask how?"

Yeah, call him a kid to his face, and he'll definitely make noise about it. That said, she's definitely wrong about the kind of trouble he is. People usually are until he proves them so wrong that it can be scary.

"I can run at supersonic speeds," Tommy answered, quite casually. "I'm a superhero."

If she ever does prove him wrong in that fashion, she'll come down on him hard, but hopefully it won't come to that.

"Ahh, I was told there were folks like you here." She purses her lips thoughtfully. "I have to admit, I've never met anyone like you. So if anything I ask is considered ... I don't know, awkward or inappropriate, I apologize in advance. I'm just curious. Is it ... common where you're from? Does everyone have something they can do like that?

"Where I'm from? You mean New Jersey?" Tommy asks, shaking his head. It's not like he was from somewhere really strange or something. "Na, mutants aren't any more common in Jersey than other places."

"Jersey?" She blinks, confused. "I'm from Virginia and I've never heard of ..." Her voice trails off as she remembers a few things she'd read when she was studying Stephen Hawking.

"This is a quantum thing, isn't it?"

"Am I the first person that gets to tell you that the multiverse is absolutely real?" Tommy asks, tilting his head curiously. "Because it REALLY is."

So yeah, New Jersey can have mutants.

"I guess you are," she said with surprise. "Where in Jersey, then?"

She hadn't been to too many places in the state, but she was familiar with a few. Particularly anything near Atlantic City or closer to the Maryland border.

"Springfield Township. Not too far from Trenton," Tommy answered with a shrug. So yeah, he was not as familiar with Atlantic City, or most of South Jersey. "You know, the part of the state where effectively all you are happened to be was a suburb of New York City."

"Ahaa." She tried to gauge from his tone whether or not he considered that a good or a bad thing, then wondered if it really mattered. "You kinda gave me the idea you had some bad experiences with the Bureau... I can't apologize for them or anything, but ... I can at least promise you I won't give you a hard time. None of that has any place here."

"Not... the Bureau specifically, but feds back home have a lot of initials and they're all assholes," Tommy answered with a shrug.

Won't give him a hard time. Tommy can't help the bark of laughter here.

"Clarice, you can't. Not here. You don't have the equipment to catch a speedster."

"A lot of them where I'm from are assholes, too," she laughed in response. "Looking back, I was a pretty black sheep. ... How fast can you go?"

Black sheep. He snorts in amusement. Black sheep among the feds are just good people in his book. Or evil. He'd have to think about which she was.

"Last I bothered to check? Right conditions, Mach Four."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

haha I knew SOMEONE had to XD

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

could have sworn I already replied to this, dangit! sorry!

Nah, it's not a problem at all

<3 you are a pearl.

Re: <3 you are a pearl.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject