revivalproject | Coruscant Catch-All

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."

"Jesus," she marvels quietly, "that's faster than a got-damn Blackbird jet. And you can get that fast right off the bat?! You must go through sneakers like a hummingbird through sugar."

"Not off the back, it takes a bit of build up time. But my brother enchants my shoes and clothes to not burn up from friction," Tommy sighs, rolling his eyes. "And I haven't been up much past Mach One since hitting Temba. Not enough food."

Thus the shopping.

"So you really are like a hummingbird," she said with a light, teasing smile. "I'm sorry, though, but did you say he enchants your stuff? Don't tell me magic's real, too. Your version of the Earth seems a hell of a lot more interesting than mine."

"Well, I sleep rather than have some weird sorta hibernation, but I guess," Tommy answered, sounding less than pleased with the description. Even if it wasn't too bad of one.

"Dude, magic's completely real. Why wouldn't it be?"

Sorry your Earth is boring he guesses.

As strange as that question is, she can't argue with it. She can't say 'because it's not possible', since in his world, it very clearly is. As such, she shrugs a bit with a raise of her eyebrows that silently concedes the argument.

"Like I said, then: hell of a lot more interesting than mine. ... What else do you think you need for the diner? No, wait. Better question. What sort of things do you already have that we need to bulk up or work with?"

"We have a lot of vegetables and fruits and root things. I wanted a few new things with seeds so, if they're good, I can grow more stuff. But mostly, we need flour of all sorts. Noodles, grains, things like that."

Which is a LOT of stuff to need given it's more than he can work on his own planetside. Sure, the green house has some grains, but it taught him NOTHING about managing them. What he uses are things that are easy to cook.

"Hmm." She thought about that as she looked around the market. "Normally I'd suggest rice because that's a good staple, but it also needs a lot of water and I'm not sure what the state of that is, back there. You're right, though, grains are a real good idea. Especially something like a bean, so you can use it as a base and still get protein that tastes better than that slop on the ships."

She makes a face. She'd tried the cinnamon paste out of curiosity. It had been servicable for what it was meant to be - astronaut food - but it wouldn't do to live on permanently by any means.

"What about something like corn? That's versatile and you can make flour out of it." She picked up a vegetable that looked promising. There were multiple seeds or kernels sprouting from the center in pleasant Fibonacci spirals.

"The water is fine, we'll be okay with that, so I'll see about finding some of that. And beans."

Yeah, he sighs over beans. He's less excited. He likes bread, and pasta, and so many other things. That said, he looks at her horrified at the claim.

"Wow, you know the chili protein paste is amazing, right?"

Wait, he needs to pause.

"Corn meal really comes from corn?"

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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.

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