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--- plot:mawne:2024-01-27 [2024/04/06 16:01] – Today's stuff pinkgothic
+++ plot:mawne:2024-01-27 [2024/04/20 17:00] (current) – Today's stuff pinkgothic
@@ Line 114: / Line 114: @@
 "Great. Evil plans work much better when all involvees are on the same page," Jagdish said, in the same perfectly conversational tone of before. He took another look at her, but she was quite presentable, so he gestured with one arm for her to follow, and began to lead the way. "You might get exposed to more of my dark sense of humour over the course of breakfast." He didn't apologise for it, technically, but the warning felt like it was for her benefit, at least. "Speaking of which, forgive me the curiosity, what //is// dream-me's body count?"
+<color #884400>Adelaide grimaced at the question. Dark humour, indeed. She had a feeling she would need to grow comfortable with that, fast, no matter what path her future held. "Directly? Zero. Your dream-self did not lay a finger on anyone." Which was true; he'd turned up less than she expected. "As an approving bystander? Perhaps two."</color>
+<color #884400>She considered his behaviour yesterday, Yarver's words, and Jagdish's joke about evil plans. "There were also several Team Rocket members sucked into a giant wine bottle that a pokemon played fetch with." It was that last detail that made her think her dreams were naturally-formed nonsense, and not inflicted on her by terrifying Psychic Legendaries. Whether the Legendary in question had been watching was another matter. If so, Adelaide hoped it had amused.</color>
+"Two," he echoed, arching a brow mildly while making a face that at first left her guessing whether he was disappointed at the low number or that it was anything other than zero. The answer stayed true to the mood of his humour: "I feel like there's some room for improvement for dream-me there. If I'm going to feature in a dream as a caricature, it might as well go all-out. Maybe sacrifice a whole town to the volcano, that sort of thing." He shrugged one shoulder, then smiled mischievously at her for a moment. "Maybe your dreams can consider that next time."
+It turned out that the dining area wasn't so far away as that the conversation wasn't effectively cut short. "Sit," Jagdish gestured two fingers to a chair. "I believe Dakarai will be joining us," he said. "I hope that won't be a problem." Instead of giving her much of a chance to look puzzled and ask what pokémon //that// was, he asked: "Any dietary restrictions?"
+<color #884400>She'd guessed somewhat correctly; Jagdish wasn't upset by his dream cameo. His suggestion of sacrificing a town to the volcano struck her as rather more suitable to Keith; the Kzye gym leader had access to both a town and some bubbling lava. Jagdish was much higher up the volcano, true, but from a sacrifice perspective he would have to rely on gravity and that was far less spectacular.</color>
+<color #884400>"No dietry restrictions," Adelaide answered as she sat. Yarver wasn't mentioned, so possibly he'd sensibly gone home to sleep in his own bed. 'Dakarai' was a new... person, she was going to go with 'person' unless otherwise instructed. Best to treat this as she would any other possibly-work-related introduction, then. "Is there anything I should be aware of?"</color>
+<color #884400>That could cover anything from 'another Legendary will be here and threaten to lick you' to 'please mind your language'.</color>
+Jagdish gave her a look as though the question were positively bizarre. "Oh yeah," he said after a moment's pause, not quite managing to look unmistakably impish for it. "You should be mentally prepared for that a breakfast is going to appear on the table in front of you in about, oh... fifteen minutes or so," he deadpanned.
+<color #884400>So she could expect the meal to be normal, then. Or normal by his standards. Which probably meant... anywhere from actually normal to somewhat bizzare, but she could probably eliminate outlandish.</color>
+Jagdish turned to disappear to the kitchen, but paused, then turned to Adelaide and said: "For your calibration, this is a normal day for me, and it's going to continue being a normal day for me." He smiled, but a sharp glint in his eyes revealed that some of the previous day's frustration was //definitely still there//. "Sit tight." Said, he slipped past the frame of the door and into the kitchen.
+<color #884400>And she was still ruffling his feathers somehow, possibly by her mere existence. It was hard not to shrink under his look but that also seemed a poor idea. Hopefully that would pass?</color>
+Six minutes, it turned out, were a long time, even though it was considerably shorter than the time Jagdish said the breakfast would appear. But at six minutes after he'd disappeared into the kitchen, a groggy-looking, dark-skinned man in somewhat worn black slacks sauntered into the dining room, two fingers of his left hand massaging at the edge of one orbit, his posture casual and tired for all of the two seconds it took him to notice someone else was in the room.
+For a split second, his face transformed into an expression of deer-in-headlights. Then the moment was gone, and he let his demeanour slip into mildly slouching teenager, wordlessly slipping into a sit opposite of Adelaide, looking at her with some curiosity.
+Presumably, this was Dakarai. If so, he was a very, very quiet man. ...or perhaps someone used to not speaking until it was explicitly his turn to talk.
+<color #884400>Politeness rarely went astray. "Good morning. I'm Adelaide," she greeted, then stalled slightly on what ettiquette applied here. " Uh... my apologies for disrupting your regular routine?"</color>
+"Hi," the man said. He had to be in his early thirties, but he acted younger, for sure, in various ways - some subtle, some not. "Are you a circuiter?" There was a look of confused fascination on his face, and maybe a tinge of horror. Whatever the exact emotion, it had apparently overridden his instinct to introduce himself.
+<color #884400>"Not for quite a few years. I'm visiting Taqnetah for other business," Adelaide answered. Neither of the gym leaders had told her she needed to keep quiet about their grand conspiracy, but she liked to think that was mostly because it was //blitheringly obvious//. And she could nonsense smalltalk with the best of them.</color>
+<color #884400>Although she may not need to. "Are you Dakarai, by any chance?" If he was, that would likely prompt a topic of conversation. If he wasn't, that should prove distracting.</color>
+The man visibly untensed as she dated her last circuiting attempts to several years back. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry," he added, realising he hadn't introduced himself in kind when she had. One arm reached across the table, offering to shake her hand. "Dakarai N'Sehla," he introduced himself. "Are you a scientist doing a survey?" he asked, curiosity in his voice. Maybe that was the second most common type of person up here.
+<color #884400>"Nothing as interesting, exciting, or valuable as that," she joked. "Is that what you're here to do? I'm mostly familiar with the coastal areas of Sehto; I used to work on the S.S Anne. Although I'm glad that's well behind me."</color>
+<color #884400>His discomfort with circuiting was interesting. Plausibly connected to the conspiracy in some way? She suspected Jagdish would illuminate things once he returned, and she had at least an hour of funny cruise ship stories to select from if necessary.</color>
+The smell of savoury pancakes was drifting toward them even before they could see Jagdish. Five seconds later, he was in the door, then through it, holding a small stack of plates, the top-most of which held in turn a stack of pancakes. He set a plate down in front of Adelaide, the pancakes hovering under her chin for a moment's logistic juggling, then did the same leaning over to Dakarai, before setting down a third in the spot right next to Adelaide and the pancakes in the middle between them. Hands now free, they fished through a pocket on his apron, and he brought up cutlery like a metal bouquet of flowers, picking at it to pass individual pieces around. As he did this, he commented: "Oh, I bet you two have been expertly beating around the bush."
+Dakarai squeezed at a fork, the look of surprise back on his face, if rather milder than before.
+"Adelaide, this is Dakarai," Jagdish redundantly introduced, seizing one of the pancakes from the stack as he did so. "He spies on circuiters for me." Then he smiled across at Dakarai and said: "Dakarai, this Adelaide. She may be assisting us here in future with chores and logistics. You may talk to her freely."
+"An assistant?" Dakarai echoed in spirit, sounding mildly surprised.
+"It's a large house," Jagdish gestured with his free hand, as though 'cathedral in partial ruin' met the qualifications of 'house'. He seemed to remember his other apron pocket, plucking a bottle of honey out of it and plonking it onto the table. Rather than use it, he started to cut into his pancake.
+<color #884400>Well. That answered the question on whether it was safe to talk about what was happening. At least in the abstract 'Dakarai is aware of the conspiracy' sense; it could still be quite dangerous in the 'rant about being caught up in it' sense.</color>
+<color #884400>"Logistics, I suppose, is what I was discussing with Yarver yesterday," Adelaide offered, before tasting a bite of her pancake to see if it needed adulteration.</color>
+"Oh, so Yarver brought you in?" Dakarai smiled. The tension seemed gone now - Jagdish had evidently said some magic words to put him fully at ease. "Are you a friend of Yarver's?" he asked, curious.
+<color #884400>"Friendly acquaintance at best. It was only the third time I've had the pleasure of meeting him." Which made threats of death if she fled even more alarming. And, admittedly, spoke to Yarver's ability to judge others' character: if she'd been an evil person or concerned only with her own skill, she'd have bolted. He had to know she cared about the consequences of such actions.</color>
+<color #884400>Although if he thought she was that sort of psychopath, she wouldn't have passed the initial job interview.</color>
+Dakarai's curiosity seemed to pingpong between some thoughts for a moment, before he began: "Do you owe somebody--?"
+"She's a perfectly normal, job-seeking person," Jagdish interrupted. "And I am sure she would like to be able to have her breakfast."
+"Sorry," Dakarai said, although without much of any particular inflection. Puzzlement, maybe. For a moment, his mouth opened as though he were going to elaborate where his line of questioning had been going, but he merely closed it again, then tended to his own meal.
+"Not meaning to cut either of you off," Jagdish commented to Adelaide, conversationally. "But the missing piece of information you're looking for is that Dakarai, much as he appreciates me, generally thinks in who owes who what, socially speaking. So he's assuming something along the lines of that you owe a gymleader your life and that's why you're here. It makes sense from his perspective, that's why he's here." A pause. "In fact, let me phrase this maximally bluntly, so you're not confused about the dynamics here, or think they apply to you, which they don't and never will: For all intents and purposes, Dakarai is a slave."
+If Dakarai objected to the term or thought it was somehow inappropriate, shaming or otherwise an attack on his integrity and values, it was completely invisible. He didn't look particularly submissive, though he had certainly shown that he would do as asked, such as ending a line of questioning. He didn't look beaten up or malnourished.
 **✘ IN PROGRESS**
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