[A little grin of his own and he looks at his glass. Almost empty.
Oh. That's pessimistic, isn't it? He should try better. Or refill it. But for now he's pacing himself. He's never been more than momentarily buzzed, after all.]
[Hank glances at the part of the wall he's leaning against and then slumps to one side, stretching his arms a little in hopes that the back of his arm will rub a little more of that old charcoal drawing off.]
Even this shit wouldn't be so bad if- well it'd still be, you know- [He stops, almost stuttering around the sheer scale of what it is he's talking around. All those fucking people. It'd be bad no matter what.] -You know. But if we just had some kind of explanation, some kinda- I don't know, review? I hate that bureaucratic BS as much as the next guy but it's there for a reason, she can't pull us out of that- out of a situation like that and then give us nothing.
[He leans forward, having pretty completely distracted himself from his stupid little worries about his nutso wall decorations, and murmurs, almost to himself. The way Astoria handled absolutely all of this is still so- well it's something.]
[No such luck, Hank. The movement just grabs Barabas' attention back to the wall. He has not forgotten about those.]
Some bureaucracy has its place. You're right. There's been no response to this, no debriefing, no discussion of what exactly went wrong. It's fucked up to start with, but it's not like we can pretend it away or forget about it.
[Nope. Not even a little.] If Astoria won't step up, then that leaves us.
[Another frown and he looks down in his glass.] ...is the wall art something you've always been fond of, or is it a new hobby?
[He huffs, grinning a little, caught out. He looks off to one side, pursing his lips as he tries to decide how - and what - to explain. Hank could tell him about his post-it notes at home, scribbled out in whatever fleeting seconds of optimism he can carve out of his day and stuck around the mirror where he can't not see in the morning - but then he'd have to explain those, too.]
Fuck it, lean up a little.
[He takes a drink, more than a sip, this time, and stands, tugging at the blanket against the wall behind them. They are carved in there but there's not that many to show, just two - well, most of two and some change - little phrases, so at least it doesn't make him look like the world's weirdest serial killer. Yet. There's the one behind him, hang in there, with the drawing below it that's now mostly blurred. There's the start of one at the other end nearest Barabas, if Barabas leans far enough forward to let Hank pull the blanket out from behind him. That one so far just says 'goo'. The one between those two says 'wake up and be fabu' and yeah that one's not done either, but it's close enough that he can't pass it off as anything else. It's that one Hank makes the face at.]
That one was a little, uh- funnier? [Is that the word? The irony in this little habit's so tired by now he honestly can't remember if this shit's actually funny or not.] -When I was the only one who was ever gonna see it.
[The plan to leave it at that and let the guy think whatever sputters out after all of one second. Any silence - at least on Hank's end - is too awkward to deal with.]
My artistic tastes usually run a little differently but uh, I guess everyone needs some variety.
[Barabas' first reaction, mostly to Hank's response of 'fuck' is a laugh, but he does as he's asked and leans up, enough that Hank can sort out the blankets and make it easier to see the various wall decor.
Interesting. Inspirational.
He cracks a smile.]
No, I think it's spot on. You are fabu, Hank.
[He gets it though. They're thrown here. Whatever scraps they can hammer together of comforts and pieces of home, reminders of the familiar, they're important.]
Oh yeah? What kind? You writing up some more shit or you just haven't figured out how to reinvent the notebook yet, keep it all in one place?
[He's still smiling, a little bit, from making Barabas laugh. That's not something he expected today, to be laughing with someone, but it's... nice. It's nice.]
[Hank takes a drink, leaning his head back against the wall, relaxing now that the 'bitching about horrific facts of life that they can't change' part of this evening seems like it's on intermission.]
Depends on what those, uh- those freaky faceless assholes can scare up for you. What's your office like back home? You said you don't have a lot of tech there, right? What's that like?
[He sighs, finally standing to go pour himself another glass, glancing back.]
Law books. Legal pads. Notebooks. And tech is unreliable, yes. It only works when the magic waves have ebbed, and even then not great. But I do have a computer and a printer. I even have a fax machine -- but the damn thing works maybe thirty percent of the time even when tech is up. So I rely a lot on books and paper and pen.
Sounds nice, actually. We have to use, uh, all sorts of modern shit, they'd have us using that holo-screen crap if the budget wasn't so tight. They probably will soon, if they don't swap us all out for androids first. People look at you like you grew another head if you try to use normal fucking paper. I mean, sure, you have to deal with magic fucking waves, but- What does that even mean, anyway? Magic waves? Is that like solar flares? Do I even want to know?
[Probably not. But he asked already, so. Fuck it.]
That level of technology is almost hard to picture. Androids... is that true AI? We never quite got that far before it all came crashing down.
[Nowhere near that far.
But he grins at what Hank asks. Well, maybe Hank doesn't want to know. But Barabas sure will tell him.]
About forty years ago, there was no such thing as magic as far as most people knew. You know, aside from sleight of hand and Las Vegas big stage illusion bullshit. Then the Shift -- the first magic wave -- happened. Magic crashed back into the world in a big way. Magic and technology are diametrically opposed. Tech doesn't work when magic is present. So the world went to hell. Electricity was gone, engines stopped running, planes fell out of the sky. Buildings fell -- magic has it out for high rises in particular. The Lycos Virus and the Immortus Pathogen popped up. A whole lot of people died in those first few years.
[Basically it was a small apocalypse.] Those who didn't die, got used to magic coming and going like waves on the ocean. One minute Magic is there, and we've got monsters and fae lanterns instead of lamps, spells work. Then the magic recedes and the generators and electricity hums back to life. Engines run. Phones work. I was born about a decade after the Shift, so that's the only world I've ever known.
That makes you about thirty, right? Practically a baby.
[He smiles faintly, teasing, and then looks down, taking all the rest of it in as he watches his thumb move over the edge of his glass.]
I feel a little weird about saying it sounds nice now, though. Do you know where it comes from? The magic stuff? Has anyone tried to, I don't know, study it or... whatever?
As far as we can tell, it's just always been there. It was dormant for a while until technology gained too much ground and tipped the balance, and magic surged back like a vengeance. It seems the opposite happened before, magic reached too far and snapped back to nothing. And over the centuries, humans forgot about it outside legends and fairy tales.
About when'd that go down? The initial uh, wave thing. I guess if magic's always been a thing where you come from our uh, dimensions split off a long time ago but if you had fax machines and stuff, it seems like everything must of been mostly the same, up to a point.
You know what? If I'm gonna hear more shit like that come out of my mouth, I'm going to need to drink a little more.
[And with that he finishes most of what was in his glass off, gasping a little at swallowing a mouthful of something that rough. He doesn't get up for more, though. He hasn't totally decided whether or not he's done pacing himself. He should try still, probably.]
[Not exactly Y2K but you know, slightly worse than that turned out. After all the Harry Potter books were published and people got used to cellphones, but before they got used to smartphones. The good old days.]
Most of us thought magic wasn't a thing, except the ancient powers that were sleeping. They remembered. And then they woke up, which really is fucking a bunch of stuff up.
[Kate's dad in particular is giving everyone a giant headache.]
But okay, really? Buckled in for this ride, Hank?]
Not usually gods. ...I mean, yeah that happened once, but generally not. [The irony in this is that shortly after this conversation he will get flung into a canon update that sees him engaged to a part-time god of terror, but that remains unknown for now.] For the most part, gods are too much magic and not enough mundane to survive outside their realms when the magic wave ebbs. So they usually don't risk showing up. There are some exceptions.
It's more... well. [How to describe this.] The biggest thorn in our side right now is my friend's father. Millennia old wizard... king... guy. Roland. The Builder of Towers. Plays at being a benevolent ruler and architect of progress and enlightenment. ...mostly wants to destroy and rule over humanity. And probably wipe out all my kind of people, since shapeshifters don't fit into his definition of civilized.
It shouldn't be believable. It's absurd. All of it. Shapeshifters and vampires and wizards and witches are facts of life, and traffic in Atlanta is worse than ever.
[His world's a mess. But it's home.
He smiles at the question about his friend.]
Kate's younger than I am. She just really drew the short straw as fathers go. But... everything Roland is, Kate is the exact opposite. She cares too much sometimes, wants to help people. Hell, she even keeps the Beast Lord in line -- or as in line as he he can be kept. He's a lot easier to deal with since the two of them got together.
[The 'traffic' thing makes him laugh. It's a weird little detail, somehow makes the rest of it seem even weirder, and Hank tries not to think too hard about the way his mind's struggling to wrap itself around the idea of all that being a real thing. Sitting here talking like this, having a drink together, it makes it a little easier to at least pretend to be casual about all this shit.
And it keeps his mind off- other things. So he's got the stuff he's not thinking about, the weird-backstory-as-a-distraction that he's also not thinking too hard about, and he's got the drink and the company to take the edge off all the shit that's sitting in his head not getting thought about. And there's details in all that, anyway, that Hank does know how to take, that he can kind of latch onto. So that's fine.]
Yeah, being in love can do that. For a while. Is he usually kind of a dick? Like in a personal sense, outside the whole, uh, 'having to keep a bunch of assholes in line on a daily basis' kind of dick.
[Barabas starts to nod before hesitating and shaking his head.]
Curran is a control freak. Things are his way or the highway. But he's done a lot more good for us than I can explain. He's earned a bit of leeway for being a dick.
[That said,] Kate's still good for him. And he's good for her. They were either going to kill each other or fall in love. It's better for all of us it was the latter.
[There’s the seed of something defensive there, Hank thinks, or maybe something that could be, if Hank pushed. He pauses, noticing that, shakes his head.]
Sorry, I uh, I didn’t mean to sound like I was trying to shit on the guy, I was just- [Trying to find something in all that he understood, and doing it wrong.] Things change after you’ve been with someone a while. I thought I knew something about that, but I’m pretty sure I just came off like a bitter old asshole. That’s not what I meant. Sorry.
[He gives a small, apologetic smile and then looks down to contemplate his drink again. He’s still too lazy to get up and get more; that’s still probably a good thing. Let that time between refills stretch out.]
[Barabas shakes his head with a smile.] I just realized my own opinion has changed a little about him. Mostly for the better.
[Though he does add with a shrug,] I did almost attack him once, probably would have if his sister hadn't tackled me -- which would not have ended well for me, incidentally. But that wound up being a misunderstanding. Sort of. ...I still would've liked to get a punch in. But punching werelions is bad for everyone's health.
[His grin is back and he settles on the edge of the bed again.] Don't sweat it, Hank.
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[A little grin of his own and he looks at his glass. Almost empty.
Oh. That's pessimistic, isn't it? He should try better. Or refill it. But for now he's pacing himself. He's never been more than momentarily buzzed, after all.]
But I work with what I'm given.
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Shit do I feel that.
[Hank glances at the part of the wall he's leaning against and then slumps to one side, stretching his arms a little in hopes that the back of his arm will rub a little more of that old charcoal drawing off.]
Even this shit wouldn't be so bad if- well it'd still be, you know- [He stops, almost stuttering around the sheer scale of what it is he's talking around. All those fucking people. It'd be bad no matter what.] -You know. But if we just had some kind of explanation, some kinda- I don't know, review? I hate that bureaucratic BS as much as the next guy but it's there for a reason, she can't pull us out of that- out of a situation like that and then give us nothing.
[He leans forward, having pretty completely distracted himself from his stupid little worries about his nutso wall decorations, and murmurs, almost to himself. The way Astoria handled absolutely all of this is still so- well it's something.]
What the fuck...
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Some bureaucracy has its place. You're right. There's been no response to this, no debriefing, no discussion of what exactly went wrong. It's fucked up to start with, but it's not like we can pretend it away or forget about it.
[Nope. Not even a little.] If Astoria won't step up, then that leaves us.
[Another frown and he looks down in his glass.] ...is the wall art something you've always been fond of, or is it a new hobby?
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[Hank glances behind himself again.]
Fuck.
[He huffs, grinning a little, caught out. He looks off to one side, pursing his lips as he tries to decide how - and what - to explain. Hank could tell him about his post-it notes at home, scribbled out in whatever fleeting seconds of optimism he can carve out of his day and stuck around the mirror where he can't not see in the morning - but then he'd have to explain those, too.]
Fuck it, lean up a little.
[He takes a drink, more than a sip, this time, and stands, tugging at the blanket against the wall behind them. They are carved in there but there's not that many to show, just two - well, most of two and some change - little phrases, so at least it doesn't make him look like the world's weirdest serial killer. Yet. There's the one behind him, hang in there, with the drawing below it that's now mostly blurred. There's the start of one at the other end nearest Barabas, if Barabas leans far enough forward to let Hank pull the blanket out from behind him. That one so far just says 'goo'. The one between those two says 'wake up and be fabu' and yeah that one's not done either, but it's close enough that he can't pass it off as anything else. It's that one Hank makes the face at.]
That one was a little, uh- funnier? [Is that the word? The irony in this little habit's so tired by now he honestly can't remember if this shit's actually funny or not.] -When I was the only one who was ever gonna see it.
[The plan to leave it at that and let the guy think whatever sputters out after all of one second. Any silence - at least on Hank's end - is too awkward to deal with.]
My artistic tastes usually run a little differently but uh, I guess everyone needs some variety.
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Interesting. Inspirational.
He cracks a smile.]
No, I think it's spot on. You are fabu, Hank.
[He gets it though. They're thrown here. Whatever scraps they can hammer together of comforts and pieces of home, reminders of the familiar, they're important.]
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You fuckin asshole, you bet I am. I guess your room's decorated a whole lot classier, huh?
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Actually, my room is covered in papers and not much else right now.
[He's a boring man these days.]
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[He's still smiling, a little bit, from making Barabas laugh. That's not something he expected today, to be laughing with someone, but it's... nice. It's nice.]
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[Barabas sighs before shaking his head.] Or a binder. Fuck, I'd take paperclips.
[These days Barabas dreams of office supply stores.]
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[Hank takes a drink, leaning his head back against the wall, relaxing now that the 'bitching about horrific facts of life that they can't change' part of this evening seems like it's on intermission.]
Depends on what those, uh- those freaky faceless assholes can scare up for you. What's your office like back home? You said you don't have a lot of tech there, right? What's that like?
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[He sighs, finally standing to go pour himself another glass, glancing back.]
Law books. Legal pads. Notebooks. And tech is unreliable, yes. It only works when the magic waves have ebbed, and even then not great. But I do have a computer and a printer. I even have a fax machine -- but the damn thing works maybe thirty percent of the time even when tech is up. So I rely a lot on books and paper and pen.
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[Probably not. But he asked already, so. Fuck it.]
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[Nowhere near that far.
But he grins at what Hank asks. Well, maybe Hank doesn't want to know. But Barabas sure will tell him.]
About forty years ago, there was no such thing as magic as far as most people knew. You know, aside from sleight of hand and Las Vegas big stage illusion bullshit. Then the Shift -- the first magic wave -- happened. Magic crashed back into the world in a big way. Magic and technology are diametrically opposed. Tech doesn't work when magic is present. So the world went to hell. Electricity was gone, engines stopped running, planes fell out of the sky. Buildings fell -- magic has it out for high rises in particular. The Lycos Virus and the Immortus Pathogen popped up. A whole lot of people died in those first few years.
[Basically it was a small apocalypse.] Those who didn't die, got used to magic coming and going like waves on the ocean. One minute Magic is there, and we've got monsters and fae lanterns instead of lamps, spells work. Then the magic recedes and the generators and electricity hums back to life. Engines run. Phones work. I was born about a decade after the Shift, so that's the only world I've ever known.
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[He smiles faintly, teasing, and then looks down, taking all the rest of it in as he watches his thumb move over the edge of his glass.]
I feel a little weird about saying it sounds nice now, though. Do you know where it comes from? The magic stuff? Has anyone tried to, I don't know, study it or... whatever?
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[A grin and he adds,] I feel a lot older lately.
[Or maybe he's just exhausted. Hard to say.]
As far as we can tell, it's just always been there. It was dormant for a while until technology gained too much ground and tipped the balance, and magic surged back like a vengeance. It seems the opposite happened before, magic reached too far and snapped back to nothing. And over the centuries, humans forgot about it outside legends and fairy tales.
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About when'd that go down? The initial uh, wave thing. I guess if magic's always been a thing where you come from our uh, dimensions split off a long time ago but if you had fax machines and stuff, it seems like everything must of been mostly the same, up to a point.
You know what? If I'm gonna hear more shit like that come out of my mouth, I'm going to need to drink a little more.
[And with that he finishes most of what was in his glass off, gasping a little at swallowing a mouthful of something that rough. He doesn't get up for more, though. He hasn't totally decided whether or not he's done pacing himself. He should try still, probably.]
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[Not exactly Y2K but you know, slightly worse than that turned out. After all the Harry Potter books were published and people got used to cellphones, but before they got used to smartphones. The good old days.]
Most of us thought magic wasn't a thing, except the ancient powers that were sleeping. They remembered. And then they woke up, which really is fucking a bunch of stuff up.
[Kate's dad in particular is giving everyone a giant headache.]
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[He swirls his glass around, thinking about how much is still in it, especially in light of where this conversation's about to go.]
So, since we're there, why don't you tell me about those ancient powers. You're talking about gods, right? Like, Zeus or some shit?
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[Barabas shrugs with a faint grin.
But okay, really? Buckled in for this ride, Hank?]
Not usually gods. ...I mean, yeah that happened once, but generally not. [The irony in this is that shortly after this conversation he will get flung into a canon update that sees him engaged to a part-time god of terror, but that remains unknown for now.] For the most part, gods are too much magic and not enough mundane to survive outside their realms when the magic wave ebbs. So they usually don't risk showing up. There are some exceptions.
It's more... well. [How to describe this.] The biggest thorn in our side right now is my friend's father. Millennia old wizard... king... guy. Roland. The Builder of Towers. Plays at being a benevolent ruler and architect of progress and enlightenment. ...mostly wants to destroy and rule over humanity. And probably wipe out all my kind of people, since shapeshifters don't fit into his definition of civilized.
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You know, I never used to read books about shit like this? I never thought it was believable enough.
[He huffs, amused, and takes a little sip.]
Sorry, uh, so your friend. Are they one of those 'ancient powers' too, or did they just get a lucky win in the parent lottery?
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[His world's a mess. But it's home.
He smiles at the question about his friend.]
Kate's younger than I am. She just really drew the short straw as fathers go. But... everything Roland is, Kate is the exact opposite. She cares too much sometimes, wants to help people. Hell, she even keeps the Beast Lord in line -- or as in line as he he can be kept. He's a lot easier to deal with since the two of them got together.
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And it keeps his mind off- other things. So he's got the stuff he's not thinking about, the weird-backstory-as-a-distraction that he's also not thinking too hard about, and he's got the drink and the company to take the edge off all the shit that's sitting in his head not getting thought about. And there's details in all that, anyway, that Hank does know how to take, that he can kind of latch onto. So that's fine.]
Yeah, being in love can do that. For a while. Is he usually kind of a dick? Like in a personal sense, outside the whole, uh, 'having to keep a bunch of assholes in line on a daily basis' kind of dick.
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[Barabas starts to nod before hesitating and shaking his head.]
Curran is a control freak. Things are his way or the highway. But he's done a lot more good for us than I can explain. He's earned a bit of leeway for being a dick.
[That said,] Kate's still good for him. And he's good for her. They were either going to kill each other or fall in love. It's better for all of us it was the latter.
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Sorry, I uh, I didn’t mean to sound like I was trying to shit on the guy, I was just- [Trying to find something in all that he understood, and doing it wrong.] Things change after you’ve been with someone a while. I thought I knew something about that, but I’m pretty sure I just came off like a bitter old asshole. That’s not what I meant. Sorry.
[He gives a small, apologetic smile and then looks down to contemplate his drink again. He’s still too lazy to get up and get more; that’s still probably a good thing. Let that time between refills stretch out.]
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No, no you didn't.
[Barabas shakes his head with a smile.] I just realized my own opinion has changed a little about him. Mostly for the better.
[Though he does add with a shrug,] I did almost attack him once, probably would have if his sister hadn't tackled me -- which would not have ended well for me, incidentally. But that wound up being a misunderstanding. Sort of. ...I still would've liked to get a punch in. But punching werelions is bad for everyone's health.
[His grin is back and he settles on the edge of the bed again.] Don't sweat it, Hank.
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