ArchivedLogs:On Time

On Time
Dramatis Personae Ion, Isra	2014-11-24 '
Location <BOM> Common Room - Main Lodge - Ascension Island
The common room's rustic-lodge feel has been somewhat mitigated by the modern amenities inside its sturdy wooden walls. It has comfortable couches, several chairs, a refrigerator (stocked with snacks and drinks!), a pool table, a pinball machine (METALLICA!), an assortment of books, a television -- with several game systems! -- and a splendid view out the windows (when their lacy yellow curtains are drawn open) for the rest of the island. The pale wood floors have been covered in places -- by a pair of soft thick blue rugs, by a large squishy pair of beanbags that stand in front of the stone fireplace. There's also a board up on the wall, half corkboard, half whiteboard, with a variety of community notes (and occasional insults) to other Brotherhood members. Large doors on the right-hand side lead off to the kitchen and dining room. In the back of the room, the council room's heavy oak door bears solid locks that are almost never actually barred. A short hall adjacent to the council room's door leads to a trio of multi-stalled bathrooms; these might once have been marked with the typical man-woman-handicapped signs, but someone has given them new plaques on the door; a stick figure with horns and a long tail, one with wings. One -- the large single-user toilet -- has instead been given a helmet and a cape. Someone has scrawled up, on the whiteboard, a series of notes along the type used in industrial sites though -- handmade and makeshift. ___ DAYS SINCE... though in this case the things they take pride in are not very conventional. At the moment, the counters are cheerfully proclaiming such things as, 33 DAYS SINCE Ion has been struck by lightning! 67 DAYS SINCE J.C. has melted any skin! 2 DAYS SINCE Kay has torched the lounge! 15 HOURS SINCE Ion caused a blackout! The last one, once, said __ Days since we made Regan pinch at her nose, but somewhere along the way someone scratched out days and wrote in hours instead. Then minutes. By now someone's just given up on keeping track. Most relevantly to /that/ last, at the moment there's mostly some darker bit of charring on the floorboards where once a rug and couch and a rather comfortable beanbag was. Alas. These things happen. The sound system is thankfully, or not so thankfully depending on your proclivities, evidently still intact! And just beginning to loudly blare some kind of Latin rap at the moment. Ion is just making his way up out of the basement, attire -- sweat-damp white wifebeater and black track pants, sneakers, sweatband keeping floppy hair back off his face -- combining with his flushed face and shortness of breath to make it pretty clear he's just been down in the training room. He ambles over to the kitchen to root through for post-workout foods, returning with -- a beer? -- to flop belly-down onto the floor (nevermind that there still /are/ some serviceable-if-singed sofas left) and crack it open. Maybe he forgot about the food part. Curled sidewise on the least crispy couch, absorbed by the tablet in her lap, Isra looks up only briefly when Ion enters. She wears a seafoam green cropped top and hunter green handkerchief skirt, her skin slate gray and unadorned. Her wings, relaxed as they are, hang from the edge of the couch--as does her tail, its swaying sometimes fast and sometimes slow. A black nylon camera bag is tucked beside her on a cushion. When Ion settles down, she sits up straighter and gives him an appraising look. Green eyes linger on his beer with something like mild concern. "Have you eaten anything else today?" "Ahhhh --" Ion has been stretching out a hand to reach for the television remote, but once he has it he doesn't turn the t.v. on. Instead just rolls over onto his back instead, resting the beer bottle on his belly and turning his head over to squint towards Isra, then towards his beer. "Ahh, yeah, yeah, /'course/, I, yeah -- no. No, wait, that was smokes." "Your body needs more nutrition than that beer can provide." There's no reproach in Isra's calm, clear alto. "Also, nicotine suppresses the appetite..." She trails off, a slight frown wrinkling her bare forehead. "At any rate, I intend to heat up some lunch shortly, and welcome you to partake." "Huh. Really? It do? Hah, whoops. You know once? Almost two damn month. I forgot. No food! Fucked the fuck up, huh? Lots of smokes though. I got skinny. Noooo good." Ion bounces up to a seated position, swigging at his beer. "I remember, I go out, I eat like. /Seventy/ fucking taco. Best goddamn food I ever taste. L.A.? They do taco right. What you want me take?" Isra nods absently. "Quite fucked up, yes." No sarcasm in her voice, either. "I would like for you to take some food with your beer. Unfortunately, I cannot supply tacos, from L.A. or otherwise. I did, however, bring fresh hummus and falafel." She looks at the kitchen, ears swiveling as if hearing better would somehow tell her the pantry's contents. "I could probably also make something else. My culinary skills are admittedly limited. What would you like?" "Taco!" Ion responds, prompt and with a bright grin around the lip of his bottle as he takes another swig, rolls up to his feet. "Hermana, this thing you maybe-don't-know 'bout me but, my skills in the kitchen --" He hesitates here, seesawing his bottle noncommittally back and forth in the air, "eh-eh-eh, actually, I don't-know-so-much, /in/ the kitchen, eh. I can take-or-leave the kitchen part? Don't need the kitchen. You give me a pot, some foods, some spice, some heat, I make you something /damn/ fine tasty /any/fuckingwhere you put me. I the fucking master of street food. Kitchen it's a bonus, though. Make a trade, huh, I give you a lunch you give me some time? My time it all wrong." "I should be glad to give you some of my time." This with a broad smile--fangy, yes, but uncommonly warm for Isra. "In truth, I have had a bit too much of it to myself of late, and not nearly enough tasty street food." She sets her tablet down beside the camera bag and half-rises, bracing her hands on the back of the couch and stretching her enormous wings. "What do you mean your time is wrong though? Has this got something to do with motorcycles?" "Naw, naw, naw, my baby she's running /fine/. Is this --" Ion is hopping over a table (clearly it would have been too long to take the extra half-second to step around it) to head towards the mantle above the fireplace, where he reaches up to swipe one of his several /incredibly/ Obnoxiously Ostentatious gaudy watches off of where he's casually laid it aside during training. Its face has a number of tiny dials -- it is able, it seems, to tell the time in quite a few different time zones! Which is it currently doing, incorrectly. The /big/ hands, though, the ones that /should/ be telling the current time /here/, don't even have numbers. They're /also/ set incorrectly. "This, this, this, someone she tell me. My pretty watch, she say is wrong? I maybe I broke it?" It's not broken, though, it's running smooth as ever! Just -- off. He probably never bothered to set it to begin with, after stealing it. He extends the monstrosity towards Isra on a palm, his large brown eyes opened in an almost puppyish hopeful look that contrasts oddly with the crooked sorry-I-fucked-it-up slant of his smile. "I go put the lunch." His hands clasp together, lifting to Isra in pre-emptive gratitude as he leaves the hideous thing in her care and dashes off to the kitchen. Isra does not seem excessively startled by the request, somehow. "Ah, I see. Certainly, I shall see what I can do." She accepts the watch and examines the colorful, bejeweled dial. "It appears to be running just fine--not broken. It just needs to be set to the correct time." This last she obtains with a quick glance back at her own tablet. If the watch were not so colossal, she might have a difficult time operating it, but in this case the crown is more than large enough for her to manipulate. "...And there," she says, following him to the kitchen but not entering, "you are synced up to Eastern Standard Time. Did you want to adjust these subdials, as well? The smaller...watches inside this watch, that is." "Shit, yo, what's all that /for/?" Ion is poking through the kitchen, opening bottles of spices without really /looking/ at them; he /sniffs/ at them instead to make his selections to set out on the counter. Grabs some kind of sausage from the fridge, cornmeal, flour, a pan. There doesn't seem to be a lot of /measuring/ or planning to the ways in which he starts to mingle things together, when he begins to do so. "Yeahsureyeah, /all/ the time, set it all," he answers with no small measure of delighted excitement. "I'mm'a have every time. It'll be the best. I'm gonna be /so/ on time." Though anyone who has ever tried to schedule Doing Things with Ion may find this statement dubious at best. Isra takes a closer look at the primary colored polygons that pass for hands on the subdials. "They tell you the time in other parts of the world. It looks like they follow the main dial, so all are set correctly now. You might need to make adjustments for daylight time come next spring." Her eyes follow his frenetic food-assembly process with keen interest. "Though generally those features are not excessively useful unless you suddenly find yourself in a different time zone." Which, admittedly, is not a far-fetched proposition for Ion. "Oh, oh, yeah, sometimes that happen. Every-other-thunderstorm or so." Ion shrug, fingers working spices into the ground meat. Sprinkling /other/ spices into a bowl of flour and cornmeal. "Heyyyyy." He grins up at Isra. Hopefully. Starts working his food into small squishy ball-shapes. Mostly meat, a light coating of seasoned cornmeal-flour outside. "I got, uh, uh, many-other-times. Watches. You think, uh, you think you could put those the right time, too? After the food? Maybe?" The pan gets a /deep/ amount of oil in it to start heating on high. "I be on time /everywhere/ on earth now. Thanks to you!" He beams up at her happily. "It was no problem at all." Isra folds her wings down across her shoulders and leans against the kitchen doorway. "I could also show you how to do it yourself. For the future." She looks down at the watch again. "Some timepieces are complex to set, but most only require a few turns of the crown--that is, the knob protruding from the right side of the case. As for being on time, though..." A sharp, crooked grin punctuates this. "...having the correct time on you will not make you punctual by default. You must pay attention to it in order to manage it." "Aw, shit, yo." Ion's look of dismay at this last bit of information regarding punctuality is no doubt heavily exaggerated, lips pulling down into a deep mock-grimace. "You say it gonna take a /work/. {Noooo, thanks. I'll pass.} Maybe I give you the watch? /You/ be on time? Anyway, I got a /pretty/ good solution for that, uh, puck-tu-ality? Is that I just don't never got nowhere to /be/. Maybe you try that, huh? Maybe you relax some." "Punctuality isn't for everyone." Isra waves her free hand dismissively, blue-green talons flashing. "You like your watch well enough whether it tells time or not, so keep it. That way at least you'll have the time if you need it. My phone keeps me punctual enough, anyhow." She shrugs, wings lifting up from her shoulders and settling back down with a leathery rustle. "Perhaps you are right, though. About relaxing. It's just I don't feel very relaxed lately no matter how much time I take off. Is there a trick to this?" "Oh sure-sure-sure." Ion is contemplating his pan of oil warily, like it might possibly be plotting against him. Which perhaps it /is/; it hiss-spits when he starts dropping in his sausage-ball concoctions, spattering droplets of sizzling-hot oil at him. "Ay-/ow/-/AY/--" Though this doesn't stop him from continuing to add battered meatballs to the pan. He just does an odd little /dance/ while he does. Ow-ow-ow. Yelp. "Suuuure yeah it's like. But I don't know what your trick /is/, hermana, ¿sabes? Everyone they got a trick. Maybe you punch shit, maybe you ahhh like the beer, maybe you make those pretty glass mural on the wall, maybe you cook, maybe you (ah!) fuck, maybe you hop your bike and ride around. Maybe you, maybe you look the stars. No -- /ow/ -- sé. But everyone they have a trick? Have their thing. When they get -- /ay/ayay --" his hand flutters towards his head in between settling his foods into the pan, "all key-upped, /wire/, in the brain, how to ground that." "Oh, yes. Doing things you enjoy, that's...well, maybe it really /is/ as straightforward as all that, to some extent." There is a weariness in her voices, the bass register engaging, a barely audible rumble. "I suppose I've been neglecting my stargazing in favor of the punching shit variety of stress relief. I should build a scope or two out here, so I needn't carry the smaller ones back and forth." As Ion continues to scald himself with oil, she rises a bit taller and looks as though she might attempt to intervene on behalf of his skin, but ultimately subsides and lets him cook as he pleases. "Thank you. I guess you would have to know about finding ways to ground...when you're wired." Once the food is actually /in/ the pan Ion steps back, gingerly poking at it with a long handled slotted wooden spoon to move it around from slightly farther /out/ of the range of spitting oil. "Trick is, don't you letting the world get in the /way/ of thing you enjoy. It got a way, you know, always. Always always. Always there's excuses? Not enough time, always more-important-thing." He shakes his head, bouncing back a step to hoist himself up onto an opposite counter, settling himself between his prep dishes and watching his pan from this safe distance. "Fuck more important thing, yo. You {go fucking crazy} where'll they be anyway? Drink a beer. Have a star. Relax. World, it'll be there after." Isra seems to weigh this for a long moment, eyes fixed unblinking on the pan and its sizzling contents. When at last she moves again, it's to return Ion's watch. "Keep this little knob on the right side when you put it on," she advises, pointing out the crown, "that way it will be right-side up." This done, she ducks into the refrigerator and withdraws a beer. "Why not?" She pops the cap off and raises it up--the green bottle looking incongruous wrapped so delicately in her sharp but manicured fingers. "To time." "/Huh/." The widening of Ion's eyes suggests that this tip is a /revelation/. He seems impressed by the advice, anyway, as he straps the watch on. Shiiit. He is All Over this Time shit now. He straps the watch back on /firmly/. Got it. /Check/. He hops back down off the counter, grabbing some plates from a cabinet so that he can start fishing the meatballs back out of their oil. He uses these to salute Isra right back, grinning sharp. "To enjoying the fuck out of it. Eat up, hermana."