(Subverting gender since the world was born)

[scarred_grin]

[OOMs: Night One, in which Loki plays bingo and Weyland decides to stay for a while (which is a euphemistic way of saying the story's nothing but sex and drugs), followed immediately by Loki's School for Wayward Girls, lesson one: gender and strength (no warnings there, much to Skaði's disappointment), and immediately following that: action is go]

But Pyrrha doesn't know about any of that, and she's the shape in which Loki comes down to the bar tonight. She's more subdued than usual, but you wouldn't know it to look at her--between her ridiculous boots and the crimped-and-teased-and-AquaNetted big-goth-hair she's got going on, she hits just over seven feet tall today, and that's not counting the feathers she's got stuck in her hair (that admittedly look a bit like a bird lost a fight with her hair, but she's okay with that). She's also got her usual tiny shorts, a faded Love & Rockets shirt (band not comic) and a small backpack she'd made to look like a cartoonish cute stuffed zombie doll (the zipper's in its neck).

Anyway, she does her drunken-marionette-runway-stomp up to the bar, to order herself a cherry coke slushie (with an umbrella) and a chicken sandwich with fries. She's very hungry for some reason.

Botherable.

[open until forever but slows are <3]

Comments

[ostro_goth]

Teja now knows who and what Pyrrha is, but that does not make her any less interesting to him -- on the contrary.

But he will keep Loge's secret, and just take the small-g goth on her own terms.

"Greetings, Pyrrha," he says, getting up from his seat by the fireplace where he had been sitting with his harp, and his cats.

[scarred_grin]

"Ah, Your Majesty," she says, setting her glass down and giving a deep nod by way of greeting. "I was hoping I'd run into you--I've got something for you. It's not food though, Fina's not letting me cook upstairs anymore and most of what I know how to cook needs to be served right away and--hi. How've you been?"

She opens up her bag and rummages through it for something.

[ostro_goth]

Oh, Pyrrha!


"I have been working," Teja says, both be- and amused, "and meandering through my afterlife in unexpected ways. I was threatened with creative rule-breaking, and a woman declined to be my queen. All that may happen to one in Milliways on the course of an ordinary day."

[scarred_grin]

"Wow, you've been really busy," she says with a chuckle. "I feel like a slacker in comparison. All I did was redye my hair, learn how to swear in sign language and make you a present. Actually it's mostly for your cats."

She takes a small package from her bag and offers it over; from the looks of it, she drew the wrapping paper herself.

"Is everything okay?"

[ostro_goth]

"Strangely," Teja says, "indeed, it is. I have finished the first of your mouth-pieces, also."

He takes the package, and opens it. For his cats?

Through his cats leads indeed an excellent way to Teja's good will -- but Pyrrha already has that.

[scarred_grin]

She made cat-toys, apparently.

But nothing so normal as a mouse. No, she made catnip weaponry: a sword, a spear, an axe and a hammer, all carefully rendered in fabric and yarn, and even with some red-yarn blood.

Well, she thought it was cute anyway.

"You did? You really have been busy."

[ostro_goth]

"So have you," Teja says, amused and touched by her gift. "These are very finely made, and all will know they belong to my cats."

The cats crowd around his, curiously sniffing the toys.

One by one, he tosses them for them, and the cats chase after, tumbling and shoving. In the end, each gets one to play with: - Myrrh has the spear, Count the sword, Kitty the axe, and Ferdinand the hammer.

"I have," Teja says, again, when the cats are happily playing with their gifts, "would you wish to see?"

[scarred_grin]

"Nobody can steal them. Your cats are armed, now."

She watches the cats with a smile--there's a simple joy in it, cats and their contentment. Not like people, people are complicated.

"You know I'd love to see what you've made. I should probably finish eating before I try anything on, though. Dinner's gonna get cold."

[ostro_goth]

Kitty and Count start fighting over the axe, tumbling over the floor with great energy and good spirits.

"There is no hurry," Teja says. "Do finish your food first."

She must be hungry, Loki having been not-eating Serafina and then a semblance of himself, for awhile.

[scarred_grin]

"I'm sorry for running out on you the other day," she says, picking up her sandwich. "I just--I get these headaches, you know? They come on real sudden, and all I can do is get myself up to my room before I get sick. But I'm feeling good today."

So far, anyway. Things should be quiet for her for a while.

[ostro_goth]

"It does not matter," Teja says. Some other Loki must have needed the manifestation?

"It is called migraines, is it not?"

[scarred_grin]

"Probably," she nods. "I don't really trust doctors so I've never been diagnosed or anything, but I've had them for years. They're not as bad here as they are at home, though--maybe it's stress, I don't know."

It's nice not having to worry about finding somewhere to stay.

[ostro_goth]

"If you need to go and rest, at some stage," Teja says, "I know better than to try and stop you, no matter what it is named."

[scarred_grin]

"Thanks," she says, and takes a bite of her sandwich, and a slow sip of her drink. Thus strengthened, it's apparently time for another nervous wall of words from Pyrrha.

"Look, I wasn't entirely honest with you about a few things the other day and I feel really guilty about that. I spent so much of my life hiding things or not being entirely honest, and I don't want to do that anymore. I don't have to do it here, I got somewhere to stay. And I really like you, and I'd rather you like me or not like me based on the truth, and not stupid things I say to be more interesting or less weird."

[ostro_goth]

Teja looks at her askance, and says nothing.

She will tell him.

Also, he knows a thing of her that she herself does not. No dishonesty on her part can possibly be that momentous.

[scarred_grin]

"There's three things I can think of," she says quietly. "One, I don't actually have a webcomic. I've been drawing comics in my notebook since I got here, but I don't have any computer back home to put them on. I don't even have a home back home to keep a computer in. I just said it's for a webcomic because it sounded better than being that weird girl who spends her time drawing pictures of robots fighting demons."

[ostro_goth]

"That means nothing to me," Teja says. "We can find you a computator if you wish for one; the bar gives out nicely small ones that may be taken along in what little one carries on the road forever."

Second thing?

[scarred_grin]

"I don't have a drinking problem either," she says. "I used to--for like four months, a few years back, I don't think I was sober more than a week, and not consecutive days either. But I don't do that anymore, I'm fine now, I almost never drink at all. I do black out though. Not from drinking, and not from drugs either if you're thinking that."

She looks down at her plate. "That's why I don't know how long I've been here. At home there's newspapers, I can just check the date and know how long I've missed. Here I can't. And I guess I'd rather people think of me as some drunk girl than some girl with something wrong in her head."

[ostro_goth]

Teja knows why that is, but is not at liberty to tell her.

"It might be the same thing that gives you the migraines," he says instead.

He does not suggest seeing Guppy, as he usually would. Loki would most likely not allow her to do that, anyway.

"I do not find all these very bad. We all have our personal darkness."

[scarred_grin]

"It could be a brain tumor for all I know," she says, "but I don't think I can die anymore so it can't be that bad. It's just something I have to live with, and hope I don't do anything too embarrassing when I'm blacked out. Sometimes I wake up in a completely different town."

[ostro_goth]

"Not die any more?" Teja asks.

Perhaps she is more aware of what she is than Loki himself believes?

[scarred_grin]

"Yeah, I..."

She puts down what's left of her sandwich, wipes her hands on a napkin.

"I'm not trying to flash you or anything, don't worry," she says, leaning closer and pulling the collar of her shirt down in the front.

She's got a gunshot scar more or less over her heart; it's easy to see, since she's got crosshairs tattooed around it.

"I got shot, but I'm still here."

[ostro_goth]

"You got that out in your world?" Teja says. "It is not s thing that you only had when you arrived here?"

As far as he knows, nobody makes tattoos and suchlike here.

[scarred_grin]

"It happened a couple years ago," she says. "I was with a guy--he was trouble, I mean, I knew he did drugs, but I didn't know how bad it was--and we were at a store to get cigarettes, and he just pulled out a gun and tried to rob the guy working there. The guy wouldn't give him any money, though, so he was going to shoot him--but I got in the way. That guy was just doing his job. He didn't do anything to deserve getting shot."

She sips her drink. "The guy I was with ran out, and the guy working there called an ambulance, but I don't like doctors so I left. I passed out a couple blocks down the street, and I woke up three days later in a new town with a new scar."

[ostro_goth]

So that was how Loki had done it.

"You must have been healed by some strange magic and power," Teja says.