milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Tom sits at a table slightly out of the way this evening. He's looking, well, a little pensive.

It's been a long, strange week, what with the Legilimency incident with Deitmar and the duel out back with Sylar.

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"Nah."

He's smug as hell, though.

"Me, I'm just some guy with a katana." He pours the second cup of sake. Yeah, he's just some guy with a katana who found this place by accident and likes it here.

"You think so? How come?"

"I've never heard of anyone taming and training a beetle. I can't even imagine how to go about it."

Without using the Imperius Curse, that is.

"Yeah?"

He's still pleased as anything: training the beetle was all his own idea. "No shit? You... make a thing for it and let it carry rocks around. Make 'em heavier as time goes on."

The arrival of his dumplings is heralded by a huge growl from his stomach: maybe that smelled 'em first or some shit like that.

"Easiest damn training job in the world. It ain't like the bugs could complain or nothing. You just go hey, two more laps around the tatami mat, ya bastard before you let it take a break. And you could sit there on your ass watching." The chopsticks are in his hand right away: food ain't nothin' to take lightly. But before he starts, he remembers this is the Emperor guy who bought him scotch last time. "You want some?"

"I'll try one, yes," he says. "Thank you for the offer. They do smell good."

He pauses.

"Er, should I ask for a fork?"

Chopsticks are... strange.

He hands Tom one of the unused chopsticks. "Here. Take one of these. You could just stab 'em right through the middle."

It's how little kids start out learning to use 'em anyhow, and this ain't so very different but just in case it ain't customary where Tom's from, he demonstrates by spearing the nearest couple dumplings and holding 'em up for inspection.

"See? Like that. For a wizard, you sure got a hell of a lot to learn." It ain't no more than simple observation from a guy who's from a place where everyone's scared shitless of magic and people who could do it.

"I guess I do, at that. I should be quite miserable if I hadn't anything left to learn."

He stabs a dumpling. That was easy enough.

The dumpling is- different, but good. The texture is not what he's used to, but he can get past it.

Perhaps there is a Dim Sum parlor in some corner of the Underside.

It ain't like he got a shortage of money today or nothin', and that's always easy come easier go anyhow, and besides, at least Fuu ain't hoarding it all like she always used to do.

Whiny little bitch.

These are good dumplings, with lots of pork and beef in 'em. More meat than other shit and that's always a real good thing. "You ain't never had these before neither? Shit, dude. Live a little."

He wonders what the hell the guy would make of shabu-shabu: maybe next time.

"I've had curry."

Lots and lots of curry. Neither he nor Door are enthusiastic cooks.

"I'm a man of simple tastes, is all."

He hails a waitrat and orders some dumplings of his own.

"I got no idea what curry is. Guess that makes us even."

And smug.

Fair's fair and all that, and dumplings are dumplings and all that. And they go real good with sake; he swallows some down after a few mouthfuls of dumpling. "I ain't so sure there's such a thing as simple tastes. Me, I think there's just tastes and you either like 'em or not."

That's kind of the way he sees things. "But except for this place, it ain't like I traveled a lot or nothing. Met this guy last time I was here who has a ship in that lake out back. He said some shit about how it got picked up by some giant hand and put in the water there. Yeah, right. But the how of it don't matter. He was talkin' about all sorts of places. I said I'd go with him if he needed a crew for his ship. His name was Jack."

He ain't around right now, from what he sees. Pirate ships, they're everyplace. But that one -- what the hell did he call it, the Black Pearl? -- was a real nice ship. It felt like a good place to be, and he don't feel like that much.

Hardly ever.

"Oh, you've met Captain Jack Sparrow, then. He's quite the character. He'd invited Ingress, my little girl, to sail with him once, and I'd hoped to join them. I've traveled, but nothing like he has. And never on a ship. Although I have gone by motor car a time or two. I even drove one, once."

Or at least sat in the driver's seat and turned it on. The stick shift thwarted him. This is a good thing, really.

There's a moment's silence where his hunger and thirst do valiant battle with his curiosity.

Curiosity wins. "What the hell's a motor car?" No matter what Tom thinks about him, he ain't no wizard. There's so much shit he don't know.

Shit: he could hardly even read.

"And you got a little girl, huh? You keeping good care of her?" Orphans: they talked about that last time. He ain't never gonna be responsible for no damn kids.

He don't know how.

"Yes, Ingress is Door's little sister, and we take very good care of her, along with another child we took in, Gavroche."

He decides not to go into the motor car explanation as he eats his last dumpling.

"And speaking of them, I ought to be getting back to them. I hope I'll see you soon, Mugen. You cheered me when I needed cheering."

"Hey. Live to serve and all that shit."

One less person at the table means more dumplings for him and he ain't gonna complain about that. Maybe he'll meet the kids with the funny names sometime and maybe he won't, but it don't matter.

It don't matter the way food matters.

"See you."

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