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Corazon feels pretty good today, if a bit sleep-deprived. She stopped a Legion raiding party, helped a friend, it was all good.

She gets a sliced gecko sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and lots of horseradish mustard and takes it to one of the big armchairs by the fire. She puts her rifle on the floor under the chair, sits down, puts her feet up on an ottoman, and starts working on the sandwich.

Anyone who passes by will find her ten minutes later, asleep in the chair with the empty, crumb-covered sandwich plate on her lap. There's a bit of mustard at the corner of her mouth.

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Ako comes by after a while and looks for a while.

Three minutes after that will see her trying to ease the plate out of Corazon's hands with a light blanket off to one side ready for draping.Anyone who falls asleep downstairs needs the rest.

Corazon snorks and mutters something in Spansh - something about muffins - but doesn't wake up.

Blanket next then. Just to help trap that layer of warmth you need when you're sleeping.

Then settling in to read a while, with an eye on the rifle. It's not something Ako feels should be be left unattended.

Don't worry, it's not loaded. Although Corazon would be upset if someone took it - she likes that rifle. She shifts position and drools on the blanket a bit.

It's not like Ako knows how to check that. Besides pulling the trigger and that's a bad idea all around.

French lessons are eventually abandoned in favor of manga, then eventually doodling that might be soccer plays.

"Zzzzzz...*snort*...whu-ha?" Corazon awakens at last and rubs at her mouth. "Oh, man."

"Hello Corazon-san," says Ako, "Did you have a good nap?"

Corazon rubs at her face. "Wasn't s'posed t'be a nap," she mutters.

"You probably needed it if you just fell asleep," says Ako.

"Yeah. I got woken up in the middle of the night and had to fight a Legion raiding party," Corazon says. "Not very refreshing."

"That doesn't sound good at all," says Ako, "But I don't think you've mentioned the Legion before. Are they a big problem?"

"There are a lot of big problems in the Mojave, Seniorita Ako," Corazon says, folding up the blanket. "Caesar's Legion, though, is probably at the top of the list. That raiding party the other night was trying to enslave a bunch of refugees."

"That isn't good at all," agrees Ako, "Caesar was the guy in charge of Rome, right? Are they just dressed up or is it something stranger?"

"'Dressed up' does not describe how seriously into being Roman they are," Corazon says. "They also conquer stuff and crucify people."

"Ewww," says Ako, "But that's, well, it makes more sense than if they were time travelers or something else like that. It's still terrible though. I'm glad you managed all right."

"Well, I'm going to be running into more of them, that's for sure," Corazon says. "So I'm glad I got some practice with these guys.

"Well, I hope they find something better to do," says Ako, "They can keep the costumes if they want, just no..."

Yeah.

"What time is it at home for you now? You aren't going to need to get back in sync or anything are you?"

"It's late morning over there. I don't exactly keep a regular schedule anyway," Corazon says.

"I guess that makes sense if things like that keep happening," says Ako. She smiles, "You'll probably mess people up with how long it's like you can keep going without sleeping or eating if they don't know about the bar."

Corazon snaps her fingers. "Y'know, I hadn't thought about that, but it's a great idea. So people will think I'm so badass I don't need to sleep."

The Courier does not sleep. She waits.

"As long as you don't get to far from a door," agrees Ako, "And then there's trading things through here too. There are lots of ways to, um, leverage the bar."

"Oh, I know all about that. I've been selling stuff here for caps for a while. Or Bar credit. I'll have plenty to gamble away when I get to the Strip."

"The Strip?"

"The Las Vegas Strip," Corazon says. "All the fancy casinos are there."

"Oh, that sounds busy," says Ako, "There are pachinko parlors in Japan, but gambling for money like that is illegal and all the work-arounds involve Yakuza - gangs and crooks basically."

"Oh, they sound like the Three Families that run the casinos," Corazon says. "Or Raiders or something. They're not mutually exclusive." Because in the end, they're all fuckin' crooks.

Yakuza are Japanese crooks. Which doesn't make them better, but it does make them more Japanese. Everybody has their own set.

"I guess there's only so many ways you can make money when you're a crook," says Ako, "Or at all really."

"Nah, there's lots of ways to make money," Corazon says. "But a lot of people do it by stealing or cheating it from someone else, y'know?"

Ako nods. "I guess it has to be easier to take money than it is to make things yourself," she says.

"I don't know about 'easier,'" Corazon says. "I mean, you always have to watch out for other crooks stabbing you in the back or whatever."

Ako makes a bit of a face while she thinks that over.

"You've got to be crazy to be a crook then. At least like that. If you can't have any sort of a real team..." she trails off with a head shake.

"Hey, people who care about being able to trust other people don't generally make a living killing folks and stealing their stuff. Or, you know, just stealing their stuff."

"But you lose if you don't have a team," says Ako, "And it's not like they lose, I don't know a chocolate bar or something. That's just nuts."

"They think they're smart enough that they can get away with it," Corazon says, "or that the people they're working with are gonna screw 'em anyway, so they might as well do the screwing first." She blinks and frowns. "Ugh. That sounded better in my head."

Ako wrinkles her nose and nods. English is actually kind of a dirty language some times. "Well, I guess there's always people who think they're better than everyone else."

"Yeah. You just have to be better armed than they are and things generally work out."

Ako shakes her head a little. "I hope I don't end up in a situation where to comes down to winning an argument like that."

"Funny, I have no problem winning arguments like that. Especially if I don't fight fair."

"It's better than losing," says Ako, "Just, it seems like admitting that just being able to hit things harder makes you right and that just seems wrong to me."

"Hey, I didn't say that might makes right," Corazon says, "but there are lots of other people who thinks it does and you better be able to out-might them if you have a disagreement. Is all I'm saying."

Ako's universe has a heavy dose of beating people up until they smarten up so she nods.

"Yeah, lots of jerks."

"It's also okay to run away if you have to," Corazon adds, "but I kind of prefer to shoot them. Saves me the trouble of dealing with them later."

"That kind of makes sense," says Ako.

"'Course, Caesar's Legion always has more guys to send out after my hide, so in that case it doesn't really work."

"They aren't really good with the idea of letting go, are they?"

Some people are just bad at cutting loses.

"They got a reputation to keep up," Corazon says. "A reputation of chopping anyone who bothers them into tiny, tiny pieces."

"Well, I hope they don't live up to it."

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