milliways_bar | (no subject)

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teresa of the faint smile

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Teresa has spent much of her time in the woods out back, where occasionally killing a small animal has provided her with more than enough food; she's found that now she's dead, her occasional hunger and thirst is even more infrequent.

That's not to say she's been avoiding people; from even that distance she's been watching the bar, noticing the different auras therein. There's nothing special about this day that brings her inside, except that today she became curious.

So there she is, standing and leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watching the comings and goings. There are plenty of people who are invisible to her special power, but more than enough that she can see an aura to, that keep her interested.

She has a faint smile on her face.

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..not much an aura on the boy, with a grumpy expression carrying a box to one of the booths. If it were the boy himself he'd be very ordinary looking. However, the bright thing hanging inside of his shirt, the jacket itself and one other item inside of the box, but nothing...demonic.

There's a waitrat following him with an order of food, because really, he's apt to forget dinner and the blue plate special is cheap enough. If anything else, the food the rat brings him just looks weirder, but doesn't have any aura to it whatsoever. Even if it does look like a 12 legged green roasted quail with sauce and a side of veggies.

Edited 2012-02-07 02:59 (UTC)

That's... interesting, is what that is. Teresa isn't used to being able to sense an aura on an inanimate object.

Her gaze follows the boy - who is less than interesting to her, as he's not Clare - and the objects he's carrying.

The gaze lasts long enough that Tyler starts feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up, and he pauses before continuing to his booth. Somebody was watching him, and if it's a certain man with a red mask and spooky blank eyeballs he can go hang.

If he were a warrior, Teresa would expect him to be able to sense her presence and turn around, or not, as he chose. That he's an ordinary human being means that he would be able to sneak up on Teresa. So it's reasonable to expect the reverse would apply.

So when he pauses, she waits to see if he really has detected someone watching, and what he will do about it.

...Usually by now the spooky blank eyeball adult has made his appearance to get information or notebooks or to just plain talk to him by now. Same goes for the lady partner.

Now Tyler's looking up, and just glances over the bar, pausing at the wait rats before settling for a second at the...the pale lady watching him.

Watching him with a smile on her face.

"How did you know I was here?"

"Felt somebody watchin'."

One does not live with two mad science geniuses, or a few dozen metahuman children without at least catching onto the feeling of being watched.

"You can do that?" Teresa asks. "How does it work?"

She, frankly, has no idea how humans work.

"....not sure. Might have something to do with instinct and the nervous system." He's going to grab one of those roast legs and give it an experimental bite.

"Oh," she says, rather blandly. "That sounds useful."

For humans.

"Kinda, it doesn't tell me where it's coming from though."

...hrmm. He's going to get out a little pen and paper and make a note about the dish he just tried... Kind of like the taste of shrimp, but with more of an apple and chili flavor.

"...any other way can I help you?"

"Hmm? No."

Not really.

Although - "what is that thing under your shirt?"

...well, guess whose guard just went way up.

"A medallion."

"What is its purpose?"

Teresa doesn't care the slightest about his guard.

"Someone gave it to me to help keep me safe. The less people know about it, the better it works."

"That's odd," Teresa remarks, unused to anything that would work in that manner.

"...not that odd when you think about it." Tyler replies, after giving her a look of 'what planet are you from'. "The same idea applies to a lot of security and protection."

Teresa takes a few seconds to apply it to her own limited life experiences, and smiles.

"Maybe if you have something to hide," she says. And to her, this applies to the weak.

"Everyone's got something they hide, and I've met people who're experts at hiding things from themselves in plain sight." Tyler retorts, taking out a pair of metal gauntlets to take them apart to their machine-filled innards and begin servicing them. "And most of those people are grown-ups."

"Yes," Teresa says. "When I was alive, that was the yoma. They hid among people in order to eat them."

This... is the limit of her life experience.

"...and that's all you know about?"

"Why would I bother with anything else?"

"Because there's more out there. There's always more out there." Tyler replies, after a moment of thought. "It gets big and complicated."

"Does it? " Teresa says.

This is a lie, she knows how complicated life is. She saw it.

"I suppose it must."

...uh-huh.

Tyler's going to raise an eyebrow and just look at her before going back to servicing his gauntlets.

"You have any other questions?"

Well, he's already established that he doesn't want to talk about the things with the auras he's carrying.

"No," she says. "You can get on with what you were doing."

"Alright...how did you know about it anyways?"

If she manages to not poke or distract him too much from maintenance, he's not all that fussed about her staying.

"And what's a yoma?"

"I saw it."

Duh, Tyler.

Teresa shrugs, vaguely bored by the discussion of yoma. "Yoma are the man-eating monsters that plague my world," she says. "You're better off not knowing about them."

"Forewarned is forearmed, if anything like that shows up here."

There, that bit if cleaned out. After a few years of repairing these himself he's gotten good at cleaning it quickly.

"And I'm gonna bet you're not human, since most humans can't see magic."

"If any yoma show up here, then I'll see them," Teresa says. "And no, I'm not human. I'm half-yoma."

"..." The raised eyebrow is doing the questioning now.

Does he even want to know?

Teresa smirks right at that raised eyebrow. "What are you trying to ask?"

"Is the answer to 'why are you half-yoma' going to make me want to ask Belar to turn someone into a sterile newt?"

It's an answer that clearly amuses Teresa. Her smile is very nearly a silent laugh.

"Why would you ask him to do that?" she asks.

"I'm half-yoma because that's the only way humans can get the power needed to fight full yoma."

"...because he's fought demons before and something just plain sounds hinky."

"Heh."

Teresa's smile settles down to something familiarly enigmatic. She doesn't know the word 'hinky', but context is everything.

"It's common for humans not to trust us."

"It's more how you act than anything else."

Something is very, VERY off.

"Like how you talked earlier implied that power is the only thing that matters."

"In fighting yoma," Teresa clarifies. "It helps."

That's why they were ranked, after all.

"Still act stiff, talk stiff, even move it kind of. Like someone's that forgotten the last five steps of a dance."

She shrugs, natural as anything.

"Well, I'm not human. Why pretend that I am?"

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