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Noriko comes into the bar in a breezy, fluttering tank top and a pair of skinny jeans, quiet for once as she collects a small tea tray from the bar and retreats to the couch; she tucks her legs up and stares at the slate-gray and gold cup, carefully placing a sugary, salty preserved flower in the bottom. Brewing the tea has already been taken care of and she watches it go from clear, faint green to cloudy as the petals unfurl.

Looking around the bar requires remembering things she in't sure how to feel about yet, and the constancy of confusion gives her a headache. On a separate saucer, there are two panda-shaped and -decorated tea cakes, which she pushes away, facing them towards the wall.

There might be signs of some distress to handle.

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"Oh, I don't know that one." Chirrut is weaving his way around the chairs to find a place near the fireplace - he is never going to take being warm for granted. He has had... a ridiculous amount of tea in his life, and knows the scents of all of them, from his beloved sapir to something he is fairly sure was the sweepings off of the tea-factory floor.

(OOC: Baze will be along in a second if you don't mind!)

Edited 2017-04-24 02:00 (UTC)

Hey, it's a teenaged girl! Baze wonders if she's as snarky as the other one. "He's talking about the tea," Baze says in a stage whisper, pointing at his friend in a gesture that Chirrut can't see. Baze straightens, lowering his hand. "Hi. I'm Baze Malbus, and this is Chirrut Imwe. What kind of tea is it?"

Even without knowing who or what the other girl in question is, the answer as it references Noriko is almost certainly a yes. Her snark knows no bounds, and--fair warning--can be cutting. Tonight, though, she's not exactly in the mood to try being vicious with people, and just looks up to stare between the two newcomers.

Briefly, proof that not even tangential death can stomp out her personality for long, she wonders where the third stooge is.

"...It's green tea. Sencha, specifically. And a pickled cherry blossom." It's unorthodox, and Noriko does not care. She likes it. "Does he,"--pointing at Chirrut--"Normally start conversations with complete non-sequiturs?"

"No, Baze usually manages to get the introduction in first, but sometimes he just doesn't, it's a mystery." Chirrut replies, wry. "I have never heard of flowers in tea, but none of the flowers on Jedha were very edible for humans."

Baze snorts and punches Chirrut in the shoulder. "I wonder why," he says, dry as Jedhan dust. "Sencha, sencha, never heard of it. Is it an Earth tea?"

"Yeah, it's from earth, much like I am," Noriko says slowly. "I take it you aren't."

It feels like a safe bet, that. "Are you two together, or what?"

"Well, we certainly aren't apart." Chirrut notes with amusement. "At the moment we are quite close."

Baze laughs, deep and rich. "I don't think that's what she meant, my friend," he says, inordinately fond, cuffing Chirrut lightly on the back of the head.

Baze glances to Noriko. "You get right to the point, don't you?" he says. He's not quite sure if he approves of her brash, probing attitude, but at least it's hers and she owns it. "We're friends, but we've been through more than most old, married couples."

"There's not a whole lot to be gained pussyfooting around if I have something I want to know," Noriko answers, looking between the two of them.

Honestly, if she was concerned about Baze approving, she didn't show it; she wasn't overly concerned about it, though. "Clearly you're pretty tight. I guess it's good to have friends."

"Do you generally demand to know the sexual preferences of strangers, or are we just that handsome?" Chirrut asks, leaning on his staff. "I always thought we were, but this bantha never admits I'm right."

Baze snorts, nudging his friend. "As if you could tell what handsome even means," the larger man says, scoffing. "And we're technically not strangers, she does know our names."

Though he does give Noriko a skeptical look. "He has a point though, much as I hate to admit it. Why did you want to know?"

"Handsome isn't always visual," she says with a shrug.

"And as far as the question about being a couple, because you finished each other's thoughts, and I'm way better at dealing with couples than telepaths. Telepaths bother me."

"Things like that happen when you know someone for more than four decades." Chirrut retorts, "And some things stay stubbornly the same, like him refusing to admit our manly glory. It's a shame."

"'Manly glory'? Don't frighten the poor girl with your delusions," Baze says, punching Chirrut in the shoulder. He offers his friend a companionable side-eye, which Baze knows he can't see. "I'm so sorry. I'd say he's not usually like this, but no, he sort of always is."

Baze creases his brow, frowning. "Telepaths bother me, too. They should bother everyone; they're usually invasive, in my experience. Do they come here?"

"Oh, he ain't gonna frighten me. Not until he gets a whole lot scarier than he is now," Noriko quips, aiming for a laugh. "It's okay. I know someone who's like that too. But this one's a whole lot more entertaining."

The Professor has just never quite gotten that 'funny' thing down. She feels bad for that, she really does. "Some do. Usually they're pretty...okay with backing off, once you ask. But I know like a dozen of them at home, so I'm used to them." Doesn't mean she likes them a whole lot, but she's used to it, much like parents are used to stepping on small pointy toys if they have young children.

"He is blind, not deaf." Chirrut sighs. Certainly he's gotten plenty of this kind of reaction over the years, but it doesn't become an iota less annoying with time.

Baze loops an arm over Chirrut's shoulders, offering his silent support. People often ignore his friend in favor of talking to him, and he has never known why. It's not fair, and he doesn't like it, never has.

"You have to ask them to back off?" Baze says, flummoxed. "I can't even tell they're doing it, most of the time."

Noriko turns to face Chirrut, because she knows blind people still have perfectly working bidirectional hearing most of the time. He'll be able to tell she's looking at him when she speaks. "You've referred to me directly all of once in this conversation. You want to be addressed directly, you're free to join in."

Willing to be irked, she ain't.

"Yes, you usually ask. Telepathy isn't always something that can be easily controlled where I'm from, it doesn't come with an off switch any more than electrokinesis like mine does. So you ask, and they usually try to oblige. But sometimes all you get is 'I'll try not to listen in'." And in that case, you take what you can get over nothing.

Chirrut, who has addressed pretty much the entirety of this conversation to Noriko, doesn't have the patience for this sort of ridiculousness.

"All yours, I'm afraid." He smirks to Baze, and heads off to go find some tea of his own.

"Don't leave me with her," Baze says, frowning after his friend. He turns that frown on the girl. "It was very nice to meet you. I'd appreciate if next time, you weren't so callous towards my friend."

And with that he wanders off, chasing down Chirrut and a cup of tea as well.

Alana watches Noriko cross to the table, and smiles. She abandons her half-finished latte at the bar and crosses to the girl. "Hello, Noriko. How are you?"

Noriko looks up at her name and for a second she looks like a squirrel caught in the road: just as startled and just as busily flitting between decisions. But Alana is not the person she's so concerned about and she breathes in, and out, and her shoulders relax.

"Hey. I'm...I don't really know. Confused. Concerned."

And now Alana is both confused and concerned, too. "What about, if you don't mind my asking? And may I take a seat?"

Nori sighs, and shoves a hand through her hair, short again and braided back to mimic a sidecut.

"Hannibal. And sure, you can sit."

Alana stiffens. She doesn't glower, not exactly, but her eyes harden. She takes a seat. "What did he do? He hasn't hurt you, has he?"

"...No? That's the confused bit."

Noriko isn't entirely sure she should talk about what happened, but not talking doesn't seem to be helping her lately. "We went to a concert--I invited him to a concert in Manhattan--and there was a guy there who started getting mouthy about me. He tried to drag me into an alley and Hannibal slit his throat."

Alana's eyes widen. Her knee-jerk reaction is horror, but she reigns it in to carefully consider her words. "He should have defended you. But the way he went about it is... regrettable. He shouldn't have killed that man."

Noriko sighs. "I can't say that. He had his arm around my throat and was trying to drag me off my feet and into an alley, and I don't know what he was trying to do past that."

She shook her head. "The fact that someone is dead--yes, it sucks, and I feel bad, and all the things that go with knowing I was involved in someone's death, but those I've felt before. It's that he made me dinner after this happened and he didn't seem at all upset that worries me."

Alana swallows. "You let him make you dinner?" she says, her tone slightly incredulous. "Hannibal... kills without remorse. He thinks of it as removing people from their own narrative, which in turn gives him complete power to interpret them. I thought you knew that."

"He's made me food before, and it's been okay. I've always watched him and he's never done anything suspicious."

She's pretty damn sure he didn't feed her any of that guy he killed, either, because she was staring at him the whole time he was in the kitchen. "He doesn't have any power of interpretation over anyone where I'm from. He literally doesn't know them." She shifts, fidgeting, and pulls her knees up to her chest. "I'm not a shrink. I don't...take people apart like that. I'm not good at it, I don't like it." There's a reason she never saw the psychiatrist at school.

"Hannibal is a really good friend. He's managed to understand more about what's happened to me in my world than anyone else I could name in this place, and now...I don't know whether witnessing what I have should change that. It's not as if I've never killed someone myself and had to comfort someone about it."

Alana laces her fingers together in front of her, to give her hands something to do. "And yet, it still bothers you," she says, letting the statement hang in the air and speak for itself. "Noriko, I can't tell you whether you should be friends with him or not. I have a severely biased opinion when it comes to him. He's dangerous, and if you want to continue being his friend, you'll have to accept that part of him. I'm sure he'd be grateful to you, and continue protecting you in his own way, if you do."

"Yes, it still bothers me."

There's no hiding that, no way Noriko can get around it easily--maybe at all. "It's not the dangerous part that bothers me. I know people like that--hell, I'm dangerous and he knows that. It's not like he hasn't been made aware that I can hurt people." She's never shocked him, but she has let him see her angry all of once. "It's that...he doesn't feel anything about it. Or doesn't show it if he does."

"I'd be shocked if he didn't feel anything about it," Alana says, choosing her words carefully. "But I'd be even more shocked if the things he felt were remotely what a well-adjusted person would feel. For example, if I know him as well as I think I do, and I think I do, I believe he gets a rush from the power he feels. There's no remorse, and there's certainly no guilt; there's only a feeling of rightness. And when he provided for you, he bound you to him, both via protecting you and making you food which you consumed."

"He hasn't bound me to him. It's not like there's a red string between us," she says; yes, Hannibal worries her, and he does so in about fourteen million different ways, but one thing Noriko does not worry about is Hannibal having undue influence on her via the food.

"Are you sure about that, Noriko?" Alana says, tilting her head. "Even now you appear to question your loyalty to him, but I think you've already made up your mind about remaining his friend."

"I'm not questioning whether I'll remain his friend, but loyalty? Loyalty is something I have for very few things or people. I don't know how I feel about him now that I've seen...that side of him. And I don't know how to feel about the fact that I'm going to still want to be his friend, even though I know he killed someone, for me or not."

But she feels the same way, the same conflict, over people who're still friends with her. She's killed people too.

Alana stands, resting her hand on the back of her chair. "I don't know what to tell you. You already know my feelings about him. I can't in good conscience offer you consolation or advice, what with my biases being as they are."

"So are you angry at me for asking you?" Noriko questions.

"Are you asking me if I'm angry, or if I have the right to be angry?" Alana says, furrowing her brow. "Because those are two different questions, with different levels of maturity."

Alana pauses, ordering her words and assessing Noriko. "I'm not angry with you for asking," she says, exhaling through her nose. "I'm angry with him for putting you in this position. And to be perfectly honest, I think you're putting yourself at risk by remaining friends with him, but that's not my call to make."

"I know you have the right to be. Feelings are non-governable, and I know that better than a lot of people where I'm from," Noriko says.

"I was asking if you were, legitimately, angry at me for asking you for advice about someone with whom I know you have issues."

"And I just told you I wasn't," Alana says, sighing. "It was dreadfully insensitive, but I'm not angry."

"I know."

She knows it was probably on her part, that dreadfully insensitive thing. "You don't have to say anything else about it."

"Then I won't, and I'll excuse myself," Alana says, inclining her head. "Good luck, Noriko. I truly hope you figure this out."

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