taking care of business

[requiresssacrifice]

Who: Rex Lewis & Open
What: Getting business in order.
Where: Various.
When: Various times/dates this week.
Notes: Rex is due for some encounters with Alter Ego, Tadhg, Ana, Will...? ANYONE ELSE IS WELCOME, TOO. Just go ahead and start a thread at any location and any date this week, and I'll drop Rex in.
Warnings: None yet.

Now that the move from Griss Twist (which he will never, ever set foot in again... except, perhaps, to pass through to another location) to a new, two-bedroom apartment-- a proper apartment-- in Flyside has been completed, Rex is settling back into a routine. Work, work, more work, the occasional contract job, partner, sister, cat, research project... On the one hand, it's exhilarating, being busy again after so much idle time wasted in a cosmic prison, but he's finding it difficult to juggle his side projects with his obligations. For nearly two years, he suffered from an abundance of free time, and now he can hardly find enough hours in each day. Time management, it seems, is a skill that can indeed atrophy with disuse. Still, he manages as best he can.

With long hours, inconsistently scheduled shifts and only two days off each week, it doesn't leave much time for his research project into magic-- really, he can only devote one day a week to it, and beyond that, he just has to find gaps in his schedule where he can and work from there. As a result, it's moving slowly-- not that he expects expediency, not with how very little he knows about magic. It's still largely academic at this point, learning magical theories and hypothesizing, brainstorming. By now, Rex is no stranger to the University library. From time to time, there are minor experiments, generally conducted in his modest workshop in Brock Marsh, which he managed to find at a reasonable rate.

When he has a contract job for his budding side-business, Rex has to shift his other projects and commitments to the side and focus on hammering out whatever needs to be done-- repairs and upgrades to technology, mostly. Hardly stimulating, but whatever it takes to build up his reputation. It can be frustrating, trying to juggle these unexpected projects with his routine, but he's finding his groove now.

When he can, Rex shops around, trying to create something respectable out of his workshop. Proper equipment being as rare and expensive as it is, however, he's learning the fine art of, well, scavenging for discarded components and bargain-hunting. Sometimes, he simply explores... and winds up in strange or awkward places. Baedal's full of surprises like that.

Luckily, Rex doesn't have enough of a personal life to sacrifice at the altar of science. Ana and Iago aren't needy sorts, and Rex is accustomed to getting by on minimal sleep, so they find time with each other where they can, but it doesn't seem to be causing any sort of strain when Rex is occupied with his experiments and work for days on end.

Then again, if it is, he's hardly perceptive enough when it comes to the feelings of others to notice.

Depending on when one finds him and what he's doing, Rex can be found in varying states of dress and exhaustion. Bags under his eyes aren't an uncommon sight. When he's out making contacts, he's professional and polished, hair slicked back as he wears a suit. When he's scavenging or bargain-hunting, he's dressed down in jeans and tees, wearing hoodies for warmth, leaving his hair unruly, looking more the part of a poor college student than a brilliant engineer-slash-weapons-developer with megalomaniacal tendencies. Sometimes he's wearing scrubs, which are just a touch too big and make him look smaller than he really is. Work days. Which are practically every day.

Well, at least he can't complain about boredom now.

Comments

[phreak]

In one of the smaller scrap technology stores that specializes in unknown objects that appear through mirrors or the fog, Rex might come across a young woman chatting with the owner about arranging a bit of employment. It seems that provided she can keep her promise of being able to identify just about anything that comes into her hands, she's got the job.

To test it, the owner, Pwe'kek, calls out to Rex and asks him to bring over any three things in the store.

[picksflight]

Doyle was a fan of scavenging himself. Not for anything in particular or for any specific project, but more for the joy of occasionally finding a jewel in a heap of garbage. He never really owned many things or had much money at his disposal as a kid, so it's how he'd gotten his pocket change before he could find jobs -- or sometimes inbetween trying to find them. People threw away all kinds of things that were still good or just needed a few tweaks to them to be good as new.

When he was a kid he used to tinker around with spare parts, make inventions that were large, obnoxious and didn't really do anything useful. But it was a hobby, and it'd taught him a few things about how mechanical pieces worked. He could repair his own watches, fix his own bikes, usually with parts he could find laying around. It was about the only useful skill set he'd ever gotten out of his childhood exploits.

But he continued to explore none the less, looking for odds and ends. He knew his free ride wouldn't last for long, and it'd be good to find a way to get some pocket change to rent a place for as long as he could afford it. Maybe he'd even find a real job.

It wasn't a complete surprise to find someone else wading through the garbage, but it was a bit of one to find someone that looked relatively clean and well-dressed, even if he was a little visibly haggard. Dressed casually, but his clothes fit well enough that he was a dead giveaway for someone who wasn't homeless or a beggar. A college student is what he would've guessed back home. Those kids ate worse than he did most days.

"Hey," He offered a hand up in brief greeting along with a toothy smile. "Looking for anything specific or just looking?"

potentially the shortest thread ever but doin' it anyway

[goodsoldier]

The time Arthur had come to let Jason out of the arrival room, he'd been dressed casually. For Arthur, anyway. So it wasn't a three piece suit, not that it matters; to Jason, Arthur emitted a suit-ness regardless of what he was wearing. So spotting Rex out making contacts in his suit, perhaps he can be forgiven for what happens next.

Or maybe not, it's Rex.

He by no means knew Arthur well enough to wander up from behind until they were side by side, then bump him with his shoulder, but he's doing it anyway because Arthur also emitted a certain dignity that Jason finds irresistibly troll-worthy. And admittedly, even if he'd known it wasn't Arthur, he might have done it anyway. "Don't I owe you a drink?"

So enjoy this six foot, kind of burly, leather jacket-wearing dude all casually talking at you, Rex.

Echomire

[gifted_hands]

Tadhg paces through the worn, unearthly statues of Monster Garden, the gray of his stallion-form's coat looking not unlike shadowed stone itself. His ears flick back and forth and his nostrils flare as he searches for sound or scent that might indicate the approach of the man he's supposed to meet here.

No sign yet.

He pauses at last by a moss-encrusted fountain, their designated meeting place. The horse makes a circuit around the fountain, head swinging to and fro, taking in every detail of his surroundings that he can. Only then does the horse rear, shimmer and shrink into a dark-haired, jeans-clad man.

Tadhg shivers slightly, and not from the dank chill in the air. There is power here, power that makes the back of his neck prickle.

[charismatic]

Will's excited. This is the first real flying machine he's been slated to test, even if it doesn't look like anything he's ever seen before. If anything, it looks vaguely reptilian, with gauzy, insubstantial wings shimmering on its sides. He's not sure how it's supposed to fly, actually, but he's looking forward to trying. The enclosed cockpit makes him a little nervous, because it'll be harder to get out when something inevitably goes wrong, but he tests the exit latch a few times before the test run really gets under way.

It does take off, surprisingly smoothly, and that's the last thing that goes right. After fifteen minutes of trying to level out the spiraling, smooth the jerky acceleration, and overall questionable handling, the fairy crocodile starts an un-asked-for descent, nose-first. Luckily, the emergency latch is still working fine and, somewhat more surprisingly, the makeshift parachute glider Will's wearing works okay too. The siren hasn't gone off, so no one's running, and Will watches the machine crash into the earth with a puff of dirt and metal shrieking while he floats down after it. Well, so much for that.

[studious_snake]

In Tinker's Lot, Jay had found an unused space and begun to dig out his own little nook to work on and test his ideas. Currently, he was building something that looked like a steampunk version of the rat traps from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that was just the right size to catch a pigeon. He was completely wrapped up in this project, and didn't really seem to notice the world around him.

[seeyaduke]

Ana is meeting her brother for lunch. She's loving the freedom of the city, and at the moment she's fitting in rather well. Of course, things are always changeable, but at the moment she's happy. There's something heady about freedom after so long in various prisons, and it's very nice to be her own boss. Of course, that will come with unexpected pitfalls eventually, it always does.

Arriving at the Italian restaurant, Ana looks well. Despite the way her eyes move over the area she's relaxed (somethings where just too far ingrained in her to ever completely go on vacation) and clearly happy to see her little brother in an area that doesn't have Barges, a warden or a concern that they were going to once again seem a sudden call to return to the ship.
The honeymoon phase is still in effect for her, but then again she's always been far more happy-go-lucky than he has.

Speaking of happy-go-lucky, Ana is carrying a large bag over her wrist. A large loaf of bread is sticking out of it, but mostly it's dominated by a large, elaborately wrapped present, complete with red swirly bows. Ever since she was a little girl, Ana had loved giving presents, and wrapping them was one of her favorite things about it.