they're going to have to fight me (open)

Who: Clarice and YOU?
What: Some trading, some information gathering, some wandering.
Where: Out and about, certainly including Mafaton, but quick transport between neighborhoods isn't so much an issue for her.
When: Veerdi, all day
Notes: Let me know where and when you're tagging her. If you want to grab me ooc for plots before taggin, IRC or plurk are both fine.
Warnings: TBA if necessary

Peace is starting to get to her.

Granted, someone outside the situation might suggest the destruction of her world, including every person she ever cared about, might be what was getting to her, but Clarice long ago learned ways to survive. Looking too closely at her injuries wasn't one of those.

She's bad at stillness, though, and she's bad at domesticity. She doesn't sleep easily, but after all these years, she'd miss her nightmares, she sometimes thinks. Her whole life has been fighting, and now there's just waiting. Waiting and fog.

At least she's not half bad at the latter. (The fog probably isn't helping her mental state either, but she ignores that for now, like everything else that doesn't suit her.) She's doing alright, and is subtly picking up information about the guild. Maybe it'd be worth joining, so she didn't have to worry about stepping on toes when she goes out.

She still gets odd looks, but that's nothing. As long as she can pick out the people who are too afraid to be interacted with properly, she can get by.

She misses a lot of people, but then she buys herself fresh bread and tells herself it's not so bad. Sometimes she even believes it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It was creepy." Clarice hadn't stayed long enough to get a "respectable" job. "What did you do back home?"

"Freelance stuff, mostly. Consulted with a few companies. I worked with tech that doesn't...seem to be very abundant, here." She shakes her head, frustration clear in the gesture.

"How about you?"

"Oh, uh." She should have expected that. "We didn't... there weren't really jobs, per se, where I came from. I mean, there were for a few people, but I was a soldier."

More or less. She isn't ashamed of it, but it's also not a topic she wants to get deeply into on a first meeting. "It's been kind of weird, actually, settling in here."

Her brow furrows faintly as she nods. It sounds like Ilde's world, and it still makes her chest ache to think of people so young as soldiers.

"I can imagine," she says quietly. "You live your whole life running on the edge, you don't really know what to do when you back up and slow down." No, it's not entirely conjecture.

Clarice smiles, lopsided. "Yeah, that's pretty much it exactly. But hey. Food's better here, generally, so that's something, at least."

Not the only thing.

"So tech - you do computers and things?"

"It's diverse, I'll say that." Barbara's smile is rueful; she's tried some things she probably shouldn't have.

"Yeah - maintenance, programming, building. I had quite a set-up back home." There's that strain again. "Well, before it got blown up."

"Yikes. I'm sorry - that had to be frustrating as hell." She doesn't want to pry, but it sounds like "blown up" is fairly literal there, not just an equipment malfunction.

With a wry smile, "That's one word for it. It happened a little while before I got here." She shakes her head. "I had a few back-up places around at home, at least. ...Come to think of it, one of those blew up too, ages back, but that was me."

Her laugh is weary. "Weird how that makes it better."

"No - at least you've got no one else to be pissed off at, then." It would be weirdly comforting. In a way. "Can you do any of that here? I mean, we've got CiDs, but I don't know what the computer level's like."

"Yeah, and it...was my sacrifice to make. My choice." For once, she doesn't say, because she is past being bitter about that, and anyway she's not going to burden anyone else with it.

"I've been looking into it, and it's - odd. Different eras and forms of tech coexisting or stitched together, just like everything else about the city. And who knows where the magic begins and ends." She can't help the slight grimace.

"Nothing against magic, I just - it's not exactly my area of expertise." Barbara knows, really, that she'll never entirely trust something she can't deconstruct from the bottom up, and you just can't do that with magic.

"I didn't used to believe in it," Clarice admits, frankly. Science that went far beyond her ability to understand, yes. Magic... not so much. She'd heard rumors, back home, but never seen anything that convinced her.

Of course, out of context, it might seem a bit weird, coming from a woman with lavender skin and pupil-less eyes.

"I definitely needed some demonstrations." And boy, did she get them. Barbara nods towards Clarice's quiver. "Not magic, then?"

"Oh! No. Do you have mutants, where you're from?" She'd quickly learned not to assume.

Barbara tilts her head slightly, brow furrowed. "Not the sort carrying glowing weapons around, no."

She considers for a moment, and then "There are metahumans, though - people with unusual abilities." Her lips quirk, just slightly.

"That's a fair way to put it I guess. Lots of mutants look more human than I do, in fairness." She draws one of her javelins. "This is sort of a way to concentrate what I do - to make it simpler to use in a fight, if I need it."

She nods slowly, peering at the javelin. "Is it a physical weapon you pour your power into, or do you manifest it yourself?"

"The latter. It's more or less an externalized way to focus what I do. The effect varies, but generally it displaces people in space for some span of time." Not far, but far enough in a fight.

A fascinated smile lights her face. "Oh, that's handy. For allies and enemies." She can't count the number of times she's wished she could vanish away an injured hero, ally or agent.

"Can you decide where exactly they end up?"

Clarice grins a little. "If I have a moment to concentrate yeah. These things tend to be just a quick displacement in the heat of the moment, though - knocks people off their game enough to make them sloppy." While she knows how to fight one-on-one, she's used to fighting with a team.

Barbara nods. "People underestimate the value of a good distraction, but one stumble can be all you need." She did that quite a lot, when she was out on the streets. She even does it now when she can; flickering lights, screeching alarms.

"Right? Fights happen fast." She smiles a little. "I can do most of what I do without it, but it's handy."

they're going to have to fight me (open)

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