The full seasonal event can be read here! Below are the main seasonal items for quick reference:
1. A thread reacting to the season's weather in some ways.
2. A thread in the part of the city your character doesn't live in!
3. A thread relating to your vocation.
Of The Season
Quote
"Tell Dr. Nate that Gale sent you, and he still owes me for the mushrooms. Except that it takes you a while to reach the clinic, and by the time you do your fever is spiking, and so instead of the requisite message you instead tell the poor soul who greets you that 'A gale'a m'shrooms sent me cus'a my hands.'" - Zephyr in Oh help me, please doctor, I'm damaged
Breathe silently, make the ghostly voice surrender.
Mallorie hesitated. Normally she preferred to be forthright, but even she knew that a plateside enforcer living in the Chokes might arouse suspicion. Not that she had any nefarious purposes, but still, the suspicion remained. She looked around herself, the small, cluttered room, and considered the ease with which Adam had invited her in.
Adam seemed friendly enough. Though she perhaps didn’t have the best experience to determine such things. But, she took a chance moving down here…
“...I did investigative work. I’m hoping to put my skills to use while I get established here.”
Not a lie. Technically.
She moved on as swiftly and smoothly as she could, accepting a can, and perched on the couch carefully, a little concerned it would collapse under the weight of more than one person. It wasn’t the most comfortable seat but it also, sadly, wasn’t the worst she’d encountered in the Drench. Mallorie toyed with the ring pull of the can, waiting for her impromptu host to open his drink before she approached hers.
Adam’s question amused her - not that her face showed it. Mallorie shook her head once, side to side, and answered flatly, “My guardian was a merchant, so I’m afraid you’re out of luck if you’re hoping to meet nobility.”
If I was a noble, she thought but pointedly didn’t say, you wouldn’t find me down here.
After a moment though, her curiosity was piqued.
“You’re not too far off what Plate radio is like. I assume your radio is a little different?”
You were born for these flashing lights You were born for these endless nights
"Investagative? Investigating what for who?" Maybe it was too direct a way to ask, but Adam was distracted, wondering if Mallorie's skill set and her time in the Plates would make her a good ally for his own personal mission. Being able to say the information in his show came from a Plates insider certainly sounded nice.
There was no hesitation in opening the beer for Adam, the can cracked and tipped in record time; he shook his head and wrinkled his nose but went for another sip after, presumably very used to piss weak drinks. Disappointed to hear that Mallorie wasn't a noble (though also a little relieved, as nobles were always pricks) he shrugged and made a humming sound that echoed through the can as he drank.
"Oh, my radio is very fuckin' different." He laughed, almost snorting, at the idea of trying to do anything like the boring gossip the Plates offered. "I mean, it's kinda serious, like I uh...tell people important stuff...but I also play music and just goof around, cos who needs more bad news? We're full of it down here." Anyone who went outside and saw the enforcers on the streets knew that the Drench wasn't doing well. "I haven't gotten a chance to do a show recently though...I mean, I don't care about the curfew and usually I can dodge 'em, but since I usually go live after their stupid bedtime, I don't want them tracing my signal and getting me cos of it."
Breathe silently, make the ghostly voice surrender.
“Your radio sounds more community minded.” Mallorie was sincere - news was important and all, but Adam seemed to have enthusiasm for his work, which was pretty refreshing. “Is your work usually interrupted by these sorts of decisions?”
Mallorie had never really...thought about the effect that decisions made by the bigwigs on the Plate had on the everyday life of those down below. She’d known, distantly, that it affected people. But the idea of not being able to do something as simple as one’s job was a sobering reminder of the disparity between regions - and of the reasons why she now found herself down here.
Adam asked about her previous work, and she was right about him being on the ball, it seemed. Mallorie put off answering his query by taking a (potentially over generous) sip of her drink - found herself disgusted but also faintly intrigued by the taste. It was a little like what she imagined dish water tasted like…only more watered down.
For a man like him, knowing an ex-enforcer lived nearby (had been invited into his home, even!) might offend. Then again, considering his radio equipment and the dubious legality of his having it, he might consider it an asset. Much as she didn’t regard herself as such at the moment. Mallorie took another drink and sat up straighter, assuming it wouldn’t be hard to guess her former employer from her demeanour.
“Many things,” she said cagily, “and I don’t do it for them anymore. Now I’m freelance.”
Her back ramrod straight, she fixed Adam with a cool stare. And, perhaps encouraged by his easy nature, or the pisswater in her can, said with a shrug:
You were born for these flashing lights You were born for these endless nights
"What, by whatever they do up there? Yeah, all the fucking time. It's just a part of it." Adam shrugged, then relied on an old saying: "Hell, the Arbiter fucking sneezes and everyone in the Drench catches a cold, you know." (The curse may have been a new addition). It was just how it was in the Drench, especially when one had revolutionary leanings; you took whatever bullshit the Plates was doing now and tried to work around it. This particular bullshit had really put a wrench in his show plans, though.
There was a not-so-disguised laugh as he saw Mallorie sample her beer, the reaction about what he expected. "Never said it was good." Adam cheerfully commented as he knocked back more of his own, seemingly numb to the piss-weak taste by now.
She was boringly short on the investigations she'd done - Adam pulled a face and sunk down in his chair, long legs with clunky boots sticking comedically out in two directions. "So you should spill the details! Isn't that what people do when they get fired? Bitch about their bosses?"
Breathe silently, make the ghostly voice surrender.
Mallorie sipped at her beer with the slow pull of someone who’d never drunk before - in her case at least, she’d never drunk beer quite this…bad. Still, she should be polite, and she diplomatically didn’t say anything until Adam’s comment. It was a drink offered in friendship, and she would finish it regardless of taste. It was certainly...a taste.
His assessment of the effects from the Plate on the Drenches was succinct. Explicit, but honest. He spoke about the Arbiter with a freedom that Mallorie found faintly impressive - her estimation of this scruffy man growing a little. Someone with something they cared about enough to disregard high society niceties was someone she could regard with at least a little respect.
It also made her feel a little, ah, guilty, she supposed. Having once been part of an organisation acting on and enforcing those same decisions that Adam was decrying…and now sitting in his room, drinking his beer. Mallorie wasn’t prone to squirming, but in this instance she couldn’t deny the tiny, queasy sensation. His goading was good-natured, but it seemed to unlock whatever hold she had on the slippery sense of shame and she swallowed her drink thickly.
“I quit.” She blurted out. Because of course that was the important thing, Mallorie, she chided herself silently before carrying on. “I’m not quite sure where one would begin, ah…bitching about those in charge of the Enforcers.”
You were born for these flashing lights You were born for these endless nights
Had Adam considered that this line of conversation could make Mallorie uncomfortable? Maybe. However, an ex-enforcers discomfort wasn't high on his list of priorities for fixing and perhaps there was a part of him that enjoyed it, the small form of revenge he could get now. Maybe Mallorie had been one of the 'good ones', one of the few enforcers that didn't revel in the potential cruelty of their work - but she still represented something he hated.
Or had represented. It was only because she'd quit that he'd let her in.
"Well, like, I dunno. Why did you quit?" Adam asked, pausing to knock back the rest of his can with a dramatic lean backwards, his booted feet rising slightly off the floor as he drank. He certainly had plenty to say about anyone he'd ever worked for and he'd never worked for an organisation quite so vile as the Plates law enforcement. "Did you like the other enforcers. Ooh - did you ever meet Arbiter Jr? He's an enforcer nowadays."
Breathe silently, make the ghostly voice surrender.
It’s a question she’d asked herself several times since making the decision to leave, and Mallorie felt no closer to creating a coherent answer. She also felt Adam might be enjoying watching her squirm a little, but she also couldn’t find it in herself to feel more than a slight prickle of irritation at that; the list of people who deserved some joy at the expense of enforcers and the Plate-dwellers was undoubtedly long.
She swallowed her beer with the grimace of someone drinking dishwater.
“I joined young. It made sense, until it didn’t.” She shrugged. “Got injured on duty and spent a few weeks doing nothing but stare at the ceiling and think. Turns out that was a quick route to quitting.”
Thinking in general seems to be a quick route out of that career path, she pointedly didn’t say, though she suspected Adam would probably hear it in her silence nonetheless.
His questions about other enforcers made her frown - Mallorie had never really been one to chat or socialise within the workplace. Or outside of it, for that matter. She had had teammates though,obviously. And opinions thereof.
…Well, it wasn’t like they were around to hear them.
“Many of my colleagues were…”
What was the best way to phrase it?
“...Not best suited to their role.” Mallorie finished her can in one long pull, as if needing to fuel her assessment. “That or we read very different protocols. As for the Arbiter’s son, I know of him, but I don’t believe we’ve met.”
She belched delicately, as if the burp surprised her, and a strange lashing of bitterness came with it.
“Not that I had much time for the nepotism hires, anyway.”
They got a file on me and it's a mile long And they say that they got all of the proof
"How young? Did you have to do the whole fucked up Plates drowning thing? Like they pull you outta the water-" Adam mimed leaning down to lift up a child by the armpits, tilting side to side as if considering the fictional infant. "-And went hm, yeah, this one'll do, off to enforcer school?"
It was somewhat refreshing to hear Mallorie say that given time to consider her role, she had decided to leave - he was sure that many Enforcers, when presented with the opportunity to reflect, would simply spend the time wondering if they could optimise their bootlicking strategies. That she'd changed enough to move down here was something that garnered respect from Adam, though there was no sign of this on his always-sardonically-amused face.
The description of them 'not best suited to the role' drew a laugh, though. "Nah, I think they're perfect. Shaju doesn't want people with a conscious, does he?" It wasn't the kind of job you could hold for a long time if you deigned to see the Drenchers as people - something he was about to comment on when mention of protocols suddenly made him pause. "Hey...d'ya remember what those protocols were? Knowing what enforcers are taught...that's some valuable info, down here."
"Nice." Was all he had to say about the burp.
That I'm just another case of arrested development I'm just another wasted youth
Breathe silently, make the ghostly voice surrender.
It took Mallorie a moment to realise what he was referring to - she may have lived on the Plates, but she had been far enough removed from nobility that that particular tradition was little more than a story. Something her guardian told her at bedtime, in somewhat ill-planned but well-intentioned attempts to encourage sleep.
“The Drowning? No. That’s for nobles,” She explained, “It’s how they decide who gets what, usually.”
As a concept she couldn’t deny there was a certain logic. As a practice, she found it…distasteful. Not that what she thought had meant much up top.
She wrinkled her nose and set her empty can aside; piss weak as it was, Mallorie wasn’t a drinker, and she could feel it already beginning to settle strangely in her stomach. How Adam drank enough to apparently justify keeping it in stock escaped her.
His laugh, his entire demeanour, gave her a faint inkling. And his question, though sarcastic, was…fair. She’d had time enough to stumble near the same thought herself, though maybe not quite so comfortably - or bluntly. She had no answer that felt worthwhile, given how her own increasing discomfort with the work had led her, somewhere along the way, to Adam’s apartment. The other question, however…
Well. She couldn’t say she was surprised at the asking. Maybe a little surprised that she considers, briefly, responding. Mallorie owed no loyalty now. Technically speaking. And she understood the need for work - even more keenly here, in her new home. She stretched, ready to stand up from the sofa, and spoke.
“They’re hard to forget. If you’re good at your job, they’re your life.”
Not that she would know, a thorny little thought pointed out, She wasn't even a mediocre enforcer these days.
Maybe the beer made her a little bold (what fractional amount of it could possibly have had an effect at this point), but she felt herself responding before her brain could parse what it was saying.
“Of course, I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and I imagine you know what that can do to a person’s memory.”
They got a file on me and it's a mile long And they say that they got all of the proof
"Guess it's hard to give your house or whatever to someone that's dead." Adam nodded, seemingly unaffected by the harsh truth behind his words. He watched as Mallorie set down the can (definitely not empty) but didn't say anything, planning to pour out what was left and drink it later; you couldn't waste beer in the Drench, awful or not.
He hadn't really expected Mallorie to come out with all the secrets of the Plates, as good as that would have been. She didn't seem particularly angry at her old bosses, and without the fire of revenge most ex-Enforcers took a while to come around to their new position. Confident he'd learn all he wanted to from her eventually, he nodded understandingly. "Sure. Hey, go get your rest. I'll keep it down for a bit, alright? Maybe sleep myself."
{END}
That I'm just another case of arrested development I'm just another wasted youth
