[Day: Friday, October 24th. Time: Early evening. Maybe around 8:10 ish.] [We cut in on Abby flying, but not over dense apartments or commercial sectors or Central Park, but rather, more normal housing, city-based though it is. Why's she doing a flyover? Maybe she's looking for a new place to live. But probably not. Let's get to the actual stuff! Mini Start!] * Abby is all priestessed up, and finally sighs before murmuring, "I'm sorry, maybe we should track down the girl from earlier today instead?" A thin smirk crosses her face for a moment, then it slips away as she says, "Yeah, sorry. Look, we're doing this, alright?" She shifts her grip on her staff and heads down towards a specific house. "Who knows, maybe she's got automated defenses." * Jacqueline 's home is nice enough, but aside from the expansive sub-basement filled with decades worth of scientific achievement and research, wholly unremarkable and roughly identical to the two flanking it. She herself is actually in the house proper, in the middle of her living room with what was probably a TV scattered all around her. * Jacqueline 's home, generally speaking, is /also/ really full of the products of several decades of life, but it's pretty much all mundane up there. Souvenirs from across the world, collectibles - a /lot/ of collectibles - artwork, and the like. * Abby doesn't bust in through the window or wall, but she does knock on the door with her staff, floating just barely off the ground. * Jacqueline 's disassembled TV is apparently still good for /something/, because when the door is knocked on, electricity jumps from some of the components to the screen. Cameras outside provide a picture of Abby, and after furrowing her brow thoughtfully a moment she lifts what should just be a capacitor to her lips. * Jacqueline says, audible through speakers outside, "Japanese girl scouts. How novel." * Abby looks up a moment, towards the speakers, then smirks faintly and affects a more japanese accent as she says, "Please buy cookie? Must beat other troop or mother beat me." She then drops the accent, going back to the faint british accent. "At least I know I have the right house." * Jacqueline taps the capacitor against another component, and just like that the door softly clicks and opens just enough to serve as an invitation. The least you could have done is wear the costume. * Abby pushes the door open with her staff and heads in, replying, "Didn't know it was to your taste. I'm sure I can find one, Halloween's next week." * Jacqueline returns to tinkering as she dryly says - normally, as Abby is inside, now "Quite a number of things are to my taste. Shut the door; what brings you here?" The television screen and such have, of course, gone back to normal. * Abby floats onward, a gust of wind closing the door as she looks around at some of the souveniers. "I'm guessing you wouldn't believe a cup of sugar?" Better to make the cookies, you know. What breed of over-eager little girl would make them herself? * Jacqueline punctuates this by slamming her fist down solidly on the center of the screen. Rather than crack, it responds by jumping up - along with the rest of the disassembled television - like a loose automaton, with electricity serving as part of its 'limbs'. * Abby reaches the room Jackie's in just as she does that, so she blinks as the TV turns into an electricity golem. "... the same kind that animates televisions? A whip-smart bored one?" * Jacqueline softly scoffs and shakes her head. "A 'whip-smart' one would devise a way to make efficient use of the stores that already exist, before expending the effort, so far as I'm concerned; they are, after all, there to be used." * Jacqueline looks over her shoulder to meet Abby's eyes directly and adds, "Either way, I am no 'little girl'." * Abby smirks and replies, "Well, I was going to reply, 'not me, I have money', but the walking TV distracted me." * Abby doesn't shy away from Jackie's look. "Not much for baking anyway. Always had too much to do. And then I was dead, and suddenly I have all the time in the world." * Jacqueline dryly says, "Death and eternity are inexorably linked, it's quite true," as she straightens up and makes her way towards the kitchen. The television, meanwhile, walks back to the empty space in the living room where it no doubt belongs to... simply stand, for now. * Abby looks over to the TV again, as it settles in, then floats after her. "Sometimes cyclically, sometimes not. All depends on the mythology." * Jacqueline 's head rolls slowly around on her shoulders as she says, "Of course; I would imagine it's quite terrifying for the religious, really. The sense of absolute, unyielding certainty shattered by the deep down knowledge that Ganesha, Jesus, Buddha, and the Hero Twins likely play Gin on Thursdays." The Hero Twins /cheat/. * Abby chuckles and says, "That assumes it gets shattered. Faith isn't just like water 'cause it fills people up." * Jacqueline clucks her tongue softly as she opens the freezer and gestures towards it; a number of carefully arranged liquour bottles take up pretty much all of the space inside. "Too many build themselves on the assumption of exclusivity for me to believe that," she dismissively says. * Abby replies, "Ah, but that's more likely because pantheism doesn't explain anything. Religion's the illusion of explanation and control." She hrms at the bottles. "An illusion I expect you understand, even if it's not religion. And pour whatever you like, I was a grad student once." * Abby then frowns a touch and murmurs, to herself, "Not the time." * Jacqueline reaches for a bottle, only to stop with her fingertips hovering just a few inches away from a gin bottle. She looks over her shoulder at Abby with an arched brow and says, "Well. If you're sure," then steps back and shuts the door. "And I feel it distinctly moronic to stick too closely to any system that refuses to accept the truths of the universe around oneself." The Baptists and I never quite saw eye to eye. * Abby blinks as she closes the door, then shakes her head. "No, I was talking to the host. By all means, pour me a glass." She smirks. "Especially if we're talking religion." * Jacqueline snorts softly as she sees to pouring two glasses of gin - by hand, no less. "You will need to explain your relationship," she says quite simply. * Abby smirks moreso. "What, to Baptists?" * Jacqueline holds one of the glasses out to Abby as she dryly says, "Of course not; why would anyone care about anyone else's relationship to Baptists?" * Abby looks to the glass and then sighs. "Dammit. Gimme a second." She takes the staff and moves it behind her back, before sticking it all the way down her back, down her left leg, too. Then she takes the glass with her one hand. "So you knew to stay away? Baptists aren't the sort to see, in my experience. Especially not to a iconoclast such as yourself." * Abby takes a sip of the gin, then exhales slowly with a chuckle. "Always a hell of a drink, straight up." * Jacqueline drinks most of hers in one straight gulp, but it's just how she is, really. "Yes. Well. Their inability to accept my uniqueness would hardly be /my/ problem; I simply find them boring." * Abby gestures with her glass. "Good enough." * Abby takes a drink, then, "Explain my relationship, huhm? I thought I made the basics pretty clear before." * Jacqueline shrugs a shoulder casually as she says, "And before, when you were a floating Japanese stereotype, I found it easier to understand." * Abby snorts, then replies, "But now that I seem like a real woman, as opposed to a noble scion of Amaterasu it's a bit more confusing?" You were easier to understand when you sat seiza and threatened to wilt at any given moment, yes. * Abby lets out a sharp laugh, takes a drink, then says, "False images, Jacqueline Hyde. Mizuki never saw a challenge she wouldn't meet." A pause, then, "That's why we died just over a week ago." * Abby then looks back to her. "Easier to put in a box, I get it, she wore 'priestess' like a glove. But I was there the whole time." * Jacqueline smiles faintly as she says, "And I have no idea who 'you' are; you could see where I might wonder at an explanation." Another glass is poured and swirled around a little once lifted. "The others make far more sense than you could hope to." * Abby nods slightly, then shrugs. "I do my best to be inscrutable. Otherwise people might talk to me and shit." She takes another sip, then, "I'm what I was before. A cultural anthropologist piloting half of a spirit that fights evil." Now it just looks like me, and Mizuki's dead. * Jacqueline gestures vaguely up and down at Abby as she wonders, "Then who, or what was Mizuki? Do you exist in some queer sort of hive, or nested state in which primary ownership over your empowered state shifts upon death?" * Abby peers a moment, then says, "She was a spirit and a woman, born over a thousand years ago. And I don't know how the rest of it works. This is the first time I've had the opportunity to die." I'll fix that eventually, but right now, I'd like to avoid it. And /you/ are? * Abby takes a drink, then adds, "A spirit and a woman, born about thirty years ago. I already mentioned I was a professor at NYU. Technically still am, since they don't know I'm dead." Also, carrying along Mizuki's powers. Whatever that means. * Abby chuckles. "Not really the Amaterasu sort. I'm not exactly mirror pure." * Jacqueline gently clucks her tongue, and after joking basically by instinct, "Good; I'm sure we'll be able to get along," she pinches the bridge of her nose briefly. "And your host?" * Abby looks over her glass at Jackie, having brought it to her lips, then says, "Not really your concern, is it? She's got her own life to try to live." So do I. * Jacqueline gestures broadly around her kitchen. And yet. * Jacqueline drinks her glass down and sets it aside, keeping it loosely held. "It's mere curiosity, anyway; there's nothing I could /do/ with the information." I doubt she'd interest me in and of herself the way that the puzzle you represent as a whole does. * Abby half-smiles. "Curiosity, I get, but she's off limits as long as she wants to be." * Abby then chuckles and says, "And I'm a puzzle, huh? What about you? Virtual house arrest, partly by choice, fighting evil by moonlight, despite ginning up as much bad blood as I've ever seen people have and still work together." Drink! Makes you damn noble, don't it? * Jacqueline brings the bottle near to her lips as Abby replies, and before drinking she scoffs, "A shame. I only bite by request," before actually taking a slug directly. Once the bottle goes down, she simply says, "/Thank/ you." For what? Understanding, of course. * Jacqueline takes one more sip before actually filling her glass and offering Abby the same courtesy. "Most are rather narrowminded. Super-Baptists." * Abby peers at her. "Wait, okay. Apparently I'm a lightweight in this body, because I don't understand how I got from point A to point Z here." Now, Mizuki, that woman could drink. * Jacqueline 's eyebrow slowly arches. "I am a heroine, unequivocably; I submit myself to routine psychological examination, the slings and arrows of the ignorant, these invisible shackles--I do not show them the penitence and shame that they no doubt expect from a former criminal, and thus, the bad blood is 'ginned'." * Abby squints at her, and then slowly says, "Or maybe it's because you denigrate their values, and heroism's all about values." Sip, then, "You think Mizuki did the stupidest fucking thing ever, yes or no?" Yes and no. * Abby is silent a moment, then says, "Guess that works. Guess you have a lot of 'ever'." * Jacqueline merely sips before elucidating, "Given different circumstances - a woman who is not bound to a cycle of reincarnation - self-sacrifice under any but the most unbelievably dire of circumstances is rather a /selfish/ act in this climate." The rest of us, after all, would have been left to clean up her slack, wouldn't we have? Not to mention the axe-swinging moron left crying in her wake. * Jacqueline sips. * Abby chuckles faintly, then says, "Wasn't sure if anyone else caught that. They weren't exactly obvious." Guess he did some embarassing crap when we died, huh? * Jacqueline shrugs impassively as she loosely folds her arms over her chest and finishes her glass. "He was /almost/ respectable, to tell you the truth." * Abby half-smiles. "From you, I figure that means something." She's silent a moment, then, "In a way, you're right. But on the other hand, she did exactly what you were worried about. She freed things up." Even if we had stayed dead... we got the job more than done. * Abby then mutters, "Besides. It was dire." You don't know how dire, because you're all fucking blind, but it was dire. I told the Warrior the same thing. In a nicer tone. * Abby takes a larger drink, finishing the glass. It's more I figured you'd disagree with the concept. You strike at what heroism means to people. Iconoclasm. * Jacqueline licks her lips briskly before letting a soft sound of amusement rise from her throat. "'Redefine'. I prefer to think of it as redefining what heroism might mean; I /have/ been doing this for a very long while, after all. It's only that it's taken quite some time to be taken seriously." * Abby snorts, then, "I still figure it comes down to values." She gestures with her glass hand. "Religion or heroes. Heroes are as gods, they represents values, shared values, shared morals, shared stories. Villains represent the opposite." She puts the cup down. "I figure you're closer to American Dream for people. You just didn't get the hand up from the government. Lucky break him, huh?" His only truly lucky break was somewhere between C2 and C4, I would wager. * Jacqueline pushes off of the counter - with the gin bottle being snagged, of course - to return to the living room, with that. "People on the whole are ignorant, when it comes down to it; it isn't as if I'm /surprised/." * Abby squints at her a moment, clearly not getting the C2/C4 thing, then regrabs her glass as she replies, "So are you people?" * Jacqueline 's eyebrows are both high as she looks back at Abby. "Why, dear Abigail, would I ever imagine myself as one of them? This 'bad blood' would not exist, if it were that easy." * Abby smirks and says, "If you thought you were as ignorant as everyone else? Maybe it'd be easier after all." She gestures with the empty glass. "Can think of more than a few sociologists that would say that, though not in those words." Academic writing. I'm sure you're familiar. * Jacqueline allows, "Perhaps," as she re-enters the living room. A sharp note is whistled, and in response the television golem reassembles itself into... well, just a TV. "But I wouldn't be me, then, would I?" * Abby chuckles. "Wouldn't you? Or are you just that piercingly socially brilliant when you want to be?" I am piercingly brilliant in most anything, when I want to be, darling. * Jacqueline has a seat on a couch that's just a couch and even gestures for Abby to join her, should she wish. "The rank and file does not give rise to greatness, all the same." * Abby snorts, still floating, then says, "Yeah, but you're lucky you don't have to do social. Some people have to work for it." You just get the pass of the brilliant. * Abby looks down to her glass, sighs, then holds it out. "Any more in that for me?" * Jacqueline refills Abby's glass as she says, "While others have the pass of god-granted power, spiritual manifestation, mutation--I have nothing /against/ those less fortunate, mind, but none of us are a thing like they are. We are, after all, deific in our own way." * Jacqueline pours herself another glass as she finishes, "We /all/ have the same pass; I simply was never given the choice of using it. Fortunately, I'm not particularly broken up about it." * Abby pulls her glass. "And yet, still so damn human." * Abby snorts, then adds, "Yeah, I noticed. But I didn't get your pass. Nobody would let me get away with shit because they need me. We're not good enough. No Horus, or American Dream, or you." Some of us are just the rank and file. * Jacqueline scoots surrepitously to the edge of her couch, and then she ever so slowly extends her leg so that the top of her shoe is pressing against the sole of Abby's. "She says, while floating above the ground they're trapped walking on; your /host/ is a woman. You, clearly, are more." * Abby looks back at her, then laughs faintly before shaking her head, "I was 'just' a woman a week ago. Am I more just because Mizuki died? Am I any more or less ignorant? More or less heroic? Just because I got a little power? A little glow, and spirits' whispers?" * Abby floats slightly off of Jackie's foot. "I'm just another fighter holding the line because it needs to be done. I'm no better or worse for it. Rank and file has a meaning, you know." * Jacqueline draws her leg in to loosely cross it over the other. "You are one of a rapidly shrinking minority of fighters, Abigail; the man who delivers my groceries could not begin to stand in for what you do, despite the modesty you're so eager to spin around it." * Abby half-smiles. "Give him a chance. You never know." She takes a drink, then replies, "I was just a woman once. So was she. So was my host. Only one of us didn't get to choose to fight." * Abby then takes another drink before adding. "You should think about that, though. Even the nicey-nice heroes really are people sometimes." You might be too. Don't know you all that well, though. * Jacqueline 's jaw very briefly clenches before a broad smile is flashed up at Abby. "I suppose. Perhaps even the addled one with axes, too." * Abby squints a moment, then chuckles. "Maybe. He's a big fuckin' softie." She then sips again, silent a moment, then says, "I hit a nerve? You're not holdin' back, are you?" * Jacqueline waves dismissively as she takes a drink directly from the bottle. "Of course not." A beat, and then her smile thins considerably and her head cants to the side. "How big?" * Abby laughs fainly, then says, "I'm not givin' you ammo in your fight, sorry." She sips. "It's funny to watch, don't get me wrong, but it'd feel pretty cheap. Didn't get to see anything risque." She lets out a soft sigh, then closes her eyes. "She at least deserved to live a bit longer for that." Thirteen days is a pretty short romance for a medieval Japanese woman. * Jacqueline snorts softly before murmuring, "A shame. perhaps; I will admit that I've wondered, sometimes, what it would be like. I've tried most everything else, so far." * Abby looks slightly confused. "What?" 'Anything risque', as a temporary alternative to actively seeking or passively wishing for his horrible demise. * Abby takes a sip, then, "What the hell for? I mean, I'm familiar with running hot and cold, but what are you, uh, going for?" Novelty, mainly. * Jacqueline clucks her tongue softly as she carefully considers Abby, and then her head slightly shakes and another slug is taken. "It's rather difficult to explain; it's rather a /thing/." * Abby smirks and gestures with her glass. "We're here, we're drinking. What better time to explain 'things'." Perhaps it'll be a story for your better half, some time. * Jacqueline raises her bottle to that before taking a sip. * Abby laughs and says, "Good luck with that." She takes a sip herself. "Novelty, huh. Guess I heard worse reasons." [And so they continued to drink and hopefully talk about maybe other things, or perhaps not. The world may never know. Mini end!]