Summary:Kori misinterprets some good advice, and gets some improved advise from Scandal Savage (and a little language explanation from Venom and Hiroto. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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It's only been a day, but Kori's acting on Scandals' advice. After all, the redheaded human had suggested that modelling might be an easy way to make money, and with finals over, there's no time like the present to start hunting for 'real' work, after all!
So Kori steps out of a print shop in New York with a bundle of paper in her hands, and smiles brilliantly at the resultant work under the light of the later afternoon sun. She steps off with a long-legged grace, hair rippling in her wake like a long encarmine dance streamer. A deeply plunging black tanktop with complicated cross-knotting over her sternum is paired with a red skirt adorned with small pink hearts. She skipsteps along with an excited expression and almost collides into—
Scandal! "Friend Scandal! Hello!" Kori says with effusive pleasure. "Look at what I have done! I am using your wonderful advise!"
She hands Scandal a sheet of paper. It sports a selfie of Kori, her name, number, address, and underneath: 'Looking for modelling work! Will remove clothes for money!'
"Do they not look the excellent?" she says, proudly. "I am going to stand on a street corner and give these out. I thought that would be the fastest way for someone to 'discover' me."
Out here on the street is another person — well. In as much as he, or many here, are ordinary people. Hiroto stands in a doorway, dressed in a black trench-coat over a white button down shirt, tucked neatly into black trousers, wearing rather conservative black shoes. He is smoking a cigarette, and his attention is easily drawn to the tall, imposing figure of Kori as she nearly collides into Scandal. He stands up a little straighter, watching the pair of them with interest. For they are both rather interesting people.
It's safe to say that this was not what Scandal had been expecting today. Or, in fact, any day. Clad in her customary black (with the usual blue bandana around her throat), she makes for quite a contrast to the many-coloured alien - and blinks in some bewilderment at the visions before her. The picture now in her hand receives a slight majority of her attention, before the other hand comes up to run through her hair. "Ahhh… wasn't the idea that you would try the *wearing clothes* version of modelling first?", she asks, a little weakly. Her accent is indeterminately international: definitely not American, but hard to pin down beyond that. "And, ahh, is this your *home* address?"
Eddie Brock isn't quite as together, having fallen asleep in a nearby alley sometimes last night. At least he doesn't seem to be covered in any fluids. He appears to be wearing a white tee and a pair of jeans, his muscled arms on display and his eyes behind a pair of sunglasses.
"There's gotta be a friggin' McDonald's around here," he mutters, then finds himself surprised by the sight of Kori as well. She's kind of hared to miss. "Huh."
"Did we? I could not remember," Kori apologizes to Scandal. "But I looked on the Googles and it seemed as if the most famous of models take their clothes off more than put them on. And the clothes they do wear are very comfortable looking— there is almost nothing to them! So I would be not having to wear all the heavy leather and pants and …" She shudders. "*Sweaters*."
"And yes, it is my home address. How else will they find me?" She catches Eddie goggling at her, looks to Scandal, then turns quickly back to Eddie and skitters towards him, barely a yard from Hitoro's smoking station. Her hair twists around in her wake. "Hello sir! My friend is trying to help me get a job. Do you think someone would pay me more to wear *more* clothes, or *less* clothes?" she asks with a completely sincere expression of professional curiousity.
Hiroto, now much closer to the action — such as it is — watches the little drama unfold before him. It's not polite to outright stare, of course, so he occasionally glances away, continuing to drag on the cigarette. He's also too polite to interject…but eavesdrop? That he can do.
"People might think that if you are giving out an address - especially your home one - and offering to take your clothes off in return for money, that you are offering… services beyond just the chance for them to look and take pictures," Scandal attempts to explain, though she doesn't seem overly confident that it will work. The unfamiliar men receive a wary glance, but for once she really can't blame them for staring at the startling figure bearing down on them. For her own part, she tags along to maintain the conversation.
Eddie stares blankly at Kori for a moment, his face bland as he tries to process what she just said and how she looks and the fact that he isn't sure what he ate last but it might not have been a willing participant in the process. Meanwhile, in Eddie's head:
<Speaking of tasty…>
(Don't you ever get full?)
<I digest quickly. And I make exceptions when the morsel is so succulent.>
(Yeah, I get the feeling you're not thinking about food.)
<Well…not JUST food.>
Blinking for a moment to clear his head, he finally manages to respond, "Fashion pays better than porn, but porn's easier to get into. Depends on how much work you wanna put into it, I guess. Either way, I'd say you'll do fine." He peers over her shoulder to see Scandal. Something familiar about her. Couldn't quite place it. "She's got a point about the address, though. Never know who might be a creepy bastard."
Hiroto puts his cigarette out on the sole of his shoe, then pockets the butt in a little silver case he's just drawn from his coat. His cheeks are a little red, like there's something about this conversation that is deeply embarrassing him — and he's not even involved in it! Just lingering on the edges of it…he's flustered enough that he when he tries to walk past them, he has a rare moment of clumsiness, half-bumping into not only Kori, but Eddie as well. "I'm so very sorry," he says, voice breathless, his English lightly accented.
Kori looks from Eddie to Scandal, back again, backs up and turns a shoulder towards Scandal so she's not excluded from her conversation with Eddie. "I— other services? I don't know how to do anything else, friend Scandal," Kori reminds the other redhead with a polite deference. "This is why I need to do the modelling. I don't know what else I would do while not wearing clothes." She furrows her brow, thinking.
"Oh! I clean! Because bleach is bad for my clothe," she says, brightening. "I could clean people's houses! I am good at the cleaning," she promises the others. "And once I'm done cleaning, I just put the napkins on the table for people to use!"
She looks back at Eddie. "What is… 'porn'?" she asks, eyelids narrowing fractionally in uncertainty. "I don't know this word. I am from Malta," she says, proudly. "But have no fear, I am a very hard worker! I am very diligent, and I take instruction well! I have only been fired from work seventeen times, and my friends have said I really should not be blamed for at least nine of them. And the property damage was all insured," she adds, quickly.
She looks over at Hiroto when the fellow speaks, and beams a smile at him. "Hello!" she greets him back. She doesn't budge an *inch* when he bumps into her. It's like trippign and checking yourself into a piece of statuary.
Scandal eyes Kori with mild disbelief… but their earlier encounter did at least provide some on-the-spot training for this rapid-fire dose strangeness. "I think that you need to have some rather extensive lessons, on a number of topics," she says dryly. "Though I do have to admit that cleaning without clothes on might be a viable way of making money, if you can find the right clientele. I could certainly imagine there being rather a lot of people who would enjoy watching you work."
There's a moment when Hiroto bumps against him where something malevolent passes over Eddie's face, something twisted in his expression, his teeth just too sharp for just a split second before he chokes it down again. Easy. No need to get violent. Just an accident. "No problem," he mutters.
"It's fucking. Porn is fucking on camera. Sometimes it's just being naked, but usually it's fucking," he says bluntly. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Gotta do what you gotta do to make ends meet. Plenty of people'd pay to see it, but if you ain't comfortable with a bunch of strange guys pulling their puds looking at your pink and your stink, you're probably better off chasing legitimate modelling jobs."
Hiroto bows his head in a brief apology to Kori, giving Scandal a rather nervous smile while he's at it. But that reaction from Eddie? Yes…he notices it. What might be strange is that Hiroto doesn't react with fear, but with something else — like there's a stirring of his energy, and then a silence. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.
It never does. His shoulders untense, and he turns to better look the others over, though his eyebrows raise at Eddie's rather, er…colorful language. "Excuse me," he says, half-turning to Kori. "What is it you are trying to accomplish, exactly?"
Kori's eyes go wider as Eddie starts talking, and when he falls silent she just stares at him for a few beats. She backs up, half a pace, and then leaaans backwards towards Scandal's ear with her precious fliers still tucked up in her arms.
"I did not understand any of that," she confesses, in a hoarse whisper that utterly fails to be actually inaudible to Eddie. "Is this sort of brain damage from testosterone normal for humans? It seems to be a trend."
She glances over at Hitoro, then smoothly pivots to her foot near Scandal and beams at the man's polite question. "I am trying to earn money. I have been fired from seventeen jobs and I am not good at anything, so my friend Scandal said, I might be good at modelling, which /I/ thought meant making the little trains and the men with the plastic and then the painting of them, but *then* she said people will pay me to wear or NOT wear clothing, and those are things I both do! Isn't she clever?"
Scandal does not currently look as if she feels terribly clever - though she is now paying a bit of extra attention to both the men involved in this bizarre discourse. "I was attempting to promote fashion modelling as a possibility," she explains. "I spoke of people who design clothes, paying others to display them, if you recall?" She arches a brow up at Kori. "But he *was* providing you with an answer, albeit in… slang terms that you apparently have not yet been taught." Not that she herself had ever had the misfortune to come across pud-tugging before today. "The short version is that many people would think that you were offering to mate with them, in return for money. Which is not 'modelling', and is in fact something else that can cause quite a lot of problems."
Eddie raises an eyebrow, "Yeah, we're the one with brain damage, sure," he says, flashing a quick grin. He turns his attention to Scandal, "You her keeper, then? Doesn't seem that this one should be wandering around without a leash on her. This is a bad city to be innocent in. Although it can be even worse to be guilty, if you cross the wrong people."
<Are we people, then, Eddie?>
<Hell if I know.>
<That boy would like to fight us. We should push him.>
(Not now.)
<Boring.>
(Welcome to Earth.)
"Got a spare cancer stick, bud?" he asks instead.
Hiroto is nothing if not polite. He listens to Kori's problem like he's trying to solve the answer for world peace and not just some random chick's weird employment dilemma. He can't help but smile a little at her naivete. It's charming, and he has moments of it himself. He turns to examine Scandal, presuming her the friend in question. Then he nods. "Yes, I think your friend — and this man — " He seems much less certain about the man. "— are correct. But many would like to see your picture in magazines, I think, without the necessity of taking off your clothing."
There's no doubt in his mind, giving what he can sense from everyone here, that /all/ of these people are extraordinary, in some way or another. But it's actually Eddie who gets the longest look, as though he's just noticed something particularly curious about him. "Yes, of course," he murmurs, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and offering them to Eddie. They are a brand one doesn't normally see in America; it reads 'Peace' on the packet.
Kori's mouth forms an 'O' of surprised understanding, and she looks from Scandal to Eddie with wide eyes. Then she nods at Hitoro. "Ahhhh, I seeeee," she says, as if some grand mystery has been revealed to her. "I was so confused! Now I understand why those construction workers kept saying, 'look, a fucking model!' when I walked past," she announces. "And no one would explain to me what the word *meant*," she clarifies for the trio.
"I asked at school! And people just said so many joking things that I gave up trying to understand the word at all. I thought it had something to do with studying, because everyone kept complaining about their 'fucking homework'," she says, her tone carrying easily around the area.
"…Wait, that doesn't make any sense. How would homework even copulate?" she asks Scandal. Her eyes widen and she snaps her finger and pivots back to Eddie and Hitoro. "Oh! If the computer has *worms*, then the *worms* must be propagating. Ah-hah! I knew I would figure it out eventually," she says, with a triumphant smile.
"Such words are often used as expletives," Scandal explains, a little wearily. "Rather than being literal in that case, they are an expression of the speaker's unhappiness with the subject in question. One can usually discern the intent by the context, and the tone of voice." Hiroto and Eddie both receive a slightly weak smile. "We only met yesterday. But I am increasingly inclined to think that you are in need of some extensive tuition, Kori."
Eddie takes a drag on the cigarette, blowing plumes of smoke through his nostrils in a rather bull-like fashion. "Get the feelin' she ain't from Malta either. Not that it's any of our business," Eddie says. Something clicks as he looks at Scandal and he remembers her from the list of operatives on file when he was signed into the Thunderbolts. "Scandal, right? We and you hadn't met yet, but we have a lightning bolt in common, if you catch our drift," he says.
His eyes rake up and down Kori again, "Yeah, I bet the construction workers teach you a lot of new words when you walk by."
"Americans use that word as an adverb, it would seem." Hiroto looks from Starfire to Scandal. "I think it is unique to how they speak. It is confusing, I agree." He is rather obviously not American, given not only his accent but his rather overly formal vibe. He smiles at the both of them a touch and adds, "Perhaps I can help as well? Although I am not well-suited to navigating certain aspects of this culture, I suppose." He takes another glance at Eddie as he smokes, and then his pocket buzzes. Murmuring "sumimasen" under his breath, he steps off from the group for a few moments to take the call.
"They try," Kori tells Eddie, and she gives him a wryly sympathetic expression. "But I am often in a hurry, and I have also been yelled at for being in a construction yard without wearing a helmet. And, I am not allowed to drive any of the equipment," she adds, conscientously.
"Adverbs, explicatives… why do you people not *say* what you mean?" Kori asks, and flips her fingernails skywards in mild consternation at the information from Scandal and Hiroto. "You have so many rules for grammar— there is no wonder I am struggling to learn the language."
She exhales, and flashes a smile at the other two. "Whew! Pardon me for losing my temper just now. I did not mean to be 'the rude'," she says. The question of lightning bolts gets a confused list of her brows and she looks from Eddie to Scandal and back again, expectantly.
Scandal offers Eddie a look of frank surprise, her distraction ensuring that Hiroto currently receives little more than a nod of acknowledgement. "I… perhaps," she concedes to the lone local involved in the conversation. "We might be due to work together, at some point," she explains to Kori, before refocusing upon the alien and finding a smile. "Lessons. You need them. But I can potentially help you find some work to get you an income in the near future."
Venom flashes a smile, "Listen to your friend," he says, nodding to Scandal. "Yes, we might at that. Maybe we'll come find you sometime and we can discuss workplace issues. We find that our mutual employers aren't always the best at communication."
Eddie starts to withdraw, in part because he truly is hungry, in part because being around this group is testing the symbiote's resistance to causing havoc. "No apologies necessary, sugar," he says to Kori, "You girls be good. We're going to go get a god damn cheeseburger."
Kori sighs wistfully. "I am just graduating high school. I was hoping to be done with the lessons of things," she complains. "But if you think it will help, friend Scandal, we can do this!"
She looks back at Eddie when he shuffles off. "Farewell, friend! Thank you for your suggestions! I hope you have a good day!"
She looks to Scandal, then shrugs and links arms without any self-consciousness and starts walking down the street with Scandal. "That was a very peculiar encounter, friend Scandal," she tells the redhead. "You'll have to explain to me what he said, because I still do not understand a *word* of it," she complains.
Poor Scandal.
|ROLL| Starfire +rolls 1d2 for: 2
Starfire says, "Wrong way!"
Kidnap had certainly not been part of today's plan - but after a startled look for each of Eddie and Hiroto in turn, Scandal finds herself being ushered back the way she came. A brief attempt to free her arm results in the arching of a brow up at her faux-Maltese companion: there aren't exactly many on whom she would have no discernible effect. "Lessons," she reaffirms, adding 'personal space' to the list of things that Starfire needs to understand. "We *definitely* have to sort out some lessons for you."