paradisalogs | MIA [OPEN]

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MIA [OPEN]

Who: Gren, and whoever want to bother him
What: Wartime loss. A confused soldier tries to figure out his place - starting at the bar.
When: Thursday, September 27th
Where: The Lux
Rating: PG-13, most likely

Gren had always been a traveler at heart. As soon as he'd been able, he'd gone out and visited different cities, different colonies, different lands. But it had always been in part his choice to move on, at least in part. Coming here, then, presented a problem, because there was no choice. Not even a warning.

It was confusing. Not that he was exactly aching to get back to the war, but at least it was somewhere he felt he had a place.

More confusing was running into Vicious' friend. He knew so little about his comrade. It seemed strange to think about his life outside of the army. At the same time, he felt a flicker of jealousy there. They were comrades-in-arms, their lives inextricably dependent on each other, and now suddenly that didn't seem to have any meaning.

Still, he'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the war to manifest itself again around some corner. He couldn't let it go that easily. Couldn't let Vicious go that easily. Which was one reason he'd refused to sleep in a different room, despite the fact that he had one. Even if it was just on the floor.

He was restless and feeling the paranoia start to eat at him a little. The solider decided maybe a drink or two would be in order. Time to try and puzzle this mystery out and figure out where he fit in, which is where today finds him - still wearing his fatigue pants and boots, with just a plain shirt on top - sitting at the bar of the Lux with a beer and cigarette.

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Rinzler was restless as well, and there were still some places in the castle that he didn't have on his list of places he knew as well as he should. The Lux had really been dismissed as a user place a long time ago, but he decided to give to a look, eying the bar and its drinks that don't seem to be glowing. Nothing like the End of Line.

He let out a soft rumbling noise, not fr from a growl, at the sight of the strange user without even thinking about it.

Gren looks up from his drink at the strange sound. He wasn't sure what he'd expected to see, but Rinzler wasn't it. It almost could have been a spacesuit, except that made no sense. Then again, what here did? Armor, maybe, which was more troubling.

Cautiously, he curled his fingers around his glass.

"Can I help you?"

Rinzler tilted his head in thought as he approached carefully. He's completely unarmed other than the disc which looks like partt of the armor. Nothing to worry about here. "No, user. Looking. User bars are different..."

He arched a brow and tilted his head back at the mysterious man.

"User bar?"

Rinzler nodded, with a curious growl. "Humans. Not like Grid. Home."

"Well...I guess this is nothing like home for any of us," he said with a wry smile, turning the glass around on the bar.

"What were bars like where you're from?"

"Lit differently. Our drinks glow."

"Well, not all bars are like this," Gren said with a lazy shrug. "There are some with lots of lights and music, like the ones in clubs and casinos."

"Drinks don't usually glow, though. Doesn't sound healthy."

Rinzler rumbles at that. "Casinos?"

He nods, not minding the normal human reaction to that. "How energy comes. Safe for programs."

"Yeah. Places people go to gamble and have fun. They like to decorate with neon and bright colors and lots of sound and music."

He folded his arms on the bar and raised a brow.

"Are you some kind of robot?"

As soon as he says it looks a little sheepish.

"I'm sorry, that's probably rude of me to ask."

Rinzler shook his head. "Am program. Not robot."

"What the difference?"

He pause and offered him a smile.

"You sit, if you want, by the way..."

The change in location had done nothing to ease his growing paranoia. Since setting foot on Titan, he'd become convinced that he was not meant to leave again, and while he had several things to back up his suspicions, he had no evidence, not that evidence would have done him any good. He was railing against forces he could not influence, except in petty ways that did little to sooth the anger he felt.

He should have welcomed this reprieve from the fighting, but the calm unnerved him instead, and the circumstances left his deeply suspicious of everything around him. The only thing he could trust, the only person he could trust right now, was Gren, who was in the exact same boat he was. Had it been anyone else, he might have suspected some duplicity, some role in this bizarre turn of events, but he didn't think the other man was capable of it.

Spike, on the other hand...

It was better not to think of it. Instead, he left the confines of his room, reluctantly, to track down his fellow soldier, almost glad when he found him in the bar. He could use the drink. It might help calm the urge he had to break things until the world agreed to make sense again.

He ordered his drink and then sat down next to the other man, preferring to concentrate on drinking for the moment, letting silence reign in lieu of small talk.

Finding Vicious at his side was an almost physical feeling of relief, as if something had jarred itself back into place. Largely it had been habit. Granted he'd slept, ate, and fought at the side of a dozen other men or more, but it was always Vicious that made him feel safe.

He said nothing to mark his comrade's arrival - only glanced aside and ordered another round for himself.

Vicious finished his drink, looking straight ahead, rather than at Gren when he finally spoke.

"Don't let your guard down."

He didn't trust this place. He hadn't trusted Titan, either, but at least there he knew the rules. Nothing here was so cut and dry.

"I wish I knew what I was guarding myself against," he said, quietly, running a finger around the rim of his glass.

Had he really been there so long that he couldn't adjust to anything else?

"I don't know." And he hated admitting it, but he couldn't pretend otherwise. No one was shooting at them here, true, but as tempting as it might have been to relax, he knew doing so would be a mistake.

He let out a sigh. That was kind of a blow, even if it was to be expected. The idea of Vicious not having a handle on a situation was a little hard to process.

"What about your friend?"

Vicious scowled at the bar top for a long moment. "I don't know if he's a friend or not."

They had been, but things had been tense even before he'd left for Titan, and now... well. Now, who could say?

There'd definitely been tension there, as if they were in way at fault for something neither one of them remembered doing. How strange was it, to be treated like an enemy by a complete stranger.

Though, given Titan, maybe not that strange.

"You never talked about home before."

"There's nothing to talk about."

Some men, he was sure, would have bragged, in his position. He certainly knew plenty who were all too happy to advertise their allegiance to the Red Dragon, full of arrogance and foolish pride. It wasn't a mistake he'd ever made, preferring to keep to himself any ignore the folly of others.

He thought back to the scene a few days ago - remembered the tension in Spike's body at the sound of a name - and wondered if that was true. He swallowed more of the drink.

"Not even Julia?"

He stared down at the bar-top when Gren said that name. "She's not here." Spike had said so, and he was inclined to believe him, even if he didn't trust anything else right now. He'd seemed unhappy enough for it to be true. As for explaining... he didn't really know what to say. That they'd been involved, but he suspected she'd never really cared about him at all?

After a moment of hesitation he reached down to his pants pockets and pulled out the music box. He slowly wound it and placed it on the bar between them and let it start to play.

"There. Now she is."

He didn't quite startle when the music began to play, but he did tense up, staring down at the music box as if it were a scorpion.

"I suppose so."

Gren frowned at him. Not the reaction he'd been expecting, exactly.

"Was there a problem between you two? Is that why you gave that to me?"

"...no." It certainly wasn't why he'd given the thing to Gren, but that was not a motivation he was about to explain. As for Julia... he couldn't claim to understand her. There was something, but it was impossible to tell if it was a problem or not.

Frowning thoughtfully, he picked up the music box as it played out the last few notes, watching the tiny drum turn as he usually did.

"I"m sorry. I guess I just...wanted to know more about you."

"There's nothing to know." His past, beyond the war, beyond the syndicate, was a carefully blanked slate, something he did not even allow himself to remember anymore. The Dragons owned him, now, as much as he would ever let himself be claimed by anything, and that was not a situation he cared to delve into in any detail.

"This says differently," he said, brandishing the music box before slipping it back into his pocket.

He almost wanted to tell Gren about the music box, what it was really about, just to see the look on his face, revenge for getting under his skin like he had. But there was too much still riding on it, and he wasn't convinced that this was anything more than just a short interlude before they found themselves back on Titan.

Instead, he simply looked straight ahead again. "It's only a music box."

Gren shrugged and look a long drought of his beer. He wasn't sure what it was that Vicious was trying to shove away so hard. It made him wonder about a lot of things.

"It's a piece of home."

"I don't need it." Home was a foreign concept, at least in the way Gren meant it. There was nowhere that he was safe, or protected. He had made a place for himself, certainly, but even there, he was regarded with suspicion.

It saddened him a little, truth be told, but it also made him curious.

"What do you need?"

"There isn't anything." To need was to leave a part of yourself exposed. Vulnerable. Weaknesses were not something he could afford. Not on Titan. Not back on Mars. And certainly not wherever they were now.

That was just silly. Everyone had needs, if only the most basic of ones. Trust Vicious to cast himself as a machine in human form.

"Is there anything you want, then?"

He looked down at the bar top and his empty glass for a long moment. "Another drink."

A defeated but vaguely amused smile.

"That can be arranged," he says, and signals for another round for them both. And maybe that was best he could hope for. Drinking in silence. At least not alone.

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MIA [OPEN]

Hope you don't mind a Rinzler, looking to throw him around more.

Don't mind at all! <3

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