infomodder | IC contact [Mask or Menace]

I need to get a new job... but I don't know how you do that exactly in this world.

[ All this paperwork confuses her. ]

[He can work with this, will work with this no matter how much research he has to do.]

Depends on what sort of job you're trying to get. You just need a new one or you already got one in mind that you're having trouble with?

Someone told me I could work at the animal shelter. Armin said I should, too.

[ Because she won't eat the food there. Maybe. ]

[Sussing each other out was a continual process, the joke made because he honestly hadn't the first clue what she might have been bringing him. He didn't expect anything upsetting to come out of the big pocket, though his ideas of upsetting were at an extreme. Still, the teeth caught him by surprise. Will looked at them, thought he knew for sure what that little collection was, but it couldn't hurt to double check. Triple check.

Gunther received a gentle push, a sweeping of Will's arm that let him to know to get back to the floor as he reached into a drawer under the counter, rummaged for a moment, and pulled out a magnifying glass. The way he grabbed up one of them spoke to respect, quick but careful, turning it just the same as he inspected it closer, down to the bits that would give away exactly what it was or was not.]

These are— [Legitimate shark teeth. His eyebrows lift, confused, as he looks back at her.] —you go fishing and run into something unexpected?

[Why not? Some of that cat food is so rich and fatty she wouldn't need much else. For, like, thirty minutes.]

First, you need to talk to the people running the animal shelter, ones who do the hiring. See where they need workers, if they need workers. [And would give them more than, like, five hours a week.] If they do and you think it's a workable fit, [heh] it's a good idea to give your old job a two week's notice. It's polite, looks good for later references.

[He's quiet, looking off at nothing in particular, almost like he's not aware, not livid, not there with her anymore. Lost in his own thoughts or seeing something no one else can. At least, until he finally speaks and makes it apparent he's with her to a degree that might be uncomfortable.]

Times change. Soldiers change with the times. [A wave of the hand holding the glass.] Soldiers from culture to culture are different. Systems of morality, of good and bad, legality, it's all a mixed bag. A tossed salad that can't decide if it's fruits or vegetables, what the theme is. Get stuck here, some people are soldiers, might find similarities. What feels like it adds up, but nothing fits like it used to. Think you've found some people who you can get along with, have a basic understanding, but there's facets that they can't get. Won't get. Maybe don't want to get. Salad gets tossed again, find rocks in it. Inedibles. Getting rocks in your salad from someone you don't know is much different than someone you thought friendly chucking them in. Telling you to enjoy it just the same as the rest, acting like they're croutons, like you're the one who's not seeing anything how it really is.

[And then what to do when that situation arises other than get something hard and strong to drink? Coping in unhealthy ways is probably far different for her than it is for him. His liver, his body is mortal. Too mortal, full of other mortals without him knowing it.]

What're you gonna with the rocks?

[Throwing them back is probably not the best answer when it comes to interpersonal relationships. He may not having many good ones, but he knows that much. Turn them to ice and have a drink is a much better answer. Will's having a drink himself.

Food comparisons, metaphors, similes, it's better than going creepy. Isn't it?]

I haven't worked at my old job in a while.

[ Annie's pause before answering is a long one, almost bordering on being irredeemable. She rests against her hands, holding on to the edge of the counter top as she looks down at the teeth, watching them and seeing the indoor room, painted with clouds, but sunrise, midday, and sunset all at once. ]

You could say that.

[ She says in the end. ]

Though I hadn't set out to be fishing in the first place. It seemed like the viable alternative once I was... there.

[ Sasha, holding on to the teen girl who'd been dumped in the water. The lasers cutting through to the surface, scouring the dock, burning Annie, mostly avoided as the sharks didn't breach. It had been a matter of time before those red lights with their burning fire would have cut through the material of the dock.

Fishing with her arm as the bait. Annie personally didn't recommend it. ]

[She tries to follow, she really does, and only because she does like Will and he's been good to her, but she.

She just can't.]

The fuck, Will?

[Once she was there. It doesn't give him much, but it's what she gives him, and it's not so important that he feels the need (or right) to press. The tooth gets set down for the biggest one, hardened fingers still treating it the same he might treat a broken piece of ceramic.]

Sharks shed their teeth constantly. Read that some of them can go through over three thousand in a lifetime. [Voice low, quiet, but it doesn't need to be very loud. No music, no one else in the shop, the dog finally taking his spot on the floor again.] Like these? [The magnifying glass tilts up the direction of Will's own teeth.] If any of these fell out or somebody took them, I'd be in a bind. I'd know, I'd have a problem with it. These? [That tooth gets made front and center.] Shark could lose one or two and not have any idea.

[But this is not one or two. This is more. This is not a walk on the beach that led to an interesting find, and who would know more than Will? She brought them to him, but whether it's to leave them behind (and thus make a gift of something she'd rather not have around) or make them something else, he's not sure. The lecture comes free of charge, easy in what might still prove uneasy. There was a reason he used his own teeth as an example instead of saying human teeth or people like me.]

I could make a necklace or something with them, if you want.

[He might have to ask for a bit of help, but he's pretty good with his hands. It can't be too difficult.]

[There's a moment before, as gently as he can:]

Are you sure you still have it?

[Perhaps he should have been creepier. Though he does have to wonder from time to time if the people he talked to in that way, laden with metaphors and similes that got a point (the exact point or otherwise) across were just humoring him. Indulging him. Or maybe the creepier is better because it's more concise or maybe he should just stop thinking about how he misses certain kinds of conversations from certain people because certain people were not at all what they seemed to be.

His Golden Ticket one was pretty shitty, in retrospect. Maybe Jack just let him talk it out because eventually he'd pull it together into something reasonable. Ish.]

Nothing.

[Nothing that doesn't take a while to explain, nothing he's sure he can explain, nothing he can't fix by just not talking. Easy to not talk if he's drinking and sending his dog a look, his dog now muddier than he has any right to be and looking so happy for it.]

You sure? Seemed like there was a point in there someone I just couldn't keep up.

[She even likes Will enough that she's putting the fault on herself, rather than on him for being really fucking hard to understand.

Because if he did have a point, she'd like to hear it, he'll just need to dumb it down for her rather than use convoluted metaphors.]

[ just a text of this link and nothing else. ]

... No, I don't.

[ Fired. ]

[ Titans shed their teeth like sharks, when injured. Annie wonders if she'd ever hit a limit. If her teeth would ever stop growing back, pulled out again and again and again. It's a nightmare thought, lurking back around with concepts of torture relying on physical rather than psychological means. She'd be hard pressed to say which one she'd fear more.

So there's no comment from her while he talks, only blue eyes focusing on his hands, on the magnifying glass, on his teeth when it's his teeth that are brought into the equation. People in the United States have nicer teeth in general. She's noticed that. More cavities, too. ]

They're a gift. You can make of them what you like.

[ Of the gift, or the gift into something else, transforming a collection of teeth forced out of a shark's mouth as it was made to swallow more flesh than it could handle, split open and filleted for its brethren, who'd eaten and eaten and even eaten the decaying flesh of her partial transformation as it faded out of existence.

Teeth that had ended up with all three young women on the battered dock in the painted room within a mountain.

So it goes.]

Shifter teeth grow back.

[ She says, relatively out of nowhere. ]

Like flesh. Limbs. We don't scar.

[ Not even easily. At all. We don't scar. Stated as the fact it is, nothing attached to it, but a kind of confession that she doesn't touch on often with anyone.

If I cut off your arms and legs, they'll just grow back, won't they? Levi's words, mixed in with screams, with her own scream calling Titans to devour her Titan form. She has to shake her head to rid herself of the sound. ]

[In return, she gets texted a picture of what appears to be Will's try at #4. It's a little hard to tell, considering his bearded dog was the recipient of the scarf, covered in fish and a little tacky thing that it is. But of all the ones on that list, should she look, it's pretty obvious the one he chose to practice on his dog.

He can be taught!]

[He's the opposite of surprised, go figure.]

All right, one problem down. [Easier to work with, unless she lost it for reasons other than just not showing up. Should he ask? Probably.] I'd just go to the animal shelter like I said, and if it works out... [Oh, wait, he doesn't have to ask if he just follows this little handy path.] ...you fill out the paperwork and all. If you don't want them to talk to your old job for whatever reason, you should have a section where you can put that in there. [Nailed it?] Unless someone's already given you an application and it's proving difficult, is that part of it?

[If people suggested it, it's not unreasonable someone already gave her one and he's been sort of obtuse.]

Maybe I should show them the tattoo and they'll know I'm an imPort. [ Instant job access?? ] So I ask for their paperwork and fill it out.

[ Alright, she can do that. ]

Is that all?

[Technology changed. Dentistry, orthodontics, treatment to keep teeth white no matter how badly treated they were or were not. If one was crooked, for the right price, anyone could pay to have that changed. Not that Will was ever well-off enough as a child to have to deal with the teasing that came from the earlier sets of braces, but had he had bad teeth, had he gotten older...he could have easily changed that.

With money.

So it goes.

He's not sure what to make of them as gifts. At all. Is there significance to it other than Will liking fish so he'd appreciate them, is he the easy dump spot, is it meant as more?

Relatively out of nowhere, followed by him carefully putting that tooth back on the pile and the magnifying glass down on the counter. He leans against it further, adjusting his watch before he interlaces his fingers and looks past her. Past that shake of the head, not at it. Unfocused but present, not uncommon.]

Have you ever seen a starfish? They can regenerate. Grow lost arms, some can do more than that. [Depending on species and all.] They're pretty interesting. Regrowing things, with or without scarring, it's not really so unusual out there.

[A nudge of his head indicates a direction that leads to water. He cannot relate in the way that he can grow things back, has his own scars that can never heal, will never grow another tooth if he loses an adult one. But there's one place he knows where that's not the case. Of course he runs the risk that she might find it in some way an insult, compared to the creatures of the sea, but coming from someone who spends more time with dogs and nature than people if he can...it's not meant as an insult at all.]

[ She listens, and she does so completely in the moment - she's heard of seastars, has seen a few clinging to rocks and old docks below and above the waterline the few times she's been down in a marina.

Everyone has scars in places that won't show. Can't show. Psychological and emotional, part of the fabric of being human or sentient enough to feel and care and not all be suffering from anti-people-matter-at-all-I-can't-actually-relate-because-I-don't-have-empathy-pathy. She doesn't end up finding an insult in the star of the ocean; her lips quirk, hinting at amusement that reaches her eyes. ]

Us and the starfish. At least one of us was born that way.

[ Again, no bitterness, but a factual statement. Shifters were made, not born. Much like Titans... exactly like Titans. Except unlike Titans, shifters tired, they needed sustenance when out of shift, and they didn't get inactive at night.

What must it be like to live in the sea? Do creatures of that realm that don't cross between the two ever wonder at the empty fullness of air that presses down on the flexible roof of their world? ]

Mmm, let me know if you end up making anything out of those things.

[ The teeth. A memory. ]

I'd be curious to see it.

[ Art is not her strong point. It's not any point at all. ]

[There's a part of him that wonders if Annie will take it upon herself to read up on starfish, if she'll do some research and see what Will left out that may also apply, other than regeneration. He wonders if she'll come across it and find his bringing them up at all gauche—or worse yet, meant to be an insult. It's certainly not, but he's not about to get into more than the very basic details. Not going to tell her about the times when people got sick of starfish and thought they could kill them only to find out they were making them stronger, when torture was seen more as pest prevention, perhaps, than anything else.

And how they all flipped humanity an ungodly amount of extra middle arm/fingers before carrying on being their starry selves.

It is too close to a Hobbs thought to consider making something that honors out of them, honors the shark that lost its teeth and Annie for whatever her part in getting them might have been. He knows it as it passes through his head, as he reaches back out to turn one over his fingers again, as he considers it. He could make a display or shove them in a box for later as much as he could make anything decorative out of it. He could throw them away, but here he is, idly wondering what sort of wire and wrapping and colors would look best on her, even if that tooth ends up hidden by her choice of clothing.]

There's plenty here to make something. [And none of them fossilized in even the simplest of ways, making it more difficult.] I'll give you a call whenever I get done with them.

[He could sell them, too. There are quite a few people who would definitely enjoy a collection of shark teeth straight out the shark, but these are not going to be on any shareable list, on any menu. Hobbs shared his honors with his family, as far as Will can gather. Will's family, his crew from home, is a dysfunctional mess that frequently does what they can to, really, cannibalize each other, and he knows it. He takes part in it. He sinks and wallows in their bloody mire, shoves the disabled under a metaphorical bus knowing the abuse suffered already. Knowing he played a part in it. The mess of Baltimore seems to not be uncommon, though in different ways. Annie's own gathering here in this world has made plenty of their issues known, publicly and loudly.

There won't be any sharing with family, either—at least, not until Annie has had her say in it.]

Was that it?

[Almost it—unseen, his other hand tucked between him and the counter, Gunther takes the quiet snap cue for what it means: you can cross the line. Better behaved this time, there won't be any jumping. There will, however, be a short tail wagging excitedly as he comes around the counter to sniff and say hello, his beard a shaking mess.]

[It's not something that she's alone in—honestly, it's a surprise no one has interrupted him before and asked him to either shut his fucking mouth or talk like a Goddamn normal person. Being rude never pays off, but still.]

Have you been to any of the cities here that you knew back where you're from? [A better starting point than ridiculous salad.] Used to live in this place here in Virginia, Wolf Trap. It looks mostly the same. The population, the way the land is—different buildings and businesses, but it's. Almost what I know. It's familiar but it's, it's wrong. [He has yet to do anything like ask or go where his house should be, uncertain if he'll find just a clean stretch of land, if he'll find a grocery store, if he'll find a house that looks like his but isn't, the owner unwilling to sell.] Sometimes the types people I should know, should be familiar with—it's the same way. It's right but it's completely wrong.

[That's one part of it, at least. Right but wrong. Meet an actual FBI agent, she mentions something about X-Files, a department in the basement, something he has no clue about. FBI? He knows that. That's right. X-Files and everything else? He has no idea. That's wrong.

Not wrong in the negative way, but wrong to what he knows. Different.]

Making sure they know you're an imPort couldn't hurt. [Possibly!!] That's pretty much it, as far as I know. I haven't changed jobs here myself, but it seems similar enough. Shelter's in Heropa, right? You run into any problems, feel free to shoot me a text. We'll figure it out.

[By which he means he'll close down shop and book his ass on over if she finds herself uncomfortable asking future employers questions that might seem self-explanatory, or no one else she knows is there, nearby. And, of course, he'll be coming with a bag of something to eat, because he knows how much Sasha appreciates free food. Free food that's not from malicious hands.]

[ She perks up, which is rare because Sasha doesn't actually like to do extra work unless she's getting something out of it.

But animals can't be so bad to work with. ]

Mm, it'll be easier to work and train here instead of having to travel around.

Thank you, Will!

IC contact [Mask or Menace]

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