[PRP] Discomfort

[Suudonym]

"Less sobbing and more whining and generally being hysterical. Also possibly faking drunk - or unwittingly drinking spiked soda."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

The brunette groaned again, her hand once more finding its way to her face. "Well, then you have my condolences for having to deal with that s**t. And it was probably soda; guy can't hold his liquor to save his life," she added with a light smirk and a shrug. Why had Akira talked to Nate in the first place though? Why had he said she was acting strange and it had freaked him out? With a frown, the girl squatted down to pat her Umbreon's head and her long ears. The dark-type seemed quite pleased with this. "I honestly don't know why he was freaking out, or what the hell I did that prompted him to go bother you. I must've done something though, so I'm sorry for that."  

[Suudonym]

"There's a problem with those words you just said," he replied, turning to grab a couple of cans from the floor of the car, one an emptied beer can and one soda. He held each in either hand. "Soda," he indicated the can in question. "Liquor," he indicated the other, then raised both in a baffled shrug. "Not the same thing. Insert multiple question marks?"

His example complete, Nate lightly tossed the cans behind him with a muffled thump. "From what he said, it sounded like he thought you were upset and you told him you weren't and he didn't believe that so much that it made him upset," he summarized. "Dunno why he thinks women are so complicated. He practically is one himself."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Sera watched the discarded cans with some amusement. "Mm. He's got a sugar thing," she tried to explain, except she'd never had to explain it before and Akira had told her a while ago, so she couldn't remember everything. "Something about getting sugar highs really easy or something like that, I don't really remember." She shrugged as she continued petting Anastasia.

The explanation made her frown in thought as she tried to think of what he could've meant. "Well, I'm still not sure," she started uncertainly, "but if he meant the last time he called me that I said I wasn't upset when I was, then he's a damned hypocrite because he did the exact same thing." Or at least she thought he did - he at least had attempted to entirely dismiss his outburst as nothing important or something, yet that obviously wasn't the case.  

[Suudonym]

"I mean I know there's a sugar thing with alcohol… like if you drink too many of those froofy cocktails you'll get a killer hangover… but my interpretation of a 'sugar high' was always like, a five-year-old kid bouncing off the walls." But hell, who was he to say; maybe there was some kind of condition by which a person could be affected by sugar the same way the average individual was affected by alcohol. Wouldn't have been the craziest thing he had ever heard in his life… but he still wasn't buying it without a link to a Wikipedia article.

Nate shrugged deeply. "I dunno, man, I don't pretend to get his angle. I told him to man up and talk to you and not ********' twist your every word to conform to his own pre-existing ideas. So I dunno how that went, but if I had to guess I'd say poorly."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

A short nod to the cocktail comment, then a shrug. "I honestly don't know, but if I had to guess it's something like that. Or similar to it, anyway," she amended with a small frown, then shrugged it off. Hell, he'd probably made himself sick from all that soda or something.

The switch to recent events caused a mild scowl to form briefly in her expression. "You can say that again. It was less 'talking' to me and more being nosy and pushy about trying to get me to talk about s**t I didn't want to talk about. I even told him I didn't want to talk about it and he kept pushing anyway. Honestly he was being kind of an a*****e about it," she ended with a frown, her gaze focused on her Umbreon as she continued to stroke the dark-type's ears.

After a few moments of thoughtful silence, she opened her mouth, reconsidered, then closed it again. When she tried it again, she asked a little uncertainly, "Do you remember that brown haired girl from the hot springs? I think you've met her before - Dove." Still a weird name, in her opinion, but whatever.  

[Suudonym]

Nate rolled his eyes with a groan. "Son don't know the meaning of 'play it cool,'" he sighed. "Doesn't make any good sense to me. Get all worked up thinking you pissed someone off when they say you didn't and then make up for it by pissing them off until they say you did. Maybe he's just a masochist. Or a sadist; sounds like it could go either way."

A faint, humorless grin spread slowly in his features. "You mean Hawkgirl," he said. "Yeah, I remember. What of her?"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Yeah, I don't know what it was, but whatever," she said with a shrug, trying to dismiss the uncomfortable feelings associated with it and largely failing. His comment about Hawkgirl made her turn her face up at him, a quizzical but amused grin forming on her face. "Hawkgirl?" She hadn't heard that one before, but it was much funnier and actually preferable to the completely aerious alternative. But, the humor didn't stay long; a frown replaced the amusement and she focused her gaze downward again as she shifted herself to sit on the pavement. Much more comfortable than squatting for an extended period. "Well," she started, the uncertainty returning to her voice, "he said she and I are really similar. Shot off a list of reasons why, too, and then said so again after a while. Except I kind of really hate her, so it was kind of shitty to hear that." A pause in which she attempted to form a proper question in her mind, and idly played with Anastasia's ears to distract herself. "I dunno, maybe it's true. What do you think?"  

[Suudonym]

"Yeah man, Hawkgirl. Female counterpart of Birdman. Or - what's that one from Cowlos or whatever it is? Hawlucha?" He lifted his arms briefly in an imitation of a luchador's flourish, dropping them against his knees after only a moment. "Or maybe more like Unova's Pidove. Or," a devilish grin emerged, "an Unfezant."

He set his elbow on his knee and propped his face against his palm, shrugging with one shoulder. "Dunno if I'm much good to judge that. I don't exactly know her very well. But you have the advantage of having never pissed me the ******** off, so I'd say any similarities only go so far."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

His various suggestions made her smile at first, then grin as she laughed a bit. "Those all sound appropriate. Last one sounds best though," she said with a chuckle.

"I should hope not," she replied. At least he didn't outright agree. She still wasn't sure what had caused Akira to say any of those things - or to even behave that way. Maybe his true self was just an a*****e. Regardless, she quirked a brow up at Nate. "To be fair, though, I don't think you're that hard to get along with. The hell did she do to piss you off?"  

[Suudonym]

"You know, I don't really think so either. I may be a d**k, but I wouldn't say I'm a particularly short-tempered d**k," he replied, shrugging helplessly. "And I dunno, it's kind of convoluted. Basically," every one of his mannerisms indicated that he had no idea what the actual basic version of the story would entail, "I work at a bakery, right? Making and selling fresh bread and all that s**t. She comes around talking about this camping trip or something, and I'm telling her that fresh bread ain't gonna be great for that because it doesn't keep. She's on about her expensive tastes and talking about how maybe she can just buy some of our high quality flour - you know, the stuff we use to make the product we sell to keep a livelihood - and I'm like 'no, there's no preservatives in this s**t, it'll go bad and you'll make yourself sick, and that's why we throw out what we don't sell.'"

A quiet anger began to surface in his expression, and he adjusted his posture to settle an ankle on the opposite knee. He spoke in an exaggerated tone, "And she's all, 'You just throw it out? Why don't you donate it? There are so many people that could use that,' or whatever." He raised his palms, "And I am not even touching on the ********' health regulations that make it illegal to sell an expired product - but oh let's just give it to the impoverished because they don't care if they get sick anyway, who needs healthcare - but just the ********' two-faced bald-faced bullshit involved in this entire exchange. You know what the impoverished could use? How about that goddamned money that's going into you supporting your goddamn expensive tastes? Or the time and energy that's going into you traipsing around the ********' region to play tea party with your stupid friends?"

He swung an arm wide, striking a part of the vehicle's interior, "She doesn't give two shits about people living in poverty! I hope her stupid little camping trip takes her straight into the middle of Ambergris's hellhole - the part of the city where you can't turn a corner without running into a drug addict shooting up or a homeless kid crying over his infected, cut up hands and feet or an abandoned hospital that people can't even use as a shelter anymore because it's falling apart because no one can afford to maintain it. But no, yeah, let's harass a bread shop in Camphoreon about donating expired bread to the soup kitchen or whatever. Golly do I wonder how the world looks from up on that high horse." He made no effort to conceal the disdain in his tone, crossing his arms scornfully.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Nah," she said with a shake of her head, "I'm pretty sure my temper's shorter than yours." She fell into silence though as he began his story, offering a nod or some similar response at appropriate places until he'd finished, and even then it took her a couple moments to internalize everything. "So she wanted fresh bread for a camping trip... and then when she found out it wouldn't keep, she just wanted to buy the flour instead? Even if you made it yourself, you'd be using the same damned ingredients so wouldn't that not keep either?" She asked, raising a brow. That's how it seemed to her, but then again, her knowledge of baking and bread ingredients was practically negative.

The extent of Ambergris's daily life - or at least in some areas of it - was almost entirely new knowledge to her. "That sounds... really kinda shitty," she said at length, frowning down at her shoes. "And I've never been to Ambergris before; I didn't know any of that." Hell, she'd never even thought of or considered going to Ambergris before - her family always seemed to react to the mention of it as one would react to smelling something rather unpleasant before dismissing the topic entirely.

She expelled a quiet breath as she frowned thoughtfully, trying to puzzle out a better way to phrase some things in her head. "Well, I'd kind of have to guess it looks pretty from up there," she started, tilting her head a little. "Everything's all gilded and nice, and places like Ambergris just don't exist because they go against all the fancy, expensive s**t you do or touch or eat every day. S'kinda like the world's just there to do whatever with or something like that - go wherever you want and do whatever you want because why not? That's what it's there for," she finished with a shrug. That came out a lot worse than she'd thought in her head, and she frowned again. Oh well. "You can do whatever you want if you've got enough money to throw around, and you can go on pretending that places like Ambergris just don't exist." A brief pause, then she shrugged. "Not that I'm defending any of that, cuz I'm not - it's all a load of bullshit, people fooling themselves and in denial all the time about everything they don't want to acknowledge. But, I guess that's sort of what it looks like."  

[Suudonym]

He shrugged excessively. "If I had to guess I'd say that the intent would be to only make as much bread as you need at any given time and then make more when you need it again, which is like sure, why not - but not in the middle of the woods or whatever." That was just an absence of forethought, though. He could laugh about it, but it wasn't going to offend him.

"Yeah, no surprise. Not a lot of people that go to Ambergris," he said with a sideways frown. "There are parts of it that are still inhabitable, but for most of it it seems like Kodo's just given up."

He leaned against the back of the front seat, frowning. "And you know what," he said, "I don't even care. I don't expect people not to do the things they wanna do just because there are people in the world who couldn't do something half as cool if they wanted to. But philanthropy isn't a game you only play when it's convenient to you. You don't just pretend to care about poor people when you want to feel good about yourself. You don't try to guilt a bakery over corporate's decision to throw out potentially hazardous food while you're perfectly content to horde money that could go into a relief fund and use it to buy expensive bread or whatever the ******** she wanted to take on her little trip."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Why make bread yourself when you could just... go buy cheaper bread that would keep longer and take that?" She asked, then shrugged. "Whatever I guess." It wasn't her camping trip, she didn't need to worry or care about it in the slightest. If Dove wanted to buy flour to make bread while camping, that was on her.

Well that was kind of depressing, especially since it wasn't something she really ever thought of before. She couldn't help but feel at least a little guilty over not doing anything, but she couldn't change the past and she couldn't really do much of anything at the moment anyway, given the fact that she and her mother were only starting to be able to live comfortably again, so she dismissed it for the time being.

"See, that's the thing," she said with a little more enthusiasm, less for the topic and more for the point she could make. It wasn't often she actually engaged in discussions like this, because usually there wasn't any point and also mostly because she wasn't good at things like this anyway. "Rich people only do s**t when or as long as it's convenient to them. If it's not, then ******** it," she said, raising her hand palm-up in an 'oh well' gesture. "You either forget it and let someone else do it, or pay someone else to do it if it's that important. Pretty much every rich person's fake. They're all hypocrites, and they're all selfish," she said, emphasizing the negative points by reaching up to poke his knee. She certainly didn't know all rich people, but she could at least draw from the memories of her own family as well as those of the people her parents had spent time with and the people she'd hung out with at school. All of them, all of them were awful. She paused though, a light frown on her face. "Well, I guess not all of them but it sure as hell seems like it. Most of them are pretentious and condescending and don't give a single s**t about you if you don't have money. They give less of a s**t if you had money but don't anymore," she added a little bitterly. "So yeah, the rich people's philosophy on philanthropy is to do it if it's convenient but not if it isn't. From what I've seen, anyway," she added with a shrug, her hand returning to pet her Umbreon's ears.  

[Suudonym]

The various logistical failings of the situation were what Nate assumed to be the cause of her quickness to give up on the idea; presumably she just hadn't thought things through. He didn't doubt that one could make bread in the middle of the wilderness somehow, but why would you even.

"It's not even necessarily a matter of it being convenient," he said, gesturing with open hands. "Like, of course it's convenient. How hard is it to go online and transfer some money to a local relief organization, if you really care so much? At that layer it's just selfishness; the only people who do it are the ones who want to be able to brag that they did it. Go a layer deeper and you hit the s**t that's too inconvenient: Selling your s**t and living in an average house eating average food because who honestly needs a bed big enough for five people and personal chefs and whatever else. You could sell it all, live with what's you need - you don't have to go into poverty yourself but you sure as hell don't need to live in the lap of luxury - and then all that money could be put to use. But no, helping people is only worth something if you can get someone to praise you for it. Two-faced ********' sonsobitches."