Scene #7532: MI Intermission: Friday Night Hawkin'

Owner	Pose
Kale Hearthward	Are decisions concerning entire nations discussed over dinner and drinks often? One has to wonder - it's not all high powered statecraft at the negotiating table or smoke-filled backrooms, right? Occasionally there has to be situations where a few words said at the right time to the right person at the right place changes the course of history for millions of people - and the right place happens to be over casual dinner at a booth in a restaurant. Kale Hearthward is here, in fairly casual clothes, sans his usual armaments aside from his boots. Next to him, an eagle - one introduced as Zephyr, dressed in a bit more fantasy-formal style. "Took me long enough - got him out here, finally," says Kale, giving Zephyr a slap on the back. "Well - like I'd been telling you, it's all been horrendously busy," says the eagle.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry Princess's "ordinary" clothes remain just slightly too formal for buying groceries and slightly too casual for "casual wear", like a teenager who's been dressed up for church by their fussy mom. It's the perfect outfit for a girl who never wants to think about what to wear, and just passable enough to be seen in public with. So even though Kale has trouble telling humans apart, he'll probably recognize her coming through the front door before she spots him- the awkward height, the hoarse voice, the flinching expression. Strawberry is a fractal, because everything about her is quintessentially and recognizably Strawberry. When she finally slides into the booth, she offers Zephyr a handshake before Kale. "He's- told me, a decent bit about you," she says after introductions. "All of it good, don't worry." And then a charming little laugh. Considering that Kale's nearly disarmed, it's probably a little gauche for her to have that carrying case with her- she unslings it and lays it across her lap as she settles in. But maybe it's forgiveable, if only for how helpless she is without it. "Are there, uh. Have you two ever been here before? I don't have any idea what to get."
Kale Hearthward	Zephyr accepts the handshake, warmly. "Well, he can't have said too much, I imagine - he's been pretty clear about stuff I'm not supposed to bring up," says Zephyr. Kale glances over. "Yeah, that... includes alluding to it," he says, annoyed. "Oh, oops, nope I'm just a normal engineer, I promise," says Zephyr, unconvincingly. "I found this place once before - just sorta wandered through and found it? And apparently that's how it works, it just- you just find it when you're hungry," says Kale, eager to change the subject. He grabs a menu from the booth, and starts paging through it. "And it just - well, look." He's turning pages on the spiral-bound menu. And turning pages, and turning pages, and turning pages. In much the same way that some places are 'bigger on the inside' in a literal sense, the menu appears to contain many more pages than it actually should.
Strawberry Princess	"He's said that he loves and cares about you, embarrassingly much! ... I mean- he loves you embarrassingly much. Not that he's... said it, embarrassingly much." Strawberry makes the Nervous Strawberry Laugh that she does after a typical fumble. "I guess he hasn't had time to teach you his acting skills, Mr. Zephyr?" And then her attention is drawn away from the light bullying- first with eyebrow-raising rapt attention at Kale's explanation of the baffling restaurant, and then with an intense scrutinization of the infinite menu. She turns a few pages. Then turns a few more. Then breezes through several dozen like a flip-book, before finally coming to a stop. "I don't even recognize most of this stuff," she mutters. "Is it... you two don't... what are you getting?" As she sets the menu aside, she rolls up her sleeve and starts absentmindedly scratching at her forearm. The skin's slightly peeling.
Kale Hearthward	"Maybe I should make sure he has some more time for stage training..." says Kale. "Ha ha, well, let's see," says Zephyr, looking through the menu. "Oh! There's this neat gourmet food that I got to try a few weeks ago, let me see if they have it," says Zephyr, as he pages through. "It's called 'fried chicken'." "Sorry, what?" comes the exclamation from Zephyr's boyfriend.
Strawberry Princess	"Oh!" Strawberry says, immediately perking up. "I know about that! Were you thinking- American style, or Japanese style? I always liked them both. The spicy mayo..." At first it looks like she might be completely, blissfully unaware of the cultural implications; they could've very well slid right off her awful little brain. But no. She looks right at Kale and taps the air a couple of inches in front of her face. An old conversation: why is your beak shaped like that? "I think I'll just have steak," she concludes, folding the menu shut with a little snap (and rolling her sleeve back up in the process). "They've got to have that somewhere. How about you, Mr. Hearthward?"
Kale Hearthward	"I believe it was 'American Style' - very crispy, right?" says Zephyr, not sure why Kale's giving him a look. "Um - chicken, that's - I'll just have the veggie burger plate," says Kale, making a snap decision to not have that conversation here and now. Someone comes by and takes their order. "... So, Strawberry, right? With the 'princess' part being part of a call sign, you're not a princess in the sense of nobility, right?" asks Zephyr.
Strawberry Princess	The worst part about being bullied by Strawberry is she doesn't even acknowledge your suffering by rubbing it in- she just smiles a plausibly deniable smile and allows the topic to shift. It seems a little unlike her to be having fun at Kale's expense like this, but maybe that just means she's comfortable? She is absolutely really polite to the waiter, though. With him, it's all "please" and "thank you, sir". "Right," she says to Zephyr as the waiter departs. "It's- I'll do a bad job of describing this. But where I'm from, there's really no royalty anymore. So to be called 'Princess'... it's like something from a storybook. A fairy-tale thing." A beat as she sips her water. "So I am a little special. But in a different way, you know? I'm not in charge of anybody." Her gaze flits between Kale and Zephyr for a moment- there's a silent apology in it, somewhere, for focusing on his boyfriend so much! But he's asked about her, so it'd be rude not to reciprocate. "You said you've been busy. It's been for a good few months, right? But now you have time to... to do something nice like this. Does that mean stuff's clearing up for good?"
Kale Hearthward	"Sort of," says Zephyr. "There was a... let's just say a lot to do, at the beginning of the year. A lot of things that had to be put in motion. It's still, you know, horrendously busy, but now it's the sort of horrendously busy that doesn't need me to be there in person all day every day. I've gotten to spend some more time in my workshop finally, and also I get to spend some time with my boyfriend, finally." "Yeah - the whole night, right? Not going to go rushing off once dinner's done?" says Kale, with the tone implying that he's not going to take 'no' for an answer. "Winds forbid - no, not rushing off. I do need to take a warpgate back to Hurricana in the morning, but till then the schedule's clear." Kale relaxes a bit. "I am glad you've gotten a bit more workshop time, too... you seem a lot more happy there, to be honest." "Well, you know, from a certain point of view I just have a bigger workshop now," says Zephyr.
Strawberry Princess	"'A lot to put into motion'," Strawberry reiterates innocently. "Like the 'Checkmate Blitz' thing?" Kale's good at putting on faces, but he's no good at reading others'. If Zephyr is a little more attentive, he might pick up on the undercurrent of hesitation and unease. She regrets asking the question almost as soon as it leaves her mouth. Habit and mis-sized ergonomics make her hunch forwards over the table, sipping her water through a straw without actually picking up the glass. She's clearly buying time to fumble for a different topic. Finally, she manages: "Kale mentioned you missing your dad. Have you been able to see him, too?" That may or may not be even worse!
Kale Hearthward	Kale poker-faces hard. It takes an attentive sort to notice the seams from 'casual' to 'tight control of facial features to look casual', but it's there. Zephyr doesn't even have that much. "Hah, um, the blitz, that was before we got busy. That was- before, things, the promotion I got, and dad was-" "- Did you know, Strawberry's an excellent flier?" says Kale, interrupting him, invading the conversation and occupying it. "She's got some impressive moves, I'm pretty sure she could outrace me." "Really - even with Tabtrack?" says Zephyr, leaning forward, successfully pushed onto another track. "I put together his boots, you know - they're some of my best work, everyone's so focused on making breath weapons into, well, weapons, and not something useful like tools or armor?"
Strawberry Princess	Complimenting Strawberry is an infallible means of putting her on the defensive. She immediately raises her hands, trying to defray the impact: "Tabtrack is amazing! I thought- it's so clever, you'd make a Breath Weapon something like that. I've seen Kale do incredible things with it. The way he dodged a wave of acid once... you've probably saved his life a few times by now." She eventually gets dragged into nerding out about flight, though. "It's- when you can go fast enough, the real problem is your body wants to leave your blood behind. Right? Your blood gets dragged into your feet, there's none left for your brain- you pass out. Or your blood gets dragged to your head- also bad. So the safest way to accelerate is 'eyes-in'; blood tries to go backwards. But if you're moving towards someone, going 'eyes-in' means a bigger profile; more silhouette they can hit. So it's tradeoffs, you know?" Food arriving is probably the only thing with a hope of shutting her up now.
Kale Hearthward	Zephyr being told that he saved Kale's life is akin to setting up an entirely second source of sunlight, located at the table. "Ah - I know some of this! Differences in physiology. Multiversal unification actually filled in some big pieces of the biological puzzle - introduced a lot of new puzzles, to be sure, but across the various motion-related breath weapons we have information on there's never really been a case of someone's blood going through their feet - I think that's what you said- but you look at what we're calling 'base' hawks and eagles and, in your case monkeys - and the diving speed of a hawk is around-" "Oh, hey, food," says Kale, as the food arrives. "Eat first."
Strawberry Princess	"But that's- it's probably a thing of your magic being kinder, isn't it? I mean, if we put Kale in a big centrifuge-" The arrival of food does, indeed, get Strawberry to quiet down. She's got an absolutely beautiful rare New York strip in front of her, and she absolutely ruins it by dipping each individual bite in ketchup. It's a mercy that the blasphemy is probably lost on Kale and Zephyr. For her part, she eyes Zephyr's fried chicken with obvious appreciation, if not envy. The veggie burger emphatically does not get the same degree of Fries-Stealing Girlfriend Energy. She eats with the speed of a kid who probably wasn't fed regularly, but that might be lost on them too. "So," she finally manages, during one of the rare windows where her mouth isn't full: "who is your dad, Mr. Zephyr? I get the feeling he must be someone important, but..."
Kale Hearthward	"Mmmh?" Zephyr looks up from his beakful of fried chicken. "He was a politician," says Kale. "Meanwhile, my dad decided he and mom should go live on this farm commune, way out in the sticks, with a bunch of other hawks, and that's where I grew up and that's also why I moved away and into the big city as soon as I could." "I hated it out there. There was no culture. Just farming." Kale gestures with his veggie burger. "I think he's still around, I just haven't really felt the need to go check in on them. I'm pretty sure they're against anything even to do with the army, anyway." "So what was that about a big centrifugre?" asks Zephyr, finally clearing his throat enough to talk. "Is this that astronaut thing?"
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry has surprisingly good table manners, despite the fact that she swallows her steak almost as fast as she can cut it- the moment her food's all gone, she definitively wipes her face with a napkin, puts the utensils neatly across the plate, and sets the whole thing off to the side. "You know," she says to Kale, too innocently-thoughtfully to have any possible malice: "it sounds kind of like you rebelled against your 'hippie' parents by moving to the city and joining the army. ... I don't think that's bad, though. Everybody needs space as they grow up, don't they?" Zephyr's question snags her attention harder. It's always a little funny when she perks up; she slouches so habitually that it's as if several extra inches of height have materialized out of nowhere. "Yeah! It's- you know how a sling works, right? You spin the rock around real fast and it 'pulls' outwards until it launches? It's the same thing, but with your blood pulling outwards. It's kind of like flying." "So, I guess the question is... if it's something about your bodies, that makes your blood not do that? Or if your magic just makes your blood not get left behind, and if you're accelerated some other way, you still might black out? I pull about a hundred meters per second squared, sometimes. It's real hard to get there without magic, so you might just never know."
Kale Hearthward	"Maybe?" Kale says, not seeming to take any offense at that. "I left to join the theater first, and put together my own play that I put on in the theater in the capital." "Oh, yeah, the Zephyr theater, the one that got named after me," says Zephyr, brightly. "Yeah, that one, but then things didn't work out, ended up in the army, recruited to the Regalia..." "So I don't know, actually," says Zephyr. "About if it's our bodies, or our blood, I do know that there's something about our bodies that's a little odd, which does explain why our beaks are shaped the way they are," says Zephyr.