Scene #9224: I'm Serious - Let's Go Drinking

Owner	Pose
Natsuki Nuki	Natsuki invites Sougo to a small bar on the north strip in Sotenbori, a narrow door with a sign declaring the establishment 'AFTER/DARK' in English letters. It's a building that's only three shoulder widths wide and one and a half is taken up by bar counter and area. Six stools only, ashtrays on the counter, and a wall of bottles of austere shapes and characternotes. Natsuki sits at the middle-right stool, dressed in black slacks ending in tigerpaw feet, a white belt with a golden buckle the extra holes all dangling with an array of pink and gold and orange charms down off the belt, and a red collared shirt untucked in, with the top three buttons open. Her tail hangs out from the back of her open shirt, curled around the barstool and sleeping on the floor. Tiger headed and handed as well, she hovers her grip over a snowball iced brown liquor -- high class, smooth whiskey by smell -- and uses her other hand to carefully thumbtype into flip phone to guide Sougo around Sotenbori.
Timespace Riders	Sougo arrives by himself, in a navy peacoat over a canary-white striped tee, one hand in the pocket of his brown, rolled-cuff pants. "Hey," he says, smiling weakly at her. There are bags under his eyes, a bandage on his cheek, a smaller one on his lower lip and a patchwork of bruises up and down his neck. "Thanks for helping me get here. And... for picking someplace quiet. I don't know if I could have handled a big crowd today."
Natsuki Nuki	A barhand, in a white shirt and a black vest and pants, stands up from sitting in a corner nook and turns to bow to Sougo as he enters, wiping up the spot besides Natsuki, and places a single cup coaster, an ashtray, and a small bowl of fried pickled ginger nubbins which have a fatty-sour flavor from the fry and a sinus clearing rip of flavor from the pickled ginger that seem to be a specialty item. The barman waits for Sougo's order with a blank patience - professional, high class service worker. Natsuki flips down her phone screen when Sougo steps into the small establishment. "Well, I could hear you'd not want to be in a big bumping party right now just over the phone." Natsuki looks Sougo up and down, impressed but in an 'oh honey' way, though the black-lipped smirk across face is multifaceted. "Whiskey? Something lighter? If you order juice I'll only laugh a little. But something sweet with bite? Not a shame in good taste!"
Timespace Riders	Sougo helps himself to the fried ginger. It's hard for his smile not to reach his eyes, when Natsuki's looking at him that way. It does--but it isn't able to evict the exhaustion and the sadness that are there, too. "I have to admit," he says, taking a seat beside her, "I don't drink often enough to really have preferences. 'Sweet, with bite...'" He repeats, turning the idea around with a slow nod. "I think that would help, right about now." He gives the barhand an apologeetic smile, for not having anything more specific in mind, and leaves his fate in that regard to Natsuki. "Natsuki... do you have a lot of experience, with saying 'this is what I want,' and getting... 'this is what it'll cost you' back?"
Natsuki Nuki	An eyeing is well-earned. Sougo looks like a mess. In every way, a man bottomed out - a king, perhaps, but with crown askew. Natsuki sees this, and, remains simmeringly interested. "Well, whiskey is a refined drink, and sake is fine, but..." Natsuki points to a bottle on the wall, and the tender turns to lift a bottle of lightly brown plum 'wine'. Several plums float within the bottle, which is lifted off the shelf. The bartender puts out a glass, tongs out two frozen slices of fruit - Japanese apple cubes - and drops them into the glass with a trio of tinks, before pouring the plum wine over top. It's Okinawan rum, stacked high with plums inside to pour a fragrant and floral nose without quite the exact taste. Instead it's sour and sweet with subtle burning heat, and with glass stirred once in wrist before placed in front of Sougo, the barman moves to settle back. "I have a feeling that you don't mean something like a business deal. But if you do," A quirk of nuki-masked brow and a side-long look brings the chimera woman's eyes back to her glass. "It's a way of replying to that, isn't it? Instead of 'this is what you want' becoming 'yes' or 'no', and meaning everything in between, isn't a hard price preferrable?" Considering glass, she half-raises hers before tilting towards Sougo to glass-sides with the young King at a 'clink!'. "Haggling wasn't an option?"
Timespace Riders	Sougo is almost so beat--emotionally--that the simple pleasure of clinking glasses in a toast is lost on him. Either that, or it's an effortful display to smile at all. "It's good," he says, after a sip. "It's fruity, but the aftertaste... I could see this being handy on a cold day." Turning the glass around to watch the frozen fruit dance in suspension, "...the fruit adds a lot, too." He sets the glass on the coaster and stares into it as if it were a third party in the conversation, ready to give advice. Then he stares past it. Eventually, Sougo heaves a sigh. "I didn't... have the leverage to haggle," he says. "'Mercy is the privilege of the strong. It takes the kind of power that makes people think you're not even human. And I don't believe you have it,'" recites the Demon King. "That was what they told me. That 'project' cost a lot of lives. More than a few of them, I even knew personally." Sougo's fingers dig furrows into the seat of his pants. "My first day in that place, I saw a dead Agent. They weren't the last. Some died in front of me... one even died because I had a choice between Woz and him, and I chose Woz." "Angela, and the Sephirah, they wouldn't get to reap the benefits. But the City would. I didn't think that was fair. I thought we all agreed that this Trideag Association would help the City, and that the... project, we'd use to get Angela out of that prison they built around her." He frowns bitterly. "Lilian and Rita didn't feel the same way. And Petra... Petra wanted to free Angela so badly, there wasn't anything she wouldn't do. And I helped her--because I knew Lilian was right, about me not having that power." "The only good thing to come out of this is that I asked Woz to find a way that she could leave, and the Sephirah could live, without it costing the City the... benefits, of that project. Somehow... I don't think Rita or Lilian will feel the same way about it."
Natsuki Nuki	Natsuki has drunk with enough broody men with years of grizzle on Sougo who never smile, practically ever, and observes the ritual because it is right to do - to observe. It pleases her, to hear the clink, like the gonging of a prayer bell. "Mm. The plums add that sour-sweet flavor. I thought it was wine with plums for the longest time, but actually it's just plums in liquor. Okinawan rum is hot but smooth, so... It seemed like something you'd enjoy." Natsuki looks down at her snowball and straight whiskey. Sougo keeping to himself somberly makes her thoughtful, absorbing the words with slow sips. There's a faint creak of a heater unit overhead banishing the late February chill, rattling in the background, providing buzz to the clinks and motions of glasses and ice and sloshing of liquids. 'Angela, and the Sephirah, they wouldn't get to reap the benefits. But the City would. I didn't think that was fair.' Natsuki 'mmns', audible and affirmative. "Bearing all the cost, and seeing none of the benefits. That's familiar. And in that case... mercy is the privelege of the strong. Raw, decision-making power." ... She sighs, looking over at Sougo with a more honestly sympathetic yokai-red eye. She's about to say something. He continues. She pauses, watching. "I'm sure-enough you'd still do all the same for Angela. Even without that organization. But aren't you forgetting something, Sougo?" Natsuki asks, a patient rumble in her voice.
Timespace Riders	And in that case... mercy is the privilege of the strong. Raw, decision-making power. Sougo nods, leans forward, and takes another sip. The heater draws his attention, first because of the creak, and keeps it because of the faint smell of dust clearing. It reminds him a little of home. But aren't you forgetting something, Sougo? "There are a few things that come to mind," he says. 'We're the Concord' is first among them. 'I want to be King' is there, too. "But... I think I want to hear it from you. It sounds like you're going somewhere with this."
Natsuki Nuki	'We're the Concord' Natsuki grins at that, leaning across to clink glasses again. Nothing so showy as toasts, but the faint cheer of crystal touching rings out with the slosh of amber and sweating ball of melting glass and frozen apple stir through their occupancy more. "First among them, maoh-san." Natsuki agrees warmly with a pinky out tip back of her glass. "I learned, at the end of high school, that the novice gains and raw talent I had stacked up didn't match up to the long-built power of the man I suddenly decided to break from. And I didn't just try to run - I tried to fight." Natsuki remains at the warm-in-aside tone she had adopted when there was no cheers in their toast. "I tried to decide. And at the end, I couldn't even choose mercy for myself. It was chosen for me." Red eyes return to the wall of glass bottles. "Because it turned out I was the weak one. Maybe you just hit the limit of talent and novice gains, Sougo. And... Maybe you've learned things in a different order than me." The chimera woman places her drink down on the coaster, corner first to flat. "Deciding what you want takes power. Power can be other people. But most of the times, power is power. How many times have you not been the powerful one? Really." Natsuki doesn't drill him with a look, but she does add a fairly strikingly-clear insistence: "Be honest." 'Think about it, don't just reply to me.'
Timespace Riders	As bidden, Sougo thinks about it, for longer than it would take to just belt out an answer. Asking the question in that particular way means that it isn't just an invitation to think about all of the times he's felt that way in a vacuum. 'How many times' doesn't mean anything if it doesn't also account for 'out of how many,' right? "Well... I think we've done okay with Hikaru and Lala against the Nottrai guys. That was a little bit of 'power' and a little bit of 'other people,' right?" "Deciding what I want... well, it took time for me to even know the answer to that. To have an answer other than 'not that.' A real answer." "So it's not always that way. But," he says, "It's never..." Sougo pushes out another sigh. "When I'm not the powerful one, it's never something that'll be okay without me. Helping with the Seed of Light project, I felt it, every ounce of power I didn't have. I lost people by margins of inches." "People tell me what the cost is, and I say, 'okay.' 'I'll pay it.' And I do. And get a little stronger. And then someone moves the finish line a little farther away." He chases away the bitterness with another sip. "Rufus told Rita that he just wanted to make things normal again. And she told him 'Okay. Give me back the Agents that we lost, and I'll forgive you.'" "It's the kind of thing that you tell someone knowing they can't do. I told myself that one day, I'd be able to do that. And that once I'm that strong, I'd be strong enough to forgive her and Lilian for deciding that the City gets two bites of the apple, and Angela didn't get any." "Well..." Sip. "I don't have the... 'capital,' right now. Someone said once that being poor is one of the most expensive ways to live. I'm not... but I'm not rich, either. I wonder how much more I'm going to have to pay, between now and then. How much farther the finish line is going to have moved, once I cross it, and I'm so strong that I can't stand the way people look at me."
Natsuki Nuki	"Power and 'the other guys', sure." Natsuki agrees. "None of those situations around the Pretty Cures have gone a way like you're talking about, no." Natsuki agrees, birdsong chirping in the back of her throat with a chuckle. "But we're besides the only people in that universe that 'matter' in the way you're talking about. Pretty Cure? They're the only ones who can choose, it seems. Eyewon, Tenjou, Kappard? They're winning until they run up against Lala and Hikaru. And maybe Mujinko's crew deserve to smash some of the Starscape Alliance's places. Maybe not." Natsuki reaches over, putting an arm around Sougo's shoulder, and pulling him over towards her shoulder. Her shirt-straining arm is warm against his back, and her fuzzy cheeks brush against his brow. "That's a Kamen Rider, a Pretty Cure bite-sized probem. Lala and Hikaru, Woz and Sougo." "I've been there, too. And you're right about power. Those Stellar Notes - if you wanted one for yourself, or a Star Color Pen - you'd need the 'power to choose'. And if you wanted one, like Eyewon, and you didn't want to hurt anyone to get it: you'd need even more powerful, to be merciful while getting it." 'People tell me what the cost is, and I say, 'okay.' 'I'll pay it.' And I do. And get a little stronger. And then someone moves the finish line a little farther away.' "It's the kind of thing that you tell someone, knowing they can't do." She repeats, and is quiet after for a few beats. "If you could do that, why not this? And inches is more agonizing than miles. Nowhere near, and you can excuse it. Right next, there yourself, and it's... On you. When you lose someone who trusted you." Natsuki's eyes close. "When you don't have the power of the divine, you'll come up short, and know it could have been done. When you don't have the will of the divine, the people that see your power will demand of it, because it doesn't threaten them enough - so it's useful to them. If you have the power to stop them, and they know it, they'll treat you like a demon even if they have to respect you..." "Maoh-sama." Natsuki sighs, a birdsong coo. "I thought you learned about this one, before, but it sounds like it's your first time." Because powerlessness was something that was a damning wake-up call for the habitually powerful. Different lessons, different orders. "If you could make apples, Sougo, isn't the offer of a bite the merciful privilege of the strong? And if you can't make apples, yet, then, do you want to be 'Sougo'?" The nue, Natsuki, asks. "Or do you want to be 'the man that can create apples'?" "I think it is a second privilege of power to decide where your own lines are. The powerful are privileged to be merciful towards themselves." Pulling away, Natsuki snaps her fingers and points at some bottles - including the plum rum that Sougo is sipping on. Some bottles to go? Is that allowed? It is when you're Natsuki. "Come on, Sougo. Let's take this to your place, so you don't have to stay vertical or go anywhere." She urges, taking-care-of-a-friend a certain way.