Cantankerous And Aloof

Participants:

bolivar_icon.gif felix_icon.gif minea_icon.gif

Scene Title Cantankerous and Aloof
Synopsis A gathering of cantankerous and aloof people. Minea sic's Bolivar on leah, which includes his dogs, and Felix starts coming out from under his rock
Date January 27, 2009

The Nite Owl

The Nite Owl is a survivor from ages past - one of those ancient diners with huge plate glass windows, checkerboard linoleum floor, and a neon owl over the entrance that blinks at those entering. Inside, there's an L-shaped main counter, complete with vintage soda fountain and worn steel stools. All of the cooking is done on the ranges ranked against the rear wall. The outer wall is lined with booths upholstered in cracked scarlet vinyl, tables trimmed with polished chrome. Despite its age, it's been lovingly maintained. The air is redolent with the scent of fresh coffee, vanilla, and frying food.


The Fed is in bad shape. Bad. This is not an evening where Teo's around - not that they'd be seen in public anywhere near each other, anyhow. But Fel is resoundingly drunk and miserable, eyeing the dinner he ordered with unwonted disgust. The coffee, however, he is not neglecting. He's got his fingers wrapped around the mug like it's a lifeline. Being Felix, and thus intensely fastidious, he's not sloppily dressed or unshaven….but he's hollow-eyed and pale, wearing that thousand yard stare.

Minea's not long into the nite owl. Blackberry working furiously, circles under her eyes. Planning for her foray. In her car are bags of surplus gear for her team, but she's not carting that with her. A batch of ID's already handed off. She's not taken the news of her partners death too well. Well enough, but, she's feeling it. So it is when she spots felix, the ISA agent is beelinging straight for table and sliding in opposite him.

The dogs precede him, despite a certain sense — a cast to their collective postures, the animals' attentive twitch and sensitivity to their leads — that Bolivar is the one in charge here. The burned man clacks in through the door, shaking off snow that has fallen hard and white across the shoulders of his coat. He doesn't notice Felix at first. Insofar as that he notices there's a man there with Felix Ivanov's face, recently resurrected, but since he has company he can not, by default, be Felix Ivanov. A click of his tongue, and he guides his dogs to the next booth over, settling for a menu.

Felix looks up. He's not reeling or bleary or slurring. There's just the faintest hint of an accent to betray how much he's had - and a certain slackness to the usually wire-tight muscles. "Miss Dahl," he says, politely. And well, it's amazing what death and resurrection will do for your social life. Just ask Lazarus.
"Mr. Ivanov. Have you heard?" Well obviously, he was at the phoenix meeting. But, details. Man with the dogs is eye'd, not unfriendly and the waitress bearing coffee is smiled at as well.

On the other hand, Bolivar is more or less alone in his haze of contained self-interest. He is reading his menu, and the Russian's name swims up against the back of his ear. He blinks, straightens, a fire-scarred hand twitching on the edge of the laminated paper. He doesn't stare at the woman who spoke; doesn't even look, really, automatically, initially dismissing the weight of her gaze as something rude to be reicprocated in kind.

Logan Rose decides different. The tiny Welsh spaniel perks up at his foot and begins to stretch her leash out across the aisle, proceeding toward Felix's feet, nose-first.

"Hey, 'votchka," Felix says, reflexively, noting the little dog's attention and glancing down to her. He drops a hand to fondle her ears, gently. A complete ass to humans, but not so bad with animals. But then, one could've said that about Hitler with some accuracy, so…."Yes," he says, crisply. "You really think it was an accident?"

"The man knows his way around a bike. Inside and out and has trophy's to prove it. I cry bullshit" Minea answers with tight lips. The dog is regarded, a raise of brows since it seems Felix knows it. She reaches over too to scratch the opposite ear. 'hey there lady"

Not that Bolivar was eavesdropping or anything. That is rude and he is the paragon of manners. "It's a fucking stupid time of year to be riding a motorcycle. Too much snow, shit for visibility, helmets don't have wipers. Maybe your man didn't know his way around a bike as well as he should have. Or it was a calculated risk and he came down on the shitty part of the math," he suggests, settling his diminutive shoulders against the faux-leather of the seat.

"Sometimes the rumors are true." At this, he stares unabashedly at the Russian without real warmth in his expression; ironic, perhaps, given the melted candle texture that brackets his face. Rosie isn't checked, though. That might be odd enough to qualify as notable; she opens her jaws and pants happily across the heels of Felix's hands.

Fel, on the other hand - if eyes that shade of blue can accurately be said to blaze, his do. But there's that perfect mask in place. "It's possible," he concedes in tones that should have the ambient nitrogen coalescing out of the air between them in hissing drops. "But not likely. Considering what he was working on…..the chances are almost infinitesimally small. Rumors?" His body language remains gentle enough not to disturb the dog, amazingly enough, as he scratches under her chin.

'And are there any other rumors?" Minea inquires of the burned man. Her eyes don't linger long on his burned features. She doens't care about that. "Something mundane as a bike wouldn't kill him" That and from all acccounts, the body was mangled.

Rumors? "You're alive," Bolivar answers, simply. He meets Minea's gaze from across the distance of two booths. After a moment, his arm shifts almost imperceptibly, a subtle deepening of the creases in his sleeve. Fed more slack, Rosie rears up on her hindlegs and deposits her forefeet on Felix's knees, turns her head to smile, black-lipped and liquid-eyed, at Minea.

Rumors? Bolivar's eyes flatten. "The Fed at Middle Creek? Hit-and-run, traffic camera didn't get the plate, so some of the boys were grumbling about foul play. He was Evolved, right?" A shrug of one shoulder: "'Tis the season. If you kids really want to know, whimpering in a fucking diner together isn't the way I'd go. Bolivar Rodriguez-Smith," he adds, for Minea, when it becomes evident that Felix is in no kind of mood.

"I haven't heard," Felix says, quietly. "And yes, I am. Sorry if you sent flowers or made a donation. I understand it's still a tax write-off." Dying hasn't improved his manners any, either. He scratches the line of the little dog's back. And then he turns a curious look back at Minea, and nods. "Evolved. Yes," he says.
"Agent Minea Dahl. That fed's partner" Said more than a little pointedly. "Tier 0 evolved. Came in handy what he could do. Btu you just gave me more than anyone is telling me so thank you. I'm being cut out of alot of things" Minea's gaze drops to the dog, giving into scratching the dogs ear for a few moments before taking back her hand. Not that she's not a dog person just, at the moment the dogs getting it all from Felix.

Dog people are people Bolivar can stand to converse with for more than two minutes. Where 'converse with' might well be a euphemism for 'insult,' as this conversation goes, but at least he's kept a lid on snide commentary in regards to Felix's appearance and flagging health. At Felix's— apology, his eyes sharpen fractionally, his jaws parting around a reply that never comes.

Instead, with something alarmingly like sincerity: "I'm sorry for your loss." For Minea.

"We'll find out," Fel assures her, gently. "He was a Fed, it's Federal case if it was murder," He drops his gaze to his coffee cup again, and takes a reluctant mouthful, as if it were medicine.

'he was a bastard. But a good bastard who got the job done. IF it was someone who decided they didn't like that extra alteration of a gene i'd hunt them down and shoot them myself" Bolivar get a nod in thanks before she finally takes a sip of her own coffee. "Whats up with you ivanov. You look like you need a visit with the restorationist"

Now that Felix is paying more attention to caffeine than to her, Rosie retracts her small body from him. Sidles along, placing sugar-white feet over the splay of the table's base, and begins to insinuate her nose in the crook of Minea's knee. She exhales a small blossom of warm air there.

Bolivar can't see her from here. His eyes are on the top of their table, his brow slightly knit, as if he is trying to penetrate the wood and plastic with his gaze. "Tier 0," he repeats, belatedly, as if to merely confirm he heard. He drops his menu. Plastic edges click before settling. Then, with all the tact in the world: "Did you die to get your own hide off enemy radar, or somebody else's?"

"Both," Felix says, taking a last sip of that coffee, before lifting a finger for the waitress to bring more. "I got tortured by some of these terrorists," he says, bluntly. "They left me injured enough a death more than made sense, so we made it happen. No reason to lean on me for info, or those I care about, if I'm six feet under."

Felix is answering Bolivar and now the little dog is getting in her business. so she pats her lap for the dog to get it's front paws up, and give her a good scratching, gentle but still good scratching, listening. Her part in getting his disappeared is kept quiet.

Her part in Felix's getting disappeared may well be suspected, given they're commiserating about some recently dead Evolved Fed guy in a time when Felix's recent activities are a big question-mark for everybody outside the Bureau. Bolivar isn't looking at her because he suspects she's part of some vast and mysterious counter-terror operation, though. He's looking at her because his dog is making happy noises. "PARIAH?" he asks Felix.

Felix shakes his head. "PARIAH is done. These guys are worse," he murmurs. "Makes Al-Qaeda look like kids with cans of spray paint."

There's a snort of agreement to Felix's comments, and a smile at the description from Minea as she continues to make the dog happy.

"And you aren't talking about them in the past-tense. I can see why you decided to come back to life and dine out with Federal agents whose partner just got his ass killed," Bolivar remarks, dryly. He flags the waitress down as soon as she's done dumping coffee into Felix's cup; goes with the customary soup and bread.

Felix pulls a disgusted face. "My cover got blown, completely by chance," he says, in that tone that could etch glass. "No point in continuing the masquerade when they knew very well I lived. And now they can come get me if they need me, rather than threaten those I care about."

Bolivar, nice dog notwithstanding, is starting to get on her nerves. "You always this … perky?" Inquired of the man, her brown eyes peering over at him, still tending to the dog.

By now, Bolivar — and half of Manhattan — knows that there are bigger fish than PARIAH to fry. Between the frame-job on Washington Irving and the corroboration here, he gets it, other things happening, need-to-know basis.

And Minea's getting cranky. His mouth finds a line wide enough to qualify as either a smile or a grimace without carrying a curl in either direction to clarify the matter at all. It probably doesn't matter. Even if he's being funny, most wouldn't think so. "I'm being very nice today," he answers, before glancing again at Felix. A quaver-beat, and then the question is quieter-spoken, as if Bolivar isn't sure how exactly to design it. "Reunited with the Demskies all right?"

Felix blows air out his nose like an irritated horse, though it isn't quite a snort. "Yes. Jesus. Why is it everyone expects Judah and I to be picking out china patterns, or something?" he says, putting a finger to the corner of his lip, unthinkingly. It's healed. now
[OOC] Felix moves the .
"Because of how close you and he were? Trading that ward of his back and forth" Minea points out. "Remind me not to run into you on a bad day" The last spoken to Bolivar.

"I was going to buy him a drink before you came back to life," Bolivar answers in a tone of voice inscrutable to mean absolutely nothing at all. He glances down at Rosie who appears to be completely immune to the thin strain of tension winding through Minea's words, then up at Minea again. The right corner of his mouth tilts upward.

Fel is actually blushing. It looks completely weird on his otherwise pale and frankly cadaverous face. "I just…..where else was Colette going to go?" he says, lamely.

There's a don't look at me look on the female agents face deflecting the question towards Bolivar. Rose is getting the royal treatment from Minea, that's for sure, regardless of the womans emotions.

People are so embarrassing. No wonder Bolivar doesn't keep barely any of them around. After a moment, his manner relents slightly. Relents insofar as that his food arrives and he stops picking at all the closet homos and their bellicose beards in favor of ripping bread apart in his hands.

And by stops picking, he means: "I wouldn't go with anything Oriental. People might think you're racist, and what they do in Communist Russia isn't much of an excuse here. New partner assigned yet?" The latter question to Minea. Rose is about boneless against her shins by now, her butt planted on the tops of the woman's boots.

Felix is out of the closet. All the closets. Freak and queer alike. He just shakes his head at Bolivar, faintly. "I've got one, yes," he says, before realizing it wasn't to him the question was really addressed.

"Cover was blown. Highly unlikely they'll reassign me to another. I'm a documents specialist. I don't get partners often. I'll have to re-establish a cover. For now, I'll keep doing what I need to do and see if they're going to look into Powell's death"

The knit of Bolivar's brow darkens. Seems like the sort of business Elisabeth is getting into, the terrorists, and the off the books, and the hysterical, schizophrenic Evolved prisoners making grandiose announcements about her allegiances. "Good luck," he offers, after a protracted moment. He slants a look at Minea. "If you're tired of her, tell her to come back to me."

Felix eyes Minea, and Bolivar, each in turn. "I missed something there," he notes, quietly, dragging a worn leather wallet out of his pocket to take care of his mostly uneaten dinner.

"He's talking about the dog Ivanov" Which is still dying int he puddle of attention she's getting. There's a whispered word from Minea though, to it's ears before she gently moves the paws off her lap. 'Back to Mr. rodruigez-SMith" A glance to the man. "Well trained. Canine unit?" Felix looks to be starting to make his way to finish. "you have my card. Call if you need anything"

"K-9 unit," Bolivar confirms. The bread chunk splays lacey white across his fingers before it's sodden down in red; he doesn't look down when Logan Rose acknowledges her order and trundles back to his side, rejoining her massive shepherd counterpart in their vigil over the walkway. Eyed, he eyes back. As far as his dogs' training goes, however, he sustains the compliment more readily than he might have had any other: "Gracias. They're good girls."

Well, Fel is still horribly drunk. Even if he has a decent excuse, and can still manage to count his change. "Right," he says, rather contrite. "And I do. Same for you. We'll figure this out," he assures her. Her question gets a rather lupine grin. "We were both NYPD, back when. I knew him then." Didn't work with him, and weren't friends, clearly.

'Take care Ivanov" She rattles off an address to him. "There's a room still there for you. If it's closer than wherever your place is. They know to let you in" Becuase he's drunk as hell. The other dog is given a glance to, as she finishes her own coffee, not making to move away any time soon.

Contrition is neither suspicious nor particularly welcome in Bolivar's point of view. The introduction, belated as it is, warrants a gentle inclination of his head, confirmation at least that the drunken Russian isn't lying. "Don't fall and die," he tells the FBI agent by way of salutation, lifting a hand that he can't be bothered to empty of bread briefly, before his attention falls again, casually enough, to his meal. Minea isn't left with a particularly ironclad sense that she's locked out of his attention, but he is temporarily distracted.

"I won't again. I'm past my nine lives, I think," Fel says, shrugging on his overcoat, and nodding to Minea. He claps her gently on the shoulder as he shuffles past. "Thank you," he says to her, gently. And then he's pulling his gloves from his pocket, fumbling them on, expression rather lost.
Felix's hand is clapped back as the waitress circles by and Minea orders another cup of coffee. "Mind if I take a seat up by you instead of wasting the booth?"

It's either encouragement or an insult, or both again, somehow: They don't teach you how to fucking count at the Bureau?" Depression looks better on some than others. Bolivar squints at his former colleague for a moment, before summarily deleting him from his awareness with a flick of neutral brown eyes to the odd chunk of potato afloat in his soup.

He doesn't lift his head again until Minea asks somebody if she can sit with. He casts a look around. Realizes that, by default, that would be himself. "There's no one to waste it on," he points out, despite waving bread at her anyway. Sure, sure.

"You knew him before he left to become a federal agent?" Her coffee is brought to the counter so that the table could be cleaned, and prepared for someone else, abandoning it for Bolivars, a glance to the larger dog. "And this gentleman's name?"

The half-breed dips his head into a nod, mostly because his mouth is full, and not even Bolivar spits the contents of his dinner at a recent acquaintance when they're making polite conversation. "A little," after he's consumed that part of the mixture. "He hasn't changed much, if that's what you're wondering. Not like most of them.

"The Bomb cut time in half for those poor fucks." The ruin of his own face and hand, and probably still more underneath the coat and shirt, might lead one to think he includes himself in the latter category. He looks down. "Gentlewoman. Nina Lou. I had a third."

'my apologies" That's spoken to the dog, a lift of her hand for the canine to sniff it. "So he's always been cantankerous and aloof. Good to know" Froma coat pocket a business card is pulled with her free hand and offered on the table to him. "For while I'm here, feel free to take that. What good it will do I don't know. Who was the third?"

Pending a lack of protest from Bolivar, Nina Lou sniffs. "He's always been a skinny little bitch who looks like he's married to his job until he gets up and leaves it for something better. Cantankerous and aloof? Not to me."

Apparently it's a relative measure, and the burnt man does not deign to share his adjectives like so. He receives the card between forefinger and thumb, peers briefly at the words, eyes scaling immediately down to check for the presence of an Evolved ability. Finding none, he pockets it and he glances away with a scowl, either from embarrassment or the ongoing aggravation: "Apple. Pitbull Terrier. She's missing now."

'How long?" The card is simple. Dahl consultations. Minea Dhal, simple black raised lettering on cream card stock with phone, fax number and email. What she consults, it's unknown.

Darkly, "Seven months." Bolivar's Evolved power is probably that to incinerate the presence of spiritual happiness with his facial expression. He knows how that sounds. Dog's gone missing in post-Bomb Manhattan for seven months and he still considers her just that: missing. He isn't shoving a Polaroid in her face now, though.

Mind you, he made a new copy after handing it off to Ewan, but he finds himself dimly perturbed by the woman's polite interest. "Cover name or real name?" he asks, after a moment. "The one on the card."

'Real. Was my cover and a side business. I don't go out in the field much. A phase evolved thought on a lark that it would be enjoyable to steal an MP5 from my purse" There's a scowl, one hand affectionate with nina lou while she pushes her cup to the end for a refill. "Civilians or art consultants do not run around with MP5's in purses"

The half-breed's eyebrow hikes high enough to make the keloids edging his face go all crinkles and wrinkles. "Phase Evolved?" he repeats as if she had just given him the taxonomic name of a novel breed of flesh-eating bacteria. "What the… walk through walls kind of shit? Or throws fucking stun rays out of his groin?" Big fan of the mutant population, evidently. Means he can almost sympathize with her complaint, by his answering scowl. "Little bastards." A quaver-beat. "How big is your purse?"

"Big. big enough for a sub machine gun. The fucking bitch put her hand through the purse and grabbed it" A look of sublime disgust. "Hoping I don't run into her again, but if she does I'm wondering how a taser works on her" She really is. "Dove right through the ground to escape"

Female, then. Bolivar's opinion of the sticky-fingered ghost doesn't improve visibly for that revelation. He's an equal opportunities misanthropist. "I'dve shot her," he says without room for doubt. Noticing something suspiciously like conversational rhythm occurring at the table near her head level, Nina Lou flips her tail once, thump, against the floor tiles. "Was she just going for your wallet, some crazy fluke like that, or someone blow your cover before that?"

Minea can take a hint. Scratch scratch scratch. "Not the wallet. Gun. Right for the gun. She knew it was there" Minea shakes her head. "Whats the dog look like? I'll keep an eye out"

The pause isn't short. When Bolivar finally moves, it is with a dry rustle like oxidized parts are jostling in joints that no longer fit. He pulls open the panel of his coat again, reaches in.

The Polaroid comes out. Fierce lady of a dog right there, chestnut brown fur, a triangular smear of cream-colored fur widening into her belly from her chest. There's a man's hand by her, its shape and texture ruined by injury. "Gracias," he repeats, for the second time in ten minutes. Must be some kind of record. "I would appreciate that." Lou appreciates that too. Or, at least, embroiled enough in her own egocentric pleasures to grumble agreement. Her dark, wolfishly angular eyes go squinty from cheer and her ears rock up, down, and gently up again.

The Polaroid is taken, studying the various details before she puts it down. Unclipping the blackberry and snapping a picture off on it of the dog, store it away for reference. "Leah Deckard. Likely has a rap sheet" Minea rattles off the woman's particulars that she knows, and what she looks like. "Can probably find her in the database. If you see her, give me a call. She's got a meeting with my fist" The Polaroid is given back. Whether Minea is kidding or not is up for debate.

Far be it for Bolivar to get between two girls who want to slap it out. Some people are into that. He could profit, one way or another: he doesn't like Evolved and he doesn't like thieves. The Polaroid is retracted with only a parting glance at the Blackberry. "Leah Deckard," he repeats, sparing her at least a bloodthirsty smile and a grandiose brandishing of whatever firearm he's wearing right now. "L-e-a-h?" She'll have to forgive him: dyslexic.

You say, "El Ee Ay ach" Minea nods. She doens't flash her firearms, you can't see them. He might see the invisible clip that's masked by the blackberry's holder, that marks the gun hidden on the inside of her waistband."

"Got it." Bolivar's head stoops in his collar and he subjects her to an inquisitive stare, sidelong. Below his face, his soup bowl is now completely empty except for one pulp-patterned smudge and a few ragged wisps of bread. "What industry do you consult for?"

"Art" Minea's hand still makes nice with the bigger dog. "small, big, I'm the liaison between purchaser and artist. Private consultations. I'm a documents verification and creation specialist as well. The latter is my job, the former is a side job and passion. Convenient cover. What is your passion? Besides your lovely companions here and your missing one"

Passion. Bolivar's lip curls faintly when she invokes that term entirely without irony. Artists. Go figure. "My girls. The dogs," he clarifies, cocking his head down to gesture at the pair and the phantom of the missing third sitting beside them. "I used to be a sniper. That was good while my health lasted. Getting blown half to fucking Hell was the last series of headlines I ever featured in." It's a wallet that comes out of his coat this time, flipped open under a thumb, bills extricated between ruined fingers.

"Your girls" She won't make that mistake again. "They don't trust you to handle a gun anymore? Or did the explosion make it impossible?" Minea gives Lou one more scratch before she too takes some bills out for her coffee sliding it over for the waitress with a tip, blackberry slid away safely.

It must not be a date, they're each of them paying their own way. "I cough like a fucking machine gun when the temperature's one degree to high or low. Sitting on my ass starts to hurt fifteen minutes in. Your boy—" he nods at the door out which Felix had swept. "May be cut from marble or whatever the fuck the phrase is for his anal retentive bullshit.

"I'm made of fucking glass." It would be hard to mistake his rancor as directed at her. Money paid as owed, he begins to push out of the booth, his weight heavy across the grasp and pull of his hands.

"Understood" Minea answers, letting him stand first, get his girls under foot and in proper place. 'Have a good evening Officer Rodriguez-Smith. Pleasure making your acquaintance. Hope your good day stays that way, whatever's left of it"

Had Bolivar's day looked like that? Good? Perhaps suspecting he's being teased, the small man fires a glance at the wiry woman from over his shoulder, brow furrowed, mouth bent around a frown. No words forthcoming. He does, however, incline his head after a moment, agreeably as he's able. A click of his tongue and a sclitter of blunt claws on linoleum, and he leads his girls out.


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January 27th: Felix Ivanov is Stuart Redman
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January 27th: Discerning Tastes
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