dualislogs | i wanna hold ‘em like they do in texas, please

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i wanna hold ‘em like they do in texas, please

WHO: Open to all Dualizens
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: The brand-new Theronia Casino
WHEN: Dec. 7-10
WARNINGS: Please use these if applicable!

Look at all of these bright, shining new faces! There’s even a few less bright, less shining faces - maybe even a few folks without faces - but hey, this city welcomes all types. Chances are, if you’ve just arrived, you're seeing some pretty crazy things, unless you're used to an eye-blinding amount of neon, robots, weird-ass technology, magic, and an omnipresent police force...and hey, if you are, congrats, you're gonna settle in just fine! But for the rest of you, the Head knows this is gonna be pretty overwhelming, right?

Well, since your quaint individual processing units are probably having a hard time, why not link up with another one? By which the Head means...

Hello, new citizens of Dualis,
and welcome to your monthly Network Adjacency Protocol~!

NAPs are a monthly community networking event similar to the Earth concept of speed dating. Two citizens (new arrivals and old hands alike) are placed at a table together with a handy cue card of queries to help break the proverbial ice. Ask (possibly invasive) personal questions and receive results - or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship, whatever works! But don't be too shy - you've only got ten minutes together, and if you just sit in silence for the whole ten, the Network Admins are likely to come supervise and try to repair the uplink through a mild shock to the ol' central nervous system. You might find yourself saying all sorts of unintended facts about yourself if that happens...probably better to just make friends, right? Who doesn’t like friends?!

The weather outside is … not frightful, but this month’s event is still being held in a cozy indoor environment. Welcome to the newly-opened Theronia Casino, a 12-story building that boasts amazing buffets and dozens of different types of gambling on each floor. Enjoy a rousing game of blackjack, poker, or tall card with your friends! Try your luck at roulette, get a group together for dice games, or maybe meet some new faces over a round of mahjong. If there’s another type of gambling game local to your home world, chances are good it’ll have a table on one of the casino floors. Types of cuisine vary from floor to floor, but kosher, vegan, and allergen-free offerings are always available no matter where you choose to dine.

As a special bonus, all NAPs attendees receive free entry into the weekly Go Fish Tournament. Daily finalists win a prize of 1000 duos and advance to the championship game next month. Play your heart out, and remember - anything’s competitive if you try hard enough!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The only reason Connor is here at all is that he always comes to these things and it will annoy him if he doesn't this time. It'll annoy him if he lets a little thing like being jumped in a back alley and shot through the kneecap ruin his routines.

And it turns out to be a casino, which means learning how to play blackjack, go fish, poker and mahjong all in quick succession, and quickly realising that in all of these games, it makes sense to remember which cards and tiles have already been shown, and use that when planning his next move.

In mahjong, that's called basic strategy. In poker, it's called card counting and the casino doesn't like it very much.

"So it seems like if I try to play any card games here ever again, I'm banned," he says as he approaches Hank at the bar on his crutch. "How's your evening going, Ha--" and the end of his sentence goes up in a confused sort of way, because the man sitting at the bar who faintly smells like work and spirits and is wearing the garish shirt that Connor immediately beelined for...is not Hank, and for a moment there, Connor just stares like an idiot, LED chugging away in bright yellow, head tilted to one side like the change in angle is going to help somehow.

What are the odds.

...In a manner of speaking.

Harry's head swings around, drink suddenly forgotten, and he finds himself staring straight back. Check it out: Two idiots. Staring.

No really, he was about to say Harry, right? Who the fuck is this guy?

ESPIRT DE CORPS — You don't know why, but you've got a feeling like he's your half-brother.

Oh, so what, he's some other forgotten member of the 41st? Or, no, even better: some lookie-loo asshole from the 57th ready to watch Tequila Sunset drown himself like clockwork? Harry's knee starts bouncing.

PERCEPTION — No, no, no. Look there, on the side of his head. His temple is blinking.

The knee stills again. He clears his throat a couple of times like he's trying to restart an engine.

"Hey?"

"Uh." Connor shakes himself, a literal little twitch of the head, and recovers enough to say, "I'm sorry, I thought you were my partner."

But now that he's actually looking and not focusing on hobbling, this is very much not Hank. In the face, the hair (including facial), they're nothing alike. But sitting down, back to Connor when he's already not paying the fullest attention, there's a general air that's uncanny. And a very bright shirt.

"I'm a little distracted," he says by way of explanation, and part of it's in the crutch he already propped up against the bar to prepare to sit down. But part of it is about, "Like I said, my night isn't exactly going as I pictured it."

Harry's eyes flick to the crutch, then back over to Connor himself, resulting in an oddly sluggish once over. Mr Deer-In-The-Headlights-With-His-Own-Head-Light is tall (taller than Harry, possibly), clean-cut (ridiculously so, by Revocholian standards), freckled (yeah, fuck you, too, buddy), and... evidently injured. That's about the sum-total of this particular Super-Cop's powers of deduction right now.

Harry scrubs his palm over his numb face, then gives a loose gesture to the stool Connor was probably already planning on sitting on.

"Don't worry, pal. You can't win too much at drinking," he replies helpfully. "What's your poison?"

The man - he's a detective, Connor's sure of it, and not just because he can now identify the smell that hangs around him as a form of cleaning solution good for cleaning up blood - looks Connor over, crutch and all. He's not sure what the assessment is, but the guy's clearly drunk or getting there, so maybe there is no assessment.

"I think I can," says Connor thoughtfully as he takes a seat. "I don't get hungover. I'll take a Baileys," as the bartender walks by.

Then he adds thoughtfully, "But I can't get drunk, so maybe I just can't win at all at drinking."

If Harry had anything but fuzzy recollections of his life before waking up on the floor of the Whirling, he might remember a time where he didn't get hangovers either. As it stands, all he has is a little wave of unpleasantness in his gut ⁠— one that likely falls under the banner of either jealousy or irritation.

"You can't get drunk," he repeats flatly. Less a question than an expression of incredulity. He watches the bartender pour the glass with a myopic squint, then grins to himself, like he's figured out a riddle. "Sure. Not on that, maybe."

Oh yeah. Captain Sober has got you all worked out, mister.

"Lemme guess... you get sick from the cream before the whiskey even gets a hello, right?"

Connor nods his thanks to the bartender and takes the first sip as he eyes his companion, who's apparently figuring something out...and getting it very wrong.

"No, I'm not lactose intolerant either." Or, really, lactose tolerant. He decides to just put the man out of his misery. "I'm an android. None of it goes into my system - I just like drinking sometimes."

For a few reasons, but none of them involve Connor himself getting drunk.

Harry stares back blankly.

ENCYCLOPEDIA — An android is a kind of... religious thing, maybe? Or, wait — no, no! It's a colloquial word for... for someone on anabolic steroids?

He shifts on his stool, torn between asking for basic clarification and not wanting to look like a dumb piece of shit. Eventually he settles on bobbing his head and mumbling, "Cool, cool, cool."

Order (and coolness) restored, he sucks on his teeth for a moment before presenting his hand for a shake. It's somewhat clammier than he'd want it to be, but he can totally carry confidence in the squeeze. "Harry Du Bois."

The blank stare immediately tells Connor this guy has no idea what an android is. That’s not totally unexpected; a few people here haven’t, and he’s perfectly amicable about explaining the concept. What’s a bit more unexpected is the sudden acceptance. Maybe Connor’s just misinterpreted the stare?

No. No, he was right the first time. Sometimes it embarrasses humans to not know something when they think it should be obvious. The fact that Connor dropped the word in the conversation like it’s something everyone should know might be the problem. He doesn’t like the word ‘machine’ so much, but it doesn’t mean the same thing here as back in Detroit, where it implies he’s a mindless automaton following his programming. Not a deviant. Not a person.

But this isn’t Detroit, and he likes to be helpful.

“Connor.” He takes the proffered hand. His handshake is entirely neutral in pressure - not weak, but not particularly strong either: he doesn’t have anything to prove in something as minor as a handshake, after all. “Just Connor. I don’t think my creators thought a machine needed a surname.”

He adds that last bit with a little shrug, and fluidly turns to thank the bartender for the Baileys that just appeared under his nose. He’s...not totally sure his intentions weren’t clear there, but even if they were, they’re both free to ignore this and pretend it never happened.

Those wrinkles between Harry's eyebrows become all the more pronounced as the handshake breaks and he actually listens. It can be hard to process new information when he drinks like this, but...

DRAMA — 'Tis the truth, Sire.

His eyes move from meeting Connor's, back to the light on the man's temple. You can practically see the wheels (squeakily) turning in his head. Hank had mentioned something about tase-happy robots, but Harry certainly hadn't pictured them looking anything like the man sat beside him. He doesn't really know what he pictured, really. His experience with electronics up until Dualis was more motor carriages and radio-computers, not... what, man-machines?

"But you're still a person, right?"

There it is. The frown of someone coming to a slow realisation. He's seen enough drunks... Scratch that. He's seen Hank drunk enough times to mostly be able to read the signs of a drunk person at least somewhat hearing what you're telling them.

The stare at his LED doesn't hurt either.

"Right." He takes this as a learning moment. Maybe if Harry talks to Connor and realises Connor's just a regular person (OK, even Connor doesn't think he's a regular person, but a real person, sure), he'll take a positive outlook into meeting other people who aren't organic. If androids want to build a world where people can see them as equals, it doesn't hurt to start small, with individual interactions that slowly build up into a societal world view.

"I live here just like everybody else. I have a job, hobbies, people I care about." He gestures as he talks animatedly. "I'm not much different to anybody else, except I'm not made of flesh."

He lifts his drink. "And I don't get drunk."

It's not like he's sat staring at a guy constructed out of that vitreous white of the T-500 armor. He certainly looks like flesh.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY — Oh yeah. You kinda wonder how he feels, too, right?

INLAND EMPIRE — Nope. Even non-organic freckles give you that caustic taste in your mouth.

Harry scrubs his face again, hand staying there this time, rooting itself into one of those thick sideburns as he sets his elbow on the counter-top. He lets out one of those sighs you might get from a sad old Labrador splayed in front of a fireplace. He's eyeing the Baileys. Then his own forgotten bottle of Pilsner. Aaaaand back to the Baileys once more.

"Sucks," he grumbles eventually. "How'd you... y'know—" His free hand sweeps up towards his head, and he waggles it lamely. Makes a little explosion noise in the back of his throat. "When you wanna scramble shit up for a while?"

Connor shrugs a little. He can't mourn something he's never had - although sometimes it seems fun. When people have a little and their walls come down. But he's seen the effects of far too much, too, and that scares him a little.

He watches that gesturing hand like it's going to help him answer the question. What scrambles his shit up, so to speak? Well, he has an immediate answer to that, and one he gathers isn't for polite company - Hank. His systems weren't built to handle intimacy - he wasn't made for it, not really - and trying to handle everything he feels about Hank has an overwhelming effect on every part of him. Put honestly - sex was very low on his designers priorities, and it breaks him a little every time in the best possible way. Maybe that's what his equivalent of being drunk is.

Well, Harry asked.

"I…spend time with my partner." Harry can make of that answer what he will. "I guess I get drunk on him."

The harder edge to Harry's expression softens, then. Like he understands.

Kim Kitsuragi had been his rock from the moment Harry had clumsily introduced himself in the cafeteria of the Whirling-In-Rags (as Detective Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, lest he forget it.) It's thanks to the lieutenant that he's still alive right now. In fact, it was thanks to him that Harry was able to resurface at all. In his mind's eye, he can still picture Kim stood in front of the ceiling-fan in his hostel room, light blooming around his head like a stained glass halo—a modern Innocence. Dolores Dei, eat your heart out, baby.

His face crumples a little. "Yeah," he begins, voice smaller than it was. "If Kim was here, I—" He doesn't seem to know how to finish that. Doesn't want to admit he might have staved off the drink some more. That he might be sober right now.

REACTION SPEED — Wait...

A deep red climbs up Harry's neck, joining the flush the alcohol has already left in his cheeks.

"...You meant sex?"

It's honestly strange, and a little heartwarming, that the more he talks to Harry, the more he's reminded of Hank...right up to the slow motion kind of double take as he realises that -

"Yes," Connor says, trying not to laugh into his glass. "That's what I meant."

And, feeling like he should try to salvage this, "But even without that, I didn't realise before I developed emotions just how important one person could be, or that just them being around makes everything better."

From somewhere deep in Harry's chest, his embarrassment is distilled into a single sound — an honest-to-God whine.

And despite Connor's attempt to neatly salvage the conversation, and despite him knowing he's not talking to the likes of the desperately macho Mack "the Torso" Torson, he feels like he has to clarify. Immediately.

"Me and Kim, we're not—" The words stick in his throat as he remembers the last time he tried to vehemently deny any unprofessional relationship with the lieutenant — the haunting laughs and slurs of two preteen ginger-haired gremlins having flooded straight back into his amygdala. "I mean..."

What? What exactly does he mean?

"We're partners. Police partners," says Harrier Du Bois, human beetroot.

Connor hears that whine and is suitably alarmed by it, LED flickering from blue to yellow. At first he thinks it's a sound of pain, and he's totally nonplussed by it. Are humans really that unhappy at just the mention of sex by someone they're not currently having it with?

But then he realises, or he thinks he does. Connor mentioned his partner, meaning romantic partner. Harry mentioned his own detective partner before realising what Connor meant. Now he thinks that Connor thinks that...

And his mind goes back to Hank explaining that humans and same-gender romance used to be unacceptable. And he mentioned Hank being male only seconds ago - either this conversation is about to be over, or it's about to go in a very uncomfortable direction. He decides to be quietly prepared for either one.

"I get it," he says haltingly. "Maybe I should have made it more clear I meant romantic partner. We used to be police partners, it just... I preferred that word. Because we're still a team even if we don't work together much here."

The traffic light flickering away at Connor's temple betrays the same thing his tone does.

DRAMA — One can protest too much, my liege.

A pinch of guilt wriggles in Harry's gut as he focuses in on that blinking yellow and realizes how he sounds right now. Stumbling on his words, it's like he's giving a desperate objection worthy of Chester McLaine. Like the very idea of being romantically involved with Kim is worthy of scorn, somehow.

He doesn't know how to correct himself, though. His ears still feel like they're radiating a coal furnace worth of heat, and if Kim's reaction is anything to go by, nobody really cares about all the hours he's put into questioning his own sexuality recently. Bringing it up certainly won't win him any points, anyway. He clears his throat.

"Kim—"

EMPATHY — Wouldn't appreciate you outing him to a stranger, either.

Another aborted sentence. Great job, Harry. His hand finds the bottle of Pilsner again.

"Sorry," he says, finally, punctuating with a generous swig. "...It's good you got each other." He risks eye contact. "Really. I, uh... I'm not too good at the whole romance thing."

It's honestly fascinatingly how red Harry's face has gone. He's seen people flush, but to this intensity? This is new. It makes Connor feel a little miserable to look at it. He's caused genuine discomfort and he didn't mean to, not at all.

"Oh…" he says, trying to process this. "That's OK. I didn't think I could be good at it either."

Right up until it happened. Even when he was trying to work out what sexuality and romance were to him as a functional person, he hadn't realised he was already falling.

"Anyway…" He decides maybe they should change the subject, before blood starts popping out of poor Harry's orifices.

"What division did you work in?" he asks. "You and your partner. Hank was in homicide when I got assigned to him."

Somewhere deep inside of Harry's mangled brain, a set of folders was just being laid out, ready and waiting for him to unpack. Mister Pain Threshold sat there sweating excitedly, summoned by the topic of romance, full of phrases like scarred for life and gaping emptiness.

And just like that, it slips away again.

"Major crimes?" he... asks. He doesn't mean for it to come out as a question, but shit, who's he kidding at this point? "Everything from Arson to Zzzzz—"

ENCYCLOPEDIA — Zoning? Zap. Zealous... crime? Zealous murder, maybe?

"—To murder." He frowns and takes another drag of Pilsner. Huffs a sigh into the rim straight after in a way that makes it toot like a shitty instrument. "The 41st cover a lot of ground. I mean, way too big an area for the numbers we got." The hand he swings by his head carries a breezy air of c'est la vie. "So we police a little of everything. I'm a, uh, Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor over there. Kim was with the 57th... but now he's looking to transfer over." The grin that sprouts up at that is a textbook version of the Expression. "Spend more time with the big dog!"

Edited 2019-12-20 22:56 (UTC)

Connor remains blissfully unaware that he just cut off an emotional outpouring at the pass as he takes another sip and and listens to…zzz

He can't fill that mystery Z-word in, but major crimes is understandable enough. It's what Connor would have been doing if he weren't a prototype, rolled out in extenuating circumstances for one specific case.

"Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor…" He repeats, testing the unfamiliar sounds on his tongue, partly to distract it from saying anything about that Expression. Because he thinks he knows that Expression and it's downright sad to see it on someone so uncomfortable with what it means. "I've never heard of that rank, only Lieutenant. I guess it's a higher rank?"

He considers a little more, then decides that just asking an innocent question isn't picking into anything too uncomfortable - right?

"How did Kim end up being your partner if you're in different divisions?"

Maybe he just wants to see Harry talk about Kim some more.

First things first: "Yefreitor means you got offered Captain, but turned it down. Double-Yefreitor—" he holds up two fingers "—you turned it down twice." And, oh look, he's turned the illustrative two into another little finger gun. He's fired a lot of those tonight.

"Okay, so..." A sigh. He leans on the bar to push himself more upright. Like whatever disgustingly lengthy explanation he gives will come out better from a higher vantage point. "So in Revachol, the RCM's... reach, I guess, only goes so far. Huge presence in some parts, nothing in others. The bits we got, we divide up between stations. The Coalition can only give so many fucks, right?" Cue the dramatic eyeroll. "The Martinaise is one of those nothing places. Legally we police there, but, uh... it's de facto policed by the Dockers Union, you know?" He goes for another swig, waving his other hand as he does so as if to say he's not done talking. "...All's well and good until there's a big Union strike, and suddenly one of the strike-breakers is found hanging from a tree."

The bottle clinks loudly as he goes to set it down again, hitting it against the edge of the counter. Attempt two comes seconds later, with exaggerated care. "So, uh, problem is, someone calls the RCM. Then dispatch calls up both the 41st and the 57th, because, y'know, Ms. Martinaise is sat between us both. Then Pryce and... whoever the fuck is in charge of the 57th - they decide to have a cop-off! Battle it out with a big ol' joke of a pissing contest to see who wouldn't get stuck policing the Martinaise."

There's an uncomfortable pause. It clearly wasn't in either station's interest to send their greatest detective, and Harry's absolutely aware of this.

"I ended up being the 41st's man, and, uh... and Kim volunteered to be theirs." He smiles despite himself. "Figured the whole pissing contest was immature bullshit, and that he'd ruin it by working with me instead. Can't win or lose if we both solve it, right?"

So long story short, Kim isn't officially his partner. Not yet, anyway.

Do people often turn down Captain, Connor wants to ask. But talking to Harry makes him feel like that's a very redundant question: does Harry look like the kind who would want to have responsibility over others?

Most of Harry's further explanation of his partnership with Kim is all incomprehensible terms, but Connor's good at reading between the lines and picking out the basics.

So his next silent question becomes: what takes a cop from turning down two promotions to being the fall guy?

What, short of losing everything. There are surely only so many ways Connor can be reminded of Hank during this conversation.

"I think I like the sound of Kim," he comments with a wry grin. "So did you solve it?"

"He's an unrepentant spoilsport. The fucking worst," Harry replies, the faint smile and short, quiet huff betraying the fondness in those words. Who doesn't like Kim? Even Jean was stammering happily at the prospect of him joining them.

"And... yeah. We did." He hesitates, seemingly studying Connor for a moment. There's a naked vulnerability in that stare—the kind that only comes soaked in alcohol. "It was a shit-show, man. We started with one body and ended with..." The fingers wrapped around the pilsner twitch, like he's tallying up. "What, eight?"

SUGGESTION — This isn't your Lazareth, Harry. You don't need to give him a rundown of all the ways you fucked up.

He clears his throat. "But we found the killer. Got the motive, the murder weapon, a confession..." He peters out for a moment. "Kept a whole bunch of people alive, too." Sometimes you get handed a time-bomb. The fact that the inevitable blood-bath didn't end with more Union dead is a minor miracle, and he knows it.

Doesn't stop the guilt, though.

"Hey, so, uh..." The halting start of a man wanting to move off yet another sensitive subject. He nods down to Connor's leg. "That happen here or back home?"

Edited 2019-12-27 00:07 (UTC)

Kim reminds Connor a bit of himself- and with Harry reminding him of Hank, this is a bit of a strange conversation to have. And he finds himself oddly wishing he could see the two together. How they interact, if that's like him and Hank too.

But he understands screwing up a case. He's definitely done that before. In a sense.

"I've had two cases," Connor explains, figuring it won't hurt to share some. "First was a hostage negotiation, they were testing out my capabilities." And it was a success, technically speaking, although he went through a phase of guilt for condemning the android perp to death before realising it was the SWAT team using him to kill the android that was really at fault. Connor was as much a slave as any other android.

"Second, I was assigned to my partner to investigate a series of homicides and assaults - the common factor was that the perps were all like me, machines." He adds, a little grimly, "technically when I say I was assigned, I mean I was loaned out to the police department as equipment. That's how they thought of androids then.

"But we kept screwing up." He drinks a bit more Baileys. "I didn't get anything useful out of our first perp and he wound up killing himself in custody. The second one got away because I stopped to help my partner. The next two… We let them go. I don't regret it, but looking back on the whole case, we didn't do great."

As detectives. As people with morals, by the end of the case Connor was doing better than a few of the humans he'd met.

"This?" He taps his crutch, and this time his grimace is genuinely angry. "I got jumped. Six of them. One of them shot me through the knee, another one kicked me in the head. My, uh… My blood's made of a substance that can be converted into a recreational drug. It's pretty valuable."

And hell if being jumped on like a walking dispensary didn't aggravate the hell out of him, then and now.

i wanna hold ‘em like they do in texas, please

some kind of a/wildcard hybrid I guess?

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SORRY

APOLOGY RECIPROCATED

APOLOGY RALLY

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