headandhand: (Default)
the head | the hand ([personal profile] headandhand) wrote in [community profile] dualislogs2019-08-10 03:47 pm

kitty at my foot and i wanna touch it.

WHO: Open to all residents
WHAT: Your regularly scheduled NAPs event for the month
WHERE: The RoCocoa Cat Cafe
WHEN: Aug. 10-14
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, 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 juuuuust fine. But for the rest of you, the Head knows this has gotta 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 queries and receive results, or ignore the card and yeet yourself straight into a brand new friendship! 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?!

This month’s event is held at the brand new RoCocoa Cat Cafe, a sparkly new establishment that caters to children and the young at heart with iced and hot cocoa drinks of all kinds, delicious pastries, age-appropriate live music, and of course many friendly kitties who love to lounge in laps. The cats are of all shapes, sizes, and colors, including some who may look a little different from what you expect, or may look like an ordinary cat but are actually anything but ordinary underneath that adorable fur coat. All cats in the cafe are adoptable, too, if you meet a new furry friend and just can’t bear to go home without them!

So pull up a chair, get to know your new neighbors, and enjoy a sugary treat or two with the resident furbabies. You might just meet your new two- or four-legged best friend!
notalive: (i am done with my graceless heart)

[personal profile] notalive 2019-08-25 07:16 pm (UTC)(link)
He follows her gaze, and his eyebrows go up as he sees the sleek creature showing off for customers. Even as he's watching, the cat stands and stretches its tails, much like the one they have at their own table, only this one's tails spread into a fan like shape, feathery tufts rippling under the lights of the cafe.

"You had one?" he asks, looking back. "So you had them at home?

He's pretty sure there's nothing like that where he's from - cats just don't look like that. Bird and cat hybrids definitely don't exist.
firacrux: (Oh really?)

[personal profile] firacrux 2019-08-26 01:19 am (UTC)(link)
He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "How tough are they to fight?" Because honestly, a Flerken infestation sounded potentially fun. Although, he's an idiot, so don't listen to him. "...Here's a better question, they reproduce asexually?" Because if not, they might be okay. Might.

Very slim might.

"Maybe this one likes pretendin' to be a house cat." This is horrifying and yet fascinating all at the same time.
punchpunchkisskiss: (frown)

[personal profile] punchpunchkisskiss 2019-08-26 02:34 am (UTC)(link)
Riiight, gotta be all stealth like.

[ He hunches over the table and peers around the room, as though this makes him less suspicious. ]

I'll be careful. I promise.
firacrux: (In no hurry)

[personal profile] firacrux 2019-08-26 02:54 am (UTC)(link)
That earns a huffed laugh. "You and me both. Far as I can tell my particular skill set doesn't translate to this kinda livin'." Easy enough to understand why, most worlds evidently had little need for those well-versed in monster hunting. He follows along after her, still carrying his ball of yellow fluff that seemed more than content to be carried around like a teddy bear. "'Course, gotta stay busy." If he didn't, he would absolutely be climbing up the walls and causing all kinds of trouble. Squall gets enough trouble from him.

At her request he nods and turns to scope out a good location. Once he finds what looks to be a semi-private spot he goes to claim the two cozy looking stuffed arm chairs to sit with his new fluffy friend and wait. At least this way with a cat in his lap he'll have a hand free for cocoa.
yondu: (1 0 7)

[personal profile] yondu 2019-08-26 09:05 am (UTC)(link)
"Sure, I guess if you wanna go full tilt in a crazy fit. I hear ya. Number one? Don't get scratched by 'em. At all. They go real deep an' you'll never heal right. They'll aim right for your eyes. Number two? Keep you a good seven or eight meter range from the thing. They can move fast an' swallow somebody damn quick.

"Thirdly, they got the sense of normal cats."

He looks around with the uneasy feeling that there is more than one Flerken and that just isn't going to be good for anybody.

"You ain't gonna sneak up on 'em." He muses, but is more at ease with just the normal cats wandering close. 'Normal', like the one that hops up in his lap that's about as pink as he is blue. This time Yondu doesn't seem like he's about to leave a Yondu shaped hole in the wall.
notalive: (and i'm damned if i do)

[personal profile] notalive 2019-08-26 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Connor's not easy to identify as an android to people who don't recognise the signs. The LED on his temple could be a simple cybernetic enhancement, and the patterns and numbers on his jacket could mean anything - even just a fashion statement. Otherwise he looks perfectly human in every way, even sitting across from someone close up. He's not used to people not seeing or caring - to anybody in 2038 Detroit, he's obviously a piece of equipment just from looking at him. Sure, things are changing, but he didn't even get a chance to see anything change before he got here. The cat certainly doesn't care what he is; it jumps up onto the table and makes sure to get in his face again.

"I just got here," he says, sweeping tails away from his mouth without even looking at the cat - he's done this a few times now. "And it looked like I was going to get conscripted if I didn't. I'm Connor."
notalive: (245 - H20tckm)

[personal profile] notalive 2019-08-26 03:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey, he can try. Besides, asking people what they do absolutely counts as conducting research.

"I don't actually know what those are," he says, then quickly clarifies. "Obviously I know what climbing is, but..."

Help him out here, Nida.
skyward_eyes: Harry Shum Jr as Magnus Bane (Older Wiser Better Than I Was (Standard))

[personal profile] skyward_eyes 2019-08-26 03:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Really? A cop-andriod doesn't know? Nida smiles and shakes his head. "Alright then. So, free-climbing is like climbing, but with no safety gear. I have done it mountains, but I love it in cities. Parkour is an art of moving where you minimize loss of momentum, and you also do pretty intense things. Jumping between building rooftops, climbing things, flipping over other stuff. I'm sure somewhere on the network there are videos."

And he'd offer to show off some but this is neither the time nor the place.
silentnarration: (surprise)

[personal profile] silentnarration 2019-08-26 04:29 pm (UTC)(link)
He can't imagine Caraway smiling, let alone joking. But family is... different, right?

He's relieved when she finally takes his hand. It was starting to feel awkward and he wasn't sure if he should take the hand back. He closes his hand around hers and listens.

"You were really close," he notes carefully. He can guess at what's bothering her but he's not entirely sure what to do about it. The last time someone close to him went away, he became who he is now. He's silent for a while before adding, "it's okay to miss her, you know."
etherealsage: (pic#13328247)

[personal profile] etherealsage 2019-08-26 04:42 pm (UTC)(link)
At first she doesn't respond. Mostly because she doesn't... really know how to. It's not every day that someone asks if they can hug her. And Rinoa being Rinoa doesn't even normally ask. Maybe it's because Nida's respecting that she's not necessarily the Rinoa he knew before.

She finds herself wondering if he would have asked That Rinoa, too. Or... if she's a special case.

Her smile grows and she opens her arms wide for him. "Make sure it's a nice and big one!"
etherealsage: (concern - akin to anxiety)

[personal profile] etherealsage 2019-08-26 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Close. They could have been. If Julia had lived longer. Rinoa's concept of close isn't a particularly good one. She can't even say if she knows what the word means.

Eventually, she simply holds Squall's hand between both of hers. His words reverberate across her insides and echo. Of course it's okay for her to miss her mother. She's never thought otherwise. It's just a little different to show it than it is to simply think it. She's vulnerable about a lot of things, but it's almost like there's a frailty to her when it comes to Julia.

Maybe due to that lack of closure.

"I... know that," she manages to get out, though not easily. "I guess it's just easier not to... talk about it. Not like I've had a lot of time to think about it after everything that's happened. And as a kid, I just didn't understand it. Now that I'm older, I still don't really get it. Wish we could have been together longer. Maybe I'd understand who I am more."
etherealsage: (surprise - akin to shock)

[personal profile] etherealsage 2019-08-26 05:07 pm (UTC)(link)
"I was noticing that. Not really sure what's going on here yet, but it seems like some of us don't exactly fit in as well as others." She pauses for a moment, "I doubt anyone in charge cares much. It's not like we were given a grand invitation. At least, I wasn't."

When he picks a place for them to sit, she follows after with their cocoa. It's only once he actually claims a chair that she puts his cup down on the table before him to claim the chair's partner. Sitting back, she holds her cup between her hands.

"They wouldn't answer this for me when I arrived, but is there a way to go home? I think we get to eventually? Even being a temporary prisoner isn't something that sounds like a good time to me." Although she supposes she has a lot of freedoms for being a caged lark.
notalive: (connor3)

[personal profile] notalive 2019-08-26 06:07 pm (UTC)(link)
They found you, huh? Well, I came off a production line, so I can't say anything.

[Production line, cabbage or otherwise, nobody here seems to have come into the world the so-called normal way. But--]

So what kind of people are your mom and dad?

[That's polite talk for 'what are your mom and dad'.]
pretendtoneedme: (anticipation)

[personal profile] pretendtoneedme 2019-08-26 07:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Jason's getting a similar examination, and it doesn't pass Clint by that the young man in front of him is performing the usual scan. There's a mannerism to a person's face when they're seeing a lot in just one glance that he's pretty used to by now, and it's actually kind of a relief to see it in someone other than himself. Whatever's going on with them being brought here, the people in charge might have slipped up pretty badly. One person with that training was an isolated incident, two was a coincidence, but with three there were now multiple possible avenues of investigation...

Possibly, at least. At the very least Jason has the training, and while he's young he's not a goddamned child. Clint is very, very sick of finding kids with that particular skill, kids who never got to be kids. (But with how young Jason is, that argues that he acquired that skill even younger, and... nope, no way, he's not thinking about that now.)

"But people might have issues with listening to you talk about how annoyed you are. Most people don't like being bitched at, even if you've got a reason to." The words are true and while they sound like something you'd say to caution someone, the tone is kind of really not. Jason's words about him looking familiar have prompted another go-over of his face, with more attention to detail and a look on his face like he's piecing things together in his mind (which he very much is). After a minute, Clint shakes his head, folding his arms over the back of the chair. "No, but... you look kind of like someone I knew a couple years back." The resemblance between him and Pietro isn't expressly perfect, but they are of similar heights and there's more than a suggestion of a match in the bone structure of their faces. But it's been so long... Not even Nat's memory is that good.

Except for a snort of laughter at the absurdity of it, the kitten's antics get ignored, much as he's ignoring the munchkin tabby butting its head against his leg. "Clint, Clint Barton. If you know Cissie, she dragged me here."
pretendtoneedme: (slow surprise)

[personal profile] pretendtoneedme 2019-08-26 07:35 pm (UTC)(link)
It's not alright is his initial reaction, and he opens his mouth to say that, but he's cut off by her insisting that they'd get him back to them. Watching her with that very clear "no more bullshit" look on his face that she's well aware of, Clint brings a hand up to her chin to tilt it up to face him. "If I go, you're coming with me. No arguments," he immediately says, because he knows she's going to try and protest it somehow. "Laura'd be angry if I left you here, and you and I both know that getting her angry is a really bad thing. Not to mention how Cooper and Lila'd react if I told them I found you and didn't bring you home for a visit."

The farmhouse hadn't quite become home to Wanda like it had to Nat, since Wanda had been to it many fewer times over a much shorter time, but she knew it was always available to her as a home if she ever needed it, and Clint knew very well how much his family loved her. She needed a place to just let everything go and be herself, have a good bed and a roof over her head and enough food and not being required to wake up and save the world any day. It was the least he could do for her after everything she'd been through, and his family had jumped to help her in the same way without his even having to ask.

Still. He was not prepared for the comment about sons, and it showed as his face quickly went utterly baffled, and then carefully blank. As she continues, though, things start to make... at least a little more sense. "One of the kids here, he talked about the alternate universe thing. Sounds like he knows a... 'me' from his home. So it's probably the same thing. You already met them somewhere? How?"
notalive: (who you never really liked)

[personal profile] notalive 2019-08-26 08:45 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yeah." Optimism as a concept is pretty new to him (so is pessimism, in fairness), so he's making a go of that. "Maybe by the time I get back they'll have worked out the big things so I can just...start my life. Whatever it's going to be."

Without having to be in the centre of everything. He's pretty sure that's not who he is - not like the real leaders.

"I'm a detective model." It never occurred to him before to be grateful for what he was - because it could always have been even more menial or degrading labour - but now it does, powerfully, and he pauses for a moment, gaze distant and troubled, before he remembers himself and goes on. "I was designed to assist police with pretty much anything. Evidence gathering, interrogations, combat... My first mission was a hostage negotiation."

He's not proud of how he did it, in retrospect, but he did save the hostage.
skyward_eyes: Harry Shum Jr as Magnus Bane (I'm Always Here For You (Embrace))

[personal profile] skyward_eyes 2019-08-26 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)
When they first started to connect? Yeah, Nida would have asked. They got to the point where it was better and easier. But this is starting from the beginning all over again. The wide open arms, though, that makes him smile. And he moves forward to give her a nice big one. Not a spinning her around one, but still a hug.

"This good enough?"
ichoosefight: (fond)

[personal profile] ichoosefight 2019-08-27 01:01 am (UTC)(link)
Steph just nods. Not to mention 'dog lady' is a pretty lame name regardless.

"Yeah? What's your job?"
ichoosefight: (upside-down time)

[personal profile] ichoosefight 2019-08-27 01:07 am (UTC)(link)
"Just one." She isn't sure about this world's Cissie, but her version is living in Pennsylvania.

"His name is Tim."
ichoosefight: (daydreaming)

[personal profile] ichoosefight 2019-08-27 01:23 am (UTC)(link)
"No, just normal cats and peacocks." She watches the cat a moment longer before turning back to her companion. They're certainly pretty animals, even the plainer females.

"But this kind of thing has happened to me before. The 'kidnapped to another world' thing. A bunch of us ended up here, apparently."
punchpunchkisskiss: (smile)

[personal profile] punchpunchkisskiss 2019-08-27 01:25 am (UTC)(link)
Heh. Mom and Dad were great. They had a detective agency, but they gave it up to take care of us kids. They used to fight monsters and stuff, just like Jake and I do now.
minus1twin: (Still young)

[personal profile] minus1twin 2019-08-27 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
[Wanda doesn't mind being laughed at. If she'd been in Cloud's position, she'd probably have done the same.

She takes his hand and carefully pulls herself up to a steady seated position. Wanda doesn't consider herself a cat person but she still doesn't want to accidently hurt any of them in the process of getting up. They're cute creatures.]


Oh?

[Light misty green eyes glance up at Cloud.]

I had thought only the people were killed by the plague. There is a zoo, isn't there?

[It is weird talking about it but it's a fact of this world and a little unavoidable.]
minus1twin: (Ummm...)

[personal profile] minus1twin 2019-08-27 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
Wanda's expression softened. "I'd like that." She could easily get the name but there was something comforting in learning it from someone who knew her son.

"Are you close with Billy or Tommy?"
minus1twin: (Ummm...)

[personal profile] minus1twin 2019-08-27 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
"I can imagine. Sounds exhausting." She'd heard stories from Avengers and others in the compound about Tony's wild life and ridiculous parties and sometimes just listening to the tale made her tired. In truth, it was too far removed from her own childhood for her to fully understand what it might be like.

It was a bit of a relief to hear that Nida didn't much care for it.

"I haven't but I have asked. There are two that I might take on part time. One involves me being away from the city for a few days but I don't know if I want to do that now that I know that Billy and Tommy are both here." Wanda hadn't decided what she was going to do yet.

"Both positions are protection. One is a government official and the other is protecting minors from cave-ins." Both jobs were relatively simple for Wanda and well within her comfort zone.
silentnarration: (still don't care)

[personal profile] silentnarration 2019-08-27 06:21 am (UTC)(link)
He nods slowly, looking at their hands as he brushes his thumb against hers. Grief. Loss. In a way he's thought about it a lot. Feared it. Even now, he's still scared of it.

"Who you could be if she never left?" His voice is soft, contemplative. He doesn't want to assume but he's not sure if he's saying this right. "You might be a different Rinoa." Maybe she'd never have joined the Timber resistance. She could be a famous pianist and singer like her mother. Who knows.

He sighs. "Sorry. We don't have to talk about this." He's terrible at this.

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