Being neighborly

[wronganswer]

Who: Anderson and Venom (although if you would also like a log with me, please ask!)
When: A couple days after her arrival
Where: Kauto-1 apartments
What: Anderson tries to get acclimated to her surroundings, but finds it hard to relax with the mental snarl that is the person in the apartment next door.
Warnings: Nothing, I think?

[ It's not that Anderson doesn't have scruples about how she uses her powers. She absolutely does. But being stranded in what is apparently a different dimension, not just somewhere out in space past human colonization, and then being told Judges don't exist here-- in any capacity-- has her more than a little out of sorts, and she's used to being authorized to exercise her own judgement in use of her abilities. If she needs to use them to make a threat assessment, she does so, without any hesitation.

And she can't help still being in threat assessment mode a few days after arriving. Certainly, if she's going to be living somewhere, she needs to make sure those around her aren't going to turn volatile. She's used to the Judge's quarters being her one solace from the stark hostility of Mega-City One, a place where she can trust the people nearby not to be violent without having to scan them. Indeed, scanning other Judges is usually too rude for her to sanction without cause. It's a place to relax.

She's nowhere near to relaxing here, especially not when she detects what she can only characterize as an unprecedented snarled tangle of a mind nearby. It doesn't seem insane in the way she's used to feeling, meaning unstable, but it's nothing she's ever sensed before, and she doesn't have just cause-- or the proximity, or the backup-- to go digging deeper. She decides to do this the old-fashioned way.

Anderson is still in her full Judge's get-up out of silent nerves for going unarmed and unarmored when she strides unerringly to the front door of the apartment the mind resides in, and knocks. ]

Comments

[wronganswer]

[ She's absolutely on board the this is ludicrous-- ludicrously stupid train. She'd reserved judgment at first, because she'd just gotten here and needed to learn more before she felt comfortable making an assessment, but nothing so far is reassuring her. Rather than it being some odd alien custom that works out in practice, it feels shady, ambiguous, exploitative. ]

Subjectivity has no place in law enforcement, [ she says with all the bluntness of a totalitarian police officer told there's no explicit laws here. An unsettled disgust is buried under her words. ]

That's too easy to take advantage of. [ Anderson shifts her weight. ] Someone told me they committed a crime, and someone else got punished for it. That's the way gangs operate, not governments.

[alterplex]

[ A moment of hesitation, and Venom reaches inside the pocket of his sweatpants for his electronic cigar. It goes between his lips and rests there, unlit, as if he enjoys the weight of the object settled against his teeth than the actual process of smoking itself.

In reality, he's just being courteous; he can take the artificial nicotine vapor or leave it, but sometimes he just wants to fill his lungs with tar until he can't taste anything else. ]

Here, the one who can make their case more convincingly wins.

[ That isn't untrue for some situations in his homeworld, too, but he refrains from making this too philosophical. Instead, he looks over his shoulder and into his living room, and offers: ] You want to come in?

[wronganswer]

[ She's not really expecting the offer, and looks faintly surprised before stepping more fully inside, shutting the door behind her. ]

Thank you. Getting practice being neighborly? [ she quips, feeling at ease enough for that now. ]

[alterplex]

First time for everything.

[ Is his return quip, as he turns on his heels and gestures for Anderson to follow him to the living room. His wolfdog has retreated to the foot of one of the couches for now, which Venom motions to as a candidate for his guest to sit on; he figures that the half-polished combat knife on the coffee table and the kevlar armor strewn around like furniture won't raise eyebrows at this point. ]

There's strength in solidarity when you don't know who your enemies are. [ Or if they even really have enemies at all— that too. ] You're new. Stress can build when you least expect it.

[wronganswer]

[ Honestly, it just looks homier to her with cared-for weaponry strewn around. She takes a seat as invited, briefly scratching DD's ruff again in acknowledgment as she sits. ]

I've been treating this like a hostile situation, [ she confesses in a quiet, low voice, keeping her gaze down near her knees. Speaking about stress and strength in solidarity sounds so odd to her ears. Judges operate alone, for the most part; certainly she has plenty of reason not to trust other Judges after the ones that'd been bought to murder her in Peach Trees; and stress is something to be managed on your own, in your own time. Anderson remembers her parents and childhood enough to understand social support systems, but it's been so long... ]

I'm not sure when it'll really sink in.

[alterplex]

[ Venom's footsteps recede, padding beyond visual range and silencing themselves altogether. For the courtesy of his housemates, Venom's taken to making actual noise like an actual human, but sometimes he forgets that the weight of his feet on the floor and his continued presence should be a given; he's become so acclimatized to laying low and blending with the scenery that, on occasion, he still manages to vanish.

He reappears on the tail end of Anderson's confession with a glass of water in hand, making sure to rest the item on the coffee table instead of coming up from behind and offering the item over her shoulder. That never seems to go down particularly well. ]

That makes two of us.

[ Venom doesn't sit— he leans, back to wall and shoulder to windowframe. ]

Our day-to-day is mundane, but danger strikes sporadically. Most of the time, we're not the specific targets— just caught in the crossfire.

This place isn't hostile, as much as it is indifferent.