apostatised | [log] and we'll learn politics and some new party tricks

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[log] and we'll learn politics and some new party tricks

New York is as easy to get to as about anywhere is when your main method of getting around is teleportation (every time he uses the pinpoint, Martel puts 'stables' higher on his mental priority list of necessary projects). He doesn't even argue the point about changing his clothes for the outing, even if he does spend altogether too much time fastidiously pulling at his cuffs and fixing his collar.

All in good time, he ushers Candice into the 'establishment' Ethan gave him details of, standing out about as much as a 6'3" man of military and noble bearing with long white hair tends to regardless of what he's dressed in.

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Candice honestly cannot rag on Martel for standing out very much this time around, since set together they're sort of hilarious. A tall, obviously-moneyed man in a suit standing next to a petite woman with tattoos, dreadlocks, and a leather jacket that is at least half as old as she is--and yet, in the city, it's not such a big deal, or so she figures. They still make a bit of an odd pair, though.

"You said his name was Ethan?" She glances up at Martel over her shoulder.

Ethan is sitting in a little booth off to one side. Not too far away that he can't see the door, but far enough back that he can lounge whilst he waits.

He's drinking a cold pint and wishing Americans had better taste, but oh well. A bottle of scotch also sits on the table but he's waiting for others.

He's wearing a simple pair of black slacks and an open, red shirt. His fingers drum the table.

Then he leans as he catches something that looks like the man from the avatars, and he waves to them. "Martel!"

"And there he is, evidently." Martel offers one of those (oft-times irritating) bland smiles and heads towards Ethan's booth. The bar reminds him of Stigmata, though busier than he's ever seen that place, which is enough to keep him from getting particularly obvious with the fish-out-of-water nonsense.

"Ethan," he says, pleasantly. "Glad to properly meet you. Allow me to introduce Candice." His accent (Elenic) probably doesn't match up to much of anything Ethan would be familiar with, but he was dead right about having an easier time of it outside text.

There's a perceptible pause in Candice's journey over to Ethan's table, as she happens to recognize Ethan, but she is pretty sure this is an iteration with whom she is not personally acquainted (yet). The wonders of the multiverse, she supposes.

"Hello," she smiles, "It's good to meet you."

Her manners are better than her fashion sense, at least.

Ethan stands and offers the woman (Candice? Yes, that was her name, no?). "And you too. Ethan Rayne," he says, purring. It's how he speaks.

"And to see you at last, Martel. Please, take a seat," he says, and waves to the opposite side of the booth.

Naturally, Martel sits, although he does call up enough of the manners he'd ground off to wait until Candice is settled. (He gives her a mildly curious look for the recognition, but doesn't pursue it. Right now.)

He's very, very good at settling in like he owns everything around him, and there's a certain...intensity about his air that didn't translate over text any better than what he was trying to say. "I should thank you," he says, slightly dry, "the limitations of literacy were going to do my head in."

Candice slides into the opposing booth side and shrugs her jacket off her shoulders. "Wait until we get into castellano versus español," she says, lightly; mostly she'll be quiet, though, as she's prone to being unless she can actually offer something useful.

"Afraid my other tongues are mostly French and Latin," he says, ruefully. "And a few demonic tongues. So I may leave that to you."

He lifts the bottle of scotch, gesturing at the empty glasses.

"Any time, dear chap, I am always in favour of meeting interesting people. And yes, I can see it will be much easier for you like this."

The interest in Martel's (quite dark, for those interested) eyes sharpens when Ethan says 'demonic tongues'--guarded interest, but it's there.

"The scotch you mentioned," he says, with a lilt of almost being a question. As for the interesting people and ease of discussion... "Ah, well. I've mastered simpler ideas, but God only knows how one spells 'apostasy' in English."

Martel's conversations about religion tend to get interesting.

"A lot of native English speakers certainly don't, either," Candice murmurs. She's an ex-teacher, of a sort, and she's generally found her overseas students to have a better grasp on grammar. She does tilt her head at Ethan, however, eyebrows raised.

"Where does one pick up demonic tongues, out of curiosity? I've never had the need to learn."

"On the job training, as it were. And... well. After the first screaming and screeching and near disembowelling... you find yourself motivated to actually learn."

Then he reaches to the seat beside him and slides over a jewel CD case. With a home-burned CD inside, scrawled on with his spiky handwriting. He puts it on the table and pushes it towards Martel.

"Voice recognition software. I thought it might be of use to you: it can take dictation, and you can set the computer to read other things aloud to you. Takes a little setting up but it might be quicker to communicate with it." He grins. "Just don't say I gave it to you, as I didn't exactly pay. Now. Scotch!"

He'd been distracted, but poured one of the glasses whilst fetching said CD, and now pours the second two.

People keep giving Martel things; he finds it puzzling but certainly gratifying, and he takes the jewel case with an oddly amused sort of smile. "You prove a useful man to know," he says, smoothly, snagging one of the glasses with an inclination of the head in thanks (for both alcohol and the disc, probably). "If you do apparently keep strange company." Which is nothing Martel, in his glass house, can be throwing stones about. Even if they're talking about demons.

He is strange company, for one thing.

Candice says absolutely nothing regarding 'strange company', but she does give Martel a look that can only be described as monumentally amused, which she thinks probably says enough. And she thanks Ethan for the drink, quietly.

"Strange makes for interesting," he claims, then tips his glass... and takes a sip.

Yes. Americans can't yet ruin scotch. This a universal good of the highest magnitude.

"I can't argue with that," Martel says, studiously not responding to the look he knows perfectly well he's getting. Given his ... life in general, he's not honestly all that picky about what he drinks, but apparently giving the impression that he is amuses him.

He has an odd sense of humor, to be fair, and an unerring ability to find fault with things.

Still, when he tastes it, he has to concede Ethan may have a point, and furthermore he's fairly sure he recognizes it. (Of course, you can't call something 'scotch' when you don't have a 'Scotland'.)

Candice is reasonably well-versed in alcoholic beverages, but scotch is something she sips at, carefully, because she's also about a hundred pounds and harder liquor will hit her like a ton of bricks.

"I got done with performing an exorcism about a month ago," she tells Ethan, wryly, "Demons are a bit on the mind."

"Oh? Anyone I know?" he asks, trying not to laugh.

"Sorry. Demonic possession... you have to laugh." Or you get your limbs ripped off. Fun!

"Are there demons where you come from, Martel? And oh, Candice, I still don't know where you're from. May I enquire?"

"In a manner of speaking," Martel confirms with a gesture of his glass and a smile that is not, in fact, very pleasant.

"I hope not," she returns, to the first question (however rhetorical), shrugging, "He wasn't very much fun. I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota--plain old midwestern girl, nowhere too interesting."

"London, myself," he tells her. Martel already knows.

And his accent. Well it's somewhat telling.

"How did the two of you meet?"

"I was recuperating," Martel says, innocently, although his follow up doesn't help matters, "at a bar we have in common."

"The bar is called 'Stigmata,'" Candice supplies, "It's a quiet place, not very many people in it, usually. It used to be run by a--werewolf, something to that effect."

Werecoyote, actually, but she doesn't know the specifics.

"Interesting. I haven't heard of it. I just wondered with you coming from so... far away."

More scotch. He likes scotch.

Maybe he'll even get drunk.

Later.

'Far away' makes Martel half-laugh like it's a private joke, something sort of odd behind his eyes when he looks up over the rim of his glass. "I do a lot of travel," he says, the kind of bland that usually thinly veils brattiness (not, grant you, the word Martel would choose to describe his behavior--for all its accuracy). "You could call it religious work, though I'm--let's say--retired."

Candice looks rather skeptical of this fact, Martel, or perhaps just otherwise disbelieving; she says nothing once more.

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