Difference between revisions of "A chase in the market"

It seems that someone stayed up late last night, judging by the yawning and scratching of the jaw as Charles shuffles through the abandoned market pace. He's poking at any promising piles of trash left behind in the Market's wake, just incase something interesting has been left behind.

Alma studies areas like this, particularly after the people have gone. You get some interesting behaviors. Crows are pretty clever at getting lids off things, though admittedly a Goffin's Cockatoo wuold be even better. Crows aren't bad at dumpster lids. Gnawers like squirrels help too. Today she's got some binoculars but she doesn't have all her gear. Still has those twigs and a few pandanus leaf bits though. For some reason she's got a couple of books in hand. Maybe relating to someone she hasn't bumped in to yet who is poking around in piles of trash.

For his part, Zach's just passing through. The Eastern Market's a large obstacle and when it's closed it's not worth the trouble to route around it. Much easier to cut right through. He's an easy guy to miss, but that's much more true in a crowd than when he's standing out as a lone figure amongst trash and whatnot. His hands are in his pockets. His gaze is on the ground in front of him - aside from the occasional sweep of his gaze around to ensure that no surprises are afoot. His conscious attention is elsewhere, perhaps on a shopping list, or the opening lines to his introduction to whomever he's off to meet, or whether or not vanilla really is as complex as people say.

Rayne was on a shopping adventure for odds and ends for her shop, she looks around the market, her hat is securely on her head. She lets her eyes move around from person to person as she meanders the market, pausing at a stall here and there to see if anyone was doing buisness today.

Charles crouches down infront of a promising trash pile and starts to dig through it. Finding a discarded fast-food container, he pulls it out and sniffs suspiciously at the contents before tossing it aside. More digging fails to reveal anything of interest, so the Gnawer straightens up and wipes his hands on his pants. Looking around, he catches site of Alma and offers up a wave in greeting, before heading in her direction.

Alma was scanning the area for Charles, and she smiles when she sees him and starts heading in his direction too. "Hey!" She holds up two books. The main market area is pretty empty, and she can't help but notice the dude she's got a question for. "Hey Zach!" She calls out, as if operational security isn't a thing. Well, it isn't for her right now in a marketplace like this. Maybe it should be? Who knows. "Got a question for you!" She projects her voice. Where is Note? Probably flirting with Kai.

Zach looks up when he's hailed and the renewed scrutiny begins to supply names to go with faces. Perhaps he presumes the books are for him - or that the initial hail was also for him. He tilts his head, but doesn't bother answering Alma at this distance. Instead he begins to adjust his course to close on the friend-to-crows without accelerating. He can respond to the hail when he's at a more conversational distance. Come to think of it, Rayne is familiar too - his gaze lingers there a moment and then he starts more carefully examining all of the other faces in the sparsely populated area just to be sure that... no, no one else familiar here.

Rayne looks over when Alma calls out to Zach and her eyes raise slightly, though she tries to stay out of the grouping for the most part. The woman moves, and purchases some herbs and oils that she could use at her own shop, exchanging monies and short conversation with the local vender

Charles slows as he reaches Alma and casts a somewhat wary look in Zach's direction, then clears his throat. "Hello Ms. Alma. How are you today?" He does not appear to have noticed Rayne.

"I'm okay for the most part," Alma says. "I found these books. want to see? This one is about Amelia Earhart and I thought of you because goggles." She offers the book to Charles. "And this one is about languages of Central America. Queche is in there. My grandparents, well--maternal grandparents spoke some of it. I didn't get anyway. Anyway, I thought you might like it. I didn't see anything about Somali though."

Rayne looks over the bag and she turns to leave, shopping done for now.. She offers a smile to Alma and Charles as she catches them on her way out.

Charles' entrance into relevance in Zach's inventory of people goes smoothly. He slows his approach just a touch to let he and Alma progress in their conversation before he starts with the talking. Language is a topic he's interested in, however, and while he doesn't contribute to the discussion he also exhibits a certain level of interest, perhaps familiarity. Also, familiarity with Alma. Charles gets the 'Hail, friend of a friend' nod for now.

Charles catches sight of Rayne as she leaves, a brief uncomfortable look flitting over his features, before he returns his attention to Alma and claims the books with a gracious nod. "Thankyou. I will enjoy reading these. I'm afraid I'm not at all familiar with South American languages. The ones I do know are European is origin, asside from Cantonese." Charles glances over at Zach, hesitates for a moment, then extends a grubby hand in greeting. "Hi. My name is Charles."

"Central American," Alma corrects. "Queche is spoken in Guatemala and other places around there. But you should definitely--I mean Peru, knots as writing!!" Alma stops and considers Charles bag for a moment, estimating how heavy the books are and how much weight he'd want in a bag. While she's thinking of this Charles greets Zach. Oh hey, Zach is close enough to hug. She goes in for a side because she is still thinking with her hands. hand. "Zach! Charles." She looks at Charles. "Charles! Zach." To Charles--He's the friend I mentioned for if I go splat you give him this. these. maybe." She touches her notebooks in her vest pockets. "He's one of the more--most? sensible people I know around here." To Zach, "He's a judge. He's helping me understand things about judges and choices." She looks at Charles warily, "Look," She tilts her head at Zach. "He knows about stuff like this, so don't get grar at me for saying that much--dammit I'm being arrogant again, aren't I? Fuck!"

Zach weathers Alma's somewhat haphazard greeting with experienced grace (and with one arm tied up behind Alma's back, no less!). There's some... curiosity, as Alma discusses Charles' vocation, but he's polite enough to keep it off his face; just not good enough at hiding his thoughts that they remain hidden. "Zach Penn," he says, shaking the offered hand as soon as he's done returning Alma's hug. There's wariness in the way he introduces himself, like maybe he's waiting for the introduction to turn sour any moment. It doesn't slow him down any, at least not in demeanor.

Charles opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again, as Alma's greeting unfolds. His handshake as a result, is somewhat haphazard, but he does his best to collect himself and manage the ritualistic greeting. After his hand is returned, he gives his head a slight shake. "Are you quite alright, Ms. Alma?"

"Yeah?" She puzzles at Charles. "For the most part? Ask him for corroboration since self report is not always the best way of knowing these things but I do think the behaviorists flipped their shit way too much about that." Alma started out in psychology, see. She didn't specialize in behavioral ecology until post grad. She hmmms, "Supposed to use more words" She says to herself. "Right. and in order." She just gave herself a pep talk.

"Got a question for you Zach." She look off at the sky while she considers how to ask it without soundling like whatever Charles thought she sounded like. "What written language conveys the most information in the shortest amount of space? I want to write a tiny scroll letter. And Note can fly it to someone if I need her too. Assuming she's still around. And No," She gets defensive. "I am not being melodramatic, god it's like..." And then she notices that Zach is his usually calm self, in fact, she appreciates that about Charles too. "Uh, yeah. anyway. I'm reacting to Emma. Sorry. You are not Emma."

"Emma.... Durov?" Zach snorts derisively, "Yeahno. Nothing like." He has to think about the question about languages though. "Oiii," he verbalizes. "Chinese is pretty compact - most ideogram-based languages will be. But it'll also depend on the content of the letter. Some languages have pretty nice vocabulary options for expressing certain concepts... and then some others are like German - where you just start gluing nouns together until you've roughly described the thing you want to talk about." He shrugs. "Like with all things: it depends, I guess?" He knows he's not being super helpful. "Don't know that you're going to save a lot either way though, unless you're writing something really huge. For most letters you'd be talking like a line or two here or there, I'd bet."

Charles scratches at the front of his shirt as the two converse. "You do get a lot of variation in languages and the words available to describe concepts and ideas. I speak German, Philipino, Spanish, French, and Cantonese."

«Can you help me translate my letter to Chinese when I'm done?» She asks Zach. She's kind of chipper for being able to switch to Spanish. «I only know English and Spanish», She explains to Charles. «I envy you guys». «I'll try to write my letter in a form that it easy to translate, succinctly. I've read some translations of classical Chinese poetry where the book shows the idiographs next to... Have you read» 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei--«Holy shit! That's a mockingbird!». She squeees and grabs Zach's arm and points with her other hand. ohshitohshitohshit. It's not a rare bird per se, but she's never seen one in Detroit before.

It takes Charles a moment, then he slips into a faintly accented Spanish. «I do believe that you may have had too much caffeine today, Ms. Alma,»he says, then his head snaps up, as he catches sight of movement at the very edge of the market. «If you will excuse me,» he says, then moves away at a brisk pace, intent on whatever managed to catch his attention.

Alma watches Charles head off. She recognizes that kid in the distance and a certain look in Charles's eyes. Before Zach can answer her, perhaps, she interupts him. He's probably used to being interrupted by Alma. She calls after Charles but he ignores her, intent on his purpose. "Oh hey," She tells Zach, "I need to tell him something." She runs after Charles.

«I could, yes,» Zach answers, after a bit of consideration. He follows the conversation into Spanish - but his accent entirely transforms and it's here that the fact of his English being unplacable is highlighted. His Spanish is immaculate, natively fluent, but odd to the American ear because of it's continental structure - Castillian Spanish. «I suspect he can as well...» Zach says as Charles starts off at that pace. Zach squints, perhaps wondering if he said something off, but doesn't pursue or interfere with Alma's pursuit. He instead ambles along, letting whatever happens there happen.

Charles has a minor head start and that seems to be all he needs, as he ducks out of the market area at speed and around an old building. By the time Alma gets to the same area seconds later, he is no-where in sight and there are a number of directions that he could have gone in.

Alma stops where she last saw Charles. She can hear some echoing of scuffles at first but those quickly fade out. Maybe too quickly, she thinks. So she slows a little and scans the area. She steps over to where some grass is moving and notices a fresh area of crushed grass from someone running. She sighs and starts to follow. "Fuck!"

Zach is some distance back now, confused, curious, but not showing any signs of urgency. He keeps tabs on Alma's progress, and generally strolls her way unhurriedly. Slow and steady something something gets the worm.

She's no longer running. The overgrown lot here has plants at waist height, some taller. She's likely to miss a turn if she goes too fast. Some chagrin shows in her face. She's out of practice at this stuff, and she's out of place for light tracking. She's been away from cloud forests for a very long time. She thinks she hears a pheasant take off. Something flushed it.

Zach's attention remains on Alma. This is perhaps the first time he's seen her pursue something mobile like this - which of course makes it an intriguing event. He glances to either side, keeping a sense of what's going on and where she might be wandering into but honestly this area of town is pretty desolate when the market isn't open. Hands go back into pockets.

Charles simply doesn't notice that he has been followed and assumes that Alma has given up the chase. Still, how he is remaining hidden in waist-high grass is anyone's guess. And then, there he is, popping into existence like a jack-in-the-box at the far end of the lot, a few steps away from re-entering the road.

Alma sees Charles and jerks in to action, "Charles!" She dashes off, almost flying through the air.

Charles turns to face Alma and there is a flicker of clear irritation on his features, but that doesn't last long. "Ms. Alma, is there something that I can help you with?"

Zach, still trailing a good ways behind, continues to slowly close now that the chase is ended. He's still unhurried, but drawing nearer as time goes on.

Whew. Alma pauses when Charles reaches her. She catches her breath pretty quickly. She very calmy says, "Yes." she nods calmly. "I was hoping to talk to you about restoritive justice. It's something I feel that you could find useful in your role as a judge."

Charles's nostrils flare and he scowls at the Mage. "Ms. Alma, I'm afraid that I'm busy at the moment. We can talk about it later. Unless it is something critical, I really should get going."

"Charles, it's extremely important, but maybe I've jumped to conclusions about you based on the situation here. Are you, in fact, going after that kid who bashed your head in? If so, we need to talk now." Her lips are pressed tight in a flat line.

Charles grits his teeth and glowers at Alma. "Ms. Alma, you are not above me in station and I am an adult. What I choose to do is my own concern."

Zach frowns as he sees the tension ratcheting up - even just a little bit - and moves into something not quite conversational distance but close enough to fake it if he pushes his voice. "Everything okay?" The question is, in fact, intended for both parties.

Alma takes a slow breath. "Charles, Judge. You are not above me in station, but I respect and listen to you. Everyone is my teacher. Please tell me what you hope to accoplish with that kid? Bash his head in? That would not be equivalent. He cannot recover from a head injury like that. Do you have the power to heal him?"

Now, now, the anger and the Rage starts to creep in to Charles' voice and posture. He straightens up and just stares at Alma, jaw set in a hard line. "You are not listening to me, Ms. Alma. What I choose to do in this is not your concern. Someone who terrorizes the helpless for the sake of personal power is not someone I want on /my/ streets and I will do what I have to, to keep him from preying on others."

Close enough now to make out what's being said/discussed, Zach frowns and steps in to a more conversational distance, positioning himself equidistant from the two of them. He doesn't repeat his question. He doesn't add to the conversation for now. But he does listen.

Alma considers what the Metis has to say. "I agree, I would not want someone terrorizing helpless. If you look at the work Second Stories does, you can see work that reduces the amount of violence in a community better than a punishment based model of justice. If your goals are an overall reduction in the helpless living in a morass of violence, consider your methods. killing or harming someone can bring out more violence from peers, onlookers... you risk causing more harm to the helpless."

"I agree I am not your boss. I thought we were friends--or friendly aquaintances. I like hearing people share their choices with me. I get to take those in to consideration when I make my own." She backs up a step or two. Her posture turns relaxed. Then tension in her face slackens. She's neutral. She's flat footed. She does not look prepared to run.

Charles heaves a heavy sigh and shakes his head. "Ms. Alma, I like you, and some of what you say has merit. But, not everything is as simple as you believe." With that, he turns and starts to walk away.

Alma gets the jitters and starts breathing. 10, 9...

Zach was, perhaps, about to say something. Instead, as Charles starts to walk off, he bites down on it. He turns to Alma next, offering he a hand to guide her in the other direction, now and again casting a wary eye after Charles, but otherwise holding his peace.