zenderael_rl | [Mal/Travis] - steampunk revolution

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[Mal/Travis] - steampunk revolution

Who: Malachai (PC), Tyrus/Travis
When: Friday, 12th
Where: Phone/Mal's apartment
Before/After: NA
Warnings: Possible swearing, TBA

Mal was growing restless. He'd met Lera's parents that morning, and then puttered around with his constructs, getting started on the lizards he'd promised Gabe, but he was starting to feel more and more alone on Earth. Duncan had shit going on he didn't want to share, Gabe and Lera were in another world, he was running out of people to bother...

So he called up Travis.

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Something, huh.

Ambition was never hard for Tyrus. He had made a good member of Upas because he was greedy, because he wanted things. He was driven to destroy it from within now, but that required going along with them for that purpose. The problem here was that he could not admit to those designs. He wanted to leave Travis's friends out of what he had to eventually do; he did not want them involved in the way he would use Travis's life to rise through the ranks of Upas. It meant that some things he had to hide; somethings he could not admit to even in part.

It was better to appear indecisive here. Still, Mal did not want details. He could at least agree with the sentiment, even if he intended to appear to not follow up on it.

"Yeah," he said. "Sooner or later, Zenderael and Earth are gonna be one world, anyways. I should find a way to make use of that. Turn it to my benefit and profit from it. Make friends and influence people."

Another grin, perhaps exaggerated by the liquor. "Networking an' all that, yeah? Guess I should start working on that. All I been doin' is inventing shit." He hadn't really felt up to trying to be social with more than his friends, what few there were, but if he intended to be an inventor who actually had an influence on, well, anything, then he should probably start on the networking aspect.

"Guess I should design some new business cards," he mused. "Captain Malachai, Inventor. Got a nice ring to it."

"It's how you get ahead in the world." Ty said. He grinned again, then leaned back. No more booze, he thought, not yet. He was always a lightweight; the endurance potion could only do so much and rum was strong stuff. "I think you got a solid plan, there, Cap."

"Gonna need a nifty catchphrase. Somethin' people'll remember." He paused, looking into his glass. "Prob'ly easier to come up with somethin' viable when I ain't full'a booze," he said, snickering. "Anything I come up with now will probably make me groan later."

He drank back the rest of what was in his glass, and reached for the bottle, pointing at Travis with it. "You had enough?"

"Yeah, you're gonna want to think on it. And thinking isn't a good idea when you've got a little Captain in you." He looked at the rum bottle, thoughtfully. He could go slow, but it seemed a shame to stop here. He could enjoy a little more. "Nah. You go first, though. I'll fill up after you."

He snickered again. "I can think great! It's just only great fer Drunk me, not so much fer Sober me." He grinned, and refilled his glass, setting the bottle down closer to Travis before leaning back with his drink.

"You know what's great fun while drunk, though?" He held up his phone again. "Drunk texting!" Then he stopped, looking at his phone, and frowned. "'cept alla th' people I wanna text're in Zenderael..." Except Duncan, but after Duncan's temper the other night, he didn't want to risk pissing the man off with inane nonsensical drunk texts. "We gotta invent a cross-world telephone service."

Clearly, Tyrus thought, he played Valentine.

He poured himself another glass of rum and swirled it around in his glass, before he lifted it up and took a short sip of it. He looked up and made a face. "I thought about that, but I think you'd need a mage. I think mages are the only ones who can crossover, right?" he asked. "But maybe if they did something -- like I don't know, a spell, or whatever? They could maybe warp information over."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. It's kind of complicated." He laughed. "I'd say you could text me, but that defeats the purpose."

"Mages," Mal muttered, frowning. The Asha was one of the people he wanted to text, in fact. Transferring information between planets didn't seem like it'd be high on the priority list, not after a war, and with the use of the internet. But drunk email or drunk private-message just wasn't as fun as drunk texting!

"Oh well. They'll be here sooner or later, yeah?" He grinned, setting the phone down again. "And yeah, if I wanna hit on you I could do that without the phone."

Tyrus laughed so he didn't grimace. It was wrong for that to even come up, but he had no business even joking about that when he pretended to be Travis.

"Never change, buddy." He lifted his glass of rum up, then moved to take a drink from it. "Cheers."

That was a little sobering. 'Change' was actually something he was trying to do. He didn't really want to talk about it while drinking, though. It'd just kill his buzz, and probably end up depressing him.

He looked at his glass, then lifted it up with a, "Cheers," of his own, before drinking half the contents. Perhaps a little too much booze too quickly, with as much as he'd already had, and he peered at the glass, as if it were somehow to blame for it.

"My boyfriend left me," he said. The words just kind of fell out, even after he'd decided not to bring it up, but it was too late not to clarify. "Three months ago." He lifted his gaze to look at Travis, shrugging. "He kept sayin' I was fake, so I been tryin' t' be more real, y'know?"

Oh, Tyrus thought, shit.

He was careful to sip at the rum, rather than drink it down too quickly. He couldn't risk getting drunk right now. He looked sideways at Malachai, his expression becoming more sober and sympathetic. It was easy to find some real sympathy for that. He had been left behind people; Travis had given him some romantic history and a lot of it ended poorly, usually because of his mistakes. Mistakes he was made to write.

Try to be more real. He hesitated at that, some of the sympathy going away. What did a player know about trying to be more real? He looked down at the glass, to hide the rising feeling of irritation, and fight it back down.

"That sucks, Mal," he finally said. He bottled the anger up and saved it up for later. It wasn't Mal that he was really angry about, buy someone that he killed. "Sorry for saying to never change. It's just a saying, you know? People gotta change." He looked up from his glass, the smile off his face. "Did you... you know? You feel like that's going okay for you?"

Mal shrugged. "I'm over him, mostly, but th' other stuff. Like, my friends. Chief, mostly. I dunno, I feel like I'm never straight with people much. Not straight enough." It was kind of a jumble, and not really something he thought he could explain, especially while drunk.

"Like... Okay, I made Val cause I wanted an outlet, you know? She don't give a shit about anythin', least she didn't- dunno if she does now. An' a lotta the time, that's the front I put up. Make jokes, laugh it off, don't let anythin' bother me." He paused, shaking his head and letting out a sigh. "It's all an act, most'a the time. Like I'm playin' a part. So I try... I try to tell people how I actually feel, but I'm jus' so used t' acting that I fuck it up. A lot. I say shit without thinkin' and it screws everything up."

"Well..." Tyrus knew a little bit about this. He looked down at the rum, swirling his alcohol around in his glass thoughtfully, before he looked back up at Mal. "If you've done it awhile, it's part of who you are. There isn't anything wrong with changing it, but that's probably why it's hard. I think everyone has the things they do automatically. It means you probably can't just flip a switch and do it suddenly. It'll take time and practice. But..."

Could he give advice on Duncan? Tyrus did not know Duncan at all; Travis did and he read those conversations, but they had happened a long time ago, now.

"Level with him, y'know?" he said. "Tell him it's something you're working on. He'd respect him."

"Yeah," Mal said, staring into his glass while he thought it over. It wasn't easy to think out with a booze-adled brain, but he was sure to remember part of the conversation... Right? "Yeah, I'll just... level with him."

Whenever Duncan got around to being willing to talk to him about what was up, at any rate. Mal didn't trust his ability to talk to Duncan calmly without saying something that would upset him.

"Thanks, man," he said, tipping his glass towards Travis. "Sorry to burden you with this crap, it just kinda came out."

"It's what I do, man." He looked up at Mal, raised his glass up into the air, and grinned. Then, he took a long drink of it and leaned back in the chair. The rum was warm going down.

He could give this sort of advice, he thought, but he was bad at following it. He looked back down into the rum, its color giving his brown eyes a reddish tent when they reflected back up at him.

He repeated, "It's what I do."

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[Mal/Travis] - steampunk revolution

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