vesanalia | 001 - Log - A New Brand of Rogues

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001 - Log - A New Brand of Rogues

WHO: Mick Rory | Open to All | Open to Rogues and Rogue allies
WHAT: Open post for general Mick things
WHEN: A week to two weeks after his appearance
WHERE: Carlyle | Thiefy Blockbuster Hide-Out
WARNINGS & NOTES: Nothing planned. Mick's taken from the beginning of Season 3 of LoT so no spoilers from him. If other people tag from anything new, just cram a spoiler warning in the subject.

Home Sweet Home - Open to Thieves or Wannabe Thieves

[First hide-out acquired. A strip mall in the next town over, just outside of the range of the immediate police patrols (they'll probably have to move further out, eventually, considering how often people go searching for new arrivals like they're fucking Easter eggs.]

[In that strip mall is an old Blockbuster, shut down for a good ten years and with a breakroom in the back that has an exit to the front, an exit to the back, and doors leading to a back corridor and to Mick? That seems like a fair number of escape points. If they turn on the lights in the break area, no one is going to see outside. With the water and electricity working, this old fridge boots up fine. There are enough doors and old (if empty) safes among the stores that Mick can do some of that thief training he promised.]

[In the breakroom itself, the flatscreen TV is still a huge box of a shape rather than one of the new things. A relic from a few years before the store actually closed and the whole mall went belly up. There are VHS rewinders still back there. Some abandoned B-Movie DVDs in boxes (non of which Mick recognizes and that's weird to him).]

[Ah well, good enough. He finds a copy of what looks like a tacky vampire movie and pops it into an ancient DVD player, so abandoned that he actually leaves dust prints from his fingers.]

I remember when we first got out of Juvie we stole a bunch of movies from the video store. Lisa loved the cartoons we brought her.

[Mick's saying. He has a donut. There's no immediate clue as to how he got this donut.]

Watching for Friends - OTA

[The Legends should show up here eventually. There's going to be a hell of a lot of explaining to do, too, when that happens. What with Leonard fucking Snart dicking around. He's been keeping an eye out for them, ignoring feelings with the occasional food or drink or flickering lighter, as he's prone to.]

[For the most part whenever he comes into town, it's in full disguise. He's some deliveryman wearing a winter uniform, moving boxes, holding a clipboard. He's come in on a different day in plaid and suspenders and a broad, worn cowboy hat. No one has been any the wiser (he can pull off that gruff farmboy look well). He watches the police station (tiny, but full of fucking feds), the bank (one bank, unimpressive, probably don't know how to deal with their newfound cash but also too much trouble to deal with while the station is full of feds), and the general area for any sign of the Legends.]

[Who knows. Maybe they can figure this out for everyone.]

[Today Mick is wearing his "casual farmhand Joe" disguise, drinking a bottle of some generic brand of grape soda because he ain't risking a beer in public right now and sitting on a bench outside of the modest post office.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, I thought you meant these movies. No, no. Movies used to be worth a lot more money. You could resell 'em and turn them at pawn shops and have enough to pick up lunch. But Papa Snart was a jackass, so me and Leonard [a rare time to use his first name, but almost necessary when talking about the full family] decided little Lisa deserved something nice.

Never really talked about what ended up happening to the old bastard. Lisa turned out stand-up despite him.

[His version of a stand-up individual, anyway. He looks at his donut, then at her.]

Do you want the donut or to try and steal?

Edited 2019-03-17 18:31 (UTC)

What did happen to him?

[She assumes he's talking about his father. She huffs at the question, though.]

I want to try to steal something. You said you'd teach me.

[She pops the rest of the donut into her mouth, though.]

But I also want more of these, yes.

He died. Snart killed his old man 'cause he was a piece of trash. Always had been. [He'd threatened his sister.] Scum backstabbing pig.

Right. Yeah, we can do both. That's the good thing about this place. Lots of doors, lots of safes, and-

[He fumbles in his pocket, and then presents her with her very own shiny new lockpick.] Happy birthday.

It sounds like he did a good thing.

[Raven takes the lockpick and smiles, turning it over in her hands. It may not be much, but people don't often give her anything.]

Do you think we can steal a gun some time, too? I hate walking around here unarmed.

Don't know. Probably. But the question is, do you hate walking around unarmed because you feel unsafe, or do you it because you can't shoot people when they piss you off?

You don't have an identity here, Legs. They catch you in this sort of thing they can eat you up and do what they want with you. You can't shoot your way out of that sort of thing, either. 'Cop killer' is not something you want on your resume in prison.

[Oh boy, does he know that.]

So, yeah, I can help you get a gun, but you gotta promise to use the thing as little or as discretely as possible. If there's a camera or a witness, don't even bother. If the man has a badge or a uniform, pretend it doesn't even exist.

[It is for her benefit that he says this.]

If someone pissed me off, I could kill them without a gun. But it means getting close, and I don't want to have to do that.

[In her right mind, she can tell it's a stupid idea. It's a useful skill to have in an emergency, but she doesn't want to go around hugging everyone who tries to hurt her.]

I don't feel safe. I don't know where I am, my unit isn't here, I don't know anyone. And a lot of people enjoy hurting those who are unarmed and defenceless.

[She bites her lip, fiddling with the lockpick.]

I don't want to be vulnerable.

Oh yeah, they do.

But certain mouthy drama queens like turning you into their personal threat the moment you're armed.

Thieving normal stuff first. [He goes over to one of the doors and crouches by it.]

Sometimes pigs look for excuses to shoot you so they can be the hero. The very first excuse is them seeing a gun on you. Alright... see how I'm putting the pick in? You're going to be able to feel a little series of pins inside the lock. Now you try it. Go slow at first.

I wish Snake hadn't stolen my grenade launcher.

[She says it woefully, but gets up and comes over to see what Mick is doing.]

Maybe I could just get a little gun. One that I can hide easily. That's stealthy, right?

[Octopus was the stealth expert of the group, but she had a P90 submachine gun. Still a considerably sized weapon.

Raven uses her pick and starts jimmying the lock, going slow as instructed. She frowns as she works.]

I can feel them. What do I do now?

I didn't say I wouldn't help you get one. I just want you to be frugal with it. We're 'guests' here at the moment. Don't want to become targets.

[He leans around her, and flicks the underside of the pick.] You do this until you feel each of those little catches drop. There's a spring under 'em, and normally a key would push them all down. But you gotta do it one at a time.

It gets easier with practice.

I know.

[She concentrates on the catches, but she gets stuck on the second one. After a good minute or two of trying, she huffs and sits back.]

It won't do it.

[She pushes her hair out of her face irritably.]

This is hard.

[Raven breathes in a few times, trying to quell the growing anger at not being able to do it, and starts again. Mick is lucky she didn't just throw the lockpick and give up, which is what she would have done before fighting Snake.]

Well, people make these things because they don't want people like us in. But sometimes I need their stuff more than they do. [Or he wants it? Whatever.]

Here, take a break. Let me go through the motions.

[Sometimes a breather helps. He can find the rage motivating, but he knows it's not always for everyone.]

[She nods, grateful to take a break. She watches carefully as Mick works, her frustration ebbing slightly. Just... breathe. She can do it if Mick can do it, right? If she can work an entire beast suit she can open a stupid door.]

When did you learn to do this?

When I got out of juvie, about eighteen. I didn't have a family to go back to. Wouldn't have went back even if I did. I didn't trust anyone, so I had to learn to take care of myself.

Snart taught me. His fucked up dad taught him to steal as a kid. Way he puts it, the old man only like his kids because he could use their tiny hands to help him steal. So he'd known most of his life.

[As he's talking, he flicks the lockpick quite a few times, light taps to get it to knock at those tumblers until the lock springs are loose. He turns the doorknob quickly, even though it's technically still locked. He then unlocks it once it's open.]

Just takes a little practice. [He closes the door, locks it again.] Don't lose your temper at the whole lock. Just work through all those little latches.
Each one is a part of how it works. One at a time.

I didn't have a family, either. They were killed.

[She says it softly, but not with much sadness. Losing her family had been awful, but it was so long ago now and she had been so young. Plus, it was only the beginning of the nightmare her childhood was for her. Most of her life is one traumatic blur, with only the ravens sticking out in her mind.

She watches before leaning back in to pick at the lock again.]

I haven't met Snart yet. What's he like?

He's um.... [There's a weird falter for Mick. His friend, the man who should be dead, the man that he wanted to die just to be with for so long only to come to realize that he and his former self hadn't been as close as he thought, still feels with a number of mixed emotions.]

He's smooth. He knows how to use a smile to mentally disarm someone. Can turn around from that and use his words to cut through them like ice. He's always chill in the face of our enemies, I've always been the one that's been ready to burn our enemies down.

[Fire and Ice. They've always been a pretty good balance that way.]

I don't understand people who can be calm with their enemies.

[Like Snake. He took her down swiftly and calmly. Where was his anger? It pisses her off a little to know she didn't provoke much of a reaction. Maybe that's the entire point, though. Or maybe he was just so old and used to it that Raven was nothing he hadn't seen before.]

[It is something that Mick noticed, but right, didn't react to. He's been on a ship with people with fucked up backgrounds. People have been taken aback by his ruthless attitude on having burned down his house.]

[But that doesn't mean he didn't intend to ask.]

Do you miss your family?

[Because she hadn't sounded like it. Not really.]

I don't really remember them.

[She does frown though, looking a little sad. She misses the idea of having a family, at least.]

Maybe that's a good thing. I don't want to remember what happened to them.

[She just remembers blood and bodies, but nothing specific. She doesn't even remember how many bodies there were. Just that she was spared death, only to be caged like an animal with other children who had seen similar things.]

[He offers her that lockpick back.]

Good. Memories just hurt.

[Not the most helpful advice, but to Mick he can rarely associate memories with anything good. Even the good ones are tainted with negative shit.]

Was it someone's fault?

It was soldiers.

[Who were they working for? She doesn't remember.]

They killed my family and took me.

[She rubs her fingers over the lockpick, focusing on the look and feel of it.]

Never got on board with the nationalistic uniform crap that excuses that. Some soldiers just end up fucked up. [Mick's never been too fond of them, but maybe because he knows his dad did some shit during the war that desensitized him. A lot of innocent people died because Dick Rory (yeah, that was his name) wanted some answers.]

Did you ever really get out? [Or did she end up with someone else.]

Not for a long time.

[Raven puts the lockpick back into the lock, focusing on that.]

They put me in a cage with some other children. They beat us and starved us. And when they were done with us, they tied us up and left us for the ravens to eat alive.

[She bites her lip, her hands shaking slightly.]

I watched them eat the other children. But when they came for me, they accidentally pecked me free. I followed the soldiers. And when night came, I killed them all.

[Her rage had been so strong that even half-starved and bruised, that one child could muster up the energy to murder an entire group of soldiers and their hostages.]

Those bastards... they deserved it.

[Instead of responding, he puts his hand over hers, the one holding the lockpick in particular. And he holds it firm, steady, to keep her from shaking.]

You can be angry. They deserved what they got. [He won't argue that, and there's no judgment in his eyes. The worst part is, seeing what he's seen, and knowing some of the things that his own father did during Vietnam, he isn't surprised to hear about her history. Pain. Death. Survival. It's what's made many of the people he knows.]

[But there's still a lesson happening here.]

You need a steady hand and precision for the first stage of breaking in. From what you just said, you've had that patience in you. As a little girl, following, waiting until night, right?

It's there. Find that sweet spot. Ignore the memory. Capture that feeling.

[Raven looks over at Mick with a slightly trembling lip, but grits her teeth and blinks away angry tears.]

Okay.

[She tries to remember what it had been like to have that patience, to be able to just wait. She had been so focused on revenge back then. Thinking of all the ways they'd die passed the time. What kind of gratification will she get if she opens this lock? If she can just be a little more patient, she'll get it.]

If I open this, I want more donuts.

[As a reward. She can be patient for a reward, mostly.]

Legs, you were already getting the donuts. You open up that lock and I'll top it off with a milkshake.

[He says it with a practically hilarious amount of earnestness, were anyone else listening. And, honestly, he'd get her one of those too even if they were something not really meant to be stolen.]

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