vesanalia | 001 - Log - A New Brand of Rogues

Entry tags:

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

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.]

[Oh, that's a good reward. Raven focuses harder on the lock, closing her eyes as she concentrates.]

What kind of milkshake?

[It had better be a fancy one.]

There's a place here that does them with the sprinkles and whipped cream on top. They can blend them with chocolate chips or caramel.

[Can someone make milkshakes sound a little menacing? Yes. It's Mick Rory, with his voice at a steady rumble as she works, a sound that comes from the very hollow of his chest. The way you'd expect a demon in a horror movie to sound, talking about sugary toppings.]

[Raven can sound like a demon too when she's pissed, so Mick's voice is nothing new to her. She is absolutely on board with what he's offering, and after a little more tinkering the lock clicks and she opens the door. She looks immensely proud of herself, even if it had taken a while.]

There, I did it.

[Give Raven enough of a reward and she will do anything, it looks like.]

There we go! [Hank chuckles approvingly before offering a hand to help her up.] let's job.

Now lets go get a sugar rush on, huh?

[Mick needs a constant supply to keep that wall of muscle he carries around going.]

[She takes his hand and pockets her lockpick, standing and tugging him along with her as she walks.]

What kind of milkshake are you getting?

[Someone is very clearly excited about this small thing, but she hasn't experienced things like this before.]

Chocolate. I love chocolate. Malted, too. Best kind. Haha.... [That chuckle comes from the depths of the chest and he gestures ahead of him like he's talking about a grand scheme for ruling a city rather than shambling out of an abandoned mall to get to a repainted mini-van to take a girl for a milkshake.]

Never had that kind of thing, huh? Welcome to Earth, Legs. I like the chaos but some of the best parts are made by bakeries and brewers.

[He leads her over towards that minivan.]

I love chocolate, too. At least, I did when I tried it earlier. I'd never had it before.

[But she had fallen in love with it instantly.]

But I think I'll see what the choices are before I pick. It's nice to have choices.

[Another luxury she never had before.]

That's how I felt whenever I'd get out of Iron Heights. A few years at a time eating prison gruel does what it can to muscle you up. But then you get out ready to get your fill on the most sugary, fattest, greasiest food you can just because you can.

[He hops into the driver's seat and leans across to pop open the passenger door for her.]

You got a favorite liquor, sister? Or is that not something you've had much of a chance with either.

[Mick doesn't know of the tragedy of her being unable to get drunk.]

[Raven slides into the passenger seat and closes the door behind her.]

I've never had alcohol before, but... I can't get drunk. My nanomachines break down the alcohol to prevent that.

[So she has to settle for sugar highs.]

Is it fun? Being drunk?

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