Week 73, Directly After The 'Mission': A Great Time For A Drink

Hugo looked around the bar, and when he spoke again his voice was quiet, watching the back of the waitress as she made it back to the bar. "..I sent a lot of money home. I pay a lot of guys, you know, to do things. Investigate, just invest. It never seems like I have enough time, you know? And what use is the money if I.. if we don't get time to spend it?" He gave a look to Han, and smiled sadly. His voice got louder as he kept talking. "Which is why I'm making my own dojo and a sort of.. agent play center. The kind of place you always wanted to play in when you were a kid but bigger, for us. Maybe we can do laser tag and other stuff. Get drunk and stuff. Yeah. I always wanted one, but I was too big except for the most empty and boring ones." He nodded to himself, happy to be distracted from the sadder places Han's conversation was going.

"So you wanted stuff like that as a kid? Somewhere to run around or whatever? Man, I can't even picture you being small, let alone being a child. I suppose childhood meant different things for us, though..." It seemed, as Shinobu stared into her glass, that that off-hand comment had struck something that made the ninja think. "Not that I'm surprised..."

"When I was a kid? I want it now!" Hugo laughed a little, giving Shinobu a nudge. "But you don't need to say we grew up differently, hermana. I mean, even Stephen and I grew up in Fed territory, but I bet it wasn't much the same, what with me being in a border town and all." He began looking in the shot glasses, trying to determine if any of them were full. "I bet you weren't playing at the edge of the woods, avoiding wild mutated little vermin."

Stephen looked at his glass, then at everyone else's glasses, then sniffed his glass slightly, then raised an eyebrow at it. "Shit, you guys are melancholy drunks. And lightweights. A few rounds and suddenly everyone's teary-eyed about their childhoods and the things money can't never buy and the meanin' of bein' young? I'm not nearly drunk enough for this shit," he declared, beckoning for more shots, "not to mention way too badass. And I'd kick all y'all's asses at laser tag." He stated the last with a grin and cocky tone, obviously daring anyone to challenge his hypothetical supremacy at the art of laser tag.

"Hey!" He shook his head, laughing a tiny bit, happy to join Stephen in perking up the conversation. "There's nothing sad about mutant dogs! Little nasty things! One of the main reasons my town let the WF in. A free gun for every child. You learn to shoot well really quick." He shook his head,  still grinning. "And yeah, I'm thinking we'll have a few laser tag nights, some paintball type stuff, too, for non-agents. And no affiliations." He nodded solemnly. "You know the only non-Ai Jinn dojo is Sagittar? And those Comoros guys won't let me go there anymore. It's be nice to have a place where people don't need to worry about that kinds stuff, especially since Seoul has agents from everywhere."

"Hey!" Fenris's voice was full of mock indignation. "I'll have you know that I did pretty damn good last time I did laser tag!" She knocked back another drink before turning back to Hugo. "How the hell did you manage that?"

"What, manage not being let back into the Sagittar dojo?" Hugo laughed a little bit, looking at Fenris with amusement and mild shock. "We stole the naked guy, remember? Comoros don't really like Oracle anymore, and the Ai Jinn have never let me in." The massive agent shrugged only a little sadly. "I make my own or I don't get anywhere decent to practice."

"You think you've got it bad Hugo? The Ai-Jinn just turn you away at the door. Me they shoot on sight." He slung back another shot. "But hey, you ever want someone to practice with, give me a shout. I could use some good old fashioned hand to hand to training. Or blade work. Whatever really."

"If you want to learn how about handling either end of a blade, I'd be happy to spare some time for you," Shinobu offered cheerfully to Han. "Not that I have any idea how much you know already, since you're always just shooting things. What is with you guys and guns, anyway?" Shinobu asked as she set down another glass. "Nobody round here appreciates the art of hitting things with things."

"Simple, the more I know about blades, the easier it is to dodge and block the things as people attempt to prevent me from using a more civilized weapon to take them down.
Han shrugged. "As for how much I know...well, I know enough that my instructors at the Academy only ever stabbed me through the chest the once.You know how the Ai-Jinn are with hand to hand combat. Always a soldier. Always armed" The five words were spoken with the practiced preciseness that rote reptition instilled, but overwrought with a heavy tinge of disgust.

"'Civilized', huh? I wouldn't exactly describe the mess you make 'civilized', Han," Shinobu said, unusually defensive over an insult that probably wasn't meant. "Given the choice between a clean cut or just brute forcing the target into paste, it seems obvious which is barbaric. Not that you don't do good work, but-" Shinobu paused to take a drink. "The best your gunplay can do is power. True swordsmanship is art."

"Only a functioning civilisation could produce a weapon capable of firing weaponised metal fragments propelled at extreme velocities at the target in order to systematically destroy a portion of the body. So that means a shotgun is a far more civilised weapon then a sword, which could be crafted by a single man with the materials and a few tools. Just seems logical to me." Han knocked back another shot. "You wanna talk about art? Art is perfectly annihilating a person forearm without touching their hand or upper arm, while that arm is swinging an Ion Katana at your face. Art is shooting a laser through a hundred meters of crowd without so much as singing the hair on another mans head. Gunplay gives power, and experts wield it like a scalpel."

"Art is shootin' a man through a click of jungle without him ever knowin' you were there," contributed Stephen. "Poor Bill. Or bakin' a mean cupcake. For real, though, ain't no need for a competition here. I wouldn't want to run into you in a dark alley," he went on, waving a hand at Shinobu, "And you wouldn't want to run into me on an airport runway. It's all situational," he declared, gesticulating magnanimously <<Engage At Range. Maximum Tactical Advantage>>, then knocked back another shot.

"Makin' stuff, though? No offense, Han, but I don't reckon you rightly appreciate the effort that has to go into makin' a good sword. Acquirin' materials, processin' 'em properly, designin' the blade... sure, some guy in a cave with a lump of metal and a hammer can work you out somethin' that looks like a sword in the long run, but by the same token I could mock you up a shitty smoothbore musket in the same situation. You wanna make somethin' proper, sword or a gun or whatever the hell, you gotta take advantage of a functionin' society to do it."

"Whoah, whoah whoah, WHOAH. Whoah." Hugo put his hands out, spreading them from Shinobu's space to Han's, creating a zone of non-argument between them. "Whoah, okay, now. Look, guns are OBVIOUSLY better. In like, all ways. Okay?" His face was trying to be serious, but there was a faint smile at the corners of his lips. (Fail L&A by 1.) He looked from Shinobu to Han, focusing on Han. "Except, Stephen's right, it takes lots of people to make a sword, okay. Not just a plasma sword, or an ion sword, but even a normal sword, okay? Like, mining and stuff takes a lot of time and effort. You make a sword alone, you get a pile of shit that snaps in half."

He frowned at both of them. "And importantly, art is.. it's.. it's subjective. Sometimes, you know, it makes a big fucking bloody mess," And here he gestured to Han. "And sometimes it's a smaller mess with less chance of getting a chunk of bone in your hair. I've seen enough art to know that it comes in a lot of types. And if you mean like, precision instead of art, that obviously is different for whatever you're doing. I like my surgeons to have knives, not guns." He gestured to Shinobu. His faint smile grew a little as he kept talking. "And obviously, obviously, OBVIOUSLY... The best type of weapon is galvanic energy. No mess except a little singeing." <<Damage Superiority. Close and Medium Range Advantage.>> He signed back, his only response to Stephen.

Shinobu shrugged. "You're entitled to your opinions, and it's not like I don't appreciate what you guys can do with guns in combat. There's just a certain elegance to a master's swordsmanship, I can't really explain it to someone who doesn't just get it. Cultural stuff and personal history and all that, I guess?" she pondered. She sighed and took another shot, reconfiguring her toxin filter as she drank to let the alcohol through. "What is with me today? Go out drinking, get all thoughtful and boring," she muttered, shaking her head.

"Eh, you're not the crazy knifework instructor I had who swore blind that the only weapon any self respecting man would ever use was a balisong. Elitist child-beating son of a bitch." He slammed his glass down on the table, hard. "You're right! One of our own just came back from something worse then death. We should be celebrating Hugo's return to the prestigious category of 'Person'!

Hugo laughed at that, raising his now empty shot glass. He was a big man who drank a lot, and he needed a lot of drink to feel what he drank. He was feeling the drank right now. He slapped Han and Stephen on the back. "Yes, yes, make it all about me. I am a big fan of me." He laughed a little more, and looked around. "You know, I haven't even got one phone call about an interview yet, and I was sure I'd make at least local news. The bastards." He was cheerful about it, and pulled his hands back to rub them energetically. "One more round, and then we get some food?"

At the mention of food, Fenris perked up a little, she was definitely hungry after the mad dash through the sewers. "Sounds good! But please. Can we go somewhere good?" She quickly finished off her drink "No offense Han, but we can do better than Keng's. We're rich." She was only teasing, but it was clear that she didn't really want to go to a noodle joint.

""And if we keep spending it all on fancy food then we won't be," Shinobu chimed in. "Not that I'm opposed to something nice, so long as it's not Italian again, but good food's kind of overrated."

"Wonder if anywhere in this city does decent Mexica- wait," Stephen said, a sudden expression of confusion overcoming his face. "We stole the naked guy? The fuck? Do I even wanna know what the hell you're talkin' about or should I let sleepin' naked guys lie?"

"He was a telepath, Comoros were using him to do stuff, we took him to figure out what was up, and he and I became friends." Hugo said this was a sad smile, and no hint of irony. "He was asleep the whole time, a nice guy, made me fly for a while.. Er.. ..I have a video to show you about it, if you want. Don't worry about it, though." He waved a hand <<Full Debriefing To Follow>> and shook his head. "And more importantly, it's a no-go on the Mexican, unless we want to spend two hours driving. I get a bunch of my food shipped special from Gangzhou. Nothing else here is any good."

Han waved a finger at Fenris. "Okay, first things first, don't ever insult Keng's or the fine art of noodlecraft in my presence again. Got it, Spire Brat?" He flashed a toothy smile to show he was only a little serious. "But in all seriousness, if people don't want noodles, we can go elsewhere. Theres the standard array of high class cuisine around the financial district. Or we could head to the Interchange, if you can think of it, they have it there. Personally, I'd rather avoid it though.

"I'm sorry Han... I should have realized a Street Rat would have no class!" She was grinning back, clearly not meaning a word of it. "Hmm. I kinda feel like somewhere a bit more casual than Giovanni's, if people are OK with that."

"Hell naw, Fen," announced Stephen, "y'all know full well I can't eat a bite unless the place is so fancy they pull the stick outta your ass at the door" - he tilted sideways and mimed the action as he said it - "to make sure it's got the requisite amount of gold inlay, before they let you in," he finished, throwing the imaginary stick over his shoulder. "Unfortunately Han here doesn't seem to be carryin' his about anymore so he ain't gonna get in. Guess I'll just have to settle for some place a little more low-key."

At that point he stopped, a pensive expression on his face as he mentally reviewed everything he just said. "How strong is this stuff?" he suddenly demanded, pointing at an empty shot glass. "And how much did I drink?"

Hugo grinned at Stephen and the assembled crew, still chuckling about the stick mime. "A little less than I did." Hugo got to his feet, a little unsteadily, beaming. "You know, you gotta count 'em, compadre. That's why they call them shots. How else will you know when a whole clip's been spent, eh?" <<Reload!>>

He shook his head and looked at Fenris. "And where ever we go, Fenrir, it can't take too long. I should get back and.. ..For Silvia." Despite his inebriated cheer, he couldn't help but look a little guilty about that.