Week 77, Early: Fancy Fucking Hotel

It wasn't an EI hotel, but it was nice. Very nice. Large rooms, oversized beds, massive holowalls. There was a separate seating area, complete with a small dining space, and a real looking 'fire' that produced heat. It was very swanky, and located in the upper floors of the Interchange. Hugo had spared no expense.

He didn't seem happy about it, though. He was quiet the drive there, and quiet as he threw his stuff on the ground. He flopped back onto the couch, removing Una just before he did so so he wouldn't crush her under his body. He sighed as he relaxed into the pillows.

Dani cackled with glee as she took in the room. This was the kind of opulence she could never have afforded back with the Ai-Jinn. Admittedly, she couldn't afford it now either, but it wouldn't take long before she'd be up there in terms of wealth. No doubt about it, Oracle was fucking awesome.

The one problem was Hugo; he still seemed down from what had happened with Fenris. Dani smiled at Hugo before collapsing down onto the couch on top of him. "Cheer up! Never mind earlier, this place is classy as fuck and we've got all this room to ourselves. How about a drink?"

Hugo's gloominess broke as Dani landed on him, and he smiled a little. He put one arm around her, and gave her a little look before leaning back. " A drink? ..Yes. Good." He let her do to help give her space to finagle getting drinks, while he sighed again and tried to cheer up. "I just don't understand them, you know?" That appeared to be he summary of the whole experience, and he wasn't really look for any sort of response from her. "And see if they have rum."

Dani was thrilled to find they had some sort of tube system to send drinks straight up to the room - possibly automated, who knows? She flicked through the panel attached to it, amazed at how many options there were. "What kind of rum?" she called over. "They have so many, I... Fuck it, these'll do to start." A couple of moments later, there was a soft hissing sound as the doors on the machine opened to reveal five bottles of rum. She grabbed a couple of glasses carefully and carried one of the bottles over to the couch. She took a swig from the bottle, nodded appreciatively, and began to pour some for Hugo. "Here, try this. Says it's got coconut in it."

Hugo righted himself and relaxed a little better, nestling Una into the cushions next to him. He to the glass of rum and sipped it with every sign of enjoyment. It did taste like coconut. "It's sweet. I.. didn't expect that. Mm, maybe I can get Impossi-Brew to get some coconut flavors. It would mix well with this. Oh, lirio, go see if they have Impossi-Brew, will you?" He drank the rum as if it was water, smiling a little as he forgot about his fight with Fenris... And anticipating Dani's reaction when she saw his suggestion of energy drink.

Dani gave a thumbs up as she drank from the bottle, then set it down and returned to the machine. "Here we go, Impossi-Br..." She stopped, looked over at Hugo, then turned back to the can of Impossi-Brew. "How long have you been on there?" she asked incredulously as she opened the can and took a mouthful. "God, that's horrible!" Dani exclaimed, having managed to not just spit it out again. "Why would you sponsor something like this? Do you have some dark secret I should know?" She made a face to show her disgust, then gulped down the rest of the can's contents and got another for Hugo. "Here, catch."

Hugo laughed a little and caught the can, taking a brief moment to pause in the exact position of his face on the bright orange can. "I know, it's horrible, right? But it'll pick you up, you know?" He opened it and began to mix Impossi-Brew with his coconut flavored rum. "But no, uh.. You remember a couple of weeks ago, there was a guy getting chased by the UIG in Seoul because of some bug in the system and was immediately depersonalized and took a bunch of hits from a iolite cruiser before jumping into the sewers? Yeah." Hugo gestured back to himself with his thumb, and give Dani a little amused, sly look. "I called my PA and told her to sell off some assets, and well.. The rights to my face got bought up by Impossi-Brew, and it'd be over 5 million to get them back now. So... I'm a mascot."

He raised his head and grinned again, just like he had on the can, and then took a sip. "Oh, ugh, uh, wow. Wow. That's.. almost better."

Dani looked at Hugo critically for a moment, and then gasped. "That was you? Holy shit, that was you. You were fucking awesome out there! That thing with the manhole cover... I'd be asking your your autograph except, y'know, I don't really need it." She sat down with another can of Impossi-Brew and one of the bottles of rum, mixing the two in a glass. "You do make a good mascot, though. Maybe you should just quit the day job and spend your time standing around looking marketable."

Hugo grinned and leaned over the couch to grab his bag. He began to rifle through it for a moment. "C'mon, lirio, where's the fun is standing around looking pretty? No. I have too much fun in Oracle." He pulled out a small silver camera, Oracle issue, and turned it on. He began to slide through the buttons. "Not many guns, and not danger, in being a mascot. But, maybe later.. Oh!" He smiled wider as whatever he was looking at derailed his thoughts. He handed the camera over. "Look at that."

On the small screen was a Quantum Camera(tm) image of Hugo in.. a basement, somewhere. His once beautiful red shirt was covered in plasma holes. He was filthy, but it looked as if someone had sprayed him in Biocleene; he wasn't dripping with sewage and under the burns were new, healthy looking patches of skin. Hugo was holding an ID chip scanner over his wrist, which was filled with an angry red glow. His rank points read -220. Hugo seemed delighted by this information, smiling hugely into the camera.

Dani stared at the image in amazement, clicking the buttons to look around, zoom in, and generally be sure that yes, Hugo really had had -220 rank points. In silent amazement, she turned to Hugo and just sort of admired him. "Really? Really? This is really who you are? A nuke who bounced back from that much rank loss and is the face of an energy drink? Are you sure you're not just some bizarre practical joke?"

"Hey, I only became the mascot BECAUSE of the rank loss." He drank more, trying to seem cool and detached but only just pulling it off. (Pres+Att pass by 2.) He smiled though, breaking the relaxed nonchalance he had just so barely achieved. "It's Oracle. It makes you do things. Does things to you. And it's not bad, really. I just think that.. Someday my face on a drink will be the least interesting thing about me." He shrugged again, for a moment seeming almost.. shy about it. "I'm sure I'm real though."

He continued to drink his cocktail, and picked up the can to look at his face again. "Besides, the new pictures should be out in a week. A much better one of me."

"Yeah. I like doing things, so... sounds good." Dani went back to her cocktail and leant on Hugo, not really sure to take the conversation from there. Instead, she just relaxed, taking in all the luxury she'd fallen into.

After a slow moment, Hugo put his arm around Dani. He drained his drink, consuming a lot of alcohol fast, even for an agent. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. "..Sometimes it's bad, I guess. I've almost died a couple times, most of us have, and we lost an agent. And I got depersonalized, which was okay, but I also lost most of my friends from training and all the ones from AMS. They won't even respond to texts or social media messages." He sounded a little sad about that, and gave her a sad smile and a squeeze on her shoulder before reaching for the rum, and pouring himself an ample, unmixed amount, and went back to drinking it like water.

Dani nodded knowingly, swigging from her bottle without bothering to pour it into a glass. "That happens. It sucks, but it happens. Even before I left the Ai-Jinn, a bunch of my friends went all distant and weird and didn't want to talk. It hurt, but I just coped," she said, tentatively putting an arm around Hugo. "You lose some, you keep some, you meet some. And now you and me, we're a great duo, yeah? Never mind people who are way across the ocean, let's just make the most of what we have here." Yeah! Good work, you master of subtlety, she thought to herself.

Hugo finished his glass again, and just nodded in a dumb way. After a few moments, his far away look cleared, and he focused back on Dani. "..Yeah. I'm lucky. I've met more people, more friends in Seoul, had more freedom, than any other time in my life. No one who needed me to report every little thing to them..." He expression soured a little, and he went to drink from his empty glass. When he saw it was empty, he took the bottle gingerly from Dani's hand, and took another swig. That milkshake hadn't really been a breakfast, and his stomach was hungry absorbing all the alcohol it could. He sighed. "...Mostly. Until like.. now. Ugh. ..Oh, sorry, yeah, I... Yeah, we're pretty good. Even if I haven't seen you in combat yet."

"What, doesn't our brawl count? I can go again if you want, this time you'll see!" Dani said, laughing as she punched Hugo in the arm. "What's the problem, hungry? We can get some food brought up, your treat! Yeah, I could kill for some good pie." She leant over to grab the phone and called downstairs, ordering a variety of "meat" and "fruit" pies. "Anything else you want? Food, clothes, magazines?"

Hugo stared wide-eyed at Dani. His money had almost always too much to spend, but with her around, well, it looked they would make a dent in it. Or certainly she would. He shook his head no and took the phone from her, hanging it up and dropping it. His brows furrowed, though he was just smiling. "If we wrestled, do you think you could beat me? Because I don..'t." He trailed off and the end there, tilting his head at her. There was something familiar and a little contemptible about her, but it was something so different that he fount it kind of enjoyable. His thoughts finally caught up with his ears. "...Wait, did you just order nine different agent sized pies?"

"Well we're not going to be sleeping any time soon, are we?" Dani said as she sipped from another can of Impossi-Brew. It was terrible, but in a way that somehow ended up growing on you - kind of like Dani herself, an outside observer might have noted. "So obviously we need food to keep going, Q.E.D. And it was hard to choose, anyway." She stood up for a moment to grab her caustic thrower's case, holding it close as she leant back on Hugo. "I'm not saying I'd beat you. I'm just saying you'd lose, is all."

Hugo looked over Dani's shoulder as she leaned against him, and he scoffed quietly. "A few days before I met you, I had to have my entire digestive tract rebuilt. So if you're gonna cheat, don't melt me with acid or.. plasma or something, okay? I am gonna really tired of it." He continued to drink from the bottle, watching her with every sign of interest. It was probably the heavy weapon. "I have a business to open at the end of the week, I don't really want to spend my whole time getting fixed up. So..." He rested his head on her shoulder. "Why yinglong? You never got to say."

"Hey, give me some credit, I wasn't gonna melt you. I just think it'd be my moral victory in the end. As for yinglong, it's a type of Chinese dragon. I like dragons, they're cool. The Ai-Jinn are all "dragon's this" and "dragon's that", so I got into studying the mythology and all when I was in training. I don't really see my guns as people, per se, but they do feel special, important, powerful... So dragons, pretty much." she said. "'s why I've got all these tattoos," she said, holding her left arm in front of her. "The rest aren't really visible, though, are they... You wanna see?"

Hugo smirked about the moral victory, but his face changed completely as she started talking about dragons. He understood completely and... "Yes. Yes, I would like to see them." He smiled a little and leaned back, giving her room to move away. Tattoos weren't looked down on in the WF, but Hugo had never really considered getting one. Not when he could spend his money on guns, anyway. Still they were... interesting on other people, and he did wonder what they looked like. Over time, he had patched together most of Fenris' wolf, but he had yet to see the whole thing at once. So this was nice. ..Oh, and she was going to take off her shirt, at the very least. So that was nice.

This latter though arrived a good deal later than the rest, but he smiled about it anyway. "What do they mean?"

"Well, the one on my left arm's there 'cos that's the arm I pull the trigger with," Dani said once she had stood up and removed the clothing in the way. The most prominent was the dragon whose black tail started at the base of the neck, changing into a multitude of reds and yellows as it plunged downwards across the right side of her body, curled around her belly button, and came upwards to over her heart, where it clutched its mouth around a black heart symbol with a pale chemical weapon hazard symbol on it. "This one's pretty obvious, right? Dedicated to my first, most sincere love 'n all. The symbol glows in the dark too, it's pretty awesome."

She turned around to show her full-back tattoo of a raging dragon with bullets stuck in its scales and an eye shot out. "And this one's saying 'Fuck the WF', 'cos they can shoot me as much as they like and I'll just keep coming at them." Facing Hugo once more, she pointed at the two dragons fighting one another on her right upper arm. "This one's all about self-improvement, struggling to overcome things, that kinda shit. And these two, " she said, pointing at two dragons lying straight just above her belt, "Are just there to look cool."

She sat back down, holding her arms out so Hugo could see the tattoos better. "You get all that? It's gonna be on the test. I was thinking I'd get one on my leg, or maybe my foot, now that I've left the Ai-Jinn. What do you think?"

Hugo nodded appreciatively, very occasionally touching the dragon tattoos with the tips of his fingers; his hands were cybernetically, chemically roughened, and her was very gentle with them... Even as he ran them over her busted WF dragon. Smirking, he admired the others. He nodded up at her. "Oh yeah, totally. You could even get those ones that move, you know the ones? But there is no reason not to have more over your legs, too. You've got a nice set." He looked up from her arms, and chest, and then face, unaware or ambivalent to how his words sounded. With even less clothes, he could see how strong she was now, surely. "But what kind of dragon represents leaving the Ai Jinn besides a dead dragon?"

"I was thinking of a dragon crushing a P-Tank?," Dani suggested. "That kind of thing, breaking something that they're all about. I need to think about it."  She began to feel irritated as Hugo touched her tattoos oh-so-goddamn-gently and looked her over, clearly evaluating and judging her. "I'm not fragile, okay? Stop it."

Hugo furrowed his brow while smiling a little, confusion passing over his features before he looked away. He seemed slightly... ashamed, almost, the effect almost certainly heightened by Dani switching to his parent tongue. "..Everyone is fragile, lily. It's hard not to be.. gentle." He managed to make eye contact at the end, looking apologetic.