outsiderslogs | like a big pizza pie (open)

Entry tags:

like a big pizza pie (open)

who. Marco and you!
what. Delivery boy shenanigans.
where. Zeta District.
when. Right now!
warnings. How questionable can a 13-year-old get? (Don't answer that.)

[ Moving people's food around the district for them beats hauling rubble, though Marco could do without the cheesy delivery boy uniform. However, he approaches this delivery business with all the highly directed tunnel-vision of someone who has played lots of video games and knows how to scoot all over the map in the most efficient manner. Having to fake smiles and suck up for tips wasn't the worst thing, either. ]

(OOC: I have no preference between prose or action spam, so I will reciprocate whatever you start with! Scenario options are presented below, but you're welcome to start a new top-level thread with anything else if you have something in mind.)

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Marco passes a lot of people on his runs around the district, and he doesn't think twice about very many of them. Sure, he's been keeping an internal roster of as many people as possible on the off-chance that being able to recall someone is useful later in life, but he doesn't remember every brief encounter on the street. Except when they eye him up and do something different. He returns the nod to Lyall with a neutral expression, but internally, he wonders about the acknowledgement from a stranger; it gives him an unsettling feeling that something is about to happen, but they pass each other without further incident.

That is, until he's feels a sharp tug that grabs him mid-step. The pizza pouch breaks his fall as he trips over his own feet and tumbles backwards. Adrenaline floods his system and he's kicking and throwing punches, as if he was an upended turtle flailing his limbs with a big red insulated bag as his shell.

"Hey, back off, dude, it's like a fucking eight-credit pizza, leave me alone!"

Back home, he's lived in a not so squeaky part of town, and he's seen muggings happening before. He's been lucky to avoid them, but he's suddenly mad that here, of all places, that luck has run out. And he doesn't even see the guy who just popped out of the doorway, knife in hand, pausing in slight confusion at the unexpected commotion.

It's only Victorian manners that keeps Lyall greeting people he passes on the street, really. That's not something he's managed to drop so far in his time here, and really, not something he even wants to try to drop.

Rather like he's not interested in letting muggings happen, even if the child believes it's his appetite he ought to worry about.

"Do not be ridiculous. I cannot even eat pizza." Lyall steps swiftly around the flailing boy with an expression of mild distaste-- he's avoided much worse, actually dangerous people before in his time, and poor Marco looks more silly than he does threatening. Instead, he pounces past Marco in an attempt to snatch that knife away before the actual mugger gets over his surprise. "I'll have that, thank you."

"Well, how am I supposed to know that?"

Marco is surprisingly fast at recovering his dignity. Lots of practice on that one. He stops thrashing about once he realizes that he's not getting pummeled, and picks himself off the ground. The pizza is unsalvageable; he can feel it squishing around inside the bag. Ew.

The mugger, meanwhile, is having second thoughts; he was aiming for a quick and easy target to snag a free meal and intercept some payments, but was now faced with someone far more prepared for such an encounter. "I don't think so, man," he says, backing down the street, but keeping the knife between them.

Now that he's seen what's going on, Marco manages to shut up for the moment and got ready to run the other way if an actual scuffle broke out. He'd deal with the squished order later.

For a moment, Lyall actually considers taking the knife by force, tempted by the thought of actually winning an encounter for the first time in this awful place since those undead monstrocities. But in the end he decides avoiding the slight risk of injury without a ready source of fresh meat available for more efficient healing, and the more palpable risk of letting more people know how fast and strong he really is, is better than removing one knife from one thug. "Then run along," he tells the mugger, making a shooing motion with one hand. "Try a different district for your free dinner."

Of course, if the mugger pushes it, he won't have any choice... but it's smarter not to push it, himself.

Fortunately for our heroes, the mugger decides that this isn't worth a fight, either, and gets shooed away.

Marco's been staring at this guy in confusion; on a station with an assorted bunch of aliens and other weirdos, someone who talks funny and wears old-fashioned clothes really sticks out. He would have overlooked it before when they were just passing each other by, but now that they've been in this shared experience, he's had a chance to process it some more.

"Who are you, some Monty Python sideshow?"

There's teenage gratitude for you.

Lyall watches the thug go until he's safely out of sight, and he can hear his footfalls receding in the distance. Then he turns back to Marco, just in time to get that response. He sighs a little. It's not an unfamiliar one.

"No, and to be honest, I have no idea what that even means. I happen to have been pulled, all unwilling, from Earth of eighteen seventy-five. This is how everyone looks." Though not generally quite so well put-together. Children these days. "Are you all right? I didn't quite mean to pull you to the ground entirely."

"1875? Wow, no wonder you look like you got lost on your way to a movie set. I've only ever seen people dressed like that on television." This whole space kidnapping experience seemed to be just as much of a crazy time machine trip as it was a scifi plot.

Marco shrugs at the question while he peeks into the delivery bag with a grimace. "I'll live, but I can't say the same thing for my friend in here. Why can't you eat pizza? Don't tell me you're allergic, 'cause that would be a terrible tragedy."

"The combination of tomato sauce with the proliferation of breads," Lyall shrugs, his own self. "I have rather particular dietary needs, I'm afraid. I am largely carnivorous, with some limited allowance for dairy and simple carbohydrates." Marco is lucky he even knows what pizza is, to be honest; he's picked it up since his arrival here.

He winces at what the proper response would be, despite the depleted state of his funds here. "Do you need the product... replaced?"

"Bummer, dude. Is that like the opposite of vegetarianism or something?" Marco's being pretty sensitive here, especially as he peels out a completely unpresentable piece of crust covered in red paste and garlic powder and starts to munch on it; the cheesy top had stuck to the inside of the box."And don't worry about this, I'll just go back and write this off as a mugging loss. There's a bit of sausage stuck to the cheese if you want some, though."

For someone who was just nearly shanked, Marco's surprisingly calm, but he just got himself a free pizza and his savior was such a strange guy that he felt bad busting him over this mess. He offers the bag to Lyall.

"The name's Marco, by the way."

Normally, Lyall would be above that kind of scrounging and probably not too keen on the cooked nature of the meat... but he's had so little that's remotely fresh lately, that he's not going to turn that down. "If you have no qualms parting with the sausage, then certainly, and you have my gratitude." He accepts the bag and opens it to daintily pick through the cheese for the meat.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mister Marco. I wish it could have occurred under more pleasant circumstances." Though to him? This is the most pleasant it's been in a while. Mmmm, sausage.

"Least I can do because you like, saved my life and all, right?" Because it isn't as if Marco's in a position to offer anything better; this is about as close to a thanks as Lyall's going to get.

"And come on, I'm definitely not a 'mister'. If any of us is a 'mister', it's you, Mister."

"Everyone is 'mister', who is not nobility or some form of constablry," Lyall corrects with a little smile. "At least in my world. Calling someone so familiarly by a name without a title is terrible rudeness, unless you are close enough friends to do without."

He pauses, and the smile grows faintly teasing. Obviously, he's aware of how he sounds, and how uncommon his manners are. "I could call you young master, if you prefer."

"Okay, well, where I'm from, misters are figures of authority that you want to at least pretend to be polite to. Or you're being sarcastic."

He grabs another fistful of squished pizza, and is now getting grease everywhere. Oops.

"Anyway, 'young master' is gonna make me think that you're like my butler or something, so unless your name is Jeeves, that's going to be kind of weird. Can't you just call me Marco, and I'll call you Mister Whatever-Your-Name-Is and we'll both be happy?"

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like a big pizza pie (open)

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