13875/Friendly, Neighborhood, Etc.

Friendly, Neighborhood, Etc.
Date of Scene:	18 January 2023
Location:	The Bushwick Memorial
Synopsis:	Cindy and Miles talk the future and spiderin' over a bat burger with no Picasso.
Cast of Characters:	Miles Morales, Cindy Moon

---

Miles Morales has posed:
The dramatic mess that is the Bushwick Memorial has been a favorite of the other Spider-Man since he moved back to Brooklyn. Although it was typically replete with people doing fancy corkscrew jumps and flippy-dippies, around this time of night it was about as peaceful and quiet as things got in New York.

At the top of the broken, crumbling building sits Miles in full costume. A black and red hoody and a pair of Brooklyn Nets basketball shorts have been thrown over it all to ward off the chill. A large pair of headphones cover his ears as he drumbs the non-business end of a pencil against a copy of Russell's 'A History of Western Philosophy.' He bobs his head along with the tune being piped into his ears, pausing to underline something important about Aristotle.

Cindy Moon has posed:
The other Spider-Girl has no territory to which she frequents. Her approach to vigilantism is a nomadic one, more closely resembling that of a marading barbarian who loosely fashions herself a crime-fighter for how brutally she's known to beat those who tempt her rage. She is the darkest of the siders, by a large metric, which doesn't exclude her from the occational night of taking a chill-pill.

It's not always raining in the world of Cindy Moon.

Wearing her usual black and white costume, with the red sash across the lower portion of her face, her hair is cut into a neat bob so that she needn't pull it back to keep it out of her eyes. Swinging through Brooklyn in an erratic dance of controlled chaos right past where Miles is busily studying the philosophical greats. Past his perch and into a dark alley where she, finally comes to rest. Dangling from the flickering sign. The thread thin length of silk webbing wraps around her right fist, the right fiddles absently with her cellphone, casting a harsh blue-green glow upon her features every time the A and O flicker in the Auto-Repair sign from which she dangles.

Miles Morales has posed:
There is a 'bloop' on Cindy's phone, and the spider-based Slack lights up with the little black and red icon.

Spider2: yo

...

Spider2: want half a bat-burger?

Should Cindy look up, Miles gives her a wave from his perch towards his fellow Spiderino. In one hand he holds a greasily half-transparent bag of Bat Burger which he waves through the air at her.

...

Spider2: extra cheese, no picasso

...

Spider2: picasso

...

Spider2: pickle

Cindy Moon has posed:
Silk is already looking at her phone when the bloop appears at the top of her screen. She drags down the icon and opens the messanger program with a smirk and is about to reply when she reads something about a bat-burger.

She peers up and around and sees Miles on his perch only a short swing away and waves a few fingers, extending one indicating she'll be there in a second. Which is pretty accurate- dropping from her dangle, she catches a line and zips through the air towards him and spins down into a lotus seat on the roof where he was doing his homework and, it appears, enjoying late dinner.

"Fancy meeting you here." She's quiet, but not nearly as awkward as she has been in the past. "What the fuck is picasso?" Having not gotten the correction about pickles by the time she's closed the gap to join him.

"Is that some kind of special sauce?"

Miles Morales has posed:
"Yeah, this isn't the designated spider-meeting zone. The Chief Arachnid's gonna bust your butt for this."

Miles grins, handing the bag over to Cindy once she's arrived whether or not she actually wants to eat it. He tosses the book and pencil casually into the air, pushing open his backpack with one foot as they land inside it comfortably. Super-agility truly is great.

"Pickle," he tells her, shaking his head and scratching the back of his head through the mask, "Or, well, no pickle."

Cindy Moon has posed:
"You ever see him anymore?" Cindy wonders with a perked brow, trying not to look too eager to grab the bag he's extended out to her. She's by no means poor, someone got her a job, but she'd skipped lunch... and dinner. "Thanks." Holding up the bag indicatively.

Unlike the other spiders, Silk wears no mask, so rather than pull her's up to her nose to eat, she pulls the scarf down around her neck. Most people wouldn't know who she was even if she showed her face, so it really didn't matter to her. Her secret identity was more of a guideline than a rule.

"You don't like pickles?" Pausing in removing the burger to stare over at him. "What do you have against pickles?"

Miles Morales has posed:
"I've been in Gotham," Miles answers, "There's only one chief guy there and I'm glad I didn't see him. Sounds like a creep. Only moved back here a few weeks ago ... hoping to get into ESU in the spring."

He sits there, dangling his feet over the memorial down below. His headphones are down around his neck now, the saxophone solo from 'Baker Street' playing mutedly in the background.

"I always used to get 'em because my mom would eat 'em. But I figured it'd be a waste to throw them away. I didn't even know they had a Bat-Burger here, anyway. Thought it was a Gotham thing."

Cindy Moon has posed:
Cindy fishes the burger out of the bag and unwraps it, tearing it in half with little concern for the grease that nodoubt runs across her gloves through the wrapper. One half she takes, the other half she holds out still partially covered in paper, "I suppose I'll try to put aside my deep emotional turmoil at the lack of pickles."

A quiet murmur and a little grin.

"I've never been to Gotham. It's in Jersey. If I wanted to go more dirty New York, I'd move to Boston. At least there the accent is different."

All that shade.

Adjusting around to dangle her feet with a quick twist of her wrist to shift around her body with little concern for silly things like anatomy or hyper extention.

"I thought about getting my G.E.D."

Miles Morales has posed:
"You should. Can't be that hard. If you can sling webs without crashing into a streetlamp, you can do geometry no problem."

Miles takes the offered other half of the burger, pulling his mask up to reveal the lower half of his face. He seems to consider it for a moment before he just shrugs and tugs the thing all the way off, tucking it into the front pocket of his hoodie. Nobody is likely to recognize him either.

"Mprhh mmphh mphhaa phaa," he says pointedly through a mouthful of burger, then he swallows and tries again.

"I can help you study."

Cindy Moon has posed:
"Swinging around is second nature, a lot of sensory pre-cognition, and healthy application of dexterity. I don't know a text book in the universe that I can learn by shooting webs at it."

Cindy peers down at her half a sandwich and takes a tenative bite, as if she's unsure she trusts anything named after a bat. Someone ate a bat once back in 2020 and it turned out pretty bad for everyone. Regardless, the results seems satisfying and she takes a bigger bite the second time.

Nodding to his offer, hand up to block her mouth as she chews and swallows, "Thank you. I'll take it under advisement. I would like to have a job that's not 'convenience store clerk', so I will have to bite the bullet eventually."

Miles Morales has posed:
"Ahhhhh, you want to be a convenience store manager. Lofty dreams, Silk. Lof-tee dreams."

Miles takes a more trusting and wholesome bite of his burger, munching away at it as he looks out over Brooklyn and the subsection of New York that is technically his territory. Or at least he's decided as much.

"No rush. Plenty of Vultures and Rhinos to beat up."

Cindy Moon has posed:
Silk grips the remaining couple of bites of her half sandwich in both hands with her brown eyes turning down to look at the bits of meat dangling from one side of the soggy bun. "District manager. I want two stores." This, she murmurs. It is a great secret of hers, her desire for advancement at Circle K.

With a fledgling smile forming when she glances up to the other spider, "That's the beauty of New York, isn't it? Always someone to punch.. kick.. or talk a gang of crap to."

The rest of her sandwich disappears and with hands free she wipes them on her legs, which does nothing to clean either hand nor leg. Her knees come up and she wraps her arms around them, resting her chin on the bundle.

"What about you? Is this your primary career goal or are you also under the impression this path lets you actually have a life?"

Miles Morales has posed:
"No idea," Miles replies with a shake of his head, "You'd have asked me, like, five years ago? I'd want to be an engineer or an artist or something. But after I graduated high school I didn't even want to go to the college because I had no idea. So I deferred, just did the spider-thing for a bit. I figure that, and not declaring my major right away? Gives me plenty of time to be indecisive."

He finishes the last of his burger, scrunching the paper up into a ball and tossing it into his backpack as well.

"That's the good thing about having great power. It's a great excuse."

Cindy Moon has posed:
Silk keeps her chin resting on her knees, peering out over Brooklyn. Or what little bit of it she can see from this perch, anyways. It's a big place, Silk Senses only let her cheat so much.

"I use to think about that kind of thing.. what will I do when I grow up, how many kids will I have, where will I live.." She snorts and rolls her eyes, "Kids stuff. Normal kids stuff. I've been 'this' since high school. I didn't get to graduate or think about where I'd go to college." This isn't said in complaint or whining about the hand she's been dealt.

"Life is the thing I pretend to do when I'm not doing this.. the way I can afford to eat so I can keep doing this. Relationships get in the way of this. A home is a thing I can lose because I do this." She looks over at Miles and shrugs, cheek laying where her chin had been.

"My future is this."