9047/Curfey Bearn

Curfey Bearn
Date of Scene:	12 December 2021
Location:	The Coffee Bean
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	April O'Neil, Darcy Lewis

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April O'Neil has posed:
The Channel Six News Van is parked just down the street. There was a Santa Clause celebration at a shopping mall on the corner of the street, and April O'Neil was sent to cover it! In the cold... and someone drove their car past her and splashed her jeans with water from the gutter while she was live on-air... people are so funny...

Now, however, the reporter has finished up her work and is marching her way toward the coffee shop to get something to warm her up.

The young reporter is wearing a black motorcycle jacket over a white sweater that is tucked in to a pair of blue jeans that are wet from the waist down, her cuffs still dripping water as she approaches the coffee shop and pulls open the door handle.

Once inside, she puts her hands up to rub some warmth back in to them, then sweeps her eyes around the interior to take in the festive decorations and decor of the place.

Once it's her turn she steps up to the counter to order her extra tall latte of white chocolate mocha!

She eagerly waits by the area to pick it up, glancing around at those here in the shop, some of them eying her wet pants... Or so she thinks that's what they're eying anyway!

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Darcy is a very normal person! Or attempts to live the life of such, despite currently having alien weapons hooked up in her lab at the secret spy organization where she is employed. Part-time, anyway. The rest of the time, she works as adjunct faculty at a university. MAYBE THE ONE NEAR HERE. And like a any upper middle class white urbanite twentysomething, she too is a great fan of her many imaginative hand-crafted espresso beverages.

Thus: "... right the sugar cookie latte, but an extra pump and uh, oh do you have the egg nog instead of cream yet? Oh great. Yeah. That." It seems that she too is just finishing a drink order, one that sounds rather sinful with all its goodies and extras.

She too is in shrouded in winter-y garb as she shuffles down the counter toward the pick-up area to wait, a dark grey peacoat obscuring a good part of her outfit, although the hem of a dark maroon dress or skirt just barely extends beneath it, followed by black thermal tights and big chonky boots for the weather. Similarly, a dark red wool hat tops her head, and she's even got a scarf! Between all that bundling and her large, thick-rimmed hipster-ish glasses, she looks very different from her appearance at a certain party outing!

And like many, it is the drip-drip-drip of poor April's soaked attire that first catches her attention when they end up beside each other at the end of the counter, although her interest is not only in the gawking! "Oh ugh, are you OK? You must be freezing like that, I wonder-"

And then, she stops, mid-thought process, as something pops into her head. She blinks, furrows her brow as if in deep thought. "I swear I know you from somewhere..." DUN DUN DUN. The party looms... "Oh, you're that news lady! Wow what happened?"

April O'Neil has posed:
April is not nearly as warmly dressed as Darcy is, and when she hears the other young woman speak to her, April looks over at her to show a smile. She sees Darcy's attire and then glances down at herself. April laughs at the question. She looks back up then and shakes her head right to left. "Some asshole saw me doing a broadcast on the corner and decided to drive his van right through the big ass pot hole." She shows a bright smile on her face, entirely recognizable from the party as she didn't have much different makeup on her face then than she does now, but her hair is down ... for whatever difference that makes!

She is also used to getting recognized, especially in Manhattan proper.

"And I'm totally freezing." She says with another light laugh, before she tilts her head to stare at Darcy. "You look familar too..." She says then with a questioning stare before her drink arrives and she pulls her eyes over to it to grab it up. Darcy's is set down a second later, so April steps out of the way. She wraps both her hands around the cup and slips the cardboard guard off to get all the heat in to her bones! "Mmmm..." She utters as she lifts the cup up to sniff the warm steam coming out of the tiny little lid hole!

Darcy Lewis has posed:
Darcy does her huuuuugest of eyerolls in the memory of Mr. Jerkface McVanGuy. "Ugh that's awful. Think you coulda gotten his plates on camera? I mean it's probably not a crime but, I don't know, could find out who he is and..." What? What delightful revenge fantasies are springing to life? Darcy Lewis is not one to easily forgive, nor forget!

... or something like that. In her head, maybe.

More practically, she wonders: "Is the rest of your crew still out there? You don't have a change in the news van or whatever, do you?" Is there even a news van? "We're lucky the weather hasn't really gotten too bad yet - well, no, that's just global warming, so I wouldn't call it lucky exactly - but anyway at least it's not literally freezing. Still, damp clothes don't help. Your body heat causes evaporation and that reduces your temperature. Which can weaken the immune response!"

Oh right, she's a physicist and a general huge-ass nerd.

"Anyway, if you don't have a change, I guess it makes sense to sit while they dry a little. You want company? I was gonna do the 'be antisocial on my laptop in the coffee shop while looking like I must be doing something important' thing, but... I really didn't have anything important to do on it." Her scam revealed! And at least both of them have nice hot drinks, which arrive not too long into this chitchat:

"I've got one for April and... Darby?"

"Ugh."

April O'Neil has posed:
April just stands there with her eyes closed for a moment basking in the warming warmth of the drink in her mits. She opens her eyes at Darcy though, looking from her to the drink and then back again. "Darby? That's an interesting name... I just had my first Roller Derby game the other day. Not... that... those two things are connected in any way, shape, or form... but hey. They sound similar." She flashes a smile then and looks to an open table near one of the store's vents. "Sure, I'd enjoy company." She says then as she steps over to it and settles in, reaching for some of the napkins to make a little pile beside her cup. Her blue eyes dart back to Darcy and she looks the woman over again. "I didn't bring a change, no. I should start doing that... that's a really good idea. My cameraman, Vernon, is still out there editing what we recorded. He said it was a city vehicle that did it, so I'm not sure... how well a vendetta would go over. But..." She sighs. "I am pretty hard on city services, so they're the ones with the vendetta most likely."

April smiles then. "I love your outfit though. It looks really warm. You're gonna have to coach me, I think." She laughs lightly. "I'm April, by the way... and yeah, I feel like I've talked to you before. It's the weirdest thing."

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"No, no, it's Darcy. DAR-SEE." She ennuciates this extra loud and extra-slow, not for April but for the barrista, who naturally only rolls her eyes. HIPSTER BATTLE.

"Ugh," she repeats.

Still, they have their drinks, and so things are looking brighter in at least that one small way. And with those in hand, it's off to the table, and the nicely warm heater vent, a comfy bubble of yummy drinks and not freezing to death. On arrival, there is one very much outstanding question, and it's still not about where they might have met other than the 6 o'clock news: "You do roller derby?" She sounds surprised... but also a little bit impressed. "That's really cool, actually. Must be a fun stress reliever."

Talk of the city vendetta earns more exasperated noises, Darcy's mild (to put it lightly) activist streak again rearing its head. "I'd say I can't believe they'd do that... but I can totally believe they'd do that. Investigative journalism and incredibly corrupt local governments rarely get along."

April's own introduction is probably a little unecessary at this point, since it's obvious Darcy has put her together with her show. It's just their other meeting that is eluding her. Maybe it's because her vision legit sucks! (those big glasses ain't just for show) Then again, that was a weird night and she ended up in a drinking contest with an alien, a robot. and Deadpool. So her memory might be a little hazy. "Yeah, from channel 6. I watch you all the time. And don't let them get you down on it, I guess, it's great that you're willing to do stuff like that, report on what's happening. So much media is overly corporatized and shallow these days!" Rabble rabble!

Talk of her outfit coincides with her unwinding the scarf, as sitting under the full blast of the heat, it actually proves a bit much. "It's all about layers!" she declares. "It's more modular that way. Add more if it's cold, take some off if you're hot." But there's a pause, as she's got the scarf half-unwrapped. "Talked to me? Now that you mention it, yeah... although I'm sure I'd remember that. I don't know, do you report much on obscure astrophysics research?"

April O'Neil has posed:
April, once settled in to her seat, actually does start to remove her black motorcycle jacket. She sets it over the back of her chair, leaving her in that off-white sweater that is snug to her form, but looks softy and comfy. She smiles brightly at Darcy's words, shaking her head at the last question there. "I barely even know what that is..." She admits. "I did recently break in to a genetics lab though, and freed a bunch of caged animals. Thankfully none of them had any zombie viruses... that we know of yet..." She mutters those last few words before taking a sip of her drink.

When she lowers the cup again, she flashes Darcy a grin. "I'm new to the Derby, but my roommate is all about it. She's been harping on me to join her team. I finally gave in... I suck at it. But I'm learning." She keeps her grin then.

"Layers. I'll remember that. I'm used to dressing light because I still ride my bike to and from work... good exercise.... bad in the winter."

April purses her lips as she glances outside through one of the large windows beside them before she looks back to Darcy, and then she gets it. "Wait a second..." She says, her natural perception triggering. "You were the ... Orion slave girl." She says, pausing to glance around to make sure nobody heard her. Some definitely did. Oh well.

Her eyes dart back to Darcy and she points at herself. "Sla---" Stop. "Huttslayer Leia. Halloween party at the Hellfire?"

Investigative journalism!

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"Yeah, I... kind of didn't think so. Most people don't. And I would have remembered getting interviewed for the news. No one interviews us for the news. Well, unless there's some kind of alien invasion or giant space-hole..." Darcy's eyes turn upward, as if imagining such a thing above them, even as she sips cautiously at the edge of her nice hot cup of holiday goodness. "Admittedly, that happens a lot more often than it usd to, these days. But even then, they're not usually interviewing ME about it." Does she sound a little insulted by that?!

"That's cool though, animal testing is terrible." A quick pause, and she wonders, "You can get away with doing stuff like that, as a reporter? Fortunately my kind of science is all uh, either pointing telescopes at huge things millions of light years away, or trying to look at stuff here that's so small we're not even sure they're real or just theoretical. Either way, it's all mostly particles bouncing around. Nothing alive. Very low chances of zombie outbreaks. Maybe the worst that happens, I get Hulk powers. Or die of horrible cancer." Those are the two popular choices!

Besides sensible fashion advice and eco-terrorism, it's definitely the sport that stands out to her. "I've never really- I've only seen a few things about it, here or there, but it always struck me as a really interesting sport. And a great way to get out some pent-up aggression." Which she does seem to have! "So what do you do exactly, like are there team positions or do you all just-"

Except here, the journalist has figured things out. And Darcy looks horrified. At least at the fact that April just said it out loud, triggering her own memory, and DOUBLY for the fact that some people might have overheard them. "HAHAHA WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT-"

Her voice drops to a whisper: "-shh! I uh, right. Right. That's right. Sorry. That was kind of a crazy night. But people from the university come here all the time." The secret life of Associate Professor Lewis!

April O'Neil has posed:
April winces at the revelation of Darcy being secretive about her costume choices. She raises her shoulders a little and leans forward some. "Sorry. I figured you were 'out and proud' about that costume. It looked great." She says a bit quieter then before straightening up in her chair and reaching for her cup again to raise it up for another drink. "I was there with my roommate, the same as the derby nut." She responds further then. "She ... manages to convince me to do all kinds of wild stuff. Like metal bikinis at the end of October... She's quite a ... card? I dunno what the expression is..." April shakes her head dismissively then.

"And no, I kinda did the lab thing on an impulse, because it was totally illegal what they were doing there. So what are they gonna do? Rat me out? Well... I got all the info to rat them out. Which I did. So... they lose." She smirks then before leaning forward again to whisper at the other.

"So why did you wear that costume if you're embarrassed by it?" Questions! Reporter!

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"I'm not- it's just- well you see I-" Darcy has a few false-starts explaining herself, stumbling over her words and ultimately starting again each time. After a few such attempts, she pauses, as if re-gathering her wits (and courage) before trying to lay it out properly, all while still casting the occasional cautious glance around the room. "I'm not really... I don't usually go to things like that, or get invited to them even! But a coworker of mine had an invite they weren't going to use, and it seemed really fun." It is a bit more 'on brand' for your average suave SHIELD spy to show up at such a gala than the nerdy lab tech! "I guess that's kind of like your friend encouraging you? I'd be kind of self-conscious anywhere else. Like those sci-fi conventions where people dress up? It's always ninety-nine percent guys and it gets really awkward, really fast. But they said it was just that kind of party and I figured no one would really know me there anyway."

Her rare chance to live it up!

"Your friend sounds fun," she adds, after a moment of self-reflection over latte-sipping. "And your costume was really good. All those details! Mine was just kind of... it was mostly just a generic dancer thing I just barely threw together since it was all on short notice. I think it was mostly the bodypaint that sold it." That, and the 'barely' in the 'barely thrown together.' "Did your friend have all the alien make-up?" She remembers more than she lets on! Or it's coming back, anyway.

As for her illegal exploits backed up even even more illegal blackmailing? "Well, good. Fuck'em."

April O'Neil has posed:
So yeah, the two women are whispering loudly at their table in the coffee shop. It doesn't look silly at all! Especially since one of them has wet pants that left a dribbly trail over to the table.

April just smiles warmly at these words from Darcy, a bit more color to her cheeks now that she's warmed up some in here. "Well you looked awesome. So you should wear it with pride." She says back before shaking her head. "I dunno where my roommate gets this stuff. For all I know she took it from the Smithsonian... which..." April turns her head and stares off in to the distance in thought. "I ... better look in to that."

Harley. Afterall.

She shoots her gaze back across the table then to Darcy. "I get invites to stuff like that all the time. It's part of the whole 'press' crap. Fancy events, and nerdy conventions. If you're interested, you could tag along some time. Hey, maybe you'd like to strap on some skates and be one of the enforcers on our team. Cause like, yeah, there's positions... Runners and Punchers, or something. I dunno. Harley.... my roommate.... kinda seems to be making her own rules up for the game as she goes. So I might not have the best insight in to what official Roiller Derby rulesets are." She smirks then.

Another sip of her coffee is taken.

"So you're a scientist huh? Got any scoops for me? Space stuff? Next big alien invasion?" And then she looks up too, just like Darcy had moments ago...

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"Oh the original Slave Leia costume isn't at the Smithsonian, not any more," Darcy explains. The nerddom strikes back, or something! "There were actually two versions of it, a hard metal one for static close-ups, and a rubber one for action scenes... Anyway, I think the metal one was sold at an auction they held with a bunch of the original props. I know there's a version on a traveling museum tour but I think that's a-"

Wait, and this isn't even the costume she was wearing!

"Ah, sorry, that's... you were just joking anyway, right?" Little does she know about Harley! "About someone stealing the real one. But it was still really authentic looking. Maybe your friend is just really good at costuming? That outfit is probably, like, one of the most famous and popular cosplays of all time, so a lot of people do it and I bet there's a lot of designs and tutorials you can get online for making your own." Maybe it's for the BEST she only thinks of Harley as talented seamstress and nothing more!

Well, talented seamstress, derby wildcard...

"I'd be more interested in going to one of your matches," she finally admits, after all the talk about subsequent fancy functions that April might be able to sneak her into. "I think most of those things, I'd be out of my depth. But the game sounds really fun. A nice way to cut loose."

It's the last question that gives her the most trouble, though, because... well, she actually has to lie. "Oh, I don't really know anything about that side of it." No spy here! "I just study the... science and theory behind it all, you know? Like how they travel. That's probably the most interesting thing, because if we could figure it out, maybe we could do the same thing. And not all of them even use ships!"

April O'Neil has posed:
April just starts to tilt her head a little as Darcy begins to desplay the depth of her nerd knowledge. It is by far deeper than April's own... She just stares at the woman, impressed? Confused? It's hard to say. She just cracks at the question of whether she was joking or not though. "Of course I was joking."

She wasn't.

"But yeah, my roomie is extremely ... talented. Gifted even. So if she wanted to make a exact replica... well, nobody else could do it like her." She laughs then... and takes another sip of her drink.

She also escaped from Arkham about twenty times. But that detail is left out for now.

"There's something sad to think that the real metal one is in the hands of some random rich person.... god only knows what they've done with it." She shudders at the thought and shakes her head to clear it from her mind before her focus goes to Darcy again.

"Lets swap contact info then, and I'll let you know when the next several games are. See if you can't come to some. It'll be awesome."

She lets a slow grin cross her lips then. "So you're in to black holes and shit then? That's awesome. My father wanted me to go in to a science job like he had... but... yeah. I was always obsessed with calling liars out, and finding out what was really going on behind closed doors." She gives another quick smile then to the other woman.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"Sure, sounds great." Darcy is quickly in the process of producing her phone, tapping through apps to get to her contacts and the thing that can conveniently send them by local RFID. "Though my schedule can be a little weird sometimes. Just gimme a heads-up a bit ahead of time, when the next one's gonna be." Tap, tap tap.

As her fingers do the walking, she answers very casually about her work. Maybe a little too casually, for discussing things so monumentally, fudamentally destructive. "Mhm. Black holes and neutron stars, quasars and pulsars, all that kind of stuff. A lot of our understanding of the really crazy stuff about the universe comes from watching these things, even though they're incomphrensible distances away, and the ones that we can see have often already been dead for millions of years. Everyone thinks light speed is fast, until you start studying space, then you realize just how slow it is." She looks up from the phone and shrugs. "Which is why the kind of travel these aliens do is interesting. You have to discover other kinds of ways of manipulating physical laws, to be able to travel anywhere useful, without it taking so long you've been dead for generations by the time you get there."

A final tap, and a little notification comes up on April's phone, that she has the info. Darcy Lewis, PhD. A .edu email address. All very boring and professional! "Or there's even crazier stuff, like the Einstein-Rosen Bridge... what a lot of people would call a wormhole? They're pretty interesting. And that's how the Asgardians travel. You know, like Thor? That avenger guy?" Apparently, this part isn't classified. "That's actually kind of how I got into this field- he was on some adventure and me and my future advisor got swept up in it."

And in a smaller voice: "alsomaybeItaseredhim." Ahem.

"Journalism's really an honorable profession though, at least among the people who still do it for real. You should be really proud of that. I was kind of interested in it when I was in undergrad, you know? All that political and activism stuff. But I just kind of get swept up into this field." Meeting space weirdos will do that!

April O'Neil has posed:
April gets her phone out of her jacket too, and drops it on the table lightly. She puts her left elbow on the table beside it, placing her hand against the side of her face as she listens to Darcy explain more about herself. She shows expressions that grow in strength here and there, smiles and such. "Oh yes. Space is a minor interest of mine. In so far as to say I fully believe it's entirely fake, and am whole heartedly a flat Earther."

She says this with a sturdy level of confidence to the point that Darcy might, maybe, believe it. And her confident stare is unwavering as her blue eyes focus on Darcy's.

But, of course, after a few beats she just smiles brightly at her. "I'm kidding. Of course. But I have had several people who still believe that on my podcast to give their ideas on why its fake and how all we've ever seen from space has actually been CGI." April grins as the contact info comes across.

She glances at it.

"Wooo. A doctor." She says as she looks up again. "Look at you, Hot Stuff." She jests with the other woman then. "Thor, huh? God. I wouldn't mind meeting him..." She says in a dreamy kind of way. "But yeah, I love my job. For the most part. I mean... I don't like the part where I get tied up in backrooms, or .... SHOT ... but still. I feel like I've done a lot of good, even if I'm not heralded like Captain America, or Wonder Woman."

Darcy Lewis has posed:
The joke definitely provokes the ASTROPHYSICIST to start to open her mouth in protest, before realizing that she has been had. She makes a face!

"I can definitely attest that he's one alien who isn't CGI," she goes on in a flat tone, perhaps still smarting from having been fooled, or just exasperated at the idea that April might be forced to talk to people who believe this stuff for real. "He's quite, er, solid." Mmmmmhmmmm!

"As for all the other stuff, I dunno. I can see people being dubious of some of it, but we've had... they've attacked parts of the planet. Left wreckage. How many times has it happened now?" They need one of those signs for the comical 'days without X gag,' where the card inevitably falls off to reveal a zero. For the whole darn planet. "Some people are tragically ignorant. Others... willfully."

And finally, with a touch of shock: "People shoot at you?!" Should she really be shocked? People shoot at her too. Well, not usually AT her. But occasionally at people she might be standing next to. "I guess the truth really is the enemy to a lot of bad people. Which makes you following it anyway? Yeah, I'd call it heroic."

April O'Neil has posed:
April just gently shakes her head at this talk of heroic. "I was handcuffed to a sewer pipe." She corrects. "I was the hostage, and got shot by the guy threatening the person who came to my rescue. So I dunno how heroic that is. But.... hey, they wanted me dead cause I ruined their money laundering business. So that's something, I guess." She flashes another grin then before raising her drink up to sip from it.

Once it's settled down again, April chimes up again. "How about I have you on the podcast sometime? Eh? Maybe debate one of these Flatty's live online? You'll get a ton of donations. Especially if you're wearing the Orion thing."

She grins again. "I'm kidding again, of course. I have a very horrible sense of humor." She shakes that off as her phone is glanced at, then she looks back up to Darcy. "If you ever do want to talk Space, or Thor's thickness on a podcast though, it's an option too. I'd love to interview a space doctor on my show."

She pauses then. "You did say thickness in reference to Thor, right? Or did I just imagine that word?"

Darcy Lewis has posed:
"That's awful," Darcy offers, with some genuine sense of not just sympathy but horror. Definitely more personal than people vaguely trying to blow up SHIELD while Darcy just happens to be in their general vicinity. "So what, the cops show up at the last minute? Or one of the more costume-y hero-types?"

Savoring her drink as April does, there's another narrowing of her eyes at the suggestion of appearing 'in costume,' although this time, she is not quite so easily fooled: "I was under the impression that podcasts are just audio, so I'm not sure how the listeners would even know." See? This is why she's the smarty scientist! "Unless it's just for your personal amusement."

Still, after this rebuttal, she smiles in a more relaxed way. "I'd be happy to come on and school some morons, or even just talk about what I do. Science doesn't get a lot of representation in the media, even though it's at the center of everything we do. And scientISTS even less."

However, the final topic is worthy of a bit of a cough and a glance off sideways. "I believe my exact word was 'solid,' Ms. O'Neil, as in the opposite of being some kind of artificial digitial CGI construct lacking significant mass. Let's keep our journalistic integrity, hmm?"

April O'Neil has posed:
That last part has April laughing and nodding her head. "You're right. My humor has gotten decidedly more raunchy over the past year or so. I also blame that on my roommate." She says with a big grin before she shakes her head lightly. "My cameraman for C6 is also my production manager for the podcast. Since he loves cameras so much, we also record video to Youtube, and a handful of alt tech sites that are decentralized. That kinda stuff is popular with tech geeks, helps grow our audience to a wider degree. Plus.... since I got my big break from television news, a lot of my fans want to see me, not just hear me. It's all a big thing... but yes, science!"

"WE'd love to have you on there, not in the Orion costume, your normal,, layered attire will do just fine!"

April exhales heavily then and glances at the door. "I suppose I should be braving the chill again though, and check up with Vernon before he drives off and leaves me." She notes as she looks back to Darcy. "This has been fun though. I'm glad we ran in to each other, Doctor." She says with a quick friendly smile then.

Darcy Lewis has posed:
The legend of the mysterious roomate only continues to grow...

Still, Darcy takes it all with good humor. "It makes sense you'd do other versions, yeah. I suppose there's probably plenty that do that kind of thing, or just want to release on every platform they can. But still..." A firm nod of agreement that she will be appearing as 'layered Darcy,' and not secret sci-fi geek slash exhibitionist nerdy fantasy-wear version! "Great. Just let me know if the topic is anything particularly weird, in case I need to do any extra preparation ahead of time." When it comes down to it, she talks the science-y stuff very seriously, and no doubt, if she spends some time lecturing, she must have all kinds of material designed preciely for explaining these complicated topics to... well, probably not conspiracy-theorist whackjobs, but at least to people who aren't (yet) doctors of rocket science, or whatever she is!

April's mention of a waiting Vernon has her glancing out the window. "Oh right, yeah. You probably have a deadline to submit your footage for and all." She turns back and leans to one side of her seat just to peer past the table see how badly April is still dripping, before ultimately advising, "Yeah, it was great. Just text me later. And make sure you get the heat on in there! And change out of those when you can!"

She will stick around, only fetching her laptop after April departs, to begin her conspicuous show of doing whatever on it!