Open Mouth, Insert Both Feet

Open Mouth, Insert Both Feet
Date of Scene:	13 May 2013
Location:	Traverse Town Inn
Synopsis:	It's Minette's big chance to leave a positive impression on her schoolyard crush! She doesn't.
Cast of Characters:	Kamon Lionward, Minette Odam

---

Minette Odam has posed:
Traverse Town isn't such a terrible place once one gets used to it. If one can look past the constant darkness, the hideous neon lights, and the sporadic ambushes by the Heartless, it can be downright pleasant. Moreover, Traverse Town is a nexsus, an interdimensional meeting place where one can find all manner of things from across the worlds. And what a place the market is!

Minette Odam, elite accountant and corporate spreadsheet demon, is required to travel for her job. Or at least, she has to nowadays. And to this end, she has ended up staying in the sleepy little inn, tucked away in the corner of District 2 (travel expenses can be written off, after all). She's spent the day shopping (really, just walking around and looking at things without buying much of anything), and has fallen back into the inn's cozy common room to kill the rest of the evening (such as it is) until she gets tired enough to sleep. She's about the only one in there, sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace. Naturally, she is passing the time in the most intellectually stimulating way available to her.

Her yo-yo goes down, her yo-yo comes up. Repeat ad nauseum.

Kamon Lionward has posed:
Kamon has kind of gotten used to Traverse Town, actually. It reminds him a bit of his first home.

While some people have been doing interplanetary business and combating the forces of evil, others (read: Kamon) have been doing less-exciting but no less unnecessary duties on the home front (read: he found a job at a deli). Those, uh, duties didn't really pan out, though; after he went to go find out why the owner's husband was kind of crazy due to some portal thing and couldn't fix it despite locating the source, he promptly lost his job. Since then, he's basically been a glorified delivery boy while hunting shards of their home planet.

No luck so far, though.

Kamon trudges into the inn's common room with his backpack slung over his shoulder and a wooden pole sticking out where his sword usually is. He shuffles over to his favorite spot by the fireplace, depositing his pack and... shovel?... next to an armchair and then dropping into it. He exhales in obvious relief once he's off his feet.

/Then/ he notices Minette, and promptly spends a moment staring at her in abject confusion.

Minette Odam has posed:
Yo-yo goes down. Kamon enters. Yo-yo comes up. Kamon plops down. Yo-yo goes down. Minette glances over and spots Kamon. Yo-yo comes up and knocks Minette on the chin as she stares at Kamon in abject confusion. "Owwie, owwie, owwie..." Two seconds in and she already looks like a doofus; as she rubs her chin to ease the pain she wonders if this is some kind of new record.

Minette looks over. Then glances around, taking note that there isn't anyone else here. She looks back towards Kamon. "Uh." She stammers out. "H-hi." She concludes, shyly and awkwardly. This would be the first time they've seen each other since school and the world disappeared into darkness. Though in Minette's mind this is probably the first time that Kamon's ever looked at her. Following in Souji's wake it's easy to not be seen.

Kamon Lionward has posed:
Kamon blinks upon yo-yo impact, ceasing his confused look. He winces a little bit, and is immediately stricken with indecision. He's not sure if he should ask if she's okay, or if asking will make this perhaps worse, or if /not/ asking makes him a jerk. There's another moment of hesitant staring, and he finally settles on an empathetic, "Ouch."

Though, the worst part is the /complete lack of recognition/. He knows he's seen her before, and knows its from school, but cannot for the life of him remember her name. "Uh -- hi," he replies, lifting a hand slightly to give the slightest two-fingered wave. He furrows his brow in thought, lapsing back into silence.

Then, something clicks in his head. He snaps his fingers. "Minette!!" Kamon exclaims suddenly, pointing directly at her. It does not occur to him that this could be the worst of the several decisions he could have made.

Minette Odam has posed:
Minette starts as her name is declared, half flinched back from the suddeness of it. But then her heart almost skips a beat. 'He knows my name. He KNOWS my name! He DOES know I exsist, ahahaha!' Minette's face brightens up perceptibly (which is an achievement given how much of it is hidden behind her glasses), and then she up and /smiles/, an open mouthed thing that makes her look less intellegent.

"Y-yes! That is me." She accents this by pointing her thumb at her chest, as if to say 'yep, you got me'. "Yes. Minette. Uh. Hiiiiiii."

Kamon Lionward has posed:
As soon as Minette's expression turns to 8D, Kamon feels twenty percent more awkward about this whole encounter.

"Yes! I, uh -- sorry, I --" He cuts himself off to organize thoughts into words. Then, he continues. "I've seen you with Souji. Before, uh, before everything... happened." Kamon doesn't really want to get any more specific than that. That wound is still fresh, for him. "So... uh..." He trails off, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing at the fireplace.

"...good to, uh, see you, out here," he finishes, lamely.

Minette Odam has posed:
"Yeah." It's good to see me! It's GOOD to see ME. Minette is confused by this; no one ever says that it's good to see her. It's never good to see Minette. Except Thirza, but Thirza doesn't count because, well, it's Thirza. It's good to see her and now she'll

what comes next

Minette does not know what comes next. Someone ought to say something. Something /should/ be said, that's how conversations go, right? Right. So since Kamon just said something the onus is on her to say something. And she doesn't know what to "So how are... you?"

Kamon Lionward has posed:
Minette's thought process is long and involved. That is to say, it's long and involved in such a way that necessitates letting her mouth run in a manner that her brain has absolutely no control over. Given that she's the Murasame accountant, she /does/ have a brain behind the gigantic coke-bottle lenses; the fact that it can't reign in her mouth is just a thing that occasionally happens to people their age.

Some people would call it hormones. Kamon doesn't call it anything at all.

"Wiped," Kamon replies with a small sigh. "I've been trying to raise some money, and running packages works, but..." He shakes his head. "Some people just -- they, uh, have some weird things that they want me to take places. Like sinks, and rare plants, and empty jars."

Kamon is basically the middle-man in a fetch quest chain. He's pretty sure he's facilitating six seperate transaction chains all at once. It is uniquely exhausting. However, this means he doesn't want to fight someone, not that he can't have a conversation. He's far less awkward when he's not being asked important questions or made to make terrible decisions.

(That last part is Nik's job.)

"But it's... coming along. And I guess I can look for pieces, too -- oh, do you, uh, know about the... shard... thing?" Kamon inquires vaguely. He doesn't seem to be catching that Minette's happiness at being named is abnormal.

Minette Odam has posed:
Minette being happy is abnormal.

"Oh that's... that's good." She replies. She doesn't know anything about sinks, or rare plants, or empty jars unless they have the scant remains of the peanut butter she just ate in them. "The shards? Uh, Alma said a... thing about them. Something." Minette squints, shoving a finger in her ear and wiggling it about for a moment. "Something about the stars and math involved. Haven't had time to work out the numbers yet, might not pan out."

"You should... you should work for Souji?" Minette volunteers. "He could give you a job. Searching for the shards, that is. He'd pay well."

Kamon Lionward has posed:
To be fair, Kamon doesn't know her well enough to know that. He also doesn't know anything about these things he's delivering either, just that people seem to want them passed around, and that they don't appear to be terribly evil. Soan would've told him once he spotted him with one of those, and he's basically everywhere.

"Yeah. I, uh, I think if we got them, we could put the world back together. Or part of it. Soan said something about it." Minette proposes something. Kamon shrugs, and slouches into his armchair with a frown. "Iiii... dunno." He looks back to the fireplace, lapsing into silence for a few moments. How do you tell someone that you're pretty sure their boss is a shady motherfucker without offending them?

"My dad used to say," Kamon says slowly and deliberately, "that you shouldn't take a job to take a bullet for someone who wasn't prepared to do the same for you. I think that he was paraphrasing my great-granddad, and mostly meant that if they won't go out on a limb for you, you shouldn't do it for them. Defending the weak is one thing, but defending the powerful when they won't expend some of their own power to help you in return is another."

Kamon shifts in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. He goes back to an almost-mutter. "Um -- what I mean is, I don't really... want to get paid for something like that. I think he wants shards for his own uses, not to just... help set things right."

Minette Odam has posed:
"Eh?" Minette replies, tilting her head to the side. Her twist-braids hang limply down at an awkward angle. "I'm not... really sure that I follow what you mean. If Souji finds the shards... well, then everything would be good again, right? Does it really matter who puts our world back togather again, so long as it's back?"

Minette pulls her legs up onto the couch and wraps her arms around them. "I miss... home. The seas around here don't smell right. I don't think it's really in Souji's best interests to find all the shards, anyway. If they all get put back togather, then he wouldn't be in charge of the zaibatsu anymore, right? A-anyway... he's a really nice person, underneath it all."

Kamon Lionward has posed:
"I... dunno. It just doesn't sit right with me." He shrugs helplessly, and slouches a little more into the deep chair. "Maybe I'm just old-fashioned," he mutters. "Probably get /that/ from my dad, too."

Kamon nods a little. "I lived on Leviathan for a little while," he remarks. "Dad and me, we... moved around a lot. I didn't really, um, do any swimming, but we were there for a little while. It was a beautiful place -- um, when I was there, I mean," he hastily adds. He doesn't like to sound fatalist about the fate of their world, not after the stink he raised last time someone did that.

Kamon is still again. Then, he nods a bit more slowly. "...yeah, he wouldn't. Sorry, I don't -- I don't really know him like you do." He'll take Minette's word for it. He just won't act on that tidbit, either. "I just want things to go back to the way they were. It's gonna take some work, but, well... it's possible."

Minette Odam has posed:
Minette rests her chin on her knees and lets out a long, drawn out sigh. Home. The smell of the salt sea, the feel of spray on her face, the rise and swell of the waves. The houses carved into the very rock of the spits of land that dared to rise out of the depths below. Minette had only ever seen Leviathan. Well, she saw the Academy, of course. At a little bit of Ramuh. Ramuh was... well, ugly. She can't understand how people could live like that.

She lets the comments on Souji's benevolence or malevolence slide past, electing instead to just sort of frown a little. After a few quiet moments, she asks instead, "What was Odin like? I've read about it, but..."

Kamon Lionward has posed:
Kamon stayed on the land, but even he couldn't deny the beauty inherent in a place like that. That kind of expanse of water was mind-boggling to behold; Odin didn't really /have/ anything like that, barring some shallow pools and wells drawn up from beneath the surface. Even that wasn't exactly the most sanitary-looking fluid, but it kept you sustained.

"Odin?" Kamon doesn't seem to be anticipating the question. He looks up with a start. "Well..." He trails off for a second, thinking. Odin. He hadn't been there in years, but he can remember it just as clearly as if it were yesterday. Maybe it's something to do with being one of its children: you just... /know/.

"It's... cold, sometimes," he begins slowly, "and hot, other times. There's not much vegetation, but there are these..." He trails off again, trying to put it into words. "These... spires. Like rock formations, but made of metal. They stick up all over the place, out of the dirt and the sand, and sometimes they sort of... twist together. Fiends live under them most of the times, and it's really dangerous to travel. Everywhere but the city, you'd get attacked all the time, so everyone has to fight. But there's these spots --"

Kamon smiles, remembering fondly. He lifts a hand, gesturing as if painting a picture. "-- places where you could sit, and see the sun come up. And it'd cross these stone shelves sort of slanting out of the ground, and catch the veins of different metal in them, and make the whole thing light up in the morning. You could see all these patterns, and even the fiends stopped and watched sometimes."

"It... didn't really matter that it wasn't green, or blue, or anything, when you saw things like that. It made it worth it."

Minette Odam has posed:
"Woah." is Minette's well thought-out, intellectual reply. "One Leviathan, it's like..."

Minette thinks to her childhood, growing up on the waves. Often times literally, for both of her parents were needed to work the fishing boat and they couldn't very well leave her at home alone. The whirl-pools in the middle of the ocean. The sight of the gulls flying around the cliffs. The rays of the sun coming through the morning mists. She thinks of all these wonders and more, and she says,

"We have fish. Like... a lot of fish." Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid...

Kamon Lionward has posed:
Kamon has a poet's soul. It is what lets him do things like cut his initials into peoples' shirts.

"I don't think I've ever seen a fish that wasn't on a plate or in one of those... really... round... bowls," Kamon says, getting progressively lamer as he goes. He does not think Minette is stupid; after all, he is pretty sure that he shouldn't be casting /that/ stone. He's not really a genius himself (though few would call him a dolt except disparagingly).

"We didn't really have any fish," Kamon says. "Mostly, uh... land animals. I think I prefer the cafeterias at the Academy, though."

Minette Odam has posed:
"There's a lot you can do with fish." Minette replies. She has been accused of stupidity. Among other things. "You can fry them, you can stew them. They can be baked. Or broiled. Or grilled. Or cooked over an open flame. You can salt them, of course, or you can" stop talking about fish, stupid "use lemon or tartar sauce. And there's some places that prepare them raw." that isn't stopping, moron "You can cook them in a stew..." you said that already "...did I say that already?" yes you did, stupid, get off fish, get off fish!!!

"Oh, those are nice." Minette turns away, looking towards the fireplace. "It's... nice, having someone cook for you, I guess."

Kamon Lionward has posed:
Kamon has learned more about fish than he ever desired to know. At least, about the proper preparation of fish, or the delicious methods behind it. Truthfully, cooking is not... his... thing. "Uhh..." Kamon thinks for a second. "I... think you did." He's actually pretty positive that she did. He also is pretty positive he's never had fish in a stew. Weird.

"Well, when you can afford it," he adds. He stretches his legs out in front of him. "I mostly lived on, uh, pasta and canned fruit. Or in the halls that took meal chits." Kamon: not one of the rich kids at the Academy. He apparently has /some/ connections there, though.

And has the feeling they should stop talking about food. He's getting hungry just thinking about it.

Minette Odam has posed:
"Oh, yeah. I usually had to make my own lunches, and bring them in a little bag. That was, uhm. Yeah." Something that teenagers get made fun of, for. After all, who can't afford the food at the cafeteria? 'Poverty Princess', that's who couldn't. One of Minette's many unwanted nicknames. Things get quiet again. Minette is left wondering what to say. She reaches. "So what's... new?" And doesn't quite grasp. D'oh.

Kamon Lionward has posed:
Kamon doesn't say anything about his knowledge or ignorance of the 'Poverty Princess' title. The only reason he didn't get more disparaging nicknames was because he's kind of imposing, because his scholarship to the school included cafeteria food during certain times of the day, and because rumor had it that he could and would kill you with your own plastic spork for interrupting him during meal times.

Half of that rumor was true, even.

"Uh..." He hesitates. Is anything new and worth remarking on? He thinks he's already done that. "I dunno." Kamon shrugs. "What, uh, what about with you?"

Minette Odam has posed:
"I'unno." Minette replies. And then there was silence. Awkward and uncomfortable, as if someone had just said something uncharitable about someone recently deceased. It's very unpleasant. Minette's mind attempts to piece togather a string of thread to keep the conversation going and prevent Kamon from leaving, bu her mind keeps alternating between 'I've got to think of something' and 'I can't think of anything'.

"You you want to... sit over here?" Minette asks. There's a ton of room on the couch with her curled up in a fetal ball like that. Though why Kamon would want to abandon his chair to come over to the couch not even Minette can answer.

Kamon Lionward has posed:
The silence doesn't press down on Kamon nearly as badly as it does Minette. He's just glad to get off his feet after effectively running a marathon while carrying boxes of varying sizes. He wonders if he should invest in a vehicle, or a chocobo, and make things easier. He wonders further if it would just cost him more, and drive him into a crazy cycle of maintenance spending and work to pay for the maintenance to work and--

"Huh?" Kamon looks up like he hadn't heard her. "Oh." He looks down at his feet. "I'm, uh, pretty comfortable. I think my legs might fall off if I tried to get up. Um, thanks, though."

Okay, /now/ he's starting to for reals notice the awkward.

Minette Odam has posed:
"Oooooh, okay." Minette says, a little crestfallen that her offer was rebuffed. Though that isn't going to be how things happened when she gossips with Thirza later. "You should, get a chocobo or something. I have a chocobo plushie named Boco." OH MY GODS WHY DID I TELL HIM THAT now he thinks I'm a dork.

Kamon Lionward has posed:
Kamon feels a little bad now.

Only a little.

"Yeah?" 'DORK DORK DORK SHE'S A DORK,' Minette's brain surely supplies. Fortunately, Kamon isn't that kind of guy. He's genuinely trying to be nice, here. "I've got a cousin who collects those," he comments with a small smile, reminiscing. "Her favorite was this old red one that was missing a wing. I think she chewed it off when she was little."

Minette Odam has posed:
oh god now he's talking about dork things i am such a dork to make him to that

"That's neat. I haven't had Boco very long, only since we came... well, here. I couldn't really afford those sorts of things before I started working for Mr. Murasame. I didn't have those sorts of things growing up." At a loss for something to say, Minette decides to swallow her own foot. "So how's your cousin doing now?" She regrets it the /instant/ the words pass her lips and she cringes at her own foolishness before Kamon even replies.

Kamon Lionward has posed:
There are only so many times you can put your foot in your mouth before someone breaks down and points out what you stepped in.

"..." Kamon turns away from Minette, his amicable demeanor melting away like an early morning's frost coming into direct contact with the surface of the sun. His jaw tenses, and his eyes narrow very slightly. One hand wipes across his mouth; the other tightens on the arm of the chair with the creaking of strained fabric, something normally quiet that suddenly seems far too loud.

"She's probably dead, or worse," Kamon says. His voice is somewhere between an angry whisper and a distraught rasp.

You done goofed, Minette.

Minette Odam has posed:
Minette buries her face in her knees. She dun goofed and she knows it. Is it right to apologise in this situation? Would that be appropriate, or would throwing herself off a cliff be more socially acceptable? Don't knock it, for the Levitani throwing oneself off a cliff is an acceptable solution to numerous social gaffs. They're a little 'old fashioned' at times.

Minette mumbles out a single word that's hard to hear through speaking softly and speaking into her knees. It begins with an 's' and ends with a 'y', though. Her face, what little can be seen of it, is flushed a bright crimson.

Kamon Lionward has posed:
The cliff thing. Definitely the cliff thing.

Kamon puts both hands on the arms of his chair and pushes himself to his feet. He scoops up his pack and shovel as he rounds the chair. He stops for just a second, one hand holding the strap of the backpack and the other on the back of the seat.

"Sorry," he echoes, speaking in a mumble. He roughly shoves the chair away from him, sliding it a few inches across the floor but, perhaps fortunately (from the perspective of the innkeeper), not knocking the heavy thing over or into the fire. "Yeah. I hear that a lot. Saying it again won't bring any of them back." Which, while true, isn't entirely sensical in context. There's definitely something else going on there, though good luck getting him to sit back down and talk about it.

Kamon stalks towards the door out of the inn. He suddenly needs some air.

Minette Odam has posed:
There are times in life when we are presented with two options. Minette could

A) Go after Kamon, apologise for being insensitive and explain that it was because she was nervous, then explain why, exposing her true feelings in hopes of coming to a mutual understanding and deeper relationship

OR

B) Sit there, swallow sadness, and cry after Kamon is out of earshot.

Tomorrow, Minette is really going to wish she picked 'A'.