rainbowlounge | Spring RP: The Hennessy Home

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roleplay: open

Spring RP: The Hennessy Home

The house sits on a bluff above the sea, with a winding path down to a sandy beach leading away from the yard. It is three stories high, stucco and terracotta, and would look forbiddingly expensive were it not for the worn tire swing hanging from a tree and the flip-flops left strewn around the outdoor pool.

Inside, the house looks much the same--expensive but lived-in. A grand piano, clearly used, dominates one room. Another room has couches and chairs neatly arranged like a museum, with beat-up books and magazines filling its shelves and cupboards. It is light and airy, with huge windows, a well-stocked kitchen, and first-rate entertainment systems.

The first and second floors seem to be generalized living spaces, with the bedrooms on the third floor. The master bedroom is the only exception, and the only one that still seems in use. Multiple other rooms, especially on the third floor, look dusty and unused.

((welcome to the RP, writers! Let the games begin.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Always nice to be able to delegate," Lux said, smiling. Idly, she wondered, "Do you have specific people for specific tasks, or do you vary the assignments at all?" Lux still--and would always--firmly believe the latter method was generally the best, but...well. Her entire species was built on fairly strict compartmentalization of responsibilities. Those she'd manage to persuade to fight for her...well, they'd all done a little of everything. Perhaps they simply couldn't handle that, and that was why she'd lost.

"Specific people have specific areas of law that they practice," Miranda said, and shrugged. "I try not to keep people doing exactly the same tasks all the time; they get bored and careless."

She nodded. "Makes sense." Perhaps that would be the way to reshape things, when she won the second war. If I win, she reminded herself. She'd been pulled back into things too early, and was far too attached to Mariko for her own good. And then there was what she'd read in his head... "Keep people relatively close to their comfort zones, where their skills are, but with enough leeway that they don't become..." She trailed off, before she could pick a word that would be far too loaded for the human's relatively innocuous context.

Edited 2014-05-24 22:09 (UTC)

Miranda raised an eyebrow, and when the other didn't continue, prompted, "So they don't become...?"

Damn it. "...I'm not actually sure what the word I want there is," she said, hoping that would be enough of an answer that the human would stop pushing.

"You seemed sure enough when you were talking," Miranda said, as mildly as she could. There was something here, some sort of answer that would explain everything about this other person, but... well, it only mattered if she could get to it.

Damn it, damn it, damn it. Of course she'd managed to find a sharp-eyed, sharp-eared human to stumble in front of. She sighed, her ever-wounded wings shivering at her back--at least those were easy to hide from human sight--and shook her head. Maybe she could still walk this back. "Well, I was going to say 'depersonalized,' but that's a bit melodramatic, I think."

"Well," Miranda said, and then, "A bit, I suppose, but it makes sense. There's this saying, cogs in a corporate machine; you don't ever want people working with you to feel as if they are that. It significantly decreases their investment in your success." She shrugged. "I try to be sure everyone has a stake."

Oh, good, the human had accepted that. "I like your phrasing better. And I'm glad you make efforts to avoid it."

She shrugged again. "Why not? It costs me very little and benefits me considerably more."

Lux nodded. "You're right, of course. I'm used to people who are...more shortsighted about such things."

"That's part of why I don't like working with corporations," Miranda said dryly. "So often they've forgotten the basic principle that making their workers happy makes them money."

And when it's about more than money, when it's about every fundamental function of your society, it gets even worse. She smiled wryly. "I think I've been spending too much time with Mariko's employers lately. It's making me jaded. More so than usual, anyway."

"It isn't cynicism if you're correct," Miranda replied, sing-song. She'd said this to her siblings so many times...

Lux laughed a little. "True, true. Still, it is nice to find out that not everyone is like that. Sometimes it's hard to remember--I've never quite been a glass-half-full sort of being." That had always been Gabriel, even in the darkest of times during the civil war.

Sort of being? Interesting. Miranda had never... well, that was irrelevant, except insofar as it was another clue to this person. "I suppose. My sister isn't, but then my brother and I work very hard to ensure she can remain idealistic."

Not that Jack was particularly cynical himself-- a realist, perhaps.

Lux nodded. "Mariko was idealistic when we first met. But it's been...a few years since then, and they were cruel to her." I was cruel to her. Whatever her reasons, whatever her need to have Mariko back, Lux was honest enough with herself to recognize that.

And, as painful as discussing her failures with Mariko was, it was far safer ground than discussing the other optimist she loved. Mentioning Gabriel would take her down an extremely uncomfortable pathway.

Miranda nodded. "I am... aware of what the world does to idealists. I will not allow it to do that to my sister."

Lux looked down at her hands, imagining her fingers entwined with Mariko's shorter ones, with the easy grace they had before the fire. "I wish you luck with that."

"Luck has nothing to do with it," Miranda said, briskly. "I just won't allow it." And she wouldn't. No matter what she had to do.

She smiled at that. "I could almost believe you when you say that, if I weren't so jaded these days." She would have kept Mariko away from that room, if she'd been able to. She would have kept Mariko away from Gabriel, and Michaela, and him, but she hadn't been able to do that, either. But this human seemed determined, and she certainly had more knowledge of her world than Lux did, after eons in prison.

Miranda shrugged again. It didn't have anything to do with luck or with belief; it only had to do with willpower, and ruthlessness. But that was not the hill she wanted to die on, so she let it go. "These days?"

...I really need to stop being so open with her. Even if I'm locked in what looks to be a consequence-free dimensional rift. "I used to think I could change the world." She shrugged fluidly. "Time proved otherwise. And most of the idealists I've known learn their hard lessons like I did. Some days it looks like it's only a matter of time before that happens to everyone."

Edited 2014-05-25 04:59 (UTC)

"To most," Miranda said. "Did you have anyone to protect you?" She asked out of curiosity more than any real interest, but that withholding... it was interesting, that was all.

"Other way around," Lux said. "I failed the people I was trying to protect. And then--" Damn. She kept coming right to the edge here. If she hadn't caught herself, she might have let Michaela's name slip.

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