sirenspull_logs | [OPEN] Look in front of you NOW. Do you have a waffle?

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[OPEN] Look in front of you NOW. Do you have a waffle?

Who: Replica Riku, AKA: Joe Fieldman ....and OPEN to everybody!
When: Wednesday, 1pm
Where: Brinners, in the Underground Mall Food Court
Summary: It's Wacky Waffle Wednesday, and who can turn down food that just costs a buck, and comes with all the toppings you want?
Warnings: This could get unreasonably silly.

Joe Fieldman didn't always know a great deal when he saw one.

But waffles-for-a-dollar with a loaded waffle bar included? Sounded like a great deal. Enough to make a trek down to the mall for them, anyway, and loudly inform his whole apartment, if anyone felt like tagging along.

Of course, the trouble with great deals, especially when they were announced over the public newsfeed, was that a lot of other people seemed just as eager to take advantage of them.

So Just-a-Buck waffles turned out to be over a fifteen minute wait, and by that time Joe had seen so many people pass by with Tantalus Torture piles of whipped cream and strawberry syrup and chocolate chips and sliced peaches and sausage gravy that he decided to buy himself a stack of about <i>eight</i>.

Luckily, he's brought along a old half-forgotten journal he'd found underneath his bed last week (Ciel Phantomhive had managed to make him so self-conscious about the state of his bedroom that he'd actually decided to give it a clean) to amuse himself. He couldn't for the life of him remember where or who he'd gotten it from (Christmas before last, maybe? Or for a 'birthday'?), but it came with all sorts of entertaining instructions for what to do with the pages, and so he went about doodling bubbles and poking pencil holes, dog-earing pages and blackening the edges while he waited to aquire some food to stain the stain log with.

Okay, so it was slightly immature. So were overly-loaded waffles, but plenty of people seemed to be perfectly fine with partaking.

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"The rules, mass."

Frau looked particularly disgusted over the whole "mass" thing, and it was incredibly annoying to him. He tried to avoid it at all costs but usually ended up failing. Even with everything there that he hated, he couldn't leave the church. Being a bishop was who he was, and it was where he belonged. He couldn't really explain the true reason though. The fact that he was one of the seven ghosts, the guardians of the people that the church protected in a hidden crypt.

"It's where I belong. I could never leave."

What was mass? Roxas opened his mouth to ask, then thought better of it. He could always look that up later.

And what Frau said after a moment resonated more. "I get that," he said, looking down at his hands. "Then you shouldn't leave. If you find a place where you really belong, no matter what...then you should hang onto it. You're lucky."

Joe glanced quickly at Roxas, shrugging, seeming equally puzzled. He'd sat in on Jonova Church meetings only only before deciding it was too creepy, everyone droning the same lines together all at once, sitting and standing and kneeling and holding their hands strangely.

"You could say that about any home world though- but here we are. if you don't like how it is, then I think you should leave it. Maybe you could belong someplace better. There's so much else to see an try, than living a life with a tone of rules."

"Heh. I'm not sure anyone else there would say I belong. Most of the other bishops would be quite content to throw me out."

Frau was generally okay with that though. He knew what they thought of him, and it didn't matter. If he was going to be stuck working at the church then he was going to make the most out of it.

When he heard the quiet longing in Roxas' voice he smiled slightly. Everyone wanted somewhere to belong, especially someone who didn't have anywhere. Frau knew what that felt like. He'd lived it most of his life.

"Sometimes it's not really the place, it's the people you're with. I belong more with a person than a place. Stupid brat who's almost more trouble than he's worth."

In fact, Frau could almost feel the little teeth of a certain pink dragon gnawing at his head while his pain in the ass apprentice tried to knock him out.

"It's better when you belong with people," Roxas said quietly. He had a feeling that even though they obviously came from radically different backgrounds, he and Frau understood each other on this subject. "Because sometimes you can't go back to a place, but if you're with the people who matter, you can make a home anywhere."

Even on an island in Canada where the darkness reigned at night.

Joe was warily silent on the matter, though as the shift in subject became more obvious, when Roxas' tone turned serious, he glanced over at his friend with a frown.

Was he talking about Xion, or Axel? He was talking about leaving the Organization...

The parts of his life that Joe didn't really want to touch. Couldn't. He wasn't any part of those memories. But he could sigh in sympathy, pulling up a chair for Frau.

"Here. Why don't you sit down with us."

"I think it's about the people you choose to be with, too."

Frau glanced at the chair a moment, then shrugged at sat down. So he'd be out a lot longer than initially planned. Teito could deal with it. Maybe it would give the kid a taste of his own medicine when he disappeared without warning, though if it got too late Frau would send the kid a message just to let him know.

The quiet sadness in Roxas' voice wasn't unknown to Frau. He'd caught it pretty quickly and began watching. Joe seemed to have caught it as well. Frau's eyes remained on the two, watching without comment. Something bigger was obviously going on here, but he had no idea what it was.

"Other people can be the light that you need sometimes. Help guide you down the right path."

Roxas chuckled quietly at that. "You sound like our friend Terra," he said. "I don't know if I need light to lead me the right way. But I'm glad to have my friends do it."

He knew that Frau probably wasn't speaking literally about light, but it was still true. That was one more thing he appreciated about being here. He might make mistakes like before, when he trusted the wrong people, but there were plenty of other people to tell him when he was being dumb.

Joe raised a brow in Roxas' direction, actually a little surprised to hear that it sounded like Terra, rather than Riku.

He'd been hanging out with the older keybearers more, he supposed. Terra hasn't really said so much to him, except in passing conversations where he's turned out pearls of wisdom that probably came from real training.

He couldn't figure it out, just why he vaguely resented the guy so much. Maybe it was just being told straight, when he was off track.

"Friends definitely help. Without my friends, I'd be just another puppet, used by the darkness."

For Frau, he was talking about actual light. That's what Teito was for him, a real light. The path that Frau walked was pitch black and only getting darker. Teito was the only light present on that path, a light to guide him back.

He sighed heavily when Joe mentioned being used and couldn't help dropping his elbow onto the table and then his chin into his hand.

"What is it with you kids and that? Or what the hell was going on when you were all born? It wasn't even the same world..."

They were certainly close enough to Teito's age, and the kid had been used as a puppet as well. It was a pain.

"It's a long story." Roxas hesitated before saying anything more.

Joe seemed to know this guy even if he didn't that well, but that didn't necessarily make him someone they wanted to share the strange details of their origins. He was trying to stay quieter about that stuff, especially since that anonymous probably-SERO person had been poking around a while back.

"A really long story."

"Yeah." Joe nodded, exchanging a wary glance with Roxas and Namine. A long story didn't even begin to cover all of it, and the few times he had tried to explain things, people like Edgeworth didn't necessarily believe him, about Kingdom Hearts and Nobodies, and Replicas made from data memories, not cloned from DNA.

"It's very complicated." He sighed, looking back to Frau with an apologetic shrug. "Some people don't care what they use kids for, or if they have good lives for not."

He snorted and rolled his eyes.

"You don't need to tell me that. I've seen it first hand."

His own apprentice had been taken as a slave of war when he was just a child, maybe around five from what Frau figured based on the years. He'd been trained as an assassin and given only a number instead of a name. When Teito had fallen into Frau's hands, he was incredibly clueless about basic things. The idea of eating meals that were food and not pills was a foreign concept to him. Money was the same.

"Trust me..."

"Yeah, well..."

This was starting to feel a little awkward. Or slightly gloomy. Or some weird combo of both. How had they gotten onto this topic track? It had started out happier, he thought...

"Anyone else still hungry?" Roxas poked at the remains of his waffle pile. "We could get some more."

"I should really, ah- finish all of there, first." Joe may have overestimated the size of his stomach, a little.

He pushes one of the three remaining waffle sandwiches at Frau in offering, sensing that what Roxas was desperately searching for was a subject change.

"So, ah-"

"So." An uncomfortable pause. What wouldn't be dumb, and wouldn't lead right back around into discussing how their lives were a little...stranger and unfortunate than most. Joe 'waffled', even on his most decisive days, between a sort of war-wounded pride in being a replica who'd found his own self, and hating it, wishing he could keep it all secret, just how much he resenting not having a real life beyond this island. Other days, it felt good to rant about being a puppet who'd cut his strings.

"...we could hang out and go get meat sometime, instead of waffles, if you want? I never have the excuse to go out for burgers anymore, now that Maya Fey's gone."

Frau picked up on the need to change topic and would have provided them with an alternative if they hadn't come up with one. Or more he would have plucked something off Joe or Roxas' plate and idly tossed it at the other one just for fun. That didn't seem to be necessary though.

"Works for me. I could bring the brat we me too. He's around your age."

At least Frau assumed that he was. He'd never asked these two how old they were, but they behaved a lot like Teito did at times.

"Just for meat? We should get some other stuff too." Roxas laughed, considerably more at ease by the shift in subject. This was on safer ground. "I don't think there are a lot of places that just serve meat."

...although considering some of the weird businesses he'd seen operating here and there, he probably wouldn't bet money against it, either.

"Who's the brat?" he asked, ripping off a piece of waffle and popping it in his mouth to chew. "Anyone we know?"

"We'll go to a buffet!" he suggests, although with munny being slim, it would probably be a better idea not to eat out for the next month or so at all. "Then we'll eat whatever we want."

"I remember him." And Joe has been called a brat before too, so he's not so keen on anyone using that word. "A boy on the network who talked about you. But we haven't really talked too much after that. "

"Teito. Brown hair, green eyes, scrawny for his age."

Frau could have gone on, but his other descriptions wouldn't have helped Joe or Roxas pinpoint who Teito was. Destroyer of porn, pain in the ass, master of the disappearing act.

A slow smile slid across his face at the suggestion of a buffet. He was pretty sure Teito had never been to one before. In fact, he would guess that the kid didn't even know what one was.

"I'm sure he'd like that."

Neither the name nor the description rang a bell for Roxas. Ah well...it'd be pretty hard to know every newcomers that had ever been here.

"If he'd want to come, sure." Roxas shrugged. "Doesn't hurt to make new friends."

Once upon a time he'd been able to count the number of friends he had on one hand. Now two wouldn't be enough.

Roxas looked a little blank, but lots of kids who'd been in and out of the city could have passed for brown haired and scrawny.

"Sure." Joe echoed shrugged just as easily, nodding at Frau. "Bring along whoever you want. I think Long Wok has plenty of meat and a soft serve station."

Best possible merge of two good things.

"More ice cream, huh? I'm sure he'd enjoy that too. In fact, I don't know if he's ever had it before."

It was certainly possible, but it wasn't served at the church and Frau highly doubted anything similar was served at the military academy. While he hadn't been with Teito 24/7 either here or when they were traveling, he didn't remember seeing the kid with an ice cream before.

"Sure he would."

Roxas was confident of that much without ever having met this Teito kid. It was ice cream.

"Especially if he's your friend. That makes it even better."

Joe smiled, and he tried to hide the fond roll of his eyes. Roxas and Xion always managed to make the ice cream thing sound so very important, the most important part of the day spent together.

He'd fallen into the ritual, and liked bragging about the flavors they made with the machine, but it meant something deeper, something magical, something that happened in that year before he was ever a part of their friendship.

"Sort of sounds like he's like Axel to Teito, right?" Joe added offhandedly, as if it needed any further underlining of resemblances.

Frau laughed softly. He'd picked up on the common trend of friendship with Roxas, but he didn't fully understand it. Of course it wasn't like Frau ever openly called anyone friend. He did more pushing away than not.

"Maybe, though I have no idea what that has to do with anything."

He had no idea what Joe was talking about and glanced between the two boys. The question didn't seem to be directed to him, but it certainly involved him. Not knowing who this other person was he was apparently being compared to wasn't exactly fun.

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Kingdom Hearts is Convolusion, Frau.

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