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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"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.

Roxas let out a slightly uneasy chuckle. Joe comparing anyone to Axel wasn't necessarily a good thing—even after all this time, the frostiness between them had never really melted, not that Roxas could blame his friend. On the other hand, it didn't sound like he meant it in a negative way. That was progress.

"Having ice cream together's just something friends do," he said. As if that explained it all.

"You were saying you stayed in a place where you felt like you didn't fit because of someone important," Joe finally elaborated, bracing his toes around the center leg of the table and leaning in his chair, so that it tilted back on it's hind legs. "...even if you feel like you didn't really belong there. To look out for them."

Then, glancing away, he tried to pass the offhand comment as casually as possible.

"...It's sort of funny, how Axel's still technicially working for the Organization, isn't it?"

"If you say so."

Personally Frau thought he was more likely to share porn and beer with friends, but that was just his own opinion.

When Joe started speaking again, Frau wasn't sure if he was talking about him or Roxas or this Axel guy. In a way he could understand why Joe would believe that Frau stayed at the church for Teito if he was the one being discussed. After all, it wasn't like Frau could truly explain the real reason he was there. Nobody could know that reason, so he usually just answered vaguely and allowed other people to come up with their own more detailed opinions as to why he stuck around.

"He's not really working for them." Roxas' mouth straightened into practically a straight line, although he was able to hold back an actual glare. Joe wasn't actually wrong but he didn't have to come out and say it like that. "He's keeping an eye on them for our sake. It's not like it was before."

No more replica experiments, no more heart collection. And if it really came down to it, he was sure he could get Axel to leave. But it did make sense to keep an eye on what Xemnas, Xigbar and the others were doing, even if Roxas didn't particularly like it himself.

"Hnh. And you think they haven't figured that out by now?" The chair legs teetered, and Joe let his weight fall forward with a heavy thump just before the chair tipped over.

"Far as I'm concerned he's still working for them." He argued at a low grumble, resting the issue aside but still wanting his last word in. "And AGI. "

Just one more way Axel was a little too two-faced for his tastes- but whatever, Roxas could deny the shady business of his friends all he wanted.

"...but I'm sure you're not with the church to be a spy or anything, right Frau?"

Frau snorted. He sort of was. In a way. Kind of. Though it was more like he was a protection detail or an undercover operative or something. He certainly had enough secrets to be one.

"Who would I be spying on at the church? And I don't think I'd make a good spy since nobody there likes me."

Which was the truth generally. Frau wasn't particularly liked by anybody and most of the other bishops considered him suspicious. A good spy would fit in well with a group. Frau lived to stand out at the church.

"Well, you're wrong," Roxas grumbled right back, and kicked Joe under the table. But only lightly, because he didn't really want to fight about it. Plus it was rude to Frau, who didn't know what they were even talking about.

"So what do you do at the church, anyway?" he asked. "What's your job?"

As far as he could tell, people in churches gave speeches and lit incense a lot. But he figured he was probably missing a lot of the details.

"He reads dirty magazines, like the one we saw at that garage sale....right Frau?" Joe jokes, shooting a quick knowing grin at the older man.

"Back when we first came here, there wasn't a community center, but the newcomers did have this- it was like a little store, almost, but not a store. Just a place we collected food and clothes and stuff. The Newcomer Faith Center. It wasn't a church, but the guy running it was sort-of-kind-of like the guys from the church? Maybe? I only stopped in there once. I guess that guy's long gone, now."

"Course I do. Man's best friend."

Yes, porn had just taken the place of a dog. You couldn't carry a dog around under your robes and pull it out whenever you wanted to.

"I'm a bishop. We do exorcisms, baptisms, hold mass, help out with the orphans."

He shrugs.

"It's boring, and I try to avoid it all whenever possible."

Except for removing kor. That he went out of his way to do because he was good at it. He had been since before he'd even become a bishop which had shocked his mentor. He didn't avoid the kids either. Amazingly enough, he was good with them, and they loved him.

Roxas made a strange face at the mention of those magazines, and it just got stranger at Frau's reply. How was he supposed to talk about...that...here in public with people around them?!

...oh. Maybe he wasn't. Good.

"How can an exorcism be boring?" he asked. They'd seen one in that movie with the little girl and the green puke. It had been really gross, but kind of awesome. "They sound pretty exciting."

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Kingdom Hearts is Convolusion, Frau.

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