capeandcowllogs | When Disney attacks! Or not.

WHO: Belle Blanc [[info]notprincess] & Miles Thatch [[info]cartoholic]
WHERE: On the streets of the City.
WHEN: March 9th, 2009
WARNINGS: None
SUMMARY: Miles giving Belle a tour of the City
FORMAT: para

Belle had already done a little exploring - just as far as halfway across the first intersection. It was there that she learned about traffic laws, what red lights meant, and why Humvees were horrible, horrible honking things, all in one quick and very effective lesson.

Nearly being smashed had sent her scurrying back to her room and the nice, safe, likely non-lethal bed. For nearly fifteen whole minutes she'd sat on the edge of it, hugging her lumpy pillow.

Hours later, after she'd exhausted all the entertainment offered by the wholly novel apartment (and really, if it was so easy to remove the lid of the toilet tank and keep the inflowing water from stopping, why wasn't there something to prevent people from doing just that?), and the communicator, she stood outside the apartments, waiting for M. Thatch. She hugged her flapping cloak around her, communicator clutched in one hand as if she were afraid it would go bouncing off again.

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Milo was not an expert of the city either, but he had a bag full of maps and at least more knowledge than Jenny. Also there was the fact that he could understand and communicate with her perfectly (never mind that everyone else and their mother knew french. Was it that common amongst the working class?).

With his nose buried in one of his marked up maps, Milo stumbled his way across the city and to the MAC. It was easily recognizable by the hi-tech similar looking apartments and shady people hanging around save for one young lady. She looked nervous and was holding her belongings for dear life. Milo peered over his map. That must be the girl.

"Bonjour!" Milo smiled, waving his hand excitedly and hopping over to meet Jenny. He continued in French. "Jenny, oui? Um, I hope you're not too--are you OK?"

She'd been watching the traffic closely as she waited, and had begun to see a pattern. Green lights facing the cars definitely meant to go. Yellow meant 'drive faster', and the first three seconds of a red light meant 'drive even faster' and then 'stop a bit, unless there's no opposing traffic, and then inch out into the intersection'.

It was very confusing.

She looked up from her thoughts at the greeting, and happily waved. "Bonjour! Yes, that's me! Are you Milo?"

Gosh, she sure hoped so. If not, the conversation was going to take a turn for the unnerving.

"The one and only," he replied, running his hand through his hair and trying to appear suave. He was talking to a woman in person--the first woman he had spoken to--in person at least--for weeks. Milo was not going to mess up his reputation and dig his hole any deeper.

He outstretched his arm for her to take if she, uh, wanted it. Gosh, how did those millionaire playboys do it? ~~The cash.~~

"Our tour starts here! The MAC! Mutant apartment complex for our needs and monitored by Stark Industries."

She laughed cheerfully, and if he was awkward or uncertain, she didn't seem to notice. Belle automatically took his arm when it was offered, slipping a hand into the crook of it - this was just what you did when a man offered you his arm, provided he didn't make you want to climb the walls in a fit of getawaygetaway.

She looked up at the building with polite interest. Some of the words are new to her, but she's sure the meanings will become clear sooner or later. "It's watched?"

She was actually laughing! And not in the mocking way either. Milo could breathe a little easier with his ego still intact. Normally girls would shoot him down immediately and throw him into the busy streets. Well, except for Kida. Kida was--

Wasn't here.

Milo chewed his bottom lip and looked elsewhere for a moment, trying to pull himself together. He hoped he wasn't being obvious.

"Watched is one way to put it. He has these cameras everywhere that films you."

Belle missed his mental slip and wobbly recovery - she was studying the outside of the building with some perplexion. She'd been focused on the hard-shelled, rushing traffic, not the architecture, but now that she looked at them, the buildings were exceedingly graceless and flat. Even where there were windows - and what windows they were, panel after panel of smooth and mirrored glass, covering so much that she wondered if it was some sort of exterior treatment, like an enamel over brick - even where there were windows, there was no ornamentation in the brick or wood around them.

She didn't see any cameras, but that certainly made sense - who would risk something so expensive and delicate to the weather? She just hoped they weren't supposed to sit for photographs for hours and hours every day, because that would likely drive her insane.

"Why does he do that?"

“No one knows exactly why,” Milo continued, stopping at a street corner. They were huddled into a crowd of strangers—old ladies, blind men, families, students. Cars whizzed past them as they waited for the pedestrians walking signal to go off.

It was easy to get the hang of things after a while. Everything was visual—color coded street lights, signs, everything. The communicator was still hard to type on and speak into. It buzzed every five seconds when new posts came in, and Milo desperately wanted to shut the thing off. He always felt compelled to open it up and check what was going on and it was usually about nothing or about something he had no idea about.

The signal went off. Milo led Belle across the street even as she was gawking at the buildings around them.

“He’s watching us. He wants to make sure we are doing our job, though I never applied for it and there seems to be enough people sufficient and willing enough to do it instead.”

In that little crowd of strangers, there was more variety of human life than Belle had ever seen. It was fortunate that she had good manners, or she might have stared at the people with the same curiosity as she had for the buildings.

At some point, she'd stuffed her communicator in her pocket. Carina had gone to sleep, but would drowsily mutter whenever a message came in. Then she'd lapse back into quietly snoring. At least it was a ladylike snore.

Belle shivered a little, clutching her cloak a bit tighter around herself. That was quite possibly the most viscerally disturbing thing she'd ever heard of.

"I didn't realize I was getting a job. I...don't think I'd be very good at dealing with criminals." She'd never even met one, aside from Pierre the Thief, who spent more time in the stocks than actually thieving. "Some people mentioned that we're allowed to get other jobs. Is that right?"

When Disney attacks! Or not.

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