showyousomethingnice | breakfast of champions (Reo, Haley)

breakfast of champions (Reo, Haley)

[After this.]

Reo spent extra time on his beauty regimen this morning, contouring and concealing and lining his eyes a touch more heavily than usual, because he didn't exactly get much sleep. He spent the night with the brief but life-changing conversation with Ms Dresden echoing in his head; he gave up on homework early on in favor of questions about magic - how it works, how a person uses it, how common it is.

Around midnight, he focused in on her comments about the Laws, went very still for a moment as several connections came together in his mind, and sat down to make a list of names. He made the list several times over before finally splitting it into categories, eventually putting his pen down with a sigh almost an hour later.

He'd attempted sleep after that, but what little he'd gotten had been broken up by dreams that shoved him back into wakefulness. He gave up at around six and got up to shower and dress. Then, with nothing else to do, he went to Kelly's Diner, arriving nearly half an hour early for his meeting with Ms Dresden.

Now he's sipping coffee restlessly, looking his list over and wondering how complete it is. If any of them know. If any any of them have been seen, might be in trouble, might be in danger.

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Haley snorts around a mouthful of waffle. Efficient. Right. Depending on your definition, she supposes. Once she manages to swallow, she warns, "Don't think that all things with magic can be solved the quick and dirty way, like this. A lot of times there isn't a quick and dirty way. It's just practice, discipline, and a hell of a lot of work."

She forks another piece of waffle. "You know. Just so you know. Once we're all paid up here, we'll go outside and see what we see."

"I'm an athlete, Ms Dresden," Reo says mildly. "I am accustomed to discipline and hard work."

He may not yet understand the implications of everything he's found himself in the middle of, but the one thing Haley won't ever have to worry about is finding him slacking off.

"But thank you for the warning," he adds. "I imagine you've had trouble with people making that assumption."

"Once I actually convince people I'm not faking it, they usually figure they can use magic for anything," Haley snorts. "Doesn't work that way. If I wanted to, say, flip over this table, for pretty much everybody, it'd be a whole lot easier to do it with my hands than tossing a spell at it. Magic's best used for those things your hands can't do, and even then, it's tiring, especially if you go slinging it around in big ways."

Reo considers this as he eats.

"That would explain why my specialty shots are more tiring than my ordinary ones," he says. "Physically, they don't take that much more effort, but if I do too many of them, I'm exhausted by the end of the game. I mentioned the effect the Emperor's Eye has on Sei-chan, too . . ."

His mind is turning back to the list. "I have two other former teammates on that list. I have my doubts about Ei-chan - Eikichi Nebuya - I don't know how much magic you need to eat far too much and develop your muscles obsessively. I added him mostly for completeness's sake; he was considered one of our group of elite players. Koutarou Hayama seems more likely, he can dribble the ball so fast it's just a blur. It never seemed to tire him out, but then he's an eternal bundle of energy. The only time I think I ever saw him slow down was after we lost the Winter Cup in our second year."

He frowns thoughtfully against the rim of his glass.

"Quite a few of the players on my list were in that game. It was a very strange one."

He's always thought that, but had acknowledged that, as a member of a losing team experiencing its first major loss in years, his perspective was biased. Now he's beginning to wonder, though.

Hyperkinetic gifts aren't uncommon. They're pretty low-tier, though, so Haley just nods and eats a few more bites while Reo talks. At some point, she'll have to ask what the hell "chan" means, and why he keeps sticking it onto people's names, and whether she has to worry about it getting appended to her name.

Finally, she swallows, and asks, "Strange how? Stranger than usual? Since, no offense, it kinda seems like your games are already pretty strange, you just never really thought they were since you were used to it. So when you say something's strange, that rings all kinds of bells for me."

Not to worry, Haley. Reo may be more liberal with his use of -chan than the average Japanese teenage boy, but there are some lines he will not cross.

Reo shakes his head a little. "I don't really know how to describe it," he says. "It seemed like a normal game at first, even when we started falling behind - oh, I'm sorry, that sounds very arrogant, but it was the first time all year we hadn't been ahead in the score. We were very good." He sighs. "As we should have been, I suppose, with so many of us doing magic. But even before us, Rakuzan had a reputation. It had been years since they'd last lost a tournament.

"So when I say 'even when we started falling behind,' I mean that was only strange in a, a normal way." He wrinkles his nose, because that is a such a stupid way to put that but he's not sure of any better way to do it. "Seirin had some very fine players as well. Three of them are on my list, but they're all in the group I'm not sure of. But."

He's frowning a bit, chasing a thought he hasn't had a chance to pin down yet. Three of them on the list, but - oh. There it is.

"You said it would take magic to copy a magical play. Would it also require magic to disrupt one?" He had assumed as much when he was thinking about Midorima's perfect three-pointers, but he hadn't actually paused to confirm it.

"Depends on how he did it," Haley explains. "A lot of things can disrupt magic. If you throw a rock at a wizard in the middle of a spell, sure, that'll disrupt it. Physical distractions, things like surprise and pain, they all work really well to keep magic from working. But if he wasn't touching him or shouting at him or throwing things at him, then sure, maybe. Was somebody in this strange game of yours keeping your gifts from working right?"

"Hyuuga Junpei," Reo says, frustrated that, even after soundly defeating Seirin in last year's Winter Cup and taking his revenge on Hyuuga, he still can't seem to completely rid himself of that jerk. "He's not on that list. I don't think - well, if he does have magic, he certainly doesn't use it in basketball. He's a good player, but so are plenty of others. Nothing about him stood out on the court. I had the upper hand with him at first, easily, but after things started to get strange, he broke all my plays. He's the only one who's been able to do that. Just through ordinary gameplay. He didn't do anything unusual, he just saw a flaw in my play and exploited it. I thought - well, up until now I thought it was because he'd observed me closely before. I could see it in how he played, that he'd used me as part of his, his foundation when he was just getting started. It seemed reasonable that that would be an advantage for him. But now I don't know."

He pauses to take a bite of his omelette and gather his thoughts back together before his aggravation can overwhelm them.

"Heaven, maybe. It's a difficult shot, but I've seen professionals do something similar. Earth, too, if I'm using - if, if it's the referees and not the player I'm targeting. But not Oblivion. The one where I freeze them. I was rattled, but I didn't do it any differently. I know I didn't."

He's forgotten that Ms Dresden won't be as accustomed to the names given to his plays as he is. Hopefully she won't find that too distracting.

The play names don't mean much to her, no, but they don't have to, especially since he gives enough context to work with. Besides, she's used to people throwing around unfamiliar words. Usually she'd say something nasty about it, but she's more concerned with what he's describing. It could be nothing-- but it could be something.

"We'll add his name to the list," she decides. "Could be he's just got really clear sight, could be he's got magic enough to disrupt magic around him unconsciously, could be he's not all human. Either way, it's worth looking into."

Reo opens his mouth to answer, then stops, his expression of distaste turning into one of startlement as Ms Dresden's words sink in.

"I'm sorry," he says, "did you say not all human?"

Maybe it should have occurred to him that magic isn't the only thing in this new world he's been dragged into. Maybe it should have, but it didn't.

"Yeah, I did. What, did you think we were the only intelligent species around?" Haley gives him a lop-sided grin. "I mean, most of them don't live here, in this dimension or plane or whatever you want to call it, but they can show up here, and sometimes they leave behind byblows who choose to stay in this realm rather than the Nevernever."

She ticks off on her fingers. "You've got faeries, angels and demons, Outsiders, the occasional werewolf...." And then she gives up on ticking off, and just says: "There's a lot of options for 'not human' if you're looking. Most of them probably wouldn't be playing basketball, but some kind of changeling faerie or younger werewolf might, I guess."

It - does seem obvious now, especially with Ms Dresden's blunt phrasing.

"Oh," he says, a bit faintly.

. . . there is a pause, in which Reo's expression becomes a bit self-conscious, wry, embarrassed, interested - it could be described any number of ways.

"Is," he asks slowly, "there such thing as a yaksha?" He pronounces it yasha, and sounds as though he doesn't know whether he wants the answer to his question or not.

"I don't know the name off-hand, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. I'd have to check." She polishes off her waffle, wiping up the last of the syrup with the last bite, trying not to leave any behind. "But honestly, if it's in a myth somewhere, odds are it's real or there's something like it out there, at least. Why? You think they might be?"

Yeah, that's definitely a self-conscious expression; Reo rubs the back of his neck with the hand not holding a fork, wishing already that he hadn't asked. It just seems childish, somehow.

"Ah," he says. "Some of us had nicknames back home. I was the Yaksha. Magazines again."

Then he shuts up and concentrates on his omelette, because he hasn't been eating as fast as Ms Dresden has and he doesn't want to keep her waiting.

Tact is not Haley's strong point, so she actually laughs at that. "Cute. Might be cuter if I knew what that was, but now I'm really going to look that up when I get home. Just for you." Maybe someday she'll even introduce him to Bob, and of course then deal with all the lewd comments the spirit is likely to make about fucking apprentices. As if she ever would.

"So what times do you have free?" she asks, putting them back on topic. "Depending on how much power you have, I'm going to need at least a couple hours, a couple times a week. If you have a lot, we might need more."

Reo blushes when she laughs. Definitely shouldn't have asked. Or at least, he could have waited. Or something.

Even if he does really want the answer.

He mentally flips through his schedule, glad for the distraction, as he finishes his last couple bites of omelette. He pauses unhappily over the blocks of time given to basketball practice - he hasn't yet decided what he's going to do about that; even if he isn't using black magic, it's hardly fair to play using any magic against people who can't do the same, but he'll lose his scholarship if he stops playing entirely to untangle that problem - before pushing them aside.

"Tuesday and Thursday mornings," he says, "and Fridays and Sundays are mostly open."

He's not at all concerned about giving up much of the free time he has. Life attending Rakuzan was so busy, between class and schoolwork and basketball and the health committee, that when he started college he hardly knew what to do with the extra holes in his schedule.

"Then let's plan on Tuesday and Friday for now, unless I'm off on some case or helping train some newbie Wardens, and if it turns out your talent's going to need more time than that, add in Thursday." Because Saturdays are, if she's lucky, about the only day she gets off. She's not giving that up unless she has to. She offers him a smirk. "There might be homework, though."

"All right."

He doesn't blink at the mention of homework; he's used to it, and anyway, it's not as though he isn't going to be doing some (careful) experimenting on his own time anyway. Not to mention all the work he's going to have to put into separating his magic from his basketball.

He takes his phone out of his pocket to add the standing appointments to the calendar app. Or, that's the plan, anyway, but it doesn't seem to want to wake up when he presses the button. He gives it a little frown.

Haley cranes her neck a little to see what the problem is, then realizes what he's trying to do and winces. "Oh. Yeah, forgot to mention that. Magic messes up technology. The more of it gets thrown around, the more likely things like that--" She points with her fork at the non-responsive phone. "--are to die on you. You, uh, might want to not bring that whenever you're coming to see me. And hope your talent isn't strong enough that more practice means it'll start happening to you, too."

. . . Reo tries not to look appalled, but he probably fails.

He needs his phone.

He needs the stuff on his phone.

How is he supposed to function without electronics?

"Yes," he says faintly after a slightly too long silence. "I'll be sure to leave it in my room."

Or its replacement, if it's really dead, and how is he going to explain that to his parents?

Don't ask her, she's never tried living with them. She finishes the last of her coffee and fishes out her wallet to leave money to pay. "If you have a car, and it's got fancy electronics in it too, that's gonna be a problem. I drive an old VW bug, all the moving parts are mechanical, so it does me all right. Or else I walk everywhere. Usually if it's not too long a trip, a taxi'll do all right. Don't let me near a computer, though. I've shorted out too many of those in my time to count, probably."

The possibility of having forced his will on other people and of not being able to use a cellphone to keep track of his life. He is beginning to wonder if there are any upsides to this magic thing. At least he doesn't drive.

He is distracted from any kind of self-pity starting to set in, though, when Miss Dresden brings out her wallet. He doesn't want to have to ask, but there really is no help for it, is there?

"I'm sorry," he blurts, "but I still don't quite understand what an appropriate gesture of gratitude is for some things here. Would it be acceptable for me to pay for your breakfast?" Considering that she is freely offering her time, energy, and knowledge to help him, not doing something to thank her would be unconscionably rude. Etiquette and appropriate behavior are important to Reo; not knowing exactly what that something should be has been bothering him.

She looks up from counting the bills still in her wallet, brows up at him skeptically. "Well, I won't say no-- but it'd just be this once." She sets the wallet down, but doesn't put it away. "There's one thing I probably ought to explain. This is, pretty literally, my job. I mean, not taking apprentices, exactly, but handling the magical problems of this city. I get an actual paycheck for it. So while I'm glad to be helping you out, and I'm being a lot more understanding of your situation than some of my coworkers, it's not just out of the goodness of my heart."

She smirks over at him a little, with a shred of bitterness to her voice, when she adds: "There's some who'd wonder how much of that I had, to begin with, and would think you were nuts for not looking for the angle."

If Reo looks a little relieved by her clarification, it's because he is. That she's being paid makes her a professional, which puts her in essentially the same category as every other teacher he's ever had, and one shows one's respect and gratitude to one's teacher by listening and working hard. He can do that.

Of course, he's also still going to pay for breakfast. The waitress, having seen Haley take out her money, comes by with the bill, and is only a little confused when Reo hands her his credit card instead.

"Constantly expecting the worst of people is unpleasant," he says, in the tones of someone who knows what he's talking about. "I prefer to avoid it when it's not necessary."

"Then maybe we can get along. It's not like you know all about my colorful past, anyway." She tucks her wallet away, and gets back to the matter at hand, for the moment. He can ask about her colorful past at a later date; she's not going to let him get into it right now. "So you're still set on trying the quick and dirty way of testing out your magic, right?"

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