nothingbadeverhappensto | Pumpkin Hollow inbox

"Ugh." says Leon, scowling a little and shaking his head. "Yeah. I was around for the first one and the last one, but..."

He huffs, tapping a french fry against the bottom of the ketchup cup a little more aggressively than necessary.

"Think I'm glad I missed out on the plague. Not a fan of those for, uh, reasons we talked about." Sang about, in Leon's case. He's still kind of embarrassed by that whole thing. "I'll go talk to Chris about the vaccine as soon as we're done here. Thanks for the heads up."

"Most people aren't. And you're welcome." César does remember the singing, now that Leon's mentioned it, and he's quiet for a long moment. "Honestly, I think things are only starting to heat up. Mendel upped the game with that reveal. And reveals like that usually change future trajectories."

He finally brings his fry with mayo on it to his mouth and eats it, chewing.

"Ugh. You aren't kidding." Leon watches César dip the fry in mayo with some continued curiosity before doing the same himself, though he continues speaking before eating it. "And I thought the US intelligence community was bad about backstabbing each other for the sake of career advancement."

That said, he takes a bite of the french fry and pulls just the slightest bit of a face, not pleased with the result.

"You always eat your fries like this?" he asks, looking over at César skeptically.

"Which reminds me, my previous boss overthrew her predecessor because he was getting in the way of world domination. Her 'reign' ended with pretty much the entire organization unilaterally accepting him back the moment he asked if they wanted to go against her when she and her bosses made her move. Now she's on the run."

César laughs as Leon takes the bait. "Yes. It's a thing in other countries. I've been all over the world, so... I tried it and liked it."

Leon just nods with a look of exhaustion on his face, hearing that.

"Why can't people in important offices stop doing shit like that?" he asks, flatly, before shaking his head. "Anyway. I heard they do mayo and french fries in parts of Europe? Hadn't really thought about it all that hard before though. I don't think I'm a fan. There's no acidity to cut the grease. Just tastes fatty."

Like he's some kind of connoisseur. But in a way, with how infrequently he eats junk food like this, it's important to make sure it's just right.

"Because we wouldn't be interesting enough to live a second life if they didn't." César's light-hearted sarcasm does have a point; few ordinary people have been brought here.

"And elsewhere, too." He nods respectfully to that opinion. "Sometimes I mix the two to compensate for that, but each their own. I've learned tastes are just a fun way to be different. But I'm the more experimental type anyway."

"You think so?" Leon did catch that César was joking, but he can't help but ask anyway, eyebrows raised. "I mean, I guess it does seem like there aren't a lot of folks Mortanne invited here who had normal nine-to-fives, but..."

Huh. He's gonna have to think really hard about that one. Sure enough he hasn't exactly interviewed everyone here about their lives before winding up here, but from the sample he's got it is kind of a pattern.

"We're people that can handle this. Our lives have proof." César shrugs a bit. "Magne and I had life experiences that have some... similarities, and we learned quickly that our opinions aligned on most matters."

"Guess we have all been through a kind of trial by fire," he says, drumming his fingers on the table thoughtfully. At the end of the day he's still not sure how useful his being really good at guns and not dying (barring two exceptions now) is when it comes to breaking a demonic or potentially old-god-bullshit curse, but he has some faith in Mortanne's judgment. Someone has to be the dumb muscle, he guesses.

Anyway. He shakes his head, smiling.

"I think it's great that you two found each other here, by the way. That's something pretty special."

"And it wouldn't be fair to ask a normal person to go through this. Not everyone's made out to survive Occasional Horror Town."

"Yeah, you got a point there. Guess we are kind of the goddesses' chosen ones? I mean, I knew that, but it hadn't really clicked that way."

Weird, but sensible. It definitely wouldn't be the most fair to ask just anyone to do what they're trying to do here. He'd only been thinking about it from the angle of Mortanne giving them a second chance, rather than the responsibility that came with it.

"We can suffer without breaking." César says it almost without thinking, then realizes how true it really is, and sobers up a bit more. "We've already faced trials proving that. It wouldn't be a fair ask for an ordinary office worker, you know? They deal with a different sort of hell."

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