But I have no doubt, one day we're gonna get out

[mustardwithat]

Fritz is on top of the Conrad. An unlit cigarette dangles from her lips, its end batted back and forth by the wind. She has hes eyes closed and her arms spread as she stands on the roof's low cement barrier, watching the sunset through the patterns of red that filter through her eyelids. At the very lest, Fritz is on the opposite side of the hotel

Comments

[neverinportland]

Juliet was having coffee with Marshall in the CCTV room, but the sudden appearance of cats in the parking lot required investigating, and so now she's walking out the front door with a confused expression on her face. She's fairly certain that someone would have mentioned it if they were going to turn the parking lot into a cat sanctuary, so that leaves.... Well, Cy comes to mind, but she doesn't see her anywhere.

"What's going on?" She'll wonder later when she became the sort of person who addresses cats as if they can actually answer her.

Well. Some of them do.

[prince_stupid]

The cats freeze. And then scatter, bolting under cars, into corners, and flooding away into the streets again. All except the little mother cat and her revived kitten. She hunkers down over the baby, panicked and hissing. Ragnar sits down next to her, purring away, and she slowly calms as well. Her attention turns to the cleaning the kitten as Ragnar addresses Juliet.

"Good evening. I do not mean to disturb you, certainly--I had invited those in need to come to me, should they feel so inclined. I will say this: I did not expect so many to accept."

[neverinportland]

And, instantly, Juliet feels kind of bad, even though that's pretty much what stray cats tend to do when confronted with people. She doesn't stare step closer for fear of startling the mother and her baby and when the freakishly large black cat addresses her, she completely freezes, herself.

She relaxes a bit, however, rolling her eyes a bit. After Cy, talking cats shouldn't surprise her, but... This cat is definitely not Cy.

"Oh, it's... Fine," she says, tilting her head to the side. "Just a little... Surprising. Um... Who are you?"

When did this become her life?

[prince_stupid]

Ragnar stands and whisks his tail into the air. "I," he says, rather more grandly than necessary, "am Ragnar Gustaffson Coeur de Lion, King of Cats." There he pauses. "Ostensibly."

Yes, Juliet, the cat just said ostensibly. "At one time I was called a Grand Champion of the show bench, representing the breed Norsk Skogatt, that is to say, the Norwegian Forest Cat. And now I am said to represent cats as a whole. Ironic! But I digress."

The kitten-mom stares up at Ragnar in awe. Stop him now, Juliet, or you never will.

[with_coffee]

Robin steps out on to the roof, hoping that no one will be here this time, and he can contemplate jumping while he smokes his cigarrette like normal for once.

Of course, it never quite works out the way Robin Rice wants it to.

Oh, no way! Someone is so not taking his... means of suicide from him! Not today! Because if someone else jumps off the roof of the Conrad, he will never be able to, because it would take something away from both of their deaths? We don't try to understand Robin's logic. We just accept it.

"What are you doing," he hisses. Consequently, he realizes moments too late that he should not have perhaps been so abrupt.

[mustardwithat]

Fritz, fortunately, is very hard to startle. She twirls--yes, twirls--to face Robin, looking a lot less manic than usual. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail rather than twisted up into its characteristic knots and twirls, and she's not wearing any makeup at all. A faint scar runs from the back of her left cheek, down her neck, and across her collarbone--visible thanks to her open coat and loose tanktop. She quirks an amused look at him.

"S'matter, hon? I steal your thunder?"

She hops down from the edge as a bluster of wind makes her sway. Fritz digs through her pants pocket and pulls out a lighter, cupping her hand around the flame as she lights her cigarette, and then after as well as she stares at it for a moment. A shrug. She clicks the lighter off and gestures at the edge. "All yours."

[with_coffee]

Robin blinks at her. He had nearly had a heart attack when she bloody well twirled, but then she doesn't fall and asks him that.

"No. Just... didn't want you to kill yourself," he mutters.

This should not be the place for smokers to come. Or people trying to practice their self destructive powers. It should be his place. His roof.

He's not possessive. Really.

Robin steps out toward the edge and rolls his eyes. "Thanks." Like he'd actually jump with someone there. He pulls out his own cigarette and lighter.

"That... wasn't why you were standing up there, was it?" Not that he cares! She just should... think about doing that somewhere else. Yeah.

[mustardwithat]

Fritz smiles, thin enough that it's hardly an expression. She looks like she's smiling half the time anyway, the way her lips quirk up fractionally at one side. She huffs a long stream of smoke into the air.

"Hey, it's not my business if you want to jump." She tips her head back and tries to balance the cigarette on her lips for about half a second before rescuing it from the wind. "And it's not yours if I want to."

After a second, she sighs and adds, "Just up hear for the sunset, sweet. No diving lessons today."

[egyptiansoldier]

Daniel may be used to weirdness of all sorts, but... there are cats. In the parking lot. And he swears it looks like a laying-on-of-hands... paws? Something like that. Anyway, he has to go look, because this is definitely something he hasn't seen before. And especially after meeting Cy, he's not about to dismiss anything that cats do around here.

He doesn't want to startle them, so he hangs back near the doors, just watching. The buried anthropology geek is peeking its head out, wanting to observe, and it's not often he gets the chance to truly indulge that sort of impulse.

[prince_stupid]

Dawww, Daniel, you're so cute. Ragnar's moving through the crowd now, tending the worst wounds on most of the crowd. He's only doing a surface-cleanse, as it were--he needs to spread his abilities around, and the sheer degree of illness is starting to tell. He's beginning to feel rather ill himself. But there are still cats to tend, and he's not going to turn anyone away.

Ragnar pauses, looks up, and sees Daniel. "...ah. I suppose this is a curious sight to a human, is it not?"

[egyptiansoldier]

"Something like that, yes." He keeps his voice quiet, still concerned about scaring the other cats away, especially now that he's noticed just how bad off some of them are. None of them look well-cared-for. This many feral cats in one area would have been seen as an infestation of pests back home, but here... it just makes him sad. Some of them must have had homes, once.

It should be surprising to him that hearing a cat talk is almost expected, but the only part he really notices is how formal this one's speech is. Go figure. "Your abilities seem to be in high demand." Which is an understatement. It almost looks like they're treating this cat like the Messiah, coming to be healed. And it sort of is.

[prince_stupid]

"It is not unusual for this to be the case." He looks at the cats still surrounding him and sighs heavily. "The cats of the false Tintagel were the same before the Alchemist took them. Then--well. Then."

There's a moment, a breath, between the end of Ragnar's sentence and the chaos that breaks out at the edge of the crow. The truce seems to shatter all at once as one of the ferals takes a swipe at a house-cat. The assemblage breaks down as the animals tear into each other. Ragnar stands in the middle of it, alarmed, before squaring his shoulders and raising his voice.

"Enough!"

They don't listen. He braces his paws against the ground. Light and a rumbling roar build around him, and for a moment there's another animal there, a massive cat built more like a bear with teeth that mesh like scissors in a mouth that could crush a man's head in one bite. The animals scatter, and then a very tired Ragnar is the only one left.

"...Well. I will say this: at least they are no longer fighting."