if you're going downtown, I might as well be on your way [CLOSED]
Characters: Cirucci Thunderwitch and Phoenix Wright
Content: Cirucci has a couple inquiries for the man.
Setting: The marketplace.
Time: Backdated to around the time of the plane races; probably before her run-in with Shinjiro etc.
Warnings: None that I can think of. Cirucci is on her better behavior.
( I won't tell one soul )
Content: Cirucci has a couple inquiries for the man.
Setting: The marketplace.
Time: Backdated to around the time of the plane races; probably before her run-in with Shinjiro etc.
Warnings: None that I can think of. Cirucci is on her better behavior.
( I won't tell one soul )
She had rehearsed the scene loosely in her head; Aizen had given her some background information on the man, of course (would he be anything less than thorough?), but she couldn't just reveal her hand of cards to Phoenix. Her assignment consisted on questions regarding the Victoria II, but she puzzled for days over how to work that into a conversation without, well...raising suspicions.
...In the end, she decided she would sound a little strange no matter what she said. And if she went about her questioning the right way, she'd seem less sketchy and more one of those overly eager strangers who meant well and with innocent intentions.
She tilted her head, trying to catch the man's eyes. "Excuse me, sir?" She took a step away from her booth, ignoring the seller who was now watching her warily (like I'd steal something that looked so horrid, don't worry). She clapped her hands together almost gleefully as she stepped closer to Phoenix--but her face quickly fell, and a hand flew to her mouth in embarrassment.
"Oh--it seems you weren't the man I was looking for." Cirucci smiled apologetically, giggling softly to herself. "I guess it's hard to tell in this crowd, mm? But..." Squinting her eyes, the arrancar gave the man an intense up-to-down stare, index pressing against in mouth in thought. "You do look familiar. You wouldn't happen to be aboard one of the ships that just landed, by chance? I arrived here around the time many of those stopped in, so perhaps I saw you then."
She kept the pleasant smile plastered on her face. Best to flatter men with small pleasantries to get what you wanted out of them. Especially one as plain-looking as Phoenix, here.
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....was she flirting? Phoenix couldn't quite tell if it was that or if she was just being friendly, so he decided to assume no, for now. "And I think I would have remembered seeing you." She did look pretty distinctive. At least, her makeup did. But it was very possible that she'd seen him around, and he just hadn't spotted her. He had been running around town in a preoccupied state, so it wasn't unimaginable.
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She had almost slipped into a familiar habit--referring to herself in the third person, 'Cirucci this,' and 'Cirucci that.' But she caught herself in time, and while he would probably ask her name at some point, she wouldn't offer it willingly herself. Best to hide her tracks in case he considered her questioning suspicious.
"For a week, huh? Mm, I've been here around the same time." She nodded slowly, before tilting her head to the side in curiosity. "What ship did you come here on? Oh..." She bit her lip. "I'm not asking too much, I hope! It's just been such a busy week, so it's nice to talk, even if to a stranger..."
She offered a shy smile, but it was a smirk that threatened to overwhelm her features.
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"Oh, you stand out, all right," he muttered. Really, someone who did their makeup like that should know that they'd be remembered...
But there was no problem telling her which ship he was from. That wasn't a difficult thing to find out, if she really wanted to, and Phoenix had no reason to hide it. "No, it's all right. I've been a passenger on the Victoria II for a while now."
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"The Victoria II, is it? ...Oh!" Cirucci perked up, suddenly, a wide grin spreading across her face. "That ship. Well known in Ivona, yes?" She poked him in the chest, lightly. "Ohhhh, what did you do to get on there, hmm~?" But the light lilt in her voice revealed that she was just teasing, her lips still turned in a smile.
A little forward, perhaps, but it shouldn't be enough to scare him off. "How long have you been on board? I hope you've been enjoying your stay...I can't imagine being stuck in the air if I hated where I was staying, you know."
Except oh, yes, she could, and the shudder that ran through her body was no act.
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"Whoa, can you slow down a little?" His guard was coming down just a little bit. It was difficult not to relax in front of such a friendly girl. "I've been on the ship for....close to a year now, to be honest. Whether or not I've enjoyed it...." He pulled a slight grimace. "It's been interesting, I'll say that for it." Mechanical spiders, giant monsters, Manfred von Karma -- the Victoria II was one insane episode after another.
And yet he stayed.
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"Interesting?" She blinked. "Ohhh, you can't leave off there, you tease." A hand reached out to nudge him jokingly in the shoulder. "You haven't gotten yourself into trouble on board, have you? Or does one of your superiors have it out for you, mm?"
She could tell by his posture that he was relaxing, if by just a little bit. At least she didn't have to lay on the act even thicker. She was already beginning to feel sick to her stomach from the effort of laying on saccharine sweetness.
"I can imagine they'd be very tough to please," she added very matter-of-factly. "Or is the Captain like a character from a novel, eyepatch and epic adventures and all~?"
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"And none of them are out to get me, either. It's just....so many things have happened since last fall..." He trailed off. "I wouldn't call any of them epic adventures, but it hasn't exactly been dull." Phoenix was beginning to feel more inclined to tell this girl about what had been happening -- she was quite friendly, and if she was one of those girls who saw everything like a novel, then who was going to take her too seriously? Besides, it wasn't like Phoenix was compromising military information. He wouldn't tell her anything sensitive.
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In reality, she was growing frustrated. His answers were so vague and ambiguous; Aizen would never be pleased with that. But she'd have been foolish to expect him to open up right away, especially to an 'overeager' stranger, even if she was using her charm to ease him into the conversation. She had to keep indulging him, even if it pained her, to put it lightly.
"Well, it looks like you got through it all right." She squeezed his upper arm, winking once as she lay another compliment onto him. "More than all right, if I say so myself...~"
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He was feeling less cautious and more flattered by her attention. He wasn't getting ahead of himself, of course -- he was probably just some interesting passerby. Maybe she was comparing him to heroes in her novels. Much as he'd like that, he thought, she was just setting herself up for disappointment. But that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy a bit of conversation. It was nice to have a pretty girl interested in talking to you.
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Her eyebrows shot up next, but it was hardly an act. Sure, the Silvana had its own set of strange mishaps, but..."Giant...spiders? Zombies?"
Surely, he couldn't blame her for the look of utter disbelief painted on her face.
"...So, uh. How did you-you and the crew...handle all that?" She tilted her head-quite naturally, given that she actually was thrown off. "I mean...you must all be pretty close, right? Going through things like...that?"
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"Giant mechanical spiders," Phoenix corrected. "You should have seen him deal with them. They started out small, but they stole metal from all over the ship, and built three big ones. There was one in the engine room, one in the showers, and....one in a closet, I think. It was scary, all right, but I wouldn't call us 'close.'" There was just the slightest hint of bitterness to Phoenix's voice as he made that last remark.
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Yes! She was finally getting somewhere, a little shred of information to report back to Aizen with. And when Cirucci Thunderwitch saw an opening, she stomped right in.
She pretended to be in stunned silence, for a moment, at the tale of the giant mechanical spiders. "Well, I-I can't say I've heard of that before," she admitted, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears. "Strange ship, is it?"
Her ears perked at the sharp tone that snuck into his speech. "Oh? What would you call the crew, then?" A knuckle brushed the bone of his wrist. "Are you all distant? I can see that happening under a dictator type.."
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He was talking about the Victoria II, and Phoenix knew that he had better be careful what information slipped. "There's definitely camaraderie there, though I'm not part of it," he explained, valiantly rallying his thoughts away from her flirting, though he kept his hand in place. "Some of them genuinely seem to care about him. But I don't know most of them well enough to say."
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"I guess some people take to that kind of disposition...unless he's a softy underneath it all. Sometimes all that authoritarian stuff is just an act~!" She nodded once for emphasis, perky and cheery, still. "Must be a hardworking crew, at the very least. Have most of them been together longer, or do you just not mesh well with them?" She paused, eyebrows knitting. "That seems strange, though...you seem friendly enough. I hope nothing too bad happened to create division between the crew."
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"And being friendly or not doesn't have anything to do with it," Phoenix replied. "I'm a reporter, and from Vohemar on top of that. I can't really blame them for not trusting me," he said with a sheepish grin, scratching the back of his neck with a free hand.
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