Big bright accent, catty smile, Oscar Wilde confrontation

[plaguedrat]

"Can I think about it and call you back?" Rat looked at the script in front of him as well as the drafted contract. The casting agency's offer was far more than he'd expected, especially for an 'out-of-towner' and Rat needed the money more than he was actually willing to admit. The city stipend paid his bills bu. Marius but Rat had a little more pride than that.

"Okay, Mr. Nezumi," the casting agent said, looking a little less than pleased with it. Rat felt strange being addressed as a Mister anything, much less a stage name he'd made up because he didn't have a real last name.

Besides all that he liked working. Television was a new prospect and it wasn't the stage, but there were plenty of actresses here. They didn't need to put a dainty man in a dress and hope the audience was forgiving the way they had in the West District. There was only so much call for Shakespeare too. Rat had to either diversify or embrace his niche.

But playing an effete gay secondary character, a drag queen? Rat wasn't sure about the script. On paper, it wasn't much of a part or even much of a show. It was a miniseries, apparently, with hope for renewal as a full time show. Dark stuff, they promised. Very edgy. Rat wasn't impressed, but he was hungry and he needed work.

"I'll call you first thing in the morning with my decision," Rat said, letting himself out through the lobby.

Comments

[oddthatway]

"I know. I'm sorry, okay?" I repeat, trying not to let my own irritation rise up at the man's reaction. He looks like something died just beneath his nose, the way he's scowling. Like I've caused some great offense by nearly walking into him.

"I wasn't going to?" I say, shrugging. I have no idea what he's talking about, "Auditions? Auditions for what?"

I assume he must be some sort of actor. In Candor, that just means he's a damn good liar.

[plaguedrat]

"For the miniseries," he says, nodding at the door. "Be Careful With My Heart." Rat rolls his eyes, highly unimpressed by the title, but not stupid enough to express that opinion right outside of the studio to a stranger. That runs a little too close to biting a hand that feeds him, even for the infamously acerbic Rat.

"They just closed callbacks, so if you were hoping for basic cable stardom, it's slipping through your fingers."

[oddthatway]

"Sounds like riveting stuff," I reply. "As riveting as that Space Hospital show, even. Lucky for you, I have no interest in auditioning." I might have begun to develop an affection for shitty television, but like hell am I letting a stranger know that.

"Aw, damn. There goes my chance," I say with mock sincerity. I would make a terrible actor; I always say what I feel and I always promote what I believe to be the truth in any given situation.

[plaguedrat]

Rat glances around like he wants to make his opinion known on both programs. "I'm not sure we'd be competing for the same roles anyway," he assures her. "Unless you are a very convincing drag queen."

His mouth twists a little, uncertain of how he likes the sound of that appellation. It's not what he's considered himself or how he'd tried to sell himself for the audition.

[oddthatway]

I guess, considering how close we are to what I assume is the studio holding the auditions, this guy has a lot more on his mind than he's at liberty to say, considering his aspirations. "The only thing I'm very convincing of is telling the truth," I say. "And I can tell you I am no drag queen."

I can guess, from the way his mouth quirks, that he isn't as sure of himself in that role himself.

"And are you?" I can't help but ask.

[plaguedrat]

"I can't imagine that you are," he agrees. He hasn't known many women who impersonate men on the stage but then what does he know of this girl's private life. "And I can't say I think of myself as one either."

So it's a question of what he chooses. His principles or his pay? Rat is quite certain he knows which one will pay for his meals.

"I played female roles out of necessity."

[oddthatway]

"No?" I ask, quirking an eyebrow. I have to wonder why he would consider the part of a drag queen when he seems to dislike the term itself. "What draws you to the part then?" Candor taught me that acting is just another form of deception; entertaining lies, but lies all the same.

"They didn't have enough parts for men?" I let out a snort. I find that hard to believe. But then again, I don't know where he comes from. "Wherever you're from, I mean?"

[plaguedrat]

"Payment," Rat says bluntly. His particular resume doesn't count much here and so he's started casting a wider net of lower quality. He can't even totally dismiss the part when it uses his skills and particular talents, but he doesn't have to enthusiastically sing it's praises either.

Still flat and blunt, with a little anger now, Rat says, "They didn't have enough actresses because where I lived was a hell hole and you worked with what you got."

[oddthatway]

"Fair enough," I reply, just as bluntly. Far be it from me to judge how anyone seeks to make a living, let alone in a city that has literally taken its citizens from other places. I need to start looking for work, myself, though I'm hardly rushing to throw myself in front of cameras of any kind.

I raise an eyebrow at his words. I haven't yet met many people who come from circumstances that remind me of the Chicago I've left behind. This man before me could have been one of the Factionless, back when that system had still been in place. "Sounds like my home," I admit with a shrug. "Only less government officials experimenting on people because of their damaged genes."

[plaguedrat]

"Sounds like a happy place," Rat says, deeply sarcastic. It's his actor's training that keeps him from flinching at the idea of human experiments, even as he remembers what it was like to be one himself. Under their lenses, he hadn't even been human, just a sample in a jar to those emotionless, amoral scientists that No. 6 turned out so readily.

"It was after the end of the world. Nice big wall separated the inside and outside, the obedient and the undesirable."

It's easy to summon up all that hatred as vicious as ever. Whatever shape No. 6 is taking now, with that wall destroyed, Rat can't forgive the place what it was and what it did to him.

[oddthatway]

"Oh, absolutely delightful, I assure you," I reply, my tone just as sardonic as his. The Chicago I left behind had only just made a giant step towards progress; the city itself still recovering from the senseless, bloody ravages of war raging through it. In the end, the subjects of the experiment had won, but at a significant cost. I try not to think of Tris' body lying prone. Of Uriah. Of everyone I've lost because of the madness of my world.

"Not end of the world for us," I explain. "Just after a war trying to improve human genes that ultimately only damaged them. And then they created the city experiments to try and clean up their mess."

"Your place sounds just as joyful," I observe with an arched brow.

[plaguedrat]

Rat scoffs. At least her world's war had had some ideology behind it. His world, it seems, had dissolved itself into nuclear hell just because it was too hard to avoid it. "We just did the old fashioned thing and had a great big nuclear fuck up," Rat says, unimpressed. "If there was a reason, they've forgotten it. Or just refused to tell us."

Shoving his script into his bag, Rat finds himself a little surprised that his blunt, hateful honesty seems to have made him a new friend. It's not the typical outcome that he expects when he opens his mouth.

"Oh I hear it's a utopia. If you live by their rules, never question the government, show a high IQ, and never do anything that might be interpreted as being malcontent."

If he were more dramatic, he'd spit on the ground.

[oddthatway]

"Big, old nuclear fuck up, huh?" I reply, arching a brow at him. I feel like we're having an actual pissing contest over whose world is more damaged and, to use his phrase,'fucked up.' That, in and of itself, is incredibly fucked up and I find I don't care. It's refreshing, to be this honest, and to find what pleasure I can in discussing the messed up things Chicago has done. "That's like, vintage nowadays, isn't it?"

I watch him shove the script into his bag and I find myself thinking that for all of his brusque talk, I actually like him. Maybe it's the Candor in me, appreciating his honesty.

"All you had to do in Chicago was not fit into any of the five factions," I reply with a shrug. "And then you were hunted down simply for being who you are. And then, the government outside watching the city never intervenes. Even when one group of people decides to overrule the rest." Sometimes, I think that is what I hate the most about the Bureau; the way they were content to watch us tear ourselves apart, so long as it didn't affect any of them.

[plaguedrat]

"Ah," Rat says. He nods, thinking of the divisions of No. 6, ranked by IQ and potential contributions to the city. The ones with less potential had had the worst housing and jobs. Shion himself should have been at the top tier, but he'd given it up because of childish sympathies. Because one boy had been kind to another, he'd been demoted.

How about that for kindness?

"Sounds like an appropriately rigid and impossible system," he agrees, glancing over at the girl. There's something sharp edged about her that reminds him of the Dogkeeper, stark and blunt. "How long before it fell to pieces?"

[oddthatway]

It's interesting, to look back now and wonder how anyone could have gotten away with structuring an entire city's population the way the Bureau structured Chicago. How Tris' bravery and determination helped to undermine the entire organization. I have no idea what's become of Chicago now, knowing that the Bureau has been stopped but winding up here in Darrow, myself. All I know is what's become of Tris.

"That just about sums it up," I nod. "Your world sounds like it's similarly impossible. Nice to know there are multiple, fucked up worlds out there." It's strangely comforting, knowing people have suffered in the same way I have. Misery loves company, or just the downtrodden and abused.

"It lasted a good while, anyway," I say. "A couple of decades, give or take. I got here after the entire system, both within and outside of the city, fell apart."

"How about you? Your world still in tact?"

[plaguedrat]

"Most of them are fucked up in some way or another." By now, he's started walking in the direction of home, figuring that the inquisitive young miss will follow if she likes or go elsewhere. It's not really his problem.

When she asks about his world, Rat lets out an angry bark of laughter. It hadn't worked, of course it hadn't worked! "Aside from a nature god filling people at random with deadly bee larvae and then a bomb destroying the wall? Oh yes, everything was going swimmingly."

Rat is very, very good at sarcasm.

"I left. Or I tried to. Now I'm here."

[oddthatway]

He starts walking and I follow. I've got nowhere else to be, as it is, and our conversation is actually interesting enough that I'm intrigued by him. "Fair point," I say, considering Darrow's own insanity. I haven't experienced much of it so far, but just the fact that a city kidnaps a fair amount of its population and then prevents them from leaving is fucked up in its own right.

"I'm sorry, what did you say about a nature god filling people with bee larvae? What the actual fuck?" I am actually flabbergasted. I didn't think anything else in this city could catch me by surprise, but here I am. Talking to a stranger I've just met about invading bee larvae.

"So you walked out of one city and into another," I observe, quirking an eyebrow at him.

[plaguedrat]

He nods as she walks alongside him, keeping up with long strides. After a year here, which is a depressing realization, Rat has met a lot of people and most of them have been scarred in some way no matter how stable their worlds might have been. Aurora, here briefly and shiningly kind, had been an exception and sometimes he misses that.

"They called her Elyurias. And she was angry." Even as the singer for the Mau, Rat had been too young to properly understand her demands. The level of control he'd seemed to have over her was largely out of desperate persuasion, infused with Safu's fondness for Shion.

"I did. And there are still giant wasps."

[oddthatway]

"Elyurias," I repeat. A pretty name for what sounds like a pretty ugly force. "So she just...filled people with bee larvae and waited for them to hatch, or?" I've seen a lot of strange things, especially here in Darrow, recently. But never anything quite like what Rat is describing.

What the hell is it with bees?

"I haven't seen them here, but I've heard they've got their own...abilities. Fire and ice, or so I've heard," I remark. Thankfully, I haven't witnessed them firsthand for myself.

[plaguedrat]

Rat shrugs. "She was very, very angry." And he hadn't known to sing for her. If not for that shred of Safu left inside that vengeful force, he doesn't know that they would have made it out as relatively unscathed as they had.

"I heard they came out last summer. The ones with fire. If they can stay away, I'd be happy for that."

He doesn't need to become the mouthpiece for another volatile force of nature that he doesn't understand.

[oddthatway]

"Any reason for that anger?" I ask, though I'm wondering if this bee god felt anger at the way the humans in Rat's world built their utopia. Perhaps this Elyurias felt that she was acting out nature's vengeance, or something. I don't know. I'm used to humans in positions of power abusing those below them. Not bees.

"I'm glad I wasn't here for that, that's all I'll say," I agree. I've seen and dealt with a lot of things. I'd rather avoid the supernatural bees if I can help it.

Although, I suppose, the challenge in getting rid of them could prove fun.

[plaguedrat]

Rat can think of reasons, but explaining them to a stranger is frankly too personal and none of her business. Instead, he just shrugs and looks skyward, "Do the gods need reason to be angry?" Accepting an actor's stance to distract her, he recites, "As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, they kill us for their sport."

It's a phrase he knows well, though he hasn't played Gloucester. Many of the theater attendees had loved the line because of how true it rang.

"Gods, fate. They don't need to have a reason."

[oddthatway]

"No, I suppose they don't," I agree, sensing that there's more to it than what he says, but hey. We've only just met. I'm not as defined by my first faction as I used to be; I don't press for details, nor do I let myself become consumed by not knowing. "I guess that's part of what makes them gods," I muse. I've never been overly religious, myself.

I raise an eyebrow at the recitation. "Poetic," I observe with a wry smile. "I can see why they offered you a part." It's as close as a compliment as I can get with a stranger.

"Here's hoping the gods of Darrow are kinder," I say, though I don't believe my own words. What kind of city just kidnaps people and refuses to let them leave, anyway?