recolle | Tea for Two (Closed)

"So, even if we agreed we weren't going to be fancy, when you mentioned tea time, I thought it was going to be inside and at a table." Minako grins as she approaches, a pink pastry box balanced on her palm. She's dressed more casually than normal herself, finally able to shuck off the heavier winter fabrics, and seems more energetic than usual, if that's possible. The spring break is doing her well.

"But I like this idea too. I'm so ready to soak up some sun."

"It seemed appropriate, and today is less cold than earlier was," she said, putting out a tray so that it could be used to keep the tea set stable on. "Besides, are picnics not supposed to be on blankets out in the grass?" It certainly seemed as such to her, so why not?

"True!"

She settles onto the blanket in perfect seiza, setting the pastry box on her lap and popping it open to show off the half dozen scones inside.

"Tadaaa! I didn't have time to make more than one flavor, but blueberry is a classic anyways, I didn't think you would mind."

"I think that the fact that you made one in the first place is already impressive, so I am hardly about to complain that there is not more variety, Minako, thank you!" Chloe said, setting out a hot plate to warm the tea. Battery powered hot plates, perfect just for this, so long as you shut them off before you picked them up.

"I brought a nice orange pekoe tea. It seemed like a good choice for today, don't you think?" Why... did that statement sound familiar?

"Of course! I didn't know how many you wanted, but since I'm a glutton and wanted three, I decided to make three for you too." She busies herself with the other table (or rather, blanket) settings, the dishes and forks and whatnot that they'd need once the tea was ready.

"Ooh, that sounds great. I admit I'm more of a black or green tea kind of girl, but the fruity ones are always nice with scones." Minako leans in and breathes in the delicate scent. "And orange is my second favorite fruit, too."

"It seems a good arrangement, and I should not say you were a glutton. You do too well at keeping your figure, afte rall." Of course, regular exercise didn't hurt, and hadn't she been one of those to introduce Chloe to Zumba before? Yes, Chloe was pretty sure she was involved there.

"Mmm, oh, I apologize. Orange Pekoe is a type of tea grading. This is actually a black tea, so you should be pleasantly surprised," she said, blushing a little. "My mother had a bit of a fancy for delicate teas, so I was trained in the varieties." And, whether or not she realized it, Orange Pekoe had been the grade of tea served at a certain other tea party trying to insert itself in the little event.

"Aw, thanks!" Though really, she's just good at hiding it under her clothes. Minako is only on her second month of keeping off what she affectionately calls 'cupcake weight', after all. She leans forward to watch Chloe pour the tea, making an interested noise in her throat.

"I didn't know that..." Clearly she needs to expand her tea horizons instead of just drinking green tea all the time. "Should I try it with milk and sugar? Or just drink it straight first?"

"Both would be fine, but if you want to try it first without, you may. It is a tea made with younger leaves," she explained, setting one out for her friend and smiling over at her, breathing in the vapors from her own cup. There was a definite familiarity there, the scent of the black tea reminiscent of things that teased at her memory.

"Tea snobbery is almost as bad as coffee snobbery, believe it or not."

"I believe it. I've made way too many excessively specific coffees at work not to."

She decides to try the tea without milk and sugar first, bringing the cup to her lips and taking a delicate sip. It's delicious, and while she's sure it has something to do with the actual tea leaves, she's sure Chloe's deft hand in preparing it also factors in.

"I like it! Tell me more about grading, though-- is that kind of like coffee roast levels?"

"If Starbucks can create eight different dark roasts, not including the seasonal varieties," she said, shaking her head and laughing to herself. "Ah, but if there is a thing people can be snobs about, someone will be a snob about it. Orange Pekoe, though... is a grading that comes from China for whole leaf teas instead of broken. It is, I guess you might say, the middle line of grading in such things. There are many grades after that, which add an additional term onto it. I think the highest grade is ... Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe?"

She couldn't help but giggle as she said that. The words mashed together like that sounded almost silly to her. "I have only ever had that a few times at my mother's house. It's ... a very high quality tea."

(OOC: Thank god for wikipedia. When I originally saw the episode years ago, I thought it was an orange tea too.)

Minako can't help but laugh along with Chloe. That is an incredible mouthful that she has to try out for herself.

"Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe."

Yup, it's ridiculous.

"Who even thought of that name? And why use the word 'tippy'? What does that even mean?" She peers down into her cup, as if it held all the answers to this tea snobbery madness. "I'm okay with just regular old Orange Pekoe, I think. It's good enough for my clearly unrefined taste buds."

"Exactly," she said as she smiled right back at the laughter. Seriously, the naming convention was just downright silly, but it was what they did. "I am not entirely sure how the name came into being. And, as you might guess, the Orange Pekoe is pleasant enough as is."

She lifted her cup and breathed in the aroma, eyes getting a distant look. As she did, she looked over at Minako quietly for a moment. The familiarity was there again, as if something was tugging at her mind. She blinked and shuddered. "Mmmm, perhaps I should find a different sort of tea to drink, though. This always seems to make me think of something else."

Minako sends Chloe a concerned look, setting her tea cup down on its plate with a click.

"Something else?" She hesitates for only a moment. This is relevant to a bigger picture, after all. "Something related to your visions?"

Chloe had received a fondue fork from Retrospec, too. It might be too early to tell, but if there's a theme behind the things Chloe is seeing and receiving in the mail, it could be relevant to or similar for other people as well.

She held the cup for a moment longer. Hands shook for a second and then stilled and she shook her head. "Ah... it's... it's just a vision I've already had, playing through my mind," she said softly, shaking her head. "I wonder if having tea with cute brown-haired girls is the trigger for it? It seems to only happen when I do that."

...no, wait, Karkat wasn't a cute brown-haired girl. He was a surly brown haired boy who happened to have hair like Kirika's. That was all. Whatever, close enough. "It seems that they think this is somehow important to me to remember, though, if I've had it twice."

"Excuse you, I'm totally a redhead~!" Her eyes flicker to Chloe's hands, then look up again, her voice light as she continues. "And it may be important to remember, but if you don't want to remember, then we can put the tea away and do something else."

Everyone has been getting these hallucinations unwillingly, as far as she can tell. If Chloe knows what the trigger is, can choose whether or not she wants to see the visions, then Minako is more than happy to help her with that.

"No, no. The vision has come and gone. It won't be re-appearing again anytime soon I should hope," she said, taking a sip and sighing to herself before grinning at Minako. "And I suppose you are a red-head. You're usually so calm. I never think of you as that hot tempered."

Her hands hovered there, relishing the warmth before she looked down at the cup. "But did you want to know about the vision?" You know, since it had kind of happened in front of her.

"Oh."

Minako gives Chloe a little blink of surprise. Her own visions come admittedly just as quickly, but she usually has a stronger reaction to them...mostly because they're so startling and strange in nature. Either Chloe's calm is of the iron-clad variety (which Minako wouldn't doubt for a moment), or the vision was as mundane as a fondue fork.

"If you don't mind telling me."

Edited 2017-04-05 14:56 (UTC)

She'd had a much stronger reaction the first time this had happened. But the vision had also been a much calmer one than many of those she'd heard about. Ok, getting a gun pulled on her was still frightening after the fact, but not as much the second time, not when she knew it was coming. Still, she was starting to build a bit more of a calm and certainty in responding to these visions, bit by bit. They had happened, and they were going to continue. No, she wasn't going to freak out again, not like that one time over the kiss.

She sipped again and shrugged, setting it down to take one of the snacks. "It was... a tea party, of sorts. I was visiting someone's house, uninvited. The girls were clearly people that knew me, and I don't think either of them liked me. I know the blonde did not, but having a gun pulled on you is a little telling, yes?" She took a bite and gave a rueful smile. "I still can't believe that I didn't once react to that gun. I was so scared the first time I saw that vision just remembering it."

Why... didn't it scare her as much the second time?

Minako's eyebrows have skyrocketed up into her bangs, her jaw slack.

"Holy crap."

It's not a very meaningful thing to say in reply, and she struggles to figure out what else to add in the midst of setting down her cup of tea.

"I know some people have been seeing crazy things, but getting a gun pulled on you, even if it's a vision, is...worrying." She flounders, switches gears so she doesn't have to remind Chloe of it. "What did the girls look like? Do you think you've seen them in the city before?"

She nodded, looking over from the lip of her cup at Minako. There was a faint emotional distance to that look, a calm that hadn't been there the first time she'd seen the vision. "Oh, it was a little terrifying, but it's not like she kept it trained on me. I just... know that they were ready the whole time, in case something happened. It was a feeling. Our guards were always up."

"But I don't know them. One of them looks a little like the girl I'm dating, but she's not the same person. I'm sure of it." A small, bitter laugh. "I'm pretty sure in the visions I'm taken with her, believe it or not."

"I believe you. I have no reason not to, even with as incredulous as it sounds. I just can't believe that your visions are turning out so threatening." Up until now it's been hard to pinpoint how she felt about the visions. There are too many strange feelings, too much déjà vu involved and too many people getting them in the first place to ignore them completely, or write them off as just dreams. But at the same time, if these visions are memories, what the hell kind of lives were they living? Or if they're just hallucinations, why have such horrible ones when most of them have lead relatively normal lives?

Minako sighs and bites into a scone.

"I have no idea how we would even go about it, but be careful anyways?"

"I don't really plan to try and invoke another one myself," she said, shaking her head. "I think that the few I've had so far make me worried about the possibility I will start remembering the life of some secret agent, jet setting around the world and causing trouble. It is much more fun to watch on television, I assure you." She laughed a little, though it was a more hollow sounding laugh than usual.

"But I don't quite know yet why either. They sounded like they might have been on edge about something called the Soldats. Don't know what that is, though."

"Something to look up in the library sometime? If you want to, that is."

She continues to nibble on the scone, more for something to occupy her hands with while she thinks than anything else. Stress eating might not be the healthiest way to deal with anxiousness, but it's her way.

"And we don't know anything about why people are having these visions yet, so even if you do start remembering the life of a secret agent, it might not mean anything." It doesn't really sound reassuring to her own ears, but Minako tries to back it up with a smile, despite how much effort it requires.

"If it's more fun to watch on television, then think of your visions like getting that one really lame cable movie channel...or something like that."

"I... may have already looked into that a little. No searches found anything that resembled the world. The word itself means 'Soldiers.' It would make sense for a military group, I suppose, if they wished to be unoriginal, but there is no organization I've heard of with that name." Admittedly, she hadn't asked the police, but she wasn't sure she wanted to do that just yet. She had too little to go on.

Nibbling a little, she nodded and smiled. "These are delicious by the way. Thank you." A smile at the re-assurance came shortly afterwards. "And perhaps you are right. As long as it is not actually changing anything about who we are, perhaps they are just... very surreal, very real feeling movies?"

Yeah, here was hoping.

"Unless they're one of those military groups you're not supposed to know about." Minako isn't the type to start going all conspiracy-theorist on people, but she can't deny it's a possibility. And really, it feels like anything is possible-- albeit in a bad way-- now that Retrospec has wormed itself into their lives.

"You're welcome!" Her smile turns crooked, the disbelief starting to bleed through. "And yeah, very surreal movies. Honestly if things weren't so messed up, I think someone could write a pretty good screenplay or novel based on everything that's going on."

"That... seems to be the most likely, though even most of those have some record in history books." She wasn't exactly a conspiracy nut either, but the way that the girls had spoken in her dream. "They certainly didn't seem to know a lot about them, and were looking into it."

A sigh. "A screenplay about us all having weird memories? I wonder if it would make any sense."

"If you need help digging into it, just let me know. I can try looking through the university's library for you. We have options."

A solemn nod, and then Minako squints off into the distance. "What was that movie called-- Eternal Sunshine of the Clean Mind? That one was about weird memories and didn't make any sense either, but you kind of understood it by the end of the movie. Though I'm pretty sure memory erasing machines don't exist right now." A pause. "At least I hope not."

"I might appreciate it, but not quite yet," she said, shaking her head a little firmly. "I... do not know if I want this to become like the Chocobos, something that is just a vision becoming part of the world around us." Not to mention, the Soldats sounded a bit more sinister than smiling fruit.

She considered for a moment. Yes, she'd seen a movie with a name like that. She didn't remember everything about it though. "Let us hope that it is nothing like that. That would be disturbing to say the least."

Minako winces. She hadn't considered that. It's certainly a good point-- Retrospec has gotten used to chocobos and smiling fruit for the most part. They've gotten a few laughs out of people, at the very least. But if something like Chloe's Soldats came to change their reality, then it wouldn't just mean that things would suddenly get way too real, that they would become part of a war story at the whim of a shady HR department for a social media app. It'd also mean that they'd be endangering the whole city, the innocent civilians who have no idea of the things that are going on.

"Right. Let's avoid that." She chews on her bottom lip. "It's a standing offer, though. If you need me to look anything up, I've got you covered. I feel like we kind of owe ourselves answers, you know?"

It could be perfectly fine, and Soldats might have just been some civically minded group of helping hands... but Chloe doubted it. It would be a lot better if they never made an appearance in this place. And if only the two of them knew that most members were just guys in suits with guns, they'd probably be even more keen on avoiding them showing up.

"Yes, agreed, and I would be happy to have a little help one way or another. At the very least, we want to have answers, so we'll have to search eventually."

"Yeah, that's unavoidable. If we have any agency with what's going on lately, we should take full advantage of it."

Even if things might take a turn for the worst. Which Minako sincerely hopes they don't.

"And if they think we aren't going to be in control of our destiny? Well, I certainly intend to disabuse them of this foolish understanding, don't you?" she said, grinning back at her with a bit more force behind it. "The trick will be finding out how to do just that, won't it?"

"Oh absolutely." Minako's smile is serene, a breath away from razor sharp. "It might take a bit to figure it out, but we're not going to take all of these weird happenings laying down."

She punctuates this with a delicate sip of tea, winking at Chloe from behind the rim.

(OOC: I think this is a good fade to black moment. They'll likely continue for a bit.)

Tea for Two (Closed)

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thank you wiki for my rp life laughs

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end around here? :3

Yep