2020-07-31 - Accounting for Taste

Sparrow has returned! And as probably a direct result, there is a Rhys in the house right now. She's taking a nap, or perhaps on the phone with her little sister -- but either way, Rhys has either gotten bored or been shooed out for private sister matters or the like, because it's ended up with him strolling through the downstairs alone, on his way probably to either the kitchen or the door. Which doesn't much matter, since it changes a moment after he's passed by the open doorway, when the changed contents of that room register and he takes a couple steps backwards to end up in front of it again, squinting slightly against the dimness to take in the view.

"Oh, hey," he says, giving the occupant a bright grin perhaps still familiar from karaoke, "hi, Mac. Didn't expect to run into you here."

For his part, he's in jeans and a grey t-shirt on which the TARDIS and the DeLorean appear to have just had a bit of a crash.

Abitha's head turns slowly toward the greeting, but it takes the length of that motion for her eyes to finally follow. It must have been some deep contemplation. Even more odd now hed looked in and greeted her, she seemed to be wearing a silvery pageant-like crown, something wholly inappropriate both to her usual demeanor and her current dress. Sometimes a girl just has to remind herself she's a queen.

"Hey, yourself." She responds as she looks at Rhys, processes his presence, processes implications. "Oh, I live here now. On the down-low, though. Yaknow, with my place being a charred husk of its former self." Seemed she was getting used to the idea, coping with horrible humor. She adds the blatantly boring conversational question, because humans did the small-talk thing, "You hanging with Sparrow?"

"Yeah, I can't imagine that did anything much for the decor," Rhys replies, hopping right onto that horrible-humour bandwagon. Easier to just let that carry an unspoken undertone of empathy than immediately get into any explicit I'm-so-sorries, anyway. "Which, awesome choices with the quilts. Like the crown, too." He's leant himself against the doorframe, arms casually crossed, and one unfolds to lift a finger and point at the accessory in question.

As far as her small-talk, "Yeah, I am. Or was, and probably will be again, depending how precise you want to be and whether she re-emerges within the next three years. Also contemplating eating whatever Corey's most recently left in the fridge. As places to live go, this one's got stuff to recommend it." He tilts his head a touch at the monitors before her. "Whatcha been up to?"

"Oh yeah, food." Abitha realizes it had been more than a few hours since she ate, as was usually the case with her, probably explaining why she always looked so thin. She unfolds herself from her chair and gets up, stretching her back and arms in the way a practiced gamer should, smirking at the comment of the crown. She removes it and sets it carefully above her keyboard. "Yeah, it's dope. Friend gave it to me." She begins moving toward the door, as the suggestion to eat was the obvious plan, making shooing motions so he can either lead on to the kitchen or she would have enough room to get past him.

"Newest Resident Evil. People like watching me getting jump-scared and creeped out in the dark." she rolls her eyes, lifting a finger to indicate the unlit ceiling fixtures, "What about you?"

Rhys needs little to no shooing to get him straightening up and leading the way on this culinary expedition. He just reminded himself of Corey's cooking! Seriously, if he lived here he'd probably gain about twenty pounds the first month. "Can't say most days involve me debating whether I could pull off a crown," he notes, "Even briefly." A pause. "Probably, though." Maybe, anyway.

"That's the best part of those kinds of games, anyway. Playing up the scary, I mean. If you don't half fall out of your chair at least once either the game isn't trying or you aren't, right?" As for what he's been up to, "Gamewise? Pretty much just some WoW, lately. Mostly been working, it's been busy dealing with the aftermath of things going on at the casino." She surely heard about that incident in the parking garage, right? Can't be anyone in town who didn't. Which is surely somewhat annoying if part of one's livelihood involves people not being scared to go to the place. He gives a tiny, annoyed huff as they reach the kitchen boundary. "Town's just going to hell, lately."

Drawing back the door, he makes an intentionally exaggerated mock-formal 'after you' gesture, finding half a grin to go with it despite the topic.

"Fire and everything." Abitha agrees dryly. That had to be a painful joke. As for the casino, some people deal with trauma by trying to flee it. Some try to take control. Abitha was the latter, having begun watching the local news, Friendzone, and even the police scanner closely. That said, there's a look Abitha gives Rhys when he says he was dealing with it. To her knowledge, she wasnt sure what his connection would be. She even falters for a step. Then, righteous feminist or not, she allows him to hold the door. She moves towards the fridge.

"Ok, obvious question: how are you dealing with the casino thing?" She squints at him briefly as she pulls the cool side open, inspecting the leftovers, "Don't you work at Firefly?"

Rhys winces sympathetically. "Fire and everything," he agrees, also dry, though with that just-short-of-apologetic flavour lurking around the edges.

The odds probably aren't too terrible he'd have gone with the same playful 'chivalry' if it were one of the house's male denizens or visitors, but on a sample of one it's pretty difficult to be sure. What IS fairly easy to be sure about is the surprise at her question, even if the initial hints are subtle: a blink, a small furrow in the brow. Then, a breath of a laugh. "Yeah. I do both," he answers, "Part of why I'm busy. Still technically managing Firefly, but it's more overseeing the assistant managers now that the Grand Olympic's open. Having a manager who's also an accountant or vice versa over there's handier than you might think." A small pause, and a shrug. "Plus, I have a bit of an investment in the place. So I get to help clean up any messes." 'Get to'. Sigh.

He leans to peer over her shoulder into the fridge; it's handy she's one of the people around here who're actually shorter than he is. Not crowding, at least, just trying to get a decent look, and fixating on a foil-wrapped round dish. "Is that pie? That looks like it might be pie."

Abitha is wise enough not to flinch, even if she absolutely did not know Rhys enough to be loomed over. Thankfully, it was probably easy enough to distract him away. Pie is retrieved and passed back over her shoulder with a bit of a wry look. Abitha attempts to find anything a little cleaner eating and well... Honestly, fails. That garlic butter white wine sauce, whatever the fuck that was had been absolutely killer the other night and there was still leftovers. She pulls that tupperware out and heads for the microwave. She stares covetously after the pie as well though, even as she's hitting the buttons to heat. She succumbs to temptation soon after, "Cut me one out, too."

Technically, it's her house now too, so she does the thing of retrieving plates and eat utensils, setting them out for serving and consumption later, "Hey, I've only met you a couple times." she remarks as she holds up a utensil wielding hand, though the palm brandished most obviously. "I'm not gonna act like I'm that great on keeping up with other people's lives. Unless you make video games." This time utensils are leveled in Rhys's direction, "Then I'm all up in your shit."

She leans against the counter as the microwave thrums behind her, fixing Rhys with a more serious look, "It's related to my shop too, though, isn't it? The casino thing? Same people?"

Being 5'5" and not exactly stocky, looming over people is probably not one of those things Rhys often has to keep in mind -- physical intimidation is not likely a natural thing to him. He is fairly observant, however, and maybe something about the specific way Abitha doesn't flinch registers -- or maybe it's just a coincidence that the set of his weight sways to take him subtly farther away in the moments before she hands him the pie, and that as soon as she does, he steps away even as he starts peeling back the foil to check the contents, moving toward the counter. "Score," he announces, as it does not disappoint him by being... something non-pie in a pie plate. "Any whipped cream or anything in there?" It'll be delicious regardless, but hey, some lilies look great gilded.

He's been here a fair few times, and gets as far as hunting down at least a knife or pie-server himself before relinquishing the rest of the gathering to Abitha, snagging some napkins instead, handily outside of her personally space. The request for a slice gets a mock-salute, and when the plates arrive he settles two fairly generous slices onto them before returning what's left to the fridge. "Nah, that wasn't you, that was me," he says, with a vague don't-worry-about-it sort of gesture, "No reason you should know. Even most people who do probably only know about the managing part, really." He seems to mean it about it being his own fault to be startled, and there's a grin at the part about the video games before she goes more serious, and he does along with it.

Serious, and also thoughtful. "I think so," he says, after a moment. "I've been trying to figure out what I can. All this shit is bullshit and I don't like it going down in my town, but I don't have... solid evidence of it being the same people, yet. But honestly? Yeah. I think it probably is." He picks up his pie and a fork, but ends up tapping a finger against the plate a couple times as he considers, rather than immediately taking a bite. "I'm not exactly Sherlock Holmes or anything, but I'm not bad at picking up patterns. And, I mean, I don't think I know all the details of what happened in your case, but even just by timing of that and other stuff... Well, that line about coincidences and enemy action comes to mind, you know?"

A little chagrined by how obvious it was Rhys noticed her hesitance of personal space, Abitha doesn't meet his eyes as she listens to him. She does reach to open the door to the fridge again, looks, then stops for a second. She pulls out a silver canister with an actual CO2 cartridge topper attached. A look is given Rhys's way that borders on incredulous disbelief. Sure, this was a gourmet sort of kitchen, but the last time she saw one of these, it was picking up coffee at Espresso Yourself. She tests it on a plate. Sure enough, whip cream. "I might die." she says flatly, implying this was the logical outcome, not the gaining of extra pounds everyone keeps warning of. Also she was too short to be fat.

"I mean..." she sighs, "I've got video of the guys that set my place on fire. I've got video of the guy that threatened me." she carefully pulls her tupperware bowl out of the microwave, carrying it over to the table delicately with splayed fingers, avoiding the hot spots by only touching the rim. She slides into a seat at the breakfast nook to eat, but has to let the food cool, of course. You always have to make it lava to make sure it all heated.

"I even have a bunch of shit on this Liu guy. Dog fighter." she makes a face with her tongue out. Even if she didn't keep pets, the thought of that level of cruelty was heinous. "I dug that out of some court websites. Nothing really goes away on the internet." She shrugs to this, "But I'm the same as you, cause what do I do with it? Who do I show it to? What does all the data say besides: Gambler, shitty human?"

"To be fair, if I got to pick what I die of, 'deliciousness' would definitely make the shortlist," Rhys says, looking slightly impressed by the display of the silver canister rather than, say, a standard red can of Reddiwhip or even a bowl of home-whipped cream. Cartridges suggest real dedication to cream dispensing! He probably shouldn't be at all surprised, what with the house chef working at a patisserie, and yet. "...as long as wasn't my own deliciousness. That's way, WAY farther down the list. It might be on another list altogether."

He is absolutely putting that whipped cream on his pie, whatever peril he may be embracing by doing so. It's tasty peril. That's one of the best kinds. And there might as well be extra tasty peril as long as you're going for it, right? He puts the can back after, and heads to settle into the nook as well, pie and all. The mention of video has his brows lifting a bit, and further at the start of the bits about Liu specifically, though that's interrupted by a momentary scowl of his own at the mention of the dog fighting. He doesn't have pets either, and he's not even opposed to fights for entertainment, but people get to volunteer or not. And aren't usually put down if the fights get discovered. Still, that's less his concern at the moment than the rest.

"Is that just kind of there on the websites?" He's looked up stuff on people online, sure, but dog fighting is not the kind of result he's usually come up with. "Or was that, like, a hacking kind of thing?" Curious, rather than disapproving. Maybe intrigued, even. Everyone knows hacking is cool. "Well, you could show it to me, anyway, and I'd thank you for it, too, though I know that's not exactly what you have in mind. I really would like to see all that, though. More pieces of the puzzle."

He has a bite of his pie, which necessitates a pause because that is really good and needs to be savoured, then asks, "Did you find anything on the other guy? 'cause what I want the data to say, aside from, I dunno, 'here is a total open and shut case against all the assholes involved here, let me hold that prison door for you' or something, is exactly who's behind this, how the connections run, what exactly they want, and most especially, how to make them fuck right the hell off." He cuts another bite of pie, though doesn't eat it yet. "...gambler," he muses, quietly. "I wonder if he's been coming to the casino." That thought gets chewed over along with the pie.

Stab. Stab. Abitha spears the first few pieces of past and lifts her fork filled with buttery noodle goodness into the air, the steam rising from it, then quickly dashed away by a gentle breath of air across it. Honestly, garlic and butter on anything and heated smells divine, and this was no exception, “Well, yes and no?” Abitha ventures after considering the question, “Like it’s there, but uh...” She pauses, looks across the table at him, having the self-awareness necessary of how much a nerd she was, “I’m gonna launch into a really technical explanation if you’re interested. If you’re not, I’m gonna say, ’You have to know how to look.’”

She eats her first bite and her eyes shut briefly, because god fucking dammit, Corey was absolutely going to be her undoing, penchant for shirtlessness or not. Actually, that probably just added to the tally, she thought, eyes briefly aside in contemplation of this.

“And well... I did meet with Javier... De la Vega? The interim chief? I dunno, people all call him like a bunch of things. Anyhow, I gave him what I had, and I’m not sure even he knows what to do with it. He did get hella angry, I think though. Said he knew the guy, but not who he was. I dunno.” More stream-of-consciousness rambling from this one. “Weird thing was he wanted me to come on as a technical consultant until the case was over, which was the weirdest job offer I’ve ever gotten... Well... Actually, the only job offer I’ve ever gotten.” Must have been a charmed life for this one at 25...

"I am one hundred percent interested," Rhys assures, and actually does sound it. Or at least, like, somewhere in the nineties. Some point of definite intrigue still south of unsettling, anyway. "How do you look?" A pause, brain playing back the phrase, and he grins, gesturing at her with his fork, "Do not say 'fantastic'; I'm now saving it for next time someone asks me that question. Dumb-joke-copyright pending."

He gives the pasta a look like he's slightly regretting not also deciding that AND pie was the ideal choice, since it quite clearly was, but too late. For now. He has some more of the pie to make up for it, which... it kinda does, actually. A small nod at the interim chief's name, brows rising in small fractions as she goes on. "Wait, which guy's he know? The one the assholes wanted info on? Or were they not real cops?" A small pause. "And are you gonna take him up on the consultancy?"

“Ok, so...” Abitha notes that mopey look of pasta jealousy and smirks, this would probably only add to the analogy so she was going to use it. “Most of the internet every people interact with is called the surface web. It’s the surface because it’s the easiest accessibly, sometimes its behind passwords, but you can get to it all through search engines. Google and others tell you ‘Here’s the thing you’re looking for.’ And you go there from an easy to follow link.” More eating, but pausing for a moment. She stands to retrieve the lid from the pasta and some water for herself, as well as the whipped cream container, coming back to the table. She puts the lid over the pasta. “I’m looking for pasta. The search engines don’t know where it is. I know where the pasta belongs, so I search for the container instead.” She pops the lid off the pasta and scoots it across to Rhys. “In this case, I knew where to start with Liu. Police officer. Where did he first start out? Police rolls, because they usually keep some stuff online. Then search court records in those areas using his name. Sometimes the pages used to be on the index, and are removed because people are like ’Hey google, stop looking here’, and you find ghost links that tell you a general direction and you just have to keep digging.”

She pulls her piece of pie to the center and gives herself a good dollop of whip cream over it, then forks herself a bite. There was appreciation, but also hatred as she stares down at the pie, chewing the bit she had eaten. This would absolutely be her undoing. Finally, she looks up at Rhys again.

“That’s a pretty simplified version of it.” She speaks, the back of her fork wielding hand covering her mouth so as not to be completely rude, leaning on the other elbow as she explains, “There are other ways to get past the surface to the secure areas people don’t want you to go. I know some of them.” She shrugs, “Which was how I found the gambling charge for dog fighting. They usually keep those only for officers, but the public only sees arrests or convictions.”

“Then there’s the deep web places I tracked down some weird black market sales deals, and...” she waves that fork hand, as if trying to clear the smell of it away from her face, “But you have to know those places exist to even go there, and it’s a pretty dangerous place to be, with trackers and rogue viruses, the true hackers that try to keep out of the public domain, that kind of thing.”

Rhys absolutely listens. Surface web; okay, this is a concept he can grok. He nods, as she stands to get the lid and such. "Everything, more or less, you're supposed to go look at. What you're being shown," he says, and has another bite or two of pie while he waits for her to settle in again. Oh no, disappearing pasta! But wait! A happy ending as the pasta slides over to him! "You sure?" he asks as it ends up in front of him, reasonably clearly about the redistribution of noms and not the analogy and how it pertains to her searching. Given a gesture of go-ahead, however, there is going-ahead, the fork licked clean of blueberry and cream before it moves into pasta territory.

There are several small nods as she goes into the ghost links and similar, and a slower one for the note about charges -- as opposed to convictions and the like -- being generally restricted. That's more or less what he would have thought, though he's curious about these other ways of passing the surface, and puts no effort into hiding it. He wasn't lying about being interested in the answer, at the least.

As for the deep web, it gets the 'I have heard of this in probably a somewhat vague way' sort of nod, and no less interest. "A hive of scum and villainy," he intones, followed by a quick grin and equally quick bite. "Most of that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I'm aware I don't know the less-simplified details, yeah, but it's broadly similar to some of what I learned to do, just in a different realm. Y'know, the proverbial following the money. Accounts and ownership contracts and the Xs that mean there has to be a Y somewhere around here." He stabs a point in the air with his fork, where this theoretical Y might be.

Another bite follows, and then so do the questions: "So which guy was it De la Vega knew but didn't know? And are you gonna go into law enforcement consulting?" He tilts his head as he chews the next bite, and it's his turn to cover his mouth to prevent any rudeness from at least that quarter as he adds with a bit of extra drama and a dry undertone, "'The answers to these questions and more, next time, on Gray Harbor'..." Half-smile, and a slightly expectant look suggests he does not genuinely expect 'next time' to be much farther away than 'now'.

"I think maybe yeah?" Comes the halting reply, her voice as much of a question as his had been, as if she was still trying to weigh the pros and cons, but her answer was the current leader. There was, of course, a dismissive wave, like she was confirming she meant he was to have the pasta. If she couldn't win on the fact the food was fatty and delicious, that meant controlling her portion size. Can't eat what wasn't there. The pie, of course, wasn't helping, but it would be impolite to give back what Rhys had served up. Right? Yeah, that was the excuse. Another bite finds its way home before she goes on.

"'Cause like, current cops, they have GPS in their cars, and if I can put together a good comparison log of where the crooked dudes have been, either in their cars, or where they report. Cops stick together, protect their own, that shitty 'thin blue line' thing. I'm sure no one's looked too hard." More thought as her deft little fingers rotate the fork in her grip idly, "And he said it was just for the duration of the case. I can do that and streaming still. To be honest, I'm not sure the insurance companies will be totally like... forward in giving me the money until we have a definite answer to how the Pad burned down." Another shrug, consideration, "Wait, so like... Forensic accounting? If I got you some of the info on the sales and bet taking he did, you think you could turn up more than I did?" It was a hopeful voice, if a little plotting.

Not a certain decision yet, then. More things interesting to know! Rhys is definitely certain about the pasta, clearly not in the least sharing Abitha's worries about any effects on figures or arteries, just tastebuds and possibly stomachs. And those vote a thumbs up here. Definitely his pasta now.

Her rationale for why 'maybe yeah' has him nodding slowly as he listens and eats. "You're not wrong," comes with another nod, and a rather thoughtful look, as though he might be examining all this in his head, turning it around. "And it's not like we don't know to start with that there's at least a couple crooked cops involved, so aside from maybe being able to use that kinda thing," a small tilt of his head toward her, indicating her GPS idea, "to work out the wheres and whens and maybe more whos... depending what kind of access you have, maybe if anyone there tried to mess with their data, hide anything, you'd be in a position to catch it. And they'll have to tell you who or what they think needs looking into, if they want you to look, which is information they're probably not going to just randomly share with you otherwise." A tiny pause. "I'd probably do it, honestly. I dunno how much I'd trust any of 'em, 'cause... like you say. But more data, and they'd pay you for it?" Yeah, he's certainly no bigger a fan of the cops than she might be, but he can see the argument 'for'.

Her questions make him grin, a smallish specimen of the type but with a quality to it that encourages that plotting edge, if anything. "Yeah. I'm not a true specialist, but I trained in it, and frankly, it's kind of fun. If you're the right sort of nerd, anyway." He takes a beat to consider her request, then nods. "I might be able to, yeah. Worth a try. And if I run into other leads on all this I can't find more on my way, maybe we could see if you can?" All the best plots go both ways, right? Teamwork!

The sort of nerd comment has Abitha snorting. They certainly had all kinds under this roof, so far as Abitha could tell. Again, a fork does the work that usual talking with hands would, pointing, "I am not that right sort of nerd, then. Want me to compare press releases and do a little light phishing to confirm Halflife 3? I'm in. That is outside my wheelhouse." Thoughts and considerations have Abitha pushing her chair out, even with half the sizable pie slice left. Was she putting it away or saving it? Nope. It was coming with her, after she deposits the whip cream canister back in the fridge.

"What do you say to a working... dinner? Lunch?" Time was always a fluid thing for a gamer, play sessions sometimes stretching into the early hours quite often. She checks her bare wrist, because she wasn't wearing her smartwatch, then looks out the window of the kitchen, then finally the oven or microwave... And still shrugs. She cocks her head toward the entrance and back to her studio, obviously meaning to get the info to him sooner than later. She does pause near the doorway and look back, mulling over something before looking back to Rhys. It takes her a moment, her jaw working as she tries to find the right way to wrap her mouth around the words.

"Rhys. Thank you. For talking me through this." She begins, eyes flitting away from eye contact as she seems to still be making it up as she goes along, and quite used to being terrible at it, "I think I am gonna take the offer." Her eyes flit back to him, "And... also thanks for being normal?" Which had a whole hell of a connotation he might not get, but she probably meant something else. The implication would be something she'd remember later at 3am when she was trying to go to sleep, and the horror will keep her up. "Like, no asking me how I am holding up. Other people try to ask, but not trigger me or something. You just talked to me like it was just another Tuesday."

"Hey, we all got our sacred realms of nerdery," Rhys replies, giving her another grin, one that turns into a more quizzical look and tilt of the head as she rises again. The suggestion of a working... meal clears that up some, and while time may be somewhat less fluid for him, there's no particular need to pin down just what meal it might be. Lunch, dinner, second breakfast, elevenses, whatever! He was hungry and there's food; they're set.

"I could probably be talked into that, with the proper bribes and blandishments." Not that he appears to be waiting for any; he pushes his own chair back, and starts working out the most logical way to arrange his plates and fork to bring them along, 'cause there's no way he's abandoning either pasta or pie. ...also he could use a drink, actually. Hm.

He makes his way into the kitchen and sets things down long enough to find a soda, claim it in the name of himself, and shove it into a pocket before picking the rest all up again. There's a pause in there when she gets to her thanks; the first part gets a smaller smile and an inclination of the head, the latter a more wry expression. "Well-- you're welcome," he says, in that way she might recognize of one realising that if there are rules for that specific situation he doesn't know them and is just going to improvise. Sounds sincere, though -- and matches the expression, particularly the addition of, "I mean, to be fair, I figured black-humour o'clock was about as much answer as I really needed or had any right to expect." There's a pause, one that lingers a touch, thoughtful. "I know I don't know you real well, but I get the feeling our way of handling these kinds of things might not be that different. It's good knowing people care. But what I usually need is to... do something. Solve it. Whatever there is of it to be solved."

The plates are properly balanced, and he shifts his weight slightly, ready to move. "So. Show me whatcha got and I'll see what I might be able to do with any of it?" This is the plan, yes?