Log: Remy & Jubilee

[x-jubilee.livejournal.com]

Backdated to September 11th 2010, Morningish. Location: Paris

Jubilee meets Remy in a Parisian coffee shop, and they talk about Paris, and why she's there.



Jubilee pushed the door to the small cafe open, looking around for a moment before she spotted her target sitting in the corner with his back to a wall. She pocketed the phone she'd been using as a navigational device, Paris wasn't exactly a place she was terribly familiar with, and went to the counter to order.

"Tout le croissant et un café, s'il vous plaît?" Jubilee said; paying the amount she was quoted before taking her croissant over to the table. "Gumbo."

"Subtle. And you accent is terrible. Better to look like a dumb American tourist if you can't blend in. Dat way, you get automatically ignored by most people, and assumed to be de deaf, dumb and mostly blind." Remy said, not looking up from his newspaper. In Paris, he usually went under an American or British identity, using his natural accent only when necessary.

Anger flashed in her gaze before she got it under control, but she had enough training not to let it show on her face as she sat down beside him. “Alright,”

She’d been working on her accent with Doug for awhile now, but her native Californian drawl always seemed to win out in the end. She supposed that some people just weren’t good at faking it. “So I found you, what now?”

"For de moment, you eat breakfast. After, we need to drop in on one of el-Giber's old associates. He supposedly has some information for us."

“Interesting. What sort of associate is this exactly?” Jubilee asked; going quiet for a moment as her coffee and croissant was delivered. She smiled and thanked the waiter and then took a bite of the buttery pastry, chewing with relish. “And how much do we trust him?”

"Local fence. He's been moving stolen goods through Paris for over three decades. He wouldn't risk pissing of his boss or us unless he thought he had something." Remy said.

Jubilee finished her breakfast, but took some time with her coffee. She didn’t want to seem too eager to be going, it would completely spoil the image she’d been trying to project. “So I’m here to watch and learn then, or did you have something else in mind?”

"You're here because dis isn't de kind of meet you make wit out backup. Hope dat you ready to hold up you end of it."

“I’m ready,” Jubilee said after a moments pause. She hadn’t expected what he’d said, and the warmth of the long unfamiliar emotion of pride warmed her as she grinned at him and pushed away her coffee. “So let’s go already.”

"Finish you coffee. Dere's still time."

“Whatever dude, it’s your dime,” Jubilee noted, picking her coffee up again and taking a sip. “You been to Paris a lot before?”

"Over de last twenty years? Oui. You don't operate in Europe wit'out spending a lot of time here." Remy turned a page on the paper, looking for all the world like just a morning customer, sipping a coffee. "It's one of dose cities wit' a deep dark side under a beautiful facade; perfect for people in our line of work."

“Has it changed much?” Jubilee asked, curious. She liked getting Remy talking about the past, even though a lot of it was dark as hell, it still gave her insight into him, helped her to know what his moves might be, and what he expected from her.

"In some ways. Especially since de Wall came down, a lot of de power centres have shifted. Still, if you want links into Africa and de Middle East, dey run very deep here. De French have always been accomedating to a certain skew of morality, and dere's plenty of lines dat start here dat lead to arms, heavy equipment, planes; all de things a modern dictator needs." He said matter of factly.

"And if you weren't here, who is my best contact?" Jubilee asked, taking another sip of her coffee before staring out the window at the foot traffic passing by. It was gearing up to be a beautiful day outside, the sunshine just the cool side of warm, a strip of cerulean blue sky just visible over the buildings.

"If I wasn't here, you don't have one." He shook his head. "Paris is a place dat you work up to. People who just jump in and try to game dere way up have very exciting and short careers here."

"Touche," she muttered, taking another drink before cupping the mug in her hands. She turned her head, staring outwards into the cafe, people watching of a sort.

Everyone had a story if you watched them for long enough, it could even be an obvious one if you were trained in what to look for, and they weren't trained in hiding it. The problem was that she wasn't good at small talk, not unless she was trying to fool someone, she could feel herself getting more tense as she sat here, trying not to start babbling about random crap just to fill the silence.

"I'm not good at this," she finally said, glancing back at him. "I keep wondering what you think of me, and it's really fucking uncomfortable."

"You're not good at it. Yet. Partly because you still relatively new to dis, and it's a steep climb getting to de top. And partly because you still don't want to take somethings seriously, and dat's something dat will be cured by experience and maturity, or it will get you killed. If Remy could order you to stop looking for ways to tear youself down, I would. But dat's something you need to decide to fix." He shrugged again, finishing off his coffee. "Right now, you're useful, and you should take that as a compliment, because not a lot of people in dis field ever even make it to dat level."