WHO: Jacob Frye & William Laurence WHAT: Laurence comes by to check out the Underground & talk shop WHEN: Backdated to September 6th WARNINGS: none STATUS: Complete
Jacob wasn't what anyone would call a hard worker, but The Underground had surprisingly become his pride and joy over the last year and a half. He hadn't expected to run a fight club at any point in this lifetime, that was for sure. But then he'd expected to kill Templars until one caught him on a bad day and that was that. Vallo might not have had the grand purpose of home, but he couldn't say he missed home anyway.
Not even as he got his bell rung in the ring that spanned the center of the club.
"Alright alright, I think my jaw needs a rest," he laughed, waving off his opponent to slip under the ropes and out of the ring. It was just a standard sparring day so he wasn't really putting in his all. Not that it mattered much around here. Between Outlanders and bloody minotaurs and everything else Vallo had to offer, Jacob hadn't had an easy match in months. Sometimes he longed for a boring human brute to knock around the ring. Right now all he longed for was a beer.
Jacob hoped over the bar and poured himself a glass from the tap, wiping at his sweaty face with his arm. There was a bartender down at the other end but if getting his own drink wasn't one of the benefits of running a club, then what was? He took a long swig and made a satisfied noise as someone approached.
"Well, if it isn't Mr. I Do Quite Well," he grinned, glass in hand. "How is Vallo treating you?"
It had been several years since the last time Laurence had witnessed a boxing match - long before Temeraire had come into his life. Laurence had no particular love of the sport, but neither did he dislike it. If he was invited as a spectator by one of his peers, then he’d attend, but his preferred forms of entertainment had always been concerts, the opera, and dancing. He may have done well if he ever attempted it - he was tall and broad-shouldered, and was no stranger to a bare-knuckle fight when the situation called for it - but he’d never been one to fight for the simple pleasure of it.
He’d caught the tail end of the match - if it could be called a match - and when it seemed appropriate to approach, he did so. He wasn’t sure what to make of the greeting - he suspected that it had been an intentional insult, but did not wish to jump to a negative conclusion if it was simply some sort of crass friendliness - but he inclined his head in acknowledgement nevertheless.
“Mr. Frye,” he answered. “Vallo’s been quite the steep learning curve, but I think I’ve been settling in nicely. I can find no complaints in my reception here; both the Outlanders and the locals seem remarkably understanding of any mistakes I may make. I thank you for asking.”
There had been enough to learn and acclimatize to keep him sufficiently distracted from the distressing lack of his dragon - or any intelligent dragon, it seemed. While he could not complain about growing used to the technology and the customs of the place, the more he grew accustomed to it, the more keenly he felt Temeraire’s absence. It seemed prudent to find some sort of purpose to prevent himself from slipping into melancholy, and the Defense Teams that Jacob had mentioned seemed like a likely remedy.
He nodded toward the ring. “That was well fought. Do you practice here daily?”
"Ha. That was a half-arsed kick in the teeth, but I appreciate the kindness," Jacob smirked. He set his glass down to collect a towel and wiped off his face and neck. It was interesting whenever he ran into someone like Laurence. A proper gentleman. He'd never particularly fit in with those crowds but he was better at faking it before Vallo. Usually, it was to get somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, but still. Now, he just leaned lazily against the bar and looked out over the club.
"I stop in every day to handle business, but I also train as a reserve for defense and work as a volunteer firefighter so I don't always get in the ring, no. You said you weren't much of a drinker, right?" Jacob gestured at the tap. "Consider this an offer just in case. I know exactly how tricky that learning curve is."
To Laurence’s credit, his lips hardly tightened at Jacob’s vulgarity. He’d grown used to the loose manners of the Aerial Corp some years ago, but Jacob perhaps still would have been too much to bear if Laurence hadn’t spent the last few months of his life in the penal colony of New South Wales - a place he fully expected to live out the rest of his days. Jacob’s greeting had been, Laurence decided, simply a crass sort of friendliness after all, and some of the stiffness left his shoulders.
“I’m not a teetotaler,” Laurence said. “I try not to drink to excess, but I’ll not turn down a drink when it’s offered. Are there many fires here? I’d have thought the risk would be slight when so many of the buildings seem to be made of glass and steel.”
“Well alright then,” Jacob smiled, reaching under the bar for a clean glass. He filled it with the house beer and set it down in front of Laurence with a lazy little salute. “As a welcome to the Underground.” Whether Laurence drank or not wasn’t particularly of consequence to Jacob, but it gave him something easy to offer and also provided an excuse to get back to work on his own glass. He took a quick drink and rapped his knuckles lightly on the bar top. “There’ll always be fire, I imagine. Steel and glass are only part of those buildings. Plenty of other materials involved that are easy enough to burn.”
There were admittedly other fire suppression methods in play now that Jacob wished they’d had back in his time, but even those went bad or weren’t set up properly to begin with. Rather than start reciting his fire safety lessons and sounding like a right git, Jacob shrugged. “There’s a woman here who grew up in space that says fire isn’t so much a thing there? But space travel still boggles my mind so I try not to think about it too hard.”
“Space?” Laurence asked, brow furrowing together. “Surely you don’t mean that she grew up among the stars. That would be…” Impossible, he’d been about to say, but then, was it any more impossible than travelling nearly two-hundred years into the future, in an entirely different world, complete with men who could fly on their swords as witches with on their brooms, or form ice flowers in the palm of his hand by use of magic?
Probably not more impossible than any of that, no.
“I hope that some day, all of this,” he gestured vaguely around him, “will grow to be a little less shocking.” He took a sip of his beer. “You had mentioned the Defense Teams earlier. I had hoped you could tell me a little bit more about them.”
Watching Laurence mull it over softened Jacob's smirk. He knew all too well what a whirlwind everything could be here in the first few months. He still learned something insane at least once a week. "Wouldn't that be a little dull, though?" he teased, leaning onto the bar and finishing off his beer with a long pull. "The madness keeps us on our toes!"
He lowered his voice like he was imparting a great secret. "It does get easier. But then I've always been a roll with the punches sort of bloke." Sliding back over to the tap, he eyed his options but didn't yet refill his glass. "What are you looking to know? If you want to sign up, you have to go into the DOA or message them over the network. They pay well enough. Even reserves get a stipend. Full-time get assigned a team and patrols."
"Sometimes I think my life could stand to be a little duller," Laurence said dryly. He'd though that maybe it had started to settle down. Perhaps farming on New South Wales was never how he'd pictured his life going, but he was proud of the work he and Temeraire had been doing, and Temeraire's pavilion was half-built and was shaping up to be quite splendid indeed. And then, he'd appeared here. He took a healthy gulp of the ale.
"What is it the Defense Teams do? I gather they help find people who've appear, but that can't be their sole function." It stood to reason that they had to defend something in order to be considered a team for defense.
Jacob snorted a quiet laugh. Laurence would probably get along with Evie. She was the one with dry wit, while Jacob was the twin more likely to be blunt and trollish. Finally selecting a dark ale, he filled his glass a second time and scooted back down towards Laurence.
"What comes through the crystals isn't always proper gentlemen like yourself. Sometimes it's monsters. Sometimes Vallo decides to unleash chaos in the form of excessively violent animals or ancient evil rises up to try and take over." Jacob said this all with cavalier ease. He'd been here a year and a half now, but that didn't mean Vallo couldn't surprise him anymore. "Primarily, defense runs patrols, but they're generally busy fighting something at least once or twice a month. What's your poison by the by?"
He finally took a swig of his drink and gestured at Laurence with the glass. "If it's not fisticuffs, how do you prefer to fight?"
Laurence had been warned, by Evie, in fact, about the monsters in the forest. Having his own experiences with sea serpents and bunyips, Laurence could not claim that he was not experienced in his own right with what some may consider monsters. The idea of something like an ‘ancient evil’ arising was worrisome though.
“When I must fight, I most often do so with sword and pistol,” Laurence answered. “If I’ve neither, then I can do well enough with my fists.”
“Fair enough,” Jacob said, saluting again with his glass. “I tend to pick knives or my brass knuckles, but I have a beauty of a sword for worthy emergencies.” Excalibur had only gotten a single use since its arrival in Vallo, but it was better that way. It was a Piece of Eden, a powerful artifact. And Jacob was no Templar to be abusing its power for selfish gain. “It stays locked up in the meantime. But you’ll find plenty of swordsman to spar with in the defense crew.”
There was a bit a of scuffle happening over by the ring, but then someone laughed and it settled down with back clapping and loud demands for someone to buy another round. Laurence still looked a little stiff for this place, but Jacob hadn’t forgotten the dragon he’d had with him last time. “You lot fight on your dragons, right? Feel like that was something that got said, but I’ll admit, it’s been a while and I barely remember what I had for breakfast most days.”
Knives and brass knuckles seemed the weapons of ruffians and thieves, but then, Laurence hardly had any room to judge others; he’d have been hanged himself if it wasn’t for Temeraire, and Jacob had yet to put on airs, or to pretend to be anything that he was not. Many of Laurence’s old prejudices had fallen by the wayside in recent years.
“It seems a shame to keep a worthy sword locked up; it seems as though it would be difficult to use it to its full potential if you don’t practice with it in the meantime.”
Scuffles, or full-out brawls, happened often in the bars of New South Wales - or out front of the bars, or in the middle of the street mid-morning - and while Laurence generally tried to steer clear of them, they were, by and large, unavoidable. He turned slightly towardward the noise, but only to be sure that it wasn’t headed his way, and once it dispersed he turned his attention back to Jacob.
There was still something extraordinarily unsettling about the idea that he and Temeraire had been in Vallo before, with Laurence having no recollection of it at all. The idea of someone knowing Laurence whom Laurence did not know in turn, or knowing things of which Laurence himself was unaware was disconcerting. He did his best not to think of it in the ordinary course of things, but he couldn’t help shifting uncomfortably on his feet when he was reminded of it now.
“The dragons do most of the hard fighting, and their crews offer them support by way of rifle shot or by dropping bombs. Really the only chance I, myself, get to see any fighting on dragonback is when we’re repelling boarders, and even then, I only get any action when the crew is overwhelmed. Captains are expected to stay out of the real fighting.” Laurence didn’t sound particularly pleased by that expectation. He understood it, of course: Temeraire could not be at his best if he was concerned over the safety of his captain, and if Laurence were killed or taken prisoner, Temeraire would lose all reason or be taken out of the fight completely. Even knowing that, logically, Laurence wasn’t typically able to keep himself from charging headlong into battle; it seemed shameful to sit back while other men died for him.
"Excalibur is magic and too bloody powerful, mate. Can't practice with it the yard like some random longsword." Jacob took a long swig. No way at home could he just blurt out such a thing. But there were a million magical things in Vallo and Excalibur's existence here was common knowledge, the way it had shown up in a park and people had tried pulling it from a rock. Now it was safely locked away under more than one magical protection as well as some good old-fashioned standard protections too. For times when magic failed. "Anyway, it's fine. I manage well enough with the weapons I have and improvised ones when necessary."
He set aside that thought in favor of thinking about dragon battles. His face lit up as he pictured it. "Expected to stay out of the real fighting though, blimey," he repeated. "Sounds mental. Like you can just sit down on your dragon's back while people try to take it over or something?" He shook his head and took another drink. "Has that happened often?"
"Excalibur?" Laurence asked, shocked. "Not King Arthur's?" Growing up, Laurence had always loved to hear stories of King Arthur, though now, hearing of his dragon slaying exploits left rather a different taste. Still, Excalibur… It certainly ranked up there with one of the most shocking things he'd heard since he came here.
"Temeraire made for a tempting target during battle," Laurence said. "He could cause more damage to the French than most other British dragons, and his colouring and build were unique among European dragons and made him easy to spot in a scrimmage, so I suspect we fought off more boarding parties than other crews may have."
That, and Napoleon's dragon, another Celestial named Lung Tien Lien, had a personal grudge against Temeraire, which Laurence was sure would have made Temeraire an even more tempting target.
"I'm not ashamed to admit that I did not stay out of the fighting as much as I probably should have, though I do regret that I likely caused my lieutenants more stress than they really deserved."
"That's the one," Jacob agreed. Arthur was part of the Order of Ancients in their world, the group that eventually became the Templars and everything the Assassin Brotherhood fought against. But the legends were all a bit of a blur where the man was concerned. Lots of assassins thought he was just misguided and idealistic - thought the Order would help mankind not whip it to the Order's will. As Jacob wasn't about to start explaining the Templar and Assassin blood feud with a stranger, he took the new information about dragons as a welcome change of subject.
"No offense, but I think better of you knowing you jumped into the fray." He frowned and wiped condensation idly off his glass. "I'm not military nor will I ever be, but all that rank and file business in the heat of battle baffles me. When what you hold dear is in danger, you bloody well fight for as far I'm concerned."
Laurence had never really believed that Arthur was a true, historical figure, but the existence of Excalibur potentially changed that. Except for the fact that Jacob was likely from a different world. The similarities between worlds made the differences somehow stranger.
"I came up in the Navy, and captains who sat out of battle on their ship were not thought well of." They were thought of as cowards, really, and Laurence couldn't help but agree with that particular assessment. "It has proven to be a difficult habit to break. But if what you hold dear is your country, and your countrymen, if you're fighting to preserve your home and the family that you've left behind, breaking rank and file and doing whatever you wish regardless of orders is going to harm your cause more than help it."
Jacob smirked, a little of the sharp-edged assassin peeking out past the troll who guarded the gates. He might not have been military, but the Brotherhood was a united front. Even when things had gone badly with his sister for a while, they worked together for the sake of their cause. Protect the weak, destroy the corrupt, and God help the Templars who got in their way.
“Never been much about country or politics. Not saying I don’t respect ol’ Queen Vic—” He could jokingly call her that here, where no one might overhear him and make him an enemy of the state. Surely he’d lose his Knighthood at least. “—But my sister and I were always more in support of the everyman. The ladies and gents just trying to live in peace. Enough about that though, eh? How about I show you around and introduce you to any defense sorts lurking about?” Jacob finished off his drink with a quickness and set the glass in the sink behind him, quickly hopping over the bar to be on Laurence’s side. “You can leave that there or bring it along for the ride,” he gestured at Laurence’s drink with a smirk.
"Queen-" Laurence started, and then stopped. Evidently Jacob came from sometime after he did, or his England was different enough to have had different rulers, and there was no sense in getting too much into it. Jacob didn't strike Laurence as someone particularly interested in discussing the royal line of succession.
Laurence gave Jacob a slight incline of the head. "I would like that very much. Thank you, Mr. Frye."