Welcome to the Jungle [Open]

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Tony has honestly been trying to avoid the whole Yeerk trial thing. It was before his time, he doesn't know that much about it, and he generally trusts the command staff and the crew to make the right decision at the end of the day. It's what they do, right? They're good people. He can tell that. Some of them are like people he knew back home. Some of them aren't. But he trusts most of them. Or, at least the ones he knows.

Still, he doesn't want to got up in that bru-ha-ha, so he's decided that it would be good a idea to chill in the Sensoriums for an afternoon. So far, he's conjured up an image of his home neighborhood - he's been a bit home-sck lately, although this doesn't help that much - and he's just been walking empty streets. He could fill it with the people from his memories if he wanted. They'd seem real, but it wouldn't be right. It would feel... off somehow.

Still, this is his home, even if it is run-down. Even if the cops don't like to come through here unless they absolutely have to. That, or they're chasing someone in force; he can't begin to count the number of times he's heard a helicopter fly over his apartment building. And then there was that one time a SWAT team had stormed the aprtment a few doors down. Someone had apparently been dealing crack or some other shit and the Federal government's War on Drugs had come rather uncomfortably close to home. He'd been a kid then, only eleven or twelve. He'd been terrified (although he would never have admitted that to his friends) and he and his family had stayed inside most of that day.

It was a rought neighborhood. There were gangs. People had been shot - hell, he'd been shot at and shot people. He'd gotten into that shit when he was thirteen and it was really only because of his First Change that he'd gotten the Hell out of it (much to the relief of his mother). He still kept close ties with his friends that were in, but... he wasn't going back to that. Aside from the fact that he could eat bullets for lunch now, he really didn't want to go frenzied war-form on a bunch of gangbangers and wake up in a pool of human blood and entrails. Once had been enough.

Besides, he had his own war to fight. The one he was fighting now. Well, would be if it weren't for Stacy. But this was home.

He'd grown tired of walking and eventually had just had Stacy conjure up a car, which he was currently in the process of trying to hotwire - just to keep in practice, of course.

"Come on, come on..." he mutters.

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"Who is she?" Roxie asks, as if she'd be able to just go out and visit her. "I've gone sideways a little to get help sometimes, but nobody likes to just give it out. It's all deals in deals in deals..."

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"She's Gaia. She created us. She created everything."

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"Huh," Roxie says, adjusting her glasses. "The stories I've heard say that we" (she says the 'we' as if to refer to her world) "never really had a beginning. Just cycles... turtles all the way down with the paradigms shifting each time."

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"We've got a beginning. But... it's way back there, man. Way back there."

He waves a hand vaguely to indicate the massive passage of time.

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Roxie nods just a little bit to acknowledge the statement,and stares up at the darkening sky.

"What's your pack like?" she asks after a long moment of contemplation, her voice as dry and subtle as ever.

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"Good people. They watch my back, I watch their's. Best friends I ever had, even if Walks-the-Web is an arrogant gringo... though we've lost people."

There's a pause as he remembers fallen friends and then he shrugs, "...miss 'em."

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Roxie nods a little, but there's something—cold about it. Either she doesn't like to think about personal loss, or she doesn't really have a point of reference. She reaches up to fiddle with the position of her glasses slightly, looking up at the sky.

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Tony glances over at her again, then flops back on the hood with a "thud".

"I don't even know anymore, man. This whole thing is fuckin' insane. But I'm rollin' with it."

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"Yeah," Roxie says simply, still looking up at the sky. "Shyama won't tell me anything but that I should keep my eyes out for the cho. He's usually not so... unhelpful."