Welcome to Gaia! ::

A typical day of hard work for Maebe usually revolved around staying in her room, as quietly as possible, and not being seen - or heard - or asked about. She'd been doing a spectacular job so far, though she wasn't sure this was because she was that good at hiding in the cracks, or if people were just too busy with crazy psycho Hunterspies to even give a s**t about whether she was making it to her mundane shifts. The answer was probably the latter.

But her room had gained an aura of claustrophobia ever since she'd seen that body on the beach. She didn't feel safe in there, anymore - and the safest place to her was one that had other people in it. To balance the tenuous line between anti-social behavior and a newfound fear of being caught alone, she chose to sit between two couches in the common room. People came in and out on a regular basis, but no one ever noticed her there. It was a delightful compromise.

When Leslie stormed in, she stilled her hands, and held her breath. He flopped on the couch to the left of her, and she felt the vibrations of it strike her side. Her hands slowly inched down, to slide the items she held - a Barbie doll, and the tiny pink brush she was using to brush its hair - under the couch and out of sight.

Then she popped up above the armrest. "You've got a potty mouth." She informed Leslie with a smirk, in lieu of a greeting.

A happy little smile met the scowl on his face. When it was time for him to try and insult her, (an inevitability with boys like him), her smile never wavered. She stayed right where she was, tilting her head in fake interest. "Oh, people tell me that all the time. But don't worry." She put a finger to her lips. "I won't tell them you were talking, if you won't. I'm very good at secrets."

Since being hidden was no longer on the agenda, she got up off the floor, and stepped over to the adjacant couch, flopping down on it as though it was hers to own. She wasn't exactly trying to start a conversation with her spunky neighbor, but neither was she against slinging back any s**t this particular monkey was about to throw at her. She only hoped that last insult wasn't the pinnacle of his routine; that would be a severe disappointment.

"My c**t doesn't talk. I do." Maebe seemed unaffected by the foulness of the word, simply pointing out what she thought was the obvious flaw in his complaint. "But if you're really that surprised about how many girls are on this island, I think you missed the train to the all boys Hunters institution. Because statistically, 50% of a group is going to end up being girls."

He was smoking. Her face took on the first signs of dismay that she'd allowed herself to show since she'd first seen him, and she turned her head away. All she needed was to end up smelling like smoke some more.

"No one gets peace in Deus. Read the pamphlets before you join the cult, precious." Even as she said it, she still looked slightly pouty at the sight of a cigarette. "Besides, I get off on making guys like you unhappy. So don't stop." She turned her head back to him and grinned a toothy, over-exaggerated grin. "I'm almost there."

She liked the way he answered, and it showed in a genuine laugh. He exposed himself as a misogynist, which was like a contagious disease lately, and wondered how someone his size had gotten away with hating women his whole life. It sounded pretty lonely. She considered it for a moment, and then realized she didn't really care. After all, he was just another body waiting to show up floating face down in the beach. It was important not to care.

"Power, and money, and s**t." She repeated, trying to remember any of those words being used when they recruited her. "Well, they've got the s**t part right. And money. Lots of money sitting around in the bank accounts of dead people. I wonder if they actually reap that money back when a Hunter dies. Do you think I just bought three boxes of Pocky with a ten dollar bill previous owned by a dead man?" That idea actually intrigued her. Now she regretted giving away the bill.

She hadn't even known there was flooding, until he mentioned it. Suddenly, she felt a great swell of regret - over leaving her room unprotected. She needed to pack up all of her stuffed animals before anything could happen to them.. they were the real victims, here. "So you're this pissed, because the job you signed up for isn't as glorious as you thought." She had been tasked to clean some cages, too, a while back. "So don't do it." Her fingers waved magically. "Did I just solve all of your white girl problems?"

"Somebody around here's going to teach you to stop using that mouth as a s**t dispenser." Maebe sighed out, stretching her entire body like a cat, claws and all. "But it's not going to be me. I just don't care enough. So the answer's no, little boy. I'm not going to lecture you. Neither am I moving from this very comfortable couch. And neither am I going to give you head. Too public. No one needs to see something like that - unless they're paying for it."

She had to admit, the common room couches were really comfortable - compared to the little chair she had in her room. The beds were kind of lumpy, but these were firm enough to keep her body all in one level, and she liked that. So she settled in, turning to her side so she could look straight at him, and pushed her hands under her face like a pillow. She remained like this for several seconds, before a purring voice let out her next words.

"You're a virgin, aren't you."

Maebe caught on to the little things in a blatant insult, like the way he'd said most, instead of all. Her lips quirked, and she thought about hiding the oncoming smile, but then decided she didn't care enough to. "I don't think you've heard many men, if you think that." She informed him, her nose pinched with amusement. "Unless you mean, like, a transvestite, in which case that hardly works as an insult - those ladies know how to work it. Plus, it would bring up the question of why you know how they sound so well, but that's not even a joke worth making. You don't look fun enough to hang out at tranny bars. Too full of hate and little boy anger."

No, Leslie didn't seem like the kind of guy who had any real fun at all. It was dubious to her that he actually had gotten laid, so she assumed he was lying and failed to correct him on the basis that everyone is always lying, all the time.

She bit her lip and stared up at the ceiling, comforted by the thought.