governmentninja | Downtime... [open to rogue_in

Downtime... [open to rogue_in_red]

Leon hasn't had much time to relax in the past few months... not that he has much time to relax ever. But he did manage to steal a few hours for himself while his flight out of Monaco got delayed due to the pouring down rain.

He decided to head back into town for now, and took refuge in a small bar on the edge of town. It was a quiet place, clean, and out of the way of the usual tourist crowds, all of which suited him just fine. He noted where all the exits were, then took a seat at a table which gave him a good view from all sides. It was an unconscious habit by now for him to do that.

He ordered a beer, then set about looking over documents and reports stored on his PDA. He figured if he at least got started with a bit of work, then he wouldn't feel as bad getting in a few rounds of tetris later on. Hopefully things would remain quiet tonight...

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The door swings open, giving the sounds of the rain outside a temporary amplification in the dimly lit establishment. The woman in the red dress tucks a small device away in her purse as she walks in, gaze hidden behind a pair of sunglasses as she looks around the bar.

Apparently, she finds what it is she's looking for, because the annoyed look from the rain fades into the smallest hints of a smile. She makes her way over to Leon's table, and like a ghost slides into one of the empty chairs.

"..You're a hard man to keep track of when you want to be." Ada's voice is quiet, controlled. "Long time no see, Leon."

He had only glanced up at the door when it opened, but that was all it took for him to recognize who it was.

His PDA quickly goes dark as he puts it away and his hand comes to rest on one of his guns. He doesn't draw it, but where there's Ada, trouble generally isn't far behind.

"Ada..." He wants to sound annoyed with her, but can't keep a hint of a grin off his lips.

"This is a surprise..." He's not sure if it's a pleasant one or not, yet.

"Tsk, tsk, Leon. You're the one that said knives were better for this sort of thing." Ada whispers. She'd seen him move, apparently. She sets her purse in her lap, and folds her hands on the table.

"I wanted to see you. Is that such a bad thing?" She'd mentioned to him for a while now that they'd needed to talk. He'd agreed. So, here she is.

Ada doesn't like beating around the bush much.

"But if the shock's too much, I can wait until you've had a drink or two...Heh."

"We'll find out in a little bit whether or not this is a bad thing."

He seems to be listening for something for a moment and... there are no sounds of people screaming, cars crashing, windows breaking, no helicopters off in the distance. Usually, where there's Leon and Ada, trouble is right around the corner. This time? There might not be any immediate danger, for once. Not that he seems to relax any. His hand is still on his gun.

"You didn't track me down all the way here just to say 'hi'. What's on your mind?"

"Just what I said. I wanted to see you, and I'm not working." It would be a first then, wouldn't it? For her to be off work and making time for him. If she's telling the truth, that is.

No one screams, no one else comes into the bar. There aren't any sirens, or men in suits talking into earpieces. Nothing undead comes their way, and no parasites lurk in the shadows.

"So.." Ada hasn't done this 'small talk' sort of thing without reason before. Not with Leon, at any rate. "We've been meaning to talk for a bit. I thought this would be as good of time as any...and here I am."

He's subtle about it, but he can't hide the surprise in his expression. This is... different. He can deal with what's become their usual working dynamic, but he's actually not sure how to handle this.

After a few more moments of relative peace, he finally takes his hand off his gun.

"Well... you've got my attention." He gestures towards the window, or more accurately, the rain outside. "I'm not heading anywhere anytime soon."

Ada, for her part, looks as calm and collected as ever. She cannot show weakness, especially not to him. In truth, she's not entirely sure how this chess game will be played out. They've never simply interacted before without some outside reason.

"...I'm fine, thanks. How've you been, Leon?" Ada doesn't bother keeping the sarcasm out of her voice. She knows he's capable of friendly conversation. She's seen it all too often...with, you know, other people.

"Really. How's the work been treating you?" Her gaze flits to the window, and then back to Leon's face. It might not seem like it, but Ada really is trying here.

He blinks, then chuckles, a bit embarrassed. He kind of has been rude, but Ada has a way of throwing him off his game. Not that he has much game to begin with.

"Sorry..." He shook his head a bit. He lifted his beer and tilted it towards her a bit. "You want anything?"

Now that he has to talk to her, it occurs to him that in all their interactions, they've never sat down and had an actual conversation.

Hn...

"Works been a bit crazy, but no more than usual." He honestly doesn't want to talk about work. Though he still doesn't know what to talk about.

"How have you been?" He is curious about that.

It's enough to weed one of those smirks out of Ada. This one, however, isn't nearly as cold and unfriendly as she's capable of. It's almost nice, almost.

"..Ah. Just a sec." Ada shifts, leaning forward and picking up her purse as she gets out of her seat. "I'll be right back." She tosses a short wave his way and wanders over to the bar to get herself a drink. Ada isn't quite patient enough to wait for a server.

She comes back a minute later, cocktail in hand, and takes her seat again. That almost smile is still there.

"Anyway. You'll get through it. Your work, I mean. You always do." She sips at her drink and then sets it on the tabletop. "As for me..." Ada thinks a long moment.

"Works been rougher than usual. But.." Ada shrugs. He knows she can't say how her work is. Nothing that might be useful to know, at any rate. "I'm still alive. Hang around places like this on my off hours now. I'm meeting a few people I can even talk to for more than a minute." A pause, and then she chuckles.

"Guess that must mean their as twisted as I am..."

He just raises an eyebrow at her trip to the bar, but says nothing about it. Not like it's hard to flag down a waiter, but whatever.

He knows neither one of them can say anything relevant or revealing about work... not that either of their jobs are pleasant. Though he does smile a bit with the odd glimpse into her personal life she just gave him.

"What makes you think you're so twisted?" It's an honest question. "I wouldn't call either of our lives 'normal', but compared to some of the people I know? You're much closer to sane."

Ada watches his face for reactions, and smirks a little bit more as he speaks. This is better than arguing, better than pissing him off. Granted, she could still make fun of him, but this whole 'talking' thing is okay.

"Because when you're sitting in a bar swapping manipulative tactics with a rumormonger for fun, you realize just how work related life has become." Ada passes a glance at her cocktail, red as her dress and smelling oddly of fruit.

"Neither of our lives are normal. But while your friends are, for example, a cop who's loud and brash but a good guy in general....Mine are people who even I think are shady." Ada chuckles again. "I didn't think I was that bad. No wonder we never hit it off.."

She says this as though it's a minute observation. It can't mean anything to her and she doesn't want it to. The point of their conversation isn't to try for something that doesn't exist. But while she's grinning on the inside, happy for this moment, on the outside, she merely shrugs.

Rumormonger...?

There's only one person he knows who would call himself that. Figured those two would get along.

"Baofu." he shakes his head a bit. "He is shady. And arrogant. Tends to bite off more than he can chew at times, but he pays his debts."

The mention of them not hitting it off seemed... odd to him. "I thought we did hit it off..." He did get a kiss out of her in Raccoon City. "...life--" and death "--kind of got in the way, I guess."

He wants to say more, but he is dating Claire now, this is territory he really shouldn't tread.

Ada nods.

"See you've met him. He is." Ada shrugs lightly. "He's tricky..not an easy person to get along with for most, I'd imagine."

Here she pauses. And...for just half a second, looks almost upset about something. Soon enough, she collects herself again. "We did...at first, I know." This was turning into the sort of talk Ada knew they needed, but really didn't want to have.

"...I guess my paying off my debts was something you couldn't forgive. And really," Ada smiles again, trying to be professional about this. "I didn't expect you to wait for a dead woman."

"Yeah, well.. he used to be a lawyer." His tone seemed to indicate that such was more than enough to explain Baofu.

On the subject of himself and her, though, he remains quiet for a moment. Finally, he asks "Why didn't you tell me you were alive?"

Ada lets the topic of Baofu drop. She stares at her cocktail while she thinks, and then finally decides to just be blunt. It's one of her specialties, after all.

"Because I owed a debt to Albert Wesker. Finding you...would have meant being ordered to kill you. Like in Spain." Her finger brushes the rim of the glass slowly. "Luckily by then I was....no longer forced under Wesker."

"I see..."

Leon was quiet for a while after hearing that. Oddly, part of him hoped the answer would be something like that. It was better than hearing 'I had no reason to. You were just a means to an end.'

"I had wondered why you'd ever work for someone like Wesker." He takes a drink of his beer. "Are your current employers any better?" There were a few reasons for him to ask that.

Ada doesn't attempt to fill in that silence. The red concoction is plucked from the table and Ada takes a sip or two, watching him all the while.

She's a little more relieved wen no rants about how awful Wesker was and how she owed him nothing come into play.

"...The man saved my life. I repay my debts." Nothing more, nothing less. Well, nothing less save for her job from her other employers, but that was not something to be shared. "...Yes. No one molests the grey area quite like us, and despite the increase of things I'm not allowed to mention, there are plenty of perks involved."

A grin.

"Like toys. You'd like the toys."

He chuckled a bit. "'Molests the gray area'?" He shook his head. "And people say I'm bad."

He takes another drink of his beer as he grins. He is curious about her job, though, for personal reasons... and maybe a few professional ones. He's not going to try to push too far, though, now that they have some kind of rapport going.

"That aside, I have access to the best tech taxpayer money can buy. What toys would your group have that you think I'd like?"

"I try. That's fairly decent compared to the innuendos I can come up with.." He should have been around when she was taunting Krauser. Or..maybe it's a good thing he wasn't.

Ada seems quite content to sit and drink with him. She hopes he won't push too far with the work topic, because Ada has no intentions of betraying her Organization even in the slightest. But when he asks, all she can do is grin at the first thing that comes to mind.

"We could play hot potato with rocket launchers until one of us fucked up and we blew ourselves up, for one thing." Oh, toys. Ada loves her some weaponry and gadgets.

He grinned right back at her, recalling the moments when 'use this' became his favorite words in the english language.

"What is it with you and the rocket launchers?"

Ada pauses, canting her head to the side just a bit when she returns his look. She almost looks shocked that he would even ask such a thing.

"They're fast, flashy, and make one hell of an explosion. I fail to see what isn't to love about them." She finishes her cocktail and shrugs.

"And you're a good shot. It always worked out."

"Oh, they have their uses, but they're impractical in some cases. And I bet it must be a pain in the ass for you to find one that matches your dress." An actual bit of good nature teasing.

"You get to be the big damn hero, the least you can do is let me have a dramatic entrance with some last minute life saving device that will cause fireworks at the same time." The corners of her mouth tug slightly, and Ada has to fight back a laugh.

"A bit of spray paint and it's just fine." A dismissive wave of her hand. "Not nearly as much trouble as you must have finding hair care products in the middle of a life or death situation."

There's a slight smirk. "Your entrances are always dramatic." If it's one thing he can say about Ada, it's that she definitely knew how to make her presence known.

He gives her a slightly amused look at the hair joke. He's heard about a billion of them by now. "Not really, I always carry some with me. Works out well for me too. The bad guys are so busy marveling at how my hair can be so nice after going through several hours of hell that it's easy to get the drop on them."

"..That's because I want them to be. When I want to, I can also get around without anyone knowing I'm there, usually." She does laugh just a little bit this time. It was kind of nice, just sitting here and talking.

A billion or not, Ada has to get in on at least one of them. "Hair stuff is flammable, you know." She points this out idly, and aside form a slightly evil smirk doesn't offer any reason as to suddenly commenting about it.

"You are hard to find when you want to be. Who taught you that?" He was always curious about that.

And He had to admit, it was nice being able to actually talk to Ada. "I know it's flammable. It makes a good weapon in case I have to improvise."

"Secret." Ada winks with a grin as the word rolls off her tongue. "I'm just that good, Leon."

She lifts one hand lazily flicking a strand of her bangs once. "Backup weapon? You'd go bald just to give a zombie some minor singe?"

He smirked and flipped his hair in an overly-dramatic fashion. "This hair is nigh-indestructible." He grinned. "But you'd be surprised what you can make a weapon out of if you're creative enough."

He takes another sip of his beer, then raises his bottle, getting the attention of one of the waitresses who nods and is off to get him another. While waiting, he asks something he's always wondered about.

"What were you like... before... everything? Before you had to become 'just that good'?"

"Pair of shears and that mop will come right off." Amazing how it's so hard to tell if Ada's joking or threatening him. Considering the grin, she's probably joking. Probably.

Her gaze moves around the room, habitually making note of the other people there when the topic moves serious again. Ada looks back at him.

"Before all of this? Well, what do you think? I was a woman, younger...less cynical toward the world. How were you before Raccoon City? Hm? It's been a long time, for me. I can't hardly remember how to be anything other than what I am." She points at him, smirk set firmly in place.

"You, on the other hand...just need to lighten up. It hasn't been that long since we first met. You can still ease up and have a good time every now and then." Be normal, in a sense. For Ada...it just doesn't happen much anymore.

He chuckles. Whether it's at Ada's threat against his hair, her remark about him needing to lighten up, or the smile the waitress gave him which she followed up by giving the back of Ada's head a dark look is unknown.

"I don't need to lighten up." Even he doesn't sound convinced by that.

"...ok, maybe I do. A little." A LOT, actually. "Unfortunately my life isn't all fun and games. I don't have much time to relax as it is. Hell, I barely have enough time to--"

--see Claire.

He's not sure why he choked off the end of that sentence, but he felt it was... odd... to bring up the subject of Claire while talking to Ada. Instead he just handwaves. "Nevermind."

"Be with your woman?" Ada folds her hands and rests her chin on the little bridge they make as she watches Leon.

Out of your reach, Ada. She doesn't falter in expression, and watches him all the while.

"I'm sure she'd like it if you quit being Jesus long enough to be Leon once in a while..." Ada's not entirely certain why she kept talking. She shrugs then and leans back in her chair. "You should do it while you can. I know you'd just kick yourself if you turned out like me."

It's subtle, but everything in Leon's posture suddenly shifts as Ada goes on about Claire. In short, Ada managed to make him squirm a bit under her gaze.

He cleared his throat.

"Claire... she knows how dedicated I am to my job. She's ok with it."

"...Well then," Is that what you were waiting for? Her chair pushes back and Ada climbs to her feet.

You wanted to hear it. Just to be final. She smiles to Leon and leaves the money for her cocktail on the table.

"I'm happy for you..." About as muddied as any statement ever comes from Ada. She looks to the window, out at the rain. Her hand reaches into her purse to grope for her sunglasses again. "Hope I didn't bore you too badly."

He pinched the bridge of his nose when she started to get up. He may be an idiot when it comes to women, but he can tell when he's fucked something up.

He wants to say something, but, honestly, what is there to say?

"You could never bore me." He stood up as well. It would be rude not to, after all. "It was good talking to you.

"And... thanks."

"Don't say that, Leon." Ada pulls on her sunglasses and smirks just a bit. Unreadable as ever, maybe. But it falters about halfway, just for a fraction of a second.

"I'm a selfish woman after all." He hadn't said a thing wrong. It's Ada that can't stand to be here anymore. She gives him a half wave, unwilling to let herself get any closer to him.

"See you again..." Ada turns and walks out of the bar without looking over her shoulder.

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Downtime... [open to rogue_in_red]

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