London Calling RPG

Clint would have loved to have a good explanation for why he was there, something about being an Iowa farm boy. To say he'd really grown up on a farm would have been an exaggeration at best. Sure, he'd grown up in a farm house and there'd been some chickens but they'd mostly been pets who happened to leave eggs. He and Barney had had a pair of goats for a while but he had no idea what happened to them after they got put in the system.

Hell, he'd encountered more animals at the circus, but here he was at the National Pet Show.

And he definitely hadn't ever encountered an alpaca before. It was a weird-looking thing, with a mean little face. It glared (?) at Clint as it chewed a mouthful of hay, lower jaw moving in tiny circles.

"What was God thinking when He made an alpaca?" Clint asked, moving a handful of hay closer to it to see what it would do.

Edited Date: 2016-05-08 08:02 am (UTC)

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Anael was walking around the Pet Show because the love people had for animals was just as lovely as any other, really. The question, rhetorical or not, made him stop and smile at the alpaca in question. "Usually, people ask about the platypus."

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"Nah, see, a poisonous mammal that looks like a duck makes perfect sense. Looks like a practical joke, but this guy..." Clint jerked a thumb back toward the alpaca, which looked at his hand like it might be delicious. "What evolutionary purpose is there to a bad-tempered sweater?"

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"Are you asking God, or Darwin?" Anael asked with amusement.

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Clint shrugged and took a step away when the alpaca leaned forward. "I am asking for whoever can explain this guys," Clint said.

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"They've been domesticated for thousands of years," Anael answered, stepping closer when the man stepped back. "Hello," he told the animal, and slowly reached out to pet its head. "Maybe they are here to provide for men. And maybe men are there to help them survive." Mutually beneficial relationship; there was a lot of that in nature. He spoke on a low, gentle tone, and the alpaca hummed its happiness, then decided to ignore him in favour of grazing.

Most animals tended to like angels.

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Clint raised an eyebrow as the alpaca suddenly melted for the other guy, all cooing and happy blinking eyes. Two seconds ago, he'd been nothing so much as a belligerent sweater. Shaking his head, he kept back.

"You've got a way with them."

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"Love animals, and they will love you back," Anael simply stated, joining the other man a little distance away from the alpaca. You never knew when it might decide to spit at them. "You must love animals, if you're here?"

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Trust Marvin to show up for a meet at the National Pet Show – also his idea – wearing an I ♥ my pig t-shirt and a cap with a curlicue tail in the back. It was Marvin, though, so Victoria shouldn't have been surprised. But doing her a favor or not, a small unprofessional part of Victoria almost started a scene when the information he handed her was on microfiche for no good reason outside Marvin's paranoia.

Microfiche. In 2016. For information that couldn't be more than a decade old at best.

She'd save sharing her thoughts with him until the next time they spoke on the phone. For now, she let him wander off while she finished her coffee, then tossed the empty cup in a bin near an alpaca just in time to hear the man's comment. A man she had recognized from her spot on the bench, whom she remembered as very alert and with interesting calluses on his hands.

Interesting. If not troubling.

"Perhaps that's what he was thinking," she suggested, a sly glint in her eyes as she watched the animal more than the man. The man was less likely to spit. One hoped. "An animal that would prompt questions of faith. It's Mr. Barton, yes?"

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"I'm not much a man of faith," Clint said, putting some of that Iowa simpleton back into his voice. "I've seen them before but never this close. They kind of look like belligerent sweaters." As he spoke, the alpaca clacked its teeth and Clint scowled, gesturing with two fingers from his eyes to the creature's.

"You bite me and I'll tell them you gave me rabies."

He was an American; he could probably get away with an absurd lawsuit like that.

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"I have. On a trip to Bolivia. I met a rancher who insisted they made excellent guard," not dogs, surely, "animals." Rather she'd had to infiltrate a compound which had both alpacas and dogs she'd needed to avoid on her way in and out. Victoria smiled. "I'll admit, I prefer their scarves to the animals themselves."

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Clint snorted; it was easy enough to picture. One alpaca, sedate in its paddock, looked mean enough. Turn them loose and give them territory and it could get nasty.

"Yeah, I think I'll agree with that. They had a rack of them for sale somewhere."

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"So if you're not all that fond of alpacas, what brings you out here today?" She asked, halfway expecting him to turn the question around on her, but she already had an answer ready if he did.

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"I came to see the dogs mostly, then I walked over here and thought to myself, damn I've never seen a dog like this." Clint gestured again at the alpaca and shook his head.

"How about you? Find a keeshond you just gotta adopt?"

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"Oh, no." Victoria shook her head at the thought. "Travel becomes so much more complicated when one has a dog to consider, and I enjoy traveling for fun now I'm retired.

"I have always had a fondness for rottweilers, though. I'm not sure why."

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"God was trolling your cranky ass, that's for sure." That was John, acerbic, perhaps even more so what with his hair the way it had been. He was feeling more like his old self than he thought he would, and wasn't sure what to do about it. "If that thing bites your fingers off, I'm just gonna laugh." He nodded to the alpaca, who seemed more suspicious of the handful of hay than actively hungry.

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"Well, that's probably what I deserve for not believing in him," Clint said, as circumspect as ever. Or at least as circumspect as he allowed himself to sound in front of others.

"It better not. I need my fingers. For typing and all that."

And firing a bow and arrow. Important things.

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"Join the club,' John retorted. He'd given up any hope of some kind of all powerful sky dude years ago. Judgement and justice were more of a personal responsibility, as he saw it. "Is your lack of belief responsible for those big-ass spiders, too? Or the platypus? Actually, let's blame all of Australia on the godless heathens, they have enough weird shit." Especially the spiders. John was not a fan.

"....Typing. Right." John still felt there was more to this guy than met the eye. You didn't get muscles like that from typing. "Your words per minute speed must be ferocious," he mused, eying a bicep.

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Clint shook his head, remembering the last time he'd gone to Australia. It had been a couple of years back on a mission to escort and then extract. He had somehow managed to pick (and lose) a fight with a kangaroo, almost acquire a pet wallaby, and flush down the toilet a spider the side of a dinner plate.

Not his favorite trip.

"Seventy-five words a minute," he said with overinflated pride. "My accuracy's amazing."

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"Sure it is," John replied dryly, before looking at the alpaca, which looked back at them both.

"So are you gonna feed that camel-sheep thing some hay, or is it just gonna eat your hand?" As if to show how it was done, John got himself a handful of hay from the loose bale nearby and extended his hand to feed the beast. It ate readily from John's palm, the furred jaw a little ticklish against his skin.

"....See? I kept all my fingers, too." John clapped Clint on the shoulder with the hand he'd just fed the alpaca, and wiped his hand clean in the process.

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"I'm gonna let you feed that guy hay while I stand back here and supervise," he said, just as dryly.

The alpaca seemed content enough once it got its mouthful and Clint was immediately less so. "I put a lot of work into not getting alpaca spit on me, kid," he said. Now look where he'd ended up.

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"You have a lot of expertise in supervising folks? I tend to buck hierarchies," John observed.

And just to rub it in (no pun intended), John raised his hand and gave Clint a twinkling little wave, demonstrating that his hand was now mostly all clean and dry and all that. "See, this is what happens when you don't hire good people. I'm not good people."

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