Apology Tour 2012: Audio

[lesliemonster]

[ooc: post is backdated to three days after the Boardwalk Empire-esque flood.]

[Leslie Knope has spent the past three days in a self inflicted cocoon of SHAME. But even though she is now a law-breaking, Jesse-beating-up, moonshine-hustling criminal, and officially one of the worst people on the barge, she still has a job to do, darn it.

She has already apologized to Jesse, but that is not enough. Not nearly.

So she sits up, brushes herself off, and starts to speak:]

I would like to personally apologize to anyone that I may have offended, insulted, shamed, threatened, assaulted, murdered, waterboarded, knuckle punched, chainsawed, belittled, and/or put in a compromising position over the course of the last few days.

[Private to Toshiko]

I am sorry that I took your beautiful, intelligent brain and used it for evil.

[Private to Lua]

I am sorry that I took it upon myself to be your gang's token insane member.

[Private to Omar]

I am sorry that I put myself in the position where I was robbed by you. How are you?

Comments

Private >> Spam

[breakingmyheart]

Of course.

[She's there twenty minutes later and has two beers poured and a table picked out, and spends the next eight minutes on fidgeting and preemptive social awkwardness because below the fading memories of her other self's friendship/partnership with the other Leslie, she just doesn't know her very well. Over time, arm's length seems to have become the best distance for other people.]

Spam

[lesliemonster]

[Leslie's timetable mirror's Toshiko's enough that she arrives ten minutes earlier than planned. She's looking more presentable than she has in the past couple of days -- a dress shirt under a cable-knit sweater and jeans to indicate that this is an off-duty beer.

She sees Tosh, and gives a little wave. Then thinks that that was a weird opening move, shakes her head, and puts her hand back in her pocket.]

Hi! Um. Greetings. Sorry -- this is weird and I'm not sure how to introduce myself to someone who was my business partner in really illegal activities but not really?

Hi.

Spam

[breakingmyheart]

[She smiles politely, with limited signs of strain, and offers a hand to shake.]

I think we can play it by ear. Hi. Nice to meet you properly.

[lesliemonster]

[Good call, Tosh. Leslie smiles, more relaxed, and shakes her hand.]

You too. [She takes a seat.] Thanks for the beer!

[breakingmyheart]

You're welcome. [She settles back a little and wraps her hands around her glass mostly to stop herself fidgeting.] How long have you been on board now?

[Sorry, did you invite her here to talk about her? Yeah that's being put off as long as possible.]

[lesliemonster]

A few months. It depends on if you count the coma or not. [She says, making a coma sound like a perfectly genial conversation topic.]

How about you?

[breakingmyheart]

[There's a fleeting pause for mental arithmetic.]

Two years and four months. I first came on board over three years ago by the Barge's calendar but I've disappeared or been home in the intervening time.

[lesliemonster]

Wow. How many inmates have you graduated?

[breakingmyheart]

Two. Out of five. [She reels them off efficiently:] The first graduated, the second escaped, the third disappeared, the fourth graduated, and the fifth was reassigned by the Admiral for reasons he didn't share with me. [She lets out a soft breath. It was just as well; Lua wasn't suited to her.] Erik is my sixth.

[lesliemonster]

Erik?

[Leslie takes a loooong sip of her beer. Those numbers are intimidating -- Tosh is smart and savvy and beautiful and personable. If she can't graduate all her inmates, Leslie's prospects aren't too great.]

How is that going? If you don't mind me asking. He seems kind of...into not liking humans?

[breakingmyheart]

[She's quiet for a moment, groping around for an answer that isn't 'I'd punch him if I didn't think he'd rip me in half'.]

We've...reached an impasse. He's like a lot of Inmates in that he thinks graduating will need him to abandon his personal ideals. I'm human, so he won't listen to a word I say, so I can't convince him otherwise. All I can do now is sit on my hands and wait for him to realise that he's wrong.

[A little frustration bleeds into her voice at the end there, but not nearly as much as what she's actually feeling.]

[lesliemonster]

If his personal ideas are killing all humans then, yeah. That's going to need a revisit.

[Leslie could guess the depth of the frustration -- it's something she feels with Omar, a section of the time.]

That's a method I've been applying. It sucks. [She smiles, and takes a sip.] What about Charles Xavier?

[breakingmyheart]

[His personal ideal isn't a world devoid of humans. At least, she doesn't think it is. What she supposes he wants is a world without fear of reprisals against who and what he is, and any genocidal tendencies are just a rather aggressive means of accomplishing that. But that's brass tacks and overly personal to boot.

At the mention of Xavier she frowns and takes a gulp of her beer. There's a lot she'd like to say about him, but Leslie does seem to have 'semi-benign meddler' written all over her and she doesn't want to give too much away.]

We don't talk. I made a pretty bad first impression. Though I don't mind saying he's probably the only thing stopping Erik going completely off the rails.