720/Breakfast at Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany's
Date of Scene:	31 May 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Jessica Jones, Indiana Jones

---

Jessica Jones has posed:
A text to invite Grampa to breakfast. An olive branch extended. Jessica hasn't really woken up early for this. Instead, she's just sort of stayed up to it. Some all-night surveillance means she's up. She'll go to sleep after.

The place she picks is a place that's literally just called "Mamma's." It is the very definition of a hole in the wall. It has exactly 5 tables crammed around a small counter. And yet it serves Mamosas, and breakfasts which are in fact home cooked by Mamma Tiff's, a woman with a true gift. Jessica has a real thing for the eggs benedict, and that is in fact what she's ordered. This is literally fresh-cooked then and there by the woman herself. People tend to overlook the place, with its sort of faded old windows and sagging storefront, but those in the know know it as an institution. It smells amazing inside, and inside it's clean, with every surface scrubbed clean. The tables hardwood, the benches, and the floors. The napkins are cloth. It's the closest thing Jessica surely gets to a home cooked meal, ever.

She's got her leather jacket on over a grey tank top and jeans as ripped as the ones she was wearing when they first met. She managed to exchange decent pleasantries during the whole 'ordering and acquiring food' phase of the entire affair.

Now, she smirks and says, "So. Glory days in...Madripoor?"

She did tell him she wanted to hear the story, and though she seems to have a little bit of trouble entirely knowing //how// to build these bridges...she's going to give it a shot.

Indiana Jones has posed:
Indy arrives a few minutes before he is supposed to meet Jessica, better to be early when building a rickety bridge than late after all. Even still, Jessica has beaten him to the place.

He walks into the hole in the wall and takes a look around, noting the cleanliness of the shop and the amazing smells that come from the kitchen. There is a smile that forms on his face, perhaps in anticipation of a good meal.

He is dressed much like when Jessica met him before, wearing rugged work clothes and that hat he never seems to take off.

As he approaches Jessica's table, he gives her a nod in greeting, "Mornin' Jessica. This place smells amazing."

He slips into the chair across from her, picks up the menu and starts to look at it before putting it back down and reaching into his pocket for his glasses. He picks up the menu again, "What's good here?"

He peeks around the menu, a grin on his face. "Madripoor. You ever heard of it?"

Jessica Jones has posed:
She starts with Madripoor, does the PI, looking more or less relaxed. If she's sleepy, or drunk, neither shows.

"I feel like I've heard of it, and I associate it with jungles, but I admit I didn't do the due diligence to even look it up. I figured I'd just let you tell me about it. Eggs benedict are my favorite, but she also makes a really mean omelette of just about any type. Coffee's pretty damned good too." She is not drinking coffee, of course, having opted for the breakfast booze, but it at least smells pretty gosh darn great, and she probably does drink it sometimes.

She leans back, relaxed, content to let him take a moment with the menu all the same. She may also have chosen a place that has more or less some decent memories for her, a place where she could, in fact, perhaps try to start building some more.

Indiana Jones has posed:
"Well, I guess I should start by telling you about Madripoor." Indy says as he looks over the menu. "Madripoor is a small island nation south of Singapore. Basically, think of it as a city of thieves, assassins, pirates and the worst scum and villainy you are likely to come across. Walking down the street is likely to get you shot more than anything...but the flipside is that is is also a wealthy upscale place. All depends on where you are at the time."

He sets the menu down, and waves over the waitress, ordering sone coffee, corned beef hash, 3 eggs over easy and a side of bacon.

"Anyway, it's a place that the faint of heart don't tend to go. For someone like me, it is also a place that I was able to go and loose myself for a while. I didn't have to be Dr. Jones. I could be whomever I wanted to be. Well, when Marion died, I thought about just...reinventing myself...and I thought Madripoor would be the place to do it."

Jessica Jones has posed:
His wife's name was Marion. This is the first time she's heard it. She also didn't try to dig through the famous Dr. Jones' exploits. There is something to be said for getting to know the man as he sees himself, not as the world sees him, and after a long, thoughtful look at her laptop hours after he'd left the first time...she'd let it alone. She'd only used it to get photographs that she could compare to his face, seconds before she'd asked for his SSN.

"Who did you try to reinvent yourself into?"

She's a woman who doesn't open up easily, obviously; there's only the slightest, and the very slightest softening, to the habitually hard-edged alto. But it's there. The very slight softening enters her face too, but one would have to watch closely. When she's expressing disgust, suspicion, anger? Those emotions rocket large and expressively over her pale features. The softer emotions? She's not devoid of them...they are just expressed very, very subtely indeed.

Indiana Jones has posed:
"Someone who wasn't me." Indy says with a shrug. "When I went to Madripoor I was a broken hearted ex-teacher, ex-archeologist who just watched his wife die, when I didn't age a day. I wanted to be the farthest thing from that I could be."

The coffee arrives and he takes a sip, not doctoring it with any cream of sugar. "I started doing treasure hunting. Not archeology. Not for museums, or restoration or preservation, but strictly for money. I was, for all intents and purposes, a pirate." He sighs, taking another sip of the coffee, "I lost all sense of why I used to do what I did. It was all about the money for me then. I didn't care who I 'acquired' items for, or why."

He pauses for a moment, taking his hat off and putting it on the chair next to him before running his fingers through his hair like a comb. "So, in that respect, I got exactly what I wanted...but it wasn't what I needed."

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica takes a long sip off that orange juice and champagne concoction as she listens to this. She swallows a little bit, something in her eyes saying maybe she kind of gets it. But...she doesn't open her mouth to say that. Instead, she says, "So you lost your way awhile...but seems like you're finding your way back. Did you just sort of wake up and realize that, or was there a catalyst for it?"

She asks it quietly, carefully-- when he'd said he went back to try to recapture his glory days she had thought perhaps he got caught up in some wild adventure. And in a sense he did, but this is heavy. "And um-- feel free to tell me to shut it if I'm just really stepping in shit I have no business stepping in. Asking questions-- kind of my nature-- but-- my nature is maybe also kind of. Bull. In China shop. And I am not trying to cause pain. Or anything."

She cuts into the eggs benedict, finally taking a bite of the food that she's ordered, but her attention is all right on him, brown eyes steady and intent.

Indiana Jones has posed:
"I'm getting to that part.." says Indy quietly, but not angrily.

He takes another sip of his coffee and sighs, "I ran around Madripoor for a while, year or so. Made some friends, made some enemies...you know, like you do. One job I was on, I was getting paid to find my way into the Temple of the Golden Spider. Well this place is full of deathtraps. I'm talking pits with spikes, poisoned darts the works. I make it through this place by the skin of my teeth with nothing but a few bumps and scrapes to show for it and I come across the item I was hired to get. It was a tiara, golden things about yay big..." Indy hold up his hands about a foot apart, "...encrusted with rubies and sapphires and it had 8 prongs that came down like the legs of a spider, hence the name of the temple. The thing was priceless. The amount of money I was going to get for this job was...well...it was ridiculous, but I was in that temple looking at this thing sitting on its display and I just was drawn in by the beauty of it."

He takes a deep breath, takes another sip of coffee, and continues.

"Well, I don't know why this piece over all the others flipped the switch, but as I am standing there with possible death all around me looking at this artifact, it reminded me of my past. How I would risk life and limb to obtain these priceless works of art, these icons of cultures long since past, these relics of beauty and I knew I couldn't take it sell it to a collector, it needed to be on display somewhere in a museum. So, I grabbed the tiara, and made it back out through the traps and sent it anonymously to the Smithsonian. Needless to say, this didn't please the guy that paid me to get it."

His food comes and he sits back in his chair, taking a breath and adding some salt and pepper to his eggs.

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica relaxes a little bit when he doesn't seem angry or upset, and finds herself getting drawn into the story.

It's a requisite of her own work that she has a good imagination. She can see it all in her mind's eye...the traps, the beautiful relic (which she now might just find herself going to the Smithsonian to go see)...

And the reaction of the people who her grandfather basically screwed over by failing to bring it back to them. "So...lots of burly gunmen and people named Guido trying to grab you to 'teach you a lesson' or 'make an example' or just kill you in the face, then," she hazards. There's a bit of humor to that smirk, a bit of admiration, even, but after interjecting her guess into his story she shuts up again to let him tell the tale of his own escape. It might give him a chance to get some of his own breakfast into his body, at any rate. She finishes the Mamosa, but rather than ordering another goes on for the previously untouched water that was sitting next to it, apparently only really deciding to take the edge off this morning with the mixed drink rather than trying to literally crawl inside the bottle.

Indiana Jones has posed:
Indy takes a bit of his eggs and follows it up with a piece of bacon as he nods. "Exactly. About three days after I got back to Madripoor I was awoken by a storm of lead. I don't know how many gunmen were out there, I didn't have the time to count. Frankly, I'm not exactly sure how I survived being in that shack. By the time the guns ran dry it looked like it was made of holes and the wood was an afterthought. When the initial gunfire ended, I made a mad dash for the window and scrambled out onto the roof of the next building. From there, the chase was on.

He pauses again to take a bite of his breakfast and wash it down with coffee. "I was running along the rooftops, leaping from building to building as I was trying to get away from these guys. They had a pair of cars on the ground trying to follow me as well as a few guys behind me running along the rooftops. As I was about to make a leap from one roof to another, a bullet clips my leg and causes me to stumble right off the roof. I figured that was it for me, you know? Except the roof I was leaping to was that of a poultry processing plant, and I end up falling into a bin full of chicken feathers."

He pauses again to let that sink in as he takes another bite from his breakfast, using his fork now to stab at the air to accentuate points as he talks. "Don't get me wrong, I still hit bottom, and I tweaked my leg up pretty bad...but the feathers cushioned my fall enough for me to walk...well, limp away. Covered head to toe in down and random feathers. I looked like I had just been tar and feathered."

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica can't help it. She lets out an incredulous laugh. She even picks up her water glass and gives him a little non-verbal toast for that one, her lips quirking just a little bit.

Her vivid imagination has that one on lockdown too. It doesn't hurt that the venerable Dr. Jones spins a good yarn about his wild exploits, using turns of phrase that help her see every single detail in living color.

"That seems like it ought to have made you //more// conspicous on your way out of Madripoor, not less," she points out, but-- something in this has brought the faintest of twinkles out of eyes that are otherwise habitually either hard or dull. "Or did the gunmen figure you were dead when this chicken-man came limping out of the poultry plant?"

Indiana Jones has posed:
"Oh no, they were still chasing me. So, feathered and limping I made my way to the docks, where my buddy kept his boat. It was a leaky old thing that could barely be called a boat, but it had a motor and it floated...for the most part. Most importantly, I knew where he hid the spare set of keys."

Indy leans back in his chair and smiles, resting one arm across the chair next to him. "So, after I go the keys out of the head, I started that thing and started putting out into the harbor. I don't know what possessed me to try and take that Junk...limited options I suppose. It only took them about 3 minutes to catch up to me in their speedboat. Well, I knew I wasn't going to be able to outrun them, nor was I going to be able to defend myself on the Junk, so I tied the steering wheel in place, and set the throttle to full and slipped off the back of the boat into the water, holding onto the ladder on the back to keep from drifting into the propeller and using the whitewater to hide."

He pauses again, finishing the last of his coffee. "So, they pull up along side the Junk, most of the men board it looking for me while I climb aboard their boat, bean the guy at the wheel with a fire extinguisher, and take off with theirs. By the time they were able to putter back to shore, I was halfway to Singapore."

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica just stares as the story unfolds, and she finally presses her lips together, as if she feels the need to hold her laugh inside instead of really letting fly with it. Because the image of the boat chase and boat hopping while her grandfather was apparently still covered in feathers is just too much.

"And I thought //I// lived a crazy life," she says, shoulders still shaking a little. She shakes her head, takes a few more bites of her food, and then studies him.

"Thanks for telling me that."

She drums her fingers against the water glass, finally orders one of the excellent coffees, and asks at last, "You had enough excitement for awhile? Or, if I happened to tell you that I just caught a case that might in fact touch on your areas of expertise, would you want in on it?"

Her lack of speed in broaching this topic is at least in part because the need to hear about Madripoor and the offer to bring him on this case are somewhat separate. It was a chance to get to know him, and a good one.

There is perhaps the slightest air of anxiety hovering just beneath the tough outer shell that says she is concerned he might, like so many people might, see this seguey as the reveal of some ulterior motive. It is in fact not one. She had heard his lament that there wasn't much of a call for archaeologists in New York City, and, having heard this, rather guesses he is a fellow that just won't take to boredom and feeling useless very well. She happens to have something that might remedy that. And she happens to have decided she might just want to offer it out to him, to work with him on it.

He can't possibly know how rare-to-never it would be for her to feel like she ought to work with anyone on anything, versus simply trying to gather the requisite understandings herself until she can get the job done.

Indiana Jones has posed:
Indiana Jones chuckles, taking another bite of his breakfast, "Oh, that ain't the half of it, kid. You know the books and movies and shit they made about me? Not all of it is fabricated. Sadly, most of it isn't. I've lived through some crazy things, done even crazier at times."

He smiles, cocking his head to the side as he studies her, "You're welcome. Glad I am around to be telling you that."

He is in the middle of taking another bite as she broaches the subject of another job. Indy chews the forkfull of food, lifting his gaze to Jessica, and there is a twinkle of excitement in them. He swallows, "I ain't dead yet, Jess. Fact is, I just got back from Belize, the government there was wanting a artifact from an old Incan priestess recovered. I haven't even unpacked yet." He gives her a grin, leaning back against the back of his chair, arm drapped over the back as he drums his fingers against the wood. "So, where are we headed?"

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jess laughs and says, "Well, I don't know that we're headed anywhere yet."

Glad that her small sally into throwing the line out there has produced only excitement, she leans forward after looking around, lowering her voice. "This morning a representative from the New York Public Library came to hire me. The Gutenburg Bible got swiped. Like, the literal one they used to make people take their hats off to go see. They've got a fake on display, and for some reason they thought I was a good choice to get it back. It's not...quite as old as an ancient Incan artifact, but...still seemed to be in your wheelhouse. And I dunno, maybe we //are// headed somewhere, you tell me, because...my guess? It's gotta be in the hands of some black market collector type or something, and-- well, I obviously wasn't wrong, given what you just told me, when I thought that maybe you'd have some experience with the shadier side of the antiquities market. A Hell of a lot more than I do."

She tilts her head at him. "What do you think?"

Indiana Jones has posed:
Indiana Jones lets out a low whistle as he listens, his eyes going a bit wide at what Jessica is telling him. In response, he leans forward and lowers his voice to match her air of privacy, "That's a big one. Literally. It isn't like you can just stuff one of those in a satchel and wander out with it."

He reaches up, rubbing his chin as he thinks. "I mean even transporting that, if they want to preserve it, is going to take some hardware that isn't exactly something you can grab down at the local store. Dehumidifiers for one thing."

Jessica Jones has posed:
"Yeah. That was the other thing. I was afraid I'd rip it to pieces if I found it and tried to transport it without your help. But...shit, that's a good lead."

She takes out a notebook and scribbles it down. "What else? If they needed specialized equipment maybe we can track the purchases, pinpoint a lead."

She frowns and says, "The librarian who hired me-- Bellamy, was his name-- was also worked up about what he called The Extra Page, and I mean you could seriously hear the capitals in that one. Sometimes he seemed more worried about this museum legend than he was about the whole damned Bible, but when I asked about it? He said it was just a blank piece of paper. I told him I wouldn't take the case if he couldn't do a little better than that and he said some guy named Eaton added the page back in 1936."

Jessica has written the word dehumidifier and circled it a few times, even as she says all this.

"So there's that, for whatever that is supposed to mean."

Indiana Jones has posed:
"Well, if I were going to transport something like that with the intent to preserve it as best as I could, I would put it into a protective case, preferably something with UV filtering or no light at all and have it hooked up to a dehumidifier. A bible is about...2 square feet give or take? Not to big, but not something you just pick up and walk away with either. I'd suspect at least 2 people to pull off the job. When was it taken?"

He listens about the Extra Page, and rubs at his chin until he hears the name Eaton. He stops moving and his eyes go wide, looking up to Jessica as he slowly lowers his hand from his chin. "Wait...what? What was that name again?" Indy's eyes narrow, "Did you say Eaton?"

Jessica Jones has posed:
She jots it down...the case, the two people, and she says, "Dude came in my office yesterday afternoon saying it had been stolen early that morning. I guess their morning had been spent with their committees or whatever running around like chickens with their goddamn heads cut off..."

Then she really zeroes in on her grandfather's reaction. "Yeaaah."

She flips a few pages earlier in her notebook. "Army guy, he said. Major Daniel Eaton."

It dawns on her that he's basically //from the era in question//.

"You have some sort of connection to this guy?"

Now she's staring at him intently, her head tilting to one side and her mouth drawing into a tight line of concentration, even as her brows furrow.

Indiana Jones has posed:
The look on Indiana's face as she repeats the name is a mix of recognition and anger. His right hand clenches tightly, knuckles popping as they turn white.

"I'll say. Major Eaton is the Army intelligence officer who sent me on the job to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant. He is also the same asshole that took the Ark from me when I did actually find it so his fuckin' 'Top Men' could study the thing. Bunch of idiots."

Jessica Jones has posed:
Jessica watches her grandfather simmer in anger, and drains her coffee. "Well. They say great hair is the best revenge, Grandpa. You still have all yours, and, you know, unless something strange happened, which of course isn't outside the realm of possibility...the fucker lost all his, along with all his skin and shit. He's dead, you're not, so you win...but...might be worth trying to figure out why the Hell he went around sticking random pieces of paper into antique Bibles all the same."

Blunt to a fault, one Jessica Jones, but...maybe also in possession of a point.

She gives him another one of those half-smiles, almost a smirk, almost a smile, not quite either, and says, "So. What do you say you finish your breakfast..."

Her eyes sparkle with her own excitement. This, solving cases? Is what she lives for, these days. It's the same drive that he has, really, simply channeled into a slightly different profession.

"And then? We go hunting."