thecapitol | We don't have to worry 'bout nothing

Who| Terezi Pyrope and Buddy Glass
What| Terezi has landed herself an interview with the new Head Peacekeeper for a little community service.
Where| Peacekeeper Headquarters
When| Now-ish
Warnings/Notes| None?

Terezi should have known it was going to be some kind of special day when she found the outfit that her stylist had laid out for her today. It was just that little bit classier than her usual everyday attire---not quite the Capitol's usual brand of fancy, but nice. The kind of outfit that you wear to impress but not overwhelm.

It crosses her mind as something strange, but she doesn't pay it any mind. At least not until later, when her escort informs her that she will be having a meeting with Buddy Glass. The name is instantly familiar to her, remembering her conversation with Jennifer Blackwood. There's no small apprehension at the sudden schedule change, but she goes along with it. There's no point in arguing now, when she asked for this.

She's taken to the Peacekeeper headquarters to wait. Hands clasped in her lap, she sits and waits patiently, back a little too straight to be completely at ease.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's an instantaneous change between the rest of Peacekeeper HQ, with its sterile pallidity, and even the receptionist's desk in front of Buddy's office. The whiteness and florescent light that overwhelms everywhere else, is absent here. Everything is dark wood and vaguely old fashioned looking, there are knickknacks almost anywhere it would be possible to leave them, and a small framed photograph (presumably belonging to Buddy's secretary) is positioned strategically on a corner of her desk.

There's still a tidiness to his secretary, however. A professionalism and depersonalization that seems ingrained into the very concrete and iron of the skyscraper. It gives way entirely when Terezi is allowed into his office.

The knickknacks abruptly multiply as if reproducing spontaneously the moment someone passes through the doorway of the actual office. Instead of one framed photograph, there are a half dozen on Buddy's desk. One is decidedly older looking than the rest and features a man and a woman who are, even by Capitol standards, dressed to the nines. There are autographs scrawled across it, the permanent ink barely contained within a large, swooping heart. In addition to the photos, there are files on every reasonable surface, and books irreverently shoved into shelves with no regard to author or compatibility of subject matter. Ashtrays with burnt out cigarette butts are placed at random intervals around the shelves and one (highly abused) is on his desk. The dominant feature of the room (in addition to a large old fashioned clock that rather resembles the face of an oversized watch) is a photo hanging above Buddy's desk. It's of Buddy probably a decade ago, with his arm around the shoulders of another, slightly older young man. They're similar looking enough to be related, but Buddy is definitely the more handsome of the two. Both are wearing dress uniforms and matching (slightly embarrassed) smiles.

"Terezi Pyrope," the man himself greets from behind his desk. He looks up from the file he's reading (possibly hers), but only for an instant, as she's led into the office. He doesn't stand. "I've been expecting you. Please take a seat."

Whatever Terezi was expecting when she stepped into Buddy Glass's office... it wasn't this. Given the state of the Peacekeepers with their pristine white uniforms, and the strictness of the curfews and the laws and the rules; she was expecting someone similarly rigid and impersonal and lacking in frivolous nonsense.

What she finds instead is something almost consistent with the rest of the Capitol. The knickknacks are a little absurd, she thinks, for someone who heads a legal force. The ashtrays are also excessive, but her expectations of what she imagined Buddy Glass to be were probably heavily influenced by Alternia, instead of what she's witnessed in Panem. The apparent disorganization is bizarre by either standard, though--or so she thinks. How this man manages to "protect" the city without misplacing a Peacekeeper here or there, she is not entirely sure.

But the sum of these observations does not stop her from seating herself nervously on the edge of a chair, situated on the other side of the desk from Buddy. Her back is straight, her hands still clasped in her lap. She puts forth her best impression of an obedience and politeness, despite the fact that he probably knows how crass and unruly she can be with her peers. It's not about pretending to be something she's not, but rather showing that restraint and respect where she should.

"Thank you for meeting with me. I really appreciate it."

"Not a problem," Buddy says amid a cloud of cigarette smoke clouding his desk. He fans it off, and that's the exceedingly limited greeting Terezi given before being waved forward. The office doesn't expand so much as the accumulation of stuff seems to open up to allow space to the foreign presence. Even the photos on the wall seem to contort themselves to make way. With a hand, Buddy bids her sit down. There's a pointedly casual quality to his action, as if if he's trying very hard not to make more of this than what it is.

"Now then, what can I do for you?" Brows hidden behind hornrimmed glasses knit together, and Buddy's lips purse as if the question he's posed is one of the greatest there might be in life. It's at least up there with the purpose of the superman amid modern society, and whether or not thought is determinate of life itself. But, at least. Abruptly, he signs. Seemingly all pretense is lost and he reaches for the cigarette which has been burning, perched, prone in a asher on his desk. "You're here because you did something wrong-- Now I don't rightly care what, but they only bother to send Tributes my way when you need to redeem yourselves."

The cigarette smoke is suffocating to her senses. Even if she didn't use her sense of smell to see, it would still be uncomfortably thick for her. She tries not to wrinkle her nose or cough, if only to be polite, but her discomfort is visible. She presses on regardless.

"I'm here because I didn't do anything wrong," she asserts the correction, only because she wants to make that point clear. It is a pivotal point of her purpose here: That she is doing this because of a clear conscience and not a guilty one. After all, who would expect a child to murder a government official and then walk up to their successor and ask for an honest job?

"I want to prove that. I want to help. I like law and justice and order; I used to study it on my own world. If I had stayed there, I was going to be a legal enforcer--like you. And I like to draw. Mrs. Blackwood said that you might have some kind of work for me."

We don't have to worry 'bout nothing

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