A little weird

"It's just one more stain," Doc chuckled, shrugging his shoulders and taking the napkins. He took them slowly, eyes on the hand offering them as he worked to not frown over what was missing. The skin was smooth, unmarred by scarring that'd suggest an accident. There was just a finger missing from the hand. It wasn't gross, but it was surprising. "No need for apologies, really. Everyone slips up now and then. Are you okay?" he asked, turning an appraising stare on Isabelle. He'd hunted long enough to know myriad manifestations of otherworldly heritage, and a missing or extra finger was high on the list. But it wasn't nearly enough to assume he was dealing with some unknown supernatural. "Need to sit for a minute? There's plenty of open bench."

Isabelle caught him looking at her hands; she let a slightly uncomfortable look cross her face, faint embarrassment mixed with hints of an old hurt. As soon as he'd taken the napkins, her fingers curled slightly, hands slipping into the kangaroo pocket on her hoodie. She didn't, in all actuality, give a damn about her missing fingers; she functioned just fine without them, and she'd been without since birth, but she did so love to play with people that way. It was a small game, but a fun one nonetheless. "I may be a klutz sometimes," she said with an attempt at a faint smile, "but I didn't hit you that hard. No concussion, not even a bruise. I am sorry I dumped your coffee, though." She supposed the polite thing would be to offer to replace what was spilled, but she didn't feel like wasting forty cents on his caffeine.

"Sorry," Doc apologized with a shake of his head, "An old teacher of mine once told me that the human eye fixates on what it doesn't come across regularly, that it's drawn to anomalies in its' standard environment. So you see a new dress or a new model of car, and you stare. Hope you didn't take any offense. I know I didn't with the impact," he told her, cheeks bunching in a grin that probably didn't work as well on younger women as it once had. Not that he was looking to charm her, but it'd be good to keep from offending her. So she was born missing a couple of fingers? And reacted just like any teenage girl might at being called out on it. "Really, I'm willing to be done with apologies for the coffee if you'll do me the same favor," he told her, setting his cup down and offering Isabelle his hand, "Deal?"

Isabelle had given him a small smile in answer when he talked about the human eye fixating and all, even if she thought it was a moronic rationalization for the simple answer of 'everyone loves freaks.' "Deal," she said quietly, looking at his hand a moment before slipping her right hand out of the hoodie to take it. "And no, I didn't take offense. More that it makes most people uncomfortable, so I try to make it easy on people. I suppose I should get used to it, right?" she asked, then shrugged as if shaking it off. "I'm Isabelle," she said then.

"Eric," he replied, shaking her hand lightly and fighting the urge to just focus, to view this young woman from a plane of pure being, where appearances didn't matter. Sadly, she'd probably notice even that momentary concentration he'd need, and then he'd lose his chance. "Everyone just calls me Doc, so that'll do. You must've come straight up here from school, I'm guessing. Most of the kids in town only hang around here when there's really nothing else to do." At least, that was what he'd picked up from Seph and Syn during their first days in town, years earlier.

"Doc," Isabelle repeated, fixing name and face together in her mind. She made it a point to always remember the unusual ones, and so far that really only numbered two - him and Kyle, the two people she'd ever met that she couldn't read at least the surface thoughts - or at least, not well. "Nice to meet you. And yeah, I was just killing a little time. No practice today, and nothing's going on until later tonight."

"Practice?" he echoed thoughtfully, "Cheerleading or something? Not that you have to be one, mind you. Just me guessing." He bent down to pick up the remainder of his coffee, slurping some down. "I wasdoing the same, really. Killing some time, that is. My shopping lists are always pretty small, I normally hate shoppers. But it was quiet today, I figured I'd sit and raise my blood pressure for a while," he joked, gesturing with the remainder of his pretzel before biting back into it.

"Um, yeah, actually," Isabelle said, blinking and eyeing him slightly askance. "Cheerleading. Good guess." Too good, perhaps? She'd never come across someone with talents like herself, save Medea, whose talents focused not on thought but on emotion. Still, it had become instinct to keep her thoughts still, hidden beneath a... well, a sort of wall she'd always felt inside her own mind, a wall she pictured as miles of cold, featureless steel. But what if her defenses weren't as naturally strong as she'd thought? She managed a smile at his blood pressure comment. "You'd think you'd need more screaming children and jostling shoppers for a good blood pressure hike," she joked. "Or well, I guess I have the jostling part taken care of."

Not bad, old man, he complimented himself with a smile. Really, the guess had been based solely on Isabelle being a pretty-enough young woman who opted for the mall as a time-waster in lieu of anything else; a stereotype he hadn't expected to hit the target. "Sometimes I'm lucky like that, I suppose," he joked dryly, "And you don't so much need the people to let the place upset you. It's more what it represents all on its' own. Thank god this is a smaller town or I wouldn't be able to set foot inside here. Just sitting around does the trick for me." That, and Doc had a little time to kill as well. He wanted to make sure Seph wasn't in the forge when he got home, to eliminate any chance of explaining why he was buying magnetic weights and calibration components.

"I hear that," Isabelle agreed. She shrugged a shoulder. "I don't do much shopping; I can't. I mostly come to people-watch. People can be real animals when they don't think anyone notices, you know?" That, at least, was actually truth. Humanity as a whole was so delightfully fucked up - greedy, selfish, childish. It was fascinating.

"Absolutely," Doc agreed easily. "Hell, in plenty of historically documented cases they don't even care if others notice, so long as they're in the majority. We're a messy, angry race of beings, and it's actually pretty remarkable that we haven't wiped ourselves out yet." Which, he knew now, was because of the balancing act performed by beings like him and the Mourning Star. Still, it was refreshing how candid he could be when talking to a stranger, especially a teenaged one.

"And people think we're not savages," Isabelle mused with a tiny but genuinely amused laugh. People were complete animals. She could have said more on the subject, but she figured it would likely sound strange coming from the mouth of a sixteen year old girl. At least to Doc it might. The last thing she wanted to do was make anyone suspicious of her. She'd hardly gotten the chance for any fun.

He shook his head at that, his smile easy but challenging. She'd made the observation, he'd continue it. "No, people think they aren't savages. They're all too happy to brand anyone who isn't them or their friends as such. Civil war in the Congo? Well, those people are uncivilized. Holy war in Israel? Same thing. Everyone likes to tell themselves they're above it, but if the chance to be ruthless came up they'd either take it or be too scared to." Which was cruel, but he knew plenty about humanity. And the minority was the people who weren't afraid to act, but didn't do so out of repressed urges or selfishness. They acted because they had to.

"So which group are you in?" Isabelle asked, eyeing him curiously. "If the chance to be ruthless came up, would you take it or would you be too scared?" In all honesty, she expected him to say he'd take it. People didn't like to acknowledge the fact that nine times out of ten, they were cowards. It was easy to say you'd shoot someone you hated, given the means and reasonably low risk of capture, but put someone in that exact situation and she highly doubted the average joe would really be able to go through with it.

"I'm not the ruthless type," Doc told her honestly, grinning a bit. Sure, he'd killed plenty of strange creatures, and a good number of people as well, but there were lines he knew he wouldn't cross, demon or no. "I don't scare too easy either. I wager I'd be the guy hitting the ruthless people and telling them to get their shit together. There's just few enough of us that we don't count as a third option." Then again, sometimes he had to be inactive. These days? It was his job, standing by and nudging the pieces towards their own motivations, be they noble or horrible.

"Maybe the ruthless people do have their acts together," Isabelle put forward. "Maybe they're necessary to do the things that other people won't want to do but that still have to be done." She was a little surprised that he hadn't gone for the ruthless category, but likely he still thought it in his head, even if he was too modest or conscious of appearances to say it aloud. She'd normally have made some excuse to touch him or accidentally brush up against him, except it wouldn't make a difference because she couldn't read him, anyway. That was frustrating.

Doc chuckled at that, swirling the last few drops of coffee in his cup and nodding. "Pretty advanced outlook for someone your age, if you don't mind me saying," he complimented, figuring she had it quite right. "Sometimes it's necessary to inject a little chaos into the system, to break things up and catalyze some change. Again, historically speaking it's never pretty." But her comment spurred his suspicions again; how many sixteen year olds had that refined of an understanding of good and evil? Seph and Syn, sure, but their upbringing had been pretty unusual.

"I read a lot," Isabelle said by way of explanation, shrugging. "I meant more in terms of like, having to decide whether or not to pull the plug on a coma patient or having to shoot someone who's breaking into your house if it came down to a you or him kind of situation. People like to think they'd be able to act to save themselves or save someone else in that kind of situation, but probably they'd just freeze up and get hurt or die. Or let someone else die."

"Well, I've never been in that scenario," Doc somewhat-lied. He'd shot intruders before, but they were never so benign as a petty thief. "So guessing at what I'd do is somewhat irrelevant, isn't it? I mean, unless I'm just trying to puff myself up, which is a tendency that you lose as you get older." Her explanation was a good redirect from what Doc had taken as surprising insight, and he smiled a little as he nodded. "Well, I wouldn't call either of those ruthless either. Really, they're just decisions that a lot of peoples' morals conflict with. That's why I prefer ethics over morals, they leave much more room for individual circumstance." Whether she was as sharp as she seemed or not, it was surprising to really be rambling about his perspective so much with someone of her age.

"Well, if you'd been in that situation before, there wouldn't be a need for guessing," Isabelle said. "You'd already know, because you'd've had to make the choice. People speculate about that kind of thing because they want to think they're braver or smarter or faster or generally better than what they are. If you think about it, most people lead tiny, boring little lives where nothing ever happens. TV and movies tell you that your life doesn't have meaning unless it's exciting or significant, but most people can't have that. So guessing about this stuff is an exercise in fantasy to make up for how utterly boring they really are." Similarly, she was surprised that she was sharing as much of her usual viewpoints with him as she was. Normally, she'd be twirling her hair and giggling by now as she made a quick exit. "So, what would you classify as ruthless?" she asked, eyeing him curiously.

Doc thought about that, popping the last of his pretzel in his mouth and crumpling the wax paper, then pitching it into a nearby garbage can. "I think most people would say killing in general. Y'know, doing it just to do it. But since you're asking me? Ruining someone's life, that's ruthless. The people who look up sex offenders online and mess with them, the people who do racist stunts or gaybash, they're ruthless. They want suffering, and they don't care how they get it." He'd seen that, both as War and before it, had encountered plenty of creatures, human and otherwise, who thrived on the misery of others.

"So does that mean you don't think killing in general or killing just to do it is ruthless?" Isabelle asked, suppressing the urge to smile at his examples. Ruining someone's life? Check. She hadn't yet looked up any sex offenders online to mess with them, though that could be an interesting diversion if she didn't find anything better. She hadn't yet ticked off racist stunts or gay bashing, though mostly because she just didn't give a damn about who or what a person was. Their only value to her was their potential entertainment value. She was an equal opportunity destroyer.

"I'd say it's more callous than ruthless," Doc argued, shaking his head to answer her question more directly. "In some parts of the world, killing's a necessity. I mentioned the Congo before? Do some research, their civil war is second only to World War Two in total body count. Out in Kenya there's U.N. reports of women suffocating their infants, just to have one less mouth to feed. And I'm sorry for the ugly examples," he was quick to add, smiling apologetically, "But it's largely a cultural difference that makes us think every life is precious. In some parts of the world, every other life is one that threatens the continuation of your own. I think plenty of killers are ruthless? But not all ruthless people need to kill to be so."

Isabelle shrugged. "It's okay. I'm not going to like, freak out or anything. The world's not all sunshine and roses. Shitty things happen to shitty people, and sometimes it comes down to a decision like that. Honestly, most people when given the choice between stretching out their resources even further and taking care of themselves would choose themselves." She knew the other side to that argument would be that women smothered their children because it was better to be dead than suffering, but she didn't necessarily agree, just as she didn't think every life was precious. Suffering could be so fun. Provided she wasn't the one doing it.

He smirked, nodding. She was probably right; without someone to inspire them or give them reasons to care, most people chose themselves. Of course, even the ones who didn't normally had no clue of the consequences of their decisions. "No, no it's not all sunshine and roses. But there's good bits out there in spite of the shitty things, too. Otherwise, would anyone have any reason at all to be selfish?" Doc smiled curiously with the question, brushing his coat away from one hip and glancing at his PDA, then frowning and starting to stand with a faint groan. "Speaking of selfishness, I think I might have to cut our impromptu discussion short, Isabelle. I have to run, I think."

"No problem," Isabelle said, wondering if he'd changed his mind due to an actual thing he had to do or if she'd just put him off with her rather pessimistic view of humanity. It was a little harder without telepathy, but she didn't think she'd read him wrong, and it seemed like he'd shared a lot of her views. Or some of them, at least. "I should probably be getting home, too. My sister's probably waiting for me. It was nice meeting you, though," she added. "Sorry again about your pants."

"No worries about the pants," Doc insisted, waving a hand at her apology. "They do better with stains. Keep safe on your way home, too. Things get a little weird around here." He grinned with the warning, heading away and wondering if maybe Isabelle was a part of the weirdness. She seemed normal, albeit cynical, but her hands? Well, the former hunter rarely discounted anything he saw that matched his experience in the field. He'd do some digging when he had time, have Teddy check school records for a match on the girl. If it came up clean, he wouldn't think twice. If it didn't? Well, Doc had shot creatures that looked younger than her in the past.

"I'll keep that in mind," Isabelle said, though she was very interested in whatever he'd consider 'weird'. Making a mental note to do some research - and share with Medea - she gave Doc a brief wave before turning and heading off towards the exit.