"I guess it's ok. Not great, but not as bad as some of these other ones."

"Well, I think I shall give this one a try. If I fail to like it, I do not have to buy it a second time," he said, selecting a box of the cologne from the shelf. Mariusz had watched out of the corner of his eye as Tses checked out the various perfumes and colognes on her own. She was clearly a bit out of her element, though based on what she had told him of her personal history he supposed that could hardly be considered as something that was all that surprising.

"And is there something wrong with being feminine," he asked, heading them in the direction of where they could take care of paying for their purchases. "I always thought all women liked to dress up and be a bit girly, even if only on occasion." He handed the cologne to a clerk who rang it up and then presented a debit card as a means of paying for it. The purchase was bagged and handed over to Mariusz who led Tses to the door before opening it and holding it once more to allow her to exit.

Once they were back on the street the feathered mutant looked this way and that, spotting something that was of interest to him despite the fact that he was Protestant and it was a place of Catholic worship. "I would make a bet you have probably never been inside Saint Patrick's Cathedral," he said, gesturing in the direction of the large neo-Gothic church and leading the way down the street in that direction.

Tses snorted slightly with laughter at his assumption, and rolled her eyes. Unlike most girls who didn't like dressing up, she didn't consider herself a tom-boy. She just considered it a waste of time to mess with. there were very rare occasions she wore eyeliner, but that was more out of curiosity than anything else. She never saw herself as pretty, so she never bothered trying to improve on something that wasn't there. "Being feminine is a waste of time. I see girls that are polished and pampered and it's way too much work. The amount of time they waste on clothes and appearances could be put into so many other things."

She put the perfumes down, and walked with him to the check out line. "I hate dressing up. The most I'll wear is a skirt, and that's for practical reasons. I've had people try to get me in touch with the whole 'girly' side of me. Wasn't successful." They finished getting his other items, and then they headed back outside.

She glanced in the direction the other mutant pointed, and took in the sight of the church. she shook head, and put her hands in her pockets. "Nah, I don't bother with churches." Was all she said about it. they always gave her a weird feeling in her gut, like someone was secretly frowning on her lifestyle. That made her skittish so she stayed out of their way.

"What is wrong with the church," Mariusz asked, leading the way in the direction of St. Patrick's. The church was, by itself, a big structure though it was nothing to most of the highrises that were around it. As they got closer to the building it became apparent that it was directly across the street from the Rockefeller Center and that the Cathedral's main entrance faced the Atlas Statue.

"The church has long been a beacon of hope for those in search of a better place in the after life," he continued, stopping for the massive wooden doors and looking up at the impressive facade of the building. "I admit that I am not actually a Catholic, but surely you can see that this is an impressive and beautiful old building." Mariusz paused for a moment and examined, at range, a plaque near the doors. "It is one of the oldest churches in the United States and, unlike so many of the steel and concrete monstrosities surrounding it, this church is made from Tuckaroe marble."

"Even if you do not wish to see the inside we could at least look around the outside. I daresay we could look much more closely than others," Mariusz continued, the feathers on his wings bristling. "That is, of course, if you trust me enough to take you aloft." In truth the Czech man was not quite used to walking this much, after all why walk when you could fly, though he would continue to remain Earth-bound if Tses was still unwilling to go aloft.

Tses stopped in front of the old building, and sized it up for a second. It was impressive, that was certain, but to her it just was a piece of architecture. There was no 'hope' for her, although that was surprising. She rarely found hope in anything. It was something boring and impracticable for her to deal with. "I'm a realist. I don't waste my time with things that would give anything in return. Cup half-full/half-empty= doesn't matter. Life is life, I take what I can get. So it's not really that I dislike the building, I just don't see it the same as other people. It's just a building. Pretty, yeah, but bricks."

She shrugged, and sized it up. It was built wrong in her tactical brain: large windows, easy access to the inside. Insecure. Anyone could break into such a place. Not that she would try to rob a church, but those were the type of things she noticed as far as buildings went. "And I'm still not to sure about the whole flying thing. You're more than welcome to get a closer look. I'm not scared of heights or anything, i just like having control over what happens to me. Who says you wouldn't drop me?" She said, more of a statement than an accusation. A colder wind nipped through the air and circled around them.

OOC: PINK seems like Tses' color, yes?

"You do not have to be an idealist in order to have belief in something," Mariusz countered, looking up at the stained glass windows of the Cathedral. Of course, with his background and degree Mariusz knew he could easily go on for quite some time on the topic of religion in general and Christianity in particular. Somehow, though, he sensed that would not be the best way to approach the topic with Tses. Besides, that kind of ham-handed preachiness was never a very affective tool of persuasion in the opinion of the Czech.

"And I'm still not to sure about the whole flying thing. You're more than welcome to get a closer look. I'm not scared of heights or anything, I just like having control over what happens to me. Who says you wouldn't drop me?"

"I would never dream of dropping you," Mariusz replied quickly, the feathers on his wings bristling a bit. "Besides, would it not be in the very poorest of manners to allow you to fall to your very doom while in my care and trust," he asked, arching an eyebrow in the direction of Tses as they stood on the sidewalk before the Cathedral.

Tses inwardly smirked. She didn't understand why bird people were so offended if you suggested they'd accidentally drop you. It was a valid point: you drop someone when they're on the ground, they can brush it off and stand back up. If you drop someone while in the air... well, hopefully they have a secondary mutation to spark up and save them from certain death. Tses did not want to test for a secondary mutation to save her. But she also didn't want to listen to this guys twittering about her lack of trust in him.

"Maybe some other time we can try it." Tses said, hoping to pacify him. She doubted she'd run into the winged mutant again, but maybe it would make him feel better. She motioned to his bags and gave her shoulders a shrug. "That way you don't mess up any of your nice clothing."

"I suppose that will simply have to do then," Mariusz replied, somewhat mollified by the admittance that she might let him take her up in the air the next time they met. The feathers on his wings settled down a little bit and he furled them in a little bit tighter. The Czech man was much too polite to try and drag Tses into St. Patrick's Cathedral since she did not seem to have much interest in entering the church. That was a bit sad to the devout man, but he knew that trying to force the faith onto someone was a sure way to drive them further from it. People would either come around, or not, of their own volition but forcing the subject was not the answer.

Standing a few steps up on the stairway that led to the Cathedral's front doors Mariusz scanned the shops and things around the church. With his superior vision he could see shops and things further in the distance than most people. a few blocks away, on the opposite side of the street he saw a sign for a shop with a most curious name indeed. Certainly, it was a shop that bore investigating. Stepping down off the stairs he rejoined Tses and started heading in the direction of the shop.

"I see somewhere else that I need to visit," he said. In truth, it was not really a lie. He may not have set out today to visit this particular place, but he now knew he had to go into the shop to satisfy his curiosity about it based on the name. Quickly, and for him very quietly, he led Tses in the direction of the shop, crossing the street several times at the properly indicated time as that was what the crosswalks were there for.

After a few more minutes of walking he was standing with Tses before the doors to a business called 'Build-a-Bear'. It was definitely a most curious name for a retailer. How exactly was one to build a bear in the first place? Bears came in a set number of varieties: Panda, Grizzly, Sun, Black, Brown, and Polar. There might have been a few other types of bear in their too, Mariusz was a bit fuzzy when it came to zoology.

"How exactly is one to build a bear," he asked Tses, peering through the large glass windows of the storefront before pulling open the door to the shop and ushering her inside. "This is a question that I must answer for I have now grown curious."

Tses was exasperated. Rather than being able to wiggle free of this mutant, she was now getting dragged to yet another shop. She probably could have just slipped away while he was patiently waiting at a crosswalk or something, sue she wasn't annoyed enough to try such a ploy yet. Like a cat who was staring at an empty food bowl, she sulked after him, not even bothering to show off and scamper across the streets early. When they finally reached the store, she was even less enthusiastic, as she found herself staring at a window full of cute and cuddly stuffed animals.

"Really. This is what you're reducing me to." Tses murmured, and looked at a few of the specialty stuffed animals mixed in. Rabbits and frogs definitely were not bears. "This is something I don't think I'm going to be able to help you with. Besides, there are... kids in that place." She said, slightly nervous, as she slowly found herself moving forward into the shop. It was a trap. She was going to be stuck in a cute and cuddly world of none sense now. Her only hope was that she wouldn't accidentally blow the place up.

"Wow," Mariusz said quietly, spinning in a small circle just inside the store and taking everything in. He was not altogether sure that there was any place like this in the Czech Republic, even in Prague. Besides that, if such a place did exist he had certainly never been allowed to go there as a child. In truth he had spent most of his childhood at the family estate near Harrachov and had never even really gone into Harrachov all that often. He had sort of spaced out for a moment and came back to what Tses was saying just in time to hear her say something that gave the impression she did not much like children.

"What is wrong with children," the feathered mutant asked, still looking around the place in a bit of wonder. "I never got to come to any place like this when I was a kid," he continued, slowly wandering deeper into the store. "How does this 'Build-a-Bear' work exactly," he asked, turning his golden-eyed gaze on Tses. He had to know how this worked. He was going to build a bear, come hell or high water.

Tses tried to stay composed, but she felt like she just walked into Santa's Workshop... and she was the grinch. Around her, children dashed between giant bins of stuffed animals, their floppy little skins lifeless without stuffing. Brightly colored murals and statues decorated the walls, and parents tried to coral over excited youngsters while they tried to decide on a new 'friend', hopefully within the parents price range. After they picked the animal employees were helping children fill the tiny flattened animals from a giant tube of white fluff, and then they were giving the little animals stitches to patch it together. If that wasn't enough, once they were done, the children were playing dress up with the poor little animals, shoving them in ridiculous outfits that ranged from fireman to princesses, complete with tiaras. Tses could commiserate with the poor little things. Dress up was awful.

"Someone call PETA.... this is definitely animal cruelty..." Tses whispered, and cautiously ventured over towards the bins at the front of the shop. The walls were lined with the optional 'build-a-bears' and friends, each posed and fluffed to 'completion'. But the bins... they were another more frightening story. Tses slowly lifted a flattened frog hide, and held it up in the air with wide eyes. "This isn't cute. This is morbid." She said, and looked at her fellow mutant with disbelief.

"What is a PETA," Mariusz asked, looking into the bin of bears that were in need of stuffing and pawing through them while ignoring Tses' comment about the morbidity of the exercise. There was nothing troubling in here at all. "I am, of course, familiar with a pita. But, somehow, I imagine it unlikely that you were referring to a common kind of bread in the Balkans and Middle East," he continued, still rifling through the bins of unstuffed bears before finally finding one that was all black that would do quite nicely.

"I think this one will do quite well," he said, showing Tses the black bear skin that looked an awful lot like a deflated balloon since there was no stuffing in it. "Now then, what is the next step in this build-a-bear process," he asked, his golden eyes looking around the shop. "I suppose we take it to get stuffed, ano," he asked, turning and heading in the direction of the giant tube of stuffing.

Tses blinked in surprise as Talon asked about PETA, and rubbed the back of her neck thoughtfully. "Oh, they're like, the 'protect the animals' people. I don't remember exactly what it stands for, but it's something about treating animals better..." She muttered, and picked what looked like a flattened tiger out of the bin. She glanced at it for a second, then realized Mari was already darting away. Dropping it back in the bin, she followed him, and crossed her arms as she watched the other kids in line. Mariusz looked incredibly out of place right now, but then again, he must always feel that way looking how he did.

"I think you stuff it now." She agreed, and watched as the tube of the stuffer went in the animals back. Like a reverse vacuum cleaner, the employees helped plump up the little animal, and it slowly started to take form. Then they stopped halfway, and the kid was instructed to get a heart for it's bear, and make a wish. "This is cheesy..."[/color] Tses muttered, but somewhere in her little inner child, she thought it was sort of cute. The kids looked so excited about it, even though the parents looked miserable. she almost wished she had been a kid like this growing up. Maybe she'd be more agreeable to hang around.

Mariusz watched the kids scurry around as he held onto his bear that still needed to be stuffed. This was basically the first time in his life that he had the opportunity to do something like this and he was enjoying himself immensely. He looked out of the corner of his eye at Tses and noticed that she did not have any stuffed animal to get stuffed. That was, rather, the whole point of coming to Build-a-Bear apparently.

"What's the matter," he asked, eying her empty hands as the line inched a few feet closer to where the animal he had would be stuffed. "Are you not going to 'build-a-bear'? I was under the impression that the entire point of this store was the construction of stuffed animals. I bet you would have a lot of fun with it if you tried it. Besides that, there is no right or wrong way to 'build-a-bear' as nearly as I can tell. Therefore, it is impossible to 'build-a-bear' in an incorrect manner. I think you should go and pick out an animal to be stuffed! I will hold our place in line."

Tses looked at him with the expression of a cat that was told it was bath time. To her, this was not fun, it was torture. But something about the way he talked made her cave a little bit. Perhaps there were worst punishments in the world than making a stuffed animal. After all; she'd been forced into a dress and a tiara. Things could definitely get worse.

So rather than starting an argument and ruining his first visit to the city, she sulked over the stuffed animal bin, and picked up a white tiger 'bear'. Coming back, she held it up with a sigh. "There, happy? I know it's not a bear, but if I have to do this, I pick the animal." She said, crossing her arms as they got closer to the stuffing machine. In her hands, the beady eyed animal stared up at her hopefully.

Mariusz glanced down at the animal that Tses had chosen and noted that it was a white tiger. A feline was certainly an interesting, and mildly amusing, choice. "Trying to send me a message, are we," he asked as the line inched forward a little bit more leaving only a couple of children in front of them at the stuffing machine. "Cats eat birds... are you trying to send a subliminal passive-aggressive message," he asked with a slight smile, still holding his unstuffed bear in his hands and being careful to make sure he did not accidentally extend the retractable talons on his hands and cause damage to the unstuffed creature.

As he had been talking the two children in front of them had gotten their little animals stuffed leaving Mariusz and Tses at the head of the line. "Good thing I will have my bear here to protect me from your ravenous passive-aggressive tiger. So, what is the next step in this process," he asked, arching an eyebrow at Tses and then turning his attention to the employee that was manning the stuffing machine. "What do we do from here? I have never been in a 'Build-a-Bear' before."