2014.02.16 - Rough Cuts - Part 2: Optimistic

Whatever it is Kitty Pryde wanted to talk with Ali about, she refused to say anything till *after* the Danger Room session Ali was there for. This clearly means at least one of three things: either it's a lot less important than training, or it's the kind of thing that might make somebody mad enough to skew the Room's readings or their reactions to scenarios, or just that Kitty Pryde wants ice cream, dammit, and you don't have snacks solo and you don't make somebody go into the Room on a full stomach.
... "all three" is also a valid option. Particularly since, post-Room, post-shower, and post-collecting-of-compensatory-calories, with the chair offered to the guest and Kitty perched by her plushie creeper (not, so far, exploding), she starts off in a tone perhaps more cautious than strictly warranted by the content: "So I hear you've been hanging out with the Defenders lately?"
Not being around as often as many of the X-Men, since she's one of the handful that don't actually live IN the Mansion, Ali definitely went with 'training/simulacrum update' first, shower second, and oh god now Ice Cream. Because Ice cream as a reward for work is totally awesome.
"Since I heard they were a team, basically," Alison admits. "Though compared to the X-Men, the definition of team is almost totally different. We're a group of people that can be referred to under one name, and we fight bad guys, but that's about all there is in common. Aside from the Soap Opera stuff, but I hear that even happens with SHIELD, so. Yeah."
Tangent, thy name is Dazzler. Brow raised, it occurs to her to wonder out loud, "Why do you ask?"
"Soap opera stuff is kind of part of the human condition," Kitty admits. "I'd say that we at least have the excuse of being on these constant adrenaline highs to exaggerate it, but you know, my relationships go down in flames even when I'm not kicking anybody's butt regularly, so hey, no excuses." She gives a wry, self-deprecating little grin and gesture with her spoon before tackling the hard one. Which, of course, requires a mouthful of chocolate first. It's like taking a fortifying drink, but with sugar high instead of straightforward intoxication.
"Um," she says post-swallow. "I talked with Pete Wisdom." There's more there, fairly obviously, but she pauses and checks for any potential reaction on Dazzler's part first.
"How is he?" Ali asks. Before she goes any further, though, she stops - ice cream on spoon, mid range to mouth. "How much do you know?" Ali doesn't bother with asking HOW she knows, because pfft. No-Longer-Teenaged Mutant Ninja Hacker.
"What you'd expect," Kitty says, matter-of-fact. "Physically, fine. Emotionally, wrecked, but walking. He's answering his phone. Mostly with 'fuck off,' but he hasn't ditched it or anything. After I bugged him into actually processing, he asked me to come talk to you guys, in general but specifically to the Doc, and see if I could pinch-hit. I made him give me a briefing, so I know the stuff he knew and thought was important enough to pass on. I don't know anything since he left, and I don't know anything he didn't see."
 
"Ok, so you got a whole Gemworld shakedown then," Ali nods - mostly to herself, probably measuring some sort of score as to what she can say and what she shouldn't. "Sorry, I've been through so much weird that even I don't believe me half the time these days."
Finishing the bite she started a moment ago, Ali visibly relaxes a little bit then leans back in the seat, letting her eyes trail over the various bits of decor and memorabilia in Kitty's room. "I was pretty focused on the group of Turquoise I was hanging out with, but Pete seemed to be keeping a good eye on things. I don't think there's much of anything he *didn't* see."
"Hey, it's not your fault you had to chase something Biblical into a Zelazny novel turned summer blockbuster, right?" Kitty offers. Chocolate. Very, very important. Especially when sentences like that one aren't jokes. "And maybe there's not. In which case, I can see why he's kinda worried about the whole situation, and I'm not even talking about the bad part. But the big thing he didn't see is, anything that happened after people got back. Do you know if Meggan's doing okay? I mean -- she's usually pretty resilient, but when she's not, she's, um, really not."
 
Alison makes kind of a hesitant scrunched-nose face at the question. "She seemed fine when we were leaving?" Now it's guilt. "I don't really KNOW Meggan, I couldn't really say whether she was fine or not in the specific sense. I think she stuck around with Doctor Strange, but I honestly couldn't tell you for sure. I mostly hang out with Pete there, and Amethyst, and when he stalked off to wrap his head around things and with her staying behind and all..."
Another guilty shrug. "I couldn't really even tell you how Booster is, except that he seemed fine too during that whole Horizons thing."
"She's probably okay, then," Kitty says with a note of relief. "You don't need to know her real well to see if she's really unhappy. She kind of ..." Little circular gesture in the air with her spoon-free hand. "Melts. Thanks. She's on my check-in-with list -- you and her and Shift are the people I know about there that I've got any kind of contact with, you know? So I want to poke my nose in with all three of you if I can do it, and see if you three think it's a good idea. The pinch-hitting thing, I mean."
Moment's pause.
"Okay, I give. Were there seriously dinosaurs?"
"That ACTUALLY HAPPENED, yes!" Ali beams - yeeeaaah, obviously she's been doing this too long. "I seriously jumped from the Blackbird, put my parachute on a dude who fell through a portal in the sky, glided down with my light powers while *chasing dinosaurs* back through the rifts they came from. It is, bar none, one of the raddest things I've ever done." Not THE raddest, but it's up there!
"As far as pinch-hitting goes, it'll be fine. Show up and be helpful and you're basically considered a member anyway."
"Man," Kitty mock-complains cheerfully. "You get /real/ dinosaurs. i get dinosaur /tourists/. How is this even fair?" She tries to sulk at Ali, but the effect is ruined by her laughing out loud about half a second into it. "I mean. I know. I shouldn't be laughing. There was seriously horrible stuff going on, and the news dissections about it are even worse, but for five minutes, screw all that, /you got to chase dinosaurs/."
Breathe. Oh, right. Actual topic. "-- so, if the Doc's heard from the Princess yet, he hasn't spread it around, do I get that right?" Kitty pauses. "Suddenly, I get what you were getting at about the so much weird part."
"If you crank that sentiment up to eleven, you're about half way to what my life is like these days," Alison says as she polishes off her ice-cream and tucks the empty carton between her thighs so she can really lean back in Kitty's chair. "I swear, sometimes it's ALMOST enough to make me move into the Mansion."
Pause. "No, I don't think it'll ever be that bad. Scratch that."
Shaking THAT bad joke off, Ali continues. "Anyway, yeah. If Doc's heard from Princess Amethyst I haven't heard it. But then I don't show up at HIS place either unless we need to go to another dimension on purpose. I'm probably the least involved member of the group, if that's even possible."
"Large quantities of superpowered teenagers: definitely safest from a distance," Kitty sighs. "All it takes is one projecting empath having a bad hormone day, and bam." Big dark woeful eyes! -- and mouth tugging up briefly at the corner. "But at least all the yelling would keep you topped off, right? Silver linings."
There's a brief shake of Kitty's head, after. "Okay. So the only person who's got a shot at knowing what's going on has locked herself in her dimension alone -- oh, God, that /does/ make it sound like the Mansion. Right. So there's probably gonna be a little more time to get our feet under us again before whatever the next impact is, cool."
 
"You've been in the Mansion too long, if everywhere else is starting to sound like the Mansion." Ali's turn to tease! She even sticks her tongue out between her teeth after she says it. "But yeah, time. There's always time, it seems. Great big deep breath before the REAL shit hits the fan and all."
"As far as whatever it is that's going on, though... I dunno. It bugs me a little only because of the uncertainty of all of it. I'm not super-happy to have taken part in a political assassination, but I'm not really sure that we wouldn't have had to kill him anyway if he really WAS possessed by Eclipso." All the around-talk has forced Ali to actually mull on the subject for a little bit, so now she's thinking out loud. "And even if he wasn't, someone is - who is it? How can we help if we can't be there to help? Did Amethyst really 'lock the doors' behind her, or can I go back to Otherworld and use my Bard's pass for a portal?"
Kitty scrunches up her face at Ali's tongue-sticking-out, but she's still grinning when it releases. Then it's flipping back to the serious subject, and she sobers visibly this time. "I'm not even all the way sure it counts as a political assassination per se; Wisdom said the proximate cause was that he was starting to go after Booster -- and the problem with fighting wizards is, you can't calibrate lethal versus nonlethal force real well. On either side. But yeah, definitely going to be read as an assassination no matter what the motivation was. Let me drop in some more questions you might already have answers for. How do you tell if somebody is possessed by Eclipso? How do you tell when he -- she? it? -- skips out of one possession and goes after another; are there any visible signs? Or visible just to magicians? Any behavioral tells? Is there any way to keep him out of people?"
Kitty pauses for just the barest of moments.
"I mean -- just for instance -- how do we know for certain that he wasn't possessing Dark Opal, and didn't skip to Amethyst when Opal died, and didn't lean on her first reaction to the mess to make everybody else go home and leave her alone where nobody could get in his way?"
 
"Oh, I *don't*," Ali says, eyes widening a little bit. "I'm not sure there are any 'tells' at all, except in maybe the worst cases?" She even shakes her head ever so slightly side-to-side in the negative, "I mean, I haven't even come across other versions of Eclipso in most of the other universes I've been in. People tend to act in all of the worst ways possible for them, or so I've been told, but that's the insidious part - if you don't really know someone, you just assume they're a total ass. Kind of like when the Shadow King takes over someone before he gets too full of himself to bother being sneaky."
ANYway. Alison lets out a sigh. "I don't think the Princess was possessed, though. Upset, yes. She was definitely overwhelmed by what went down and I don't blame her for making everybody leave so she could try to figure out what her next moves were gonna be. I just wish she would have sent us to a room or something, rather than home, because she probably really *does* need our help."
"She was probably scared that if she sent people to a room, either something else would go down by accident -- people don't know what *not* to do, you know?, and just being American in a feudal society is a total recipe for giving offense and occasional accidental marriages or something --" there is absolutely no obvious reason for Kitty to look away from Ali as she says that, faintly guiltily -- "or somebody would try to poison you guys, or, um. I. Get the impression that she might've totally been worried that her mom or aunt or something might've tried to come 'help.' But yeah. It's not a good time for her to be out of communication. Especially if Creepy Possessing Sneak really is on Gemworld. Because just from Pete's summary, my short list of people to be extra scared about right now is like six people long and half of them are in her family."
 
"Oh God, her mom was TOTALLY giving Pete the Cougar Eyeball after what happened, yeah," Dazzler says, mock-shuddering. "Anyway, I kinda figured that's why they keep me around. Poisonings, backstabbings, intercepting death-rays, things like that. I dunno. I definitely endorse you coming around and seeing if you can't wring some sense out of all of it, though. Pete's the Big Strategic Thinker and he's on the Morrisey Train to Mopesville."
Pause, and Kitty looks thoughtful. "It would be completely unethical for me to sneak in while he's asleep and change all his phone's ringtones to the Smiths, right? Also he'd know who did it."
Ok, THAT nets a big laugh from Ali. "The list of potential suspects is VERY SHORT, yes," she says once she stops, wiping the beginning of a tear from the corner of her eye. "Man alive, Kitty, it's good to natter with you. Your warped perspective is such a welcome change from everyone else's warped perspectives."
"We need to get our breakfast cereal fortified with more Euclid or something." Spoon's dropped into Kitty's empty ice cream carton, and she taps a finger against her knee. "For the record on the Morrissey Train, though, Pete's doing better than you might expect -- he's flat-out sober /and/ he's not making up for lack of booze by getting into stupid fights. And he's thinking. I mean, the thinking is running around in circles because he's got nothing new to work with, but he's thinking."
"That so, eh?" Ali's brows go up, and she rubs her hands together. "I may just go bother him, then. If he puts a hot-knife through my head I'll just get better -- what's the worst that could happen?"
"He could set your hair on fire," Kitty suggests deadpan. "That takes forever to get to grow back out even."
"That's what expensive weaves are for: not just Diana Ross!"
"*And* you could make him pay for it. Win all 'round!" Kitty flashes Ali another grin, then adds, "I mean, sounds like a good plan to me. He's still gonna be really touchy but it's not like that's *new*, right?"
 
"Definitely not," Ali says, once she stops laughing again. "But if he's feeling fine enough to be trying to do productive things, then he's fine enough for me to attempt bothering him. He puts up with a truly ridiculous level of shit from me, which only encourages me to try to top it. Maybe I'll give him a cat or something..." OOH.
"Hey, do you still have that dragon? Do you think he'd put up with me long enough to have picked him out as a present for Pete? Is he smart enough to come find you if you agree?" ... Ali's mouth makes a small 'o', then she adds, "Unless you think Pete'd try to kill him, because that would be bad."
"That," Kitty says, hushed, "is a *brilliant* idea. Except for the part where Lockheed might try to kill *us*. You'd better ask him first." A pause. "And have extra cigarettes on hand, just in case." Another pause. "And never, ever tell Pete I said that part."
 
"I'll swipe some of Logan's cigars, I hear HE hasn't been around the last few days. Probably off somewhere wearing an eye-patch," Alison says with a quietly dismissive shake of her head. But her smile comes back, and she immediately raises her left hand with the right one over her heart, "I do hereby solemnly swear that I will not tell Pete that the dragon smokes." Wait. "The dragon smokes?"
"Well, /duh/, he's a dragon," Kitty says cheerfully. "He smokes all the time. Especially after Mexican food. No, Pete claims Lockheed eats his cigarettes."
 
"Then he will either love or hate Logan's cigars. Only one way to find out!" Ali practically jumps out of the seat - of course, she forgot she was holding onto an empty ice cream carton with her thighs and this goes flying. It's easily handled (translation: completely disintegrated) with a quick laser. "Oops!"
Kitty jumps, which in Kitty's case means she has to extricate herself from her bed's mattress a moment later. And she laughs out loud. "We are going to be in so much trouble." ... which of course means they're *doing it*.
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