multiversallogs | where fast the Arctic nights set in

Entry tags:

where fast the Arctic nights set in

Who: Logan, Laura Kinney, Njoki Rainmaker, and some other people probably. Not all at the same time.
What: Existing in Baedal once an obvious exit sign has since not been found.
Where: Various!
Warnings: Swearing, so we can get an Oscar.

Shaking the cage of people in his same predicament, turns out, isn't as engaging as he had hoped. He doesn't like the CiD, it fits wrong in his hand, he feels like he could shatter it if he draws tendon and bone tight in a fist, and its mechanisms feel too small for his fingers. But eventually, he sends off a text message, some delayed and somewhat grudging.

could use that beer

He misses traffic, too. Cars don't spook so easily and he can live out of a truck.

There is a time after dusk that he picks up a scent, and follows it all the way into the Spatters. He'd been looking for it before and despite the waning hour, because a little darkness never killed nobody, and he had to know.

The evenings he isn't working in the gambling dens, with cards and fists both, to make his way are spent in hibernation on uncomfortable mattresses with a roof over his head. Daylight holds as many bar interiors as the evening. It isn't like useless, purposeless roaming never suited him before.

It just chafes, this time around.

[ OOC: See comments for some thread starters, both open and closed, otherwise make your own! ]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"Jesus."

Excuse him as he says that out loud when he didn't entirely mean to, although he doesn't seem to notice anyway. Logan's breed of horrified is generally understated, and it is now, muttered in two syllables, and he isn't really talking about himself, there, because she's wrong. She's never almost killed him. But he's met someone not too unlike her who has.

Those are a lot of numbers. Big where they shouldn't be, small where he'd prefer them not to be. His gaze wanders for her claws, but he doesn't put his own on display, meeting her sidelong glance only briefly.

"I was told I chose it." A beat. "You know the name Stryker?"

"Colonel William Stryker. Televangelist and anti-mutant bigot. Acquitted of the murders of his wife and mutant son. Responsible for the bombing of a bus of depowered mutant students at the Xavier Institute For Higher Learning which killed twenty-five percent of the student body. In his attempt to eradicate mutantkind, he reactivated the Sentinel descendent designated Nimrod. Executed by Elixir. Resurrected and lead the Purifiers in an attempt to assassinate the mutant Hope Summers. Executed by Archangel. There is evidence connecting him to the Weapon X project."

That's a huge information dump from a girl who rarely speaks more than a few words at a time, but again, it sounds like she's reciting a report -- which she sort of is, most of her information comes from accessing classified files. It's also pretty clear that her universe differs radically from his -- but there's still just enough in common for certain names to be recognisable.

Twenty-five percent of the student body. She sounds so calm. Those were her friends.

"You are not the same Wolverine I... knew. I do not know. The Wolverine who is my genetic donor was captured by Weapon X and experimented on against his will."

Edited 2012-01-03 14:07 (UTC)

"Looking for a magic lantern and paid by the gods with a letter home."

Njoki's not too sure how she feels about it, but she's used to a wide, strange world filled with deities and spirits.

"I can't deny, it's a bit shit, but I like being able to practice my trade in the open. Hoodoo and fleshcraft, if you know it?"

"People bought that?"

And only after he gravels out this sharp edged piece of cynicism does it occur that maybe Njoki was one of said people that indeed bought that. He knocks loose cigar cinders into an ashtray, mouth pressing into a brief line before he glances at her, shakes his head at whether he knows much about hoodoo and fleshcraft, but he isn't uninterested either; his inquiry is just silent.

"Seemed to work or at least those of us with a letter could sell it off for a good price." For all the trouble, it was a good way to shore up her supplies and settle into the city.

"Mostly I work on the undead, some remade, some other folk who can't heal like the living. It's messy, but it's work, right?"

"Not like they can take out health insurance." Wherever Logan comes from, he's heard weirder, or at least, there's room for that kind of weird even if he hasn't. "I, uh. My trade doesn't exactly translate, from where I come from to here." He didn't ask at the employment office if some off-shoot of the X-Men were recruiting, but he also didn't need to.

He shrugs. "I woulda picked a nicer place to go for a vacation, but you take what you get."

That's a lot of information Stryker, and it rings familiar in spirit, but not in practicality. In his reality, Logan was the one who condemned him.

"But we might get along. Sounds like we got a few things in common."

He means his alternate self, but it's coded in a way that isn't deliberate and probably too subtle for Laura to catch. Two Wolverines in a room might end in bloodshed, anyway, or basically just the building cleaned out of beer. And either way, he won't get the specifics about why he is the way he is, or even the project that made him that way, not from Laura; but it's a start.

Logan squints off at the building faces they pass by. "That day you came to find me, was that because you thought I was the guy you knew?" The guy is about as familiar as he'll get - it is truly bizarre to think of a different him.

"He wasn't the same the first time." Erik leans in closer to Charles to say this, as though anyone will hear him over the rabble anyway. And then the other mutant glances their way, and Erik lifts his chin, and perhaps they make eye contact briefly—or perhaps not. Either way, he adds, "Well, he's seen us. Come on." It would be excessively creepy just to hang around staring at the guy, after all, now that their presence has been effectively acknowledged. Now they must at least say a few words, or else he might become (more) suspicious of their motives.

(Erik would have have gone over anyway, of course, but now they're practically obliged.)

Edited 2012-01-08 06:37 (UTC)

"Yes." Laura moves her hand from side to side, watches the way the light catches off her claws -- she's not worried about anyone seeing the reflection and coming to investigate, this part of town's more or less abandoned, and nobody's going to start shit with the two of them anyway. He's a big guy and she looks pretty tough. Still, after a moment she retracts them, but out of sight, they're still in mind -- she is always aware of that weight in her hands and feet.

"We do not always 'get along'." She uses the colloquialism with obvious effort, like she's saying something in a language she doesn't speak, and -- as if that weren't obvious with the way she greeted him with intense, open hostility. That's mild for her, really, if she really hated him, she wouldn't have bothered reining in her temper.

"At least it's warmer than Montreal, eh?" While her accent is mostly North African francophone, there's enough of a twang to her vowels that someone who's familiar with Canadian accents could place her as living in Quebec.

Charles rests a hand on Erik's arm to stop him from going over quite so immediately. "That's not the only thing. There are large gaps in his memory prior to the past fifteen years. It's —this isn't the place to explain such matters. I'll tell you more later. But I think perhaps I should instigate the conversation." Like that went so well last time.

And he withdraws his contact with Erik to go and approach Logan. His body language is not loaded with the over confidence of their first meeting: he is more neutral, slightly cautious, but also not so easily dismissed.

"Excuse me —I hope you don't mind my saying congratulations. That was...quite an extraordinary display." Which he hadn't seen, not exactly, but he'd picked it up from the minds of others. "I'm Charles Xavier. And my friend here—" with a gesture to the other man no doubt by his side, "is Erik Lehnsherr."

Superficially, there's not much to link the man in front of Logan to the Xavier of the future. He still has use of his legs and a full head of hair. But there are certain mannerisms of hand, facial expressions and the fact that almost forty years later, he won't have changed his aftershave from a certain something with sandalwood undertones.

Oh, fans. Except Logan doesn't have the right kind of ego to not be suspicious of motives, an unimpressed glance from Charles, to Erik, and back to Charles where they encounter him on his way, nnnaturally, to the bar. Of course, those names stop him in his tracks, and they bring up their own associations in his mind; more predominantly of an aged man in a wheelchair, and his silver-haired equal more briefly in blurry notions of impartial encounter, battlefield moments.

"What?" comes out blunt and almost impatient, the kind of steel edged cynicism that might see sparks flying off it if tested. He doesn't search for clues of truth just yet, doesn't even think to, more looking for the punchline. "That some kind of joke?"

That actually gets a laugh out of Logan; small and smokey, maybe, a fleeting huff before it's over, but it lingers in the quirk of a half-smile as he glances at her side on. She coulda just said that particular place at random, but he can pick up the notes in her voice as well.

"Canada?" Well, there you go. He taps ash off his cigar. "Sorry. Half expect folks to say they're from the fucking moon, or the magical kingdom of... wherever."

Out of sight and still in mind for him as well; it would be a mistake to forget what she's capable of, but he thinks-- imagines-- he might 'get her' better than he did when they were bristling like angry cats on the street. One would hope so, by now.

"No, I, uh." Squint off into some dark alley. This place is fucking quiet. "I got that impression." His tone is one of almost amusement, in a way that is self-deprecating... as much as one can be across alternate realities.

"Who is Stryker in your universe?" She guesses he likely still had some involvement in the Weapon X project, but Logan's unfamiliarity with him indicates he may not have the same highly public persona he does on Earth 616 -- Stryker isn't quite a celebrity per se, but people do tend to know of him as 'that one televangelist nut' the same way they know, say, Ted Haggard.

She's curious. He murdered a lot of her friends and is indirectly responsible for her existence by being directly responsible for his.

"A dick."

So, same difference. It's sort of said with a tone that implies that casually calling him names is too good for him, made somewhat more solid when he adds; "And dead." Or so Logan assumes. Jean didn't survive the flood, so why would Stryker? The backs of his knuckles scratch the underside of his jaw, an uncomfortable fidget. "Never saw him on TV; government had enough assholes for that job.

"He was, uh. A scientist for the military, did experimentation on mutants, including his own kid, and in the end, he tried his hand at mass genocide. How he ties in with me, well, all I know is what he had to say, and desperate men talk a lot of bullshit. But he was in the business of brainwashing mutants to carry out his orders, and before that, I guess there's me."

Whatever that was supposed to be. "I don't remember," he reiterates gruffly, for those playing at home.

Experience has taught Laura to never write someone off as dead until there's a body, and even then, to still be prepared for their eventual return. There's a reason they call death the revolving door, where she's from. She says nothing more on the subject of Stryker except for a mild grunt that's much more Wolverine than most of her other mannerisms thus far -- there are probably more of those, but they manifest so oddly in her. (Seeing her smoke a stogie is pretty surreal.)

After a moment, she says, "You will." It's meant to be comforting, but Laura is just... not good at that, so it comes out more awkward. It is, at least, not an empty platitude: the one she knows remembered, eventually. It's unlikely that this one never will.

She almost wishes she could forget.

"You saying that my home isn't a magical kingdom?" Njoki, no. It is a lovely city and a very old one at that, but it is not the equivalent of Walt Disney World. "Where're you from then? You don't spit enough to be from La Belle Provence. "

It isn't. Comforting. And the crooked half-smile that comes of it is not because Logan feels comforted. "I'm not sure I want to. The fragments that I do remember sometimes weren't exactly a picnic.

"Besides. I have this place now."

He sounds incredibly unenthusiastic. "No Stryker, no... Weapon X." No Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters. "No one to hold responsible." It's about then that he realises he is talking too much, to a girl who was doing something useful before he showed up. He stops when he does and glances at her, away, and slows his walking as if to allow her to detach and go off on her own.

"You should, uh. Let me know if you want help out here. 'Want' bein' the operative word, because it doesn't sound like you need it." The qualifier is less to pander to her ego and more to circumvent precise correction.

Not that she might not get it anyway, occasionally, but it's polite to ask.

"You know us, don't you?" Subtlety, thy name is Lehnsherr.

Pardon him, he's just feeling enthusiastic about this ever so serendipitous encounter. It's one of the few times of late in which he hasn't felt stressed out over the prospect of meeting someone who knows more about him than he does, in a manner of speaking—probably because it's happening on his own terms. And it's sort of an amazing stroke of luck. And this fellow's skeleton is really interesting, and by the way he fails to make proper eye contact, Logan should be well aware that he too is well aware. As it were.

The images of himself and Erik forty years into the future make Charles do the telepathic equivalent of a record scratch and he backs out of Logan's mind.

Oh. Well. He was bound to see little glimpses at some time or other, whether it was accidental or with some purpose in mind. But it really is unsettling to see yourself so...old. And Erik, he was— What had it meant?

(The seeds of curiosity have been thoroughly sown.)

Either way, none of it puts Charles in a good mood and his trademark frown settles on his face. He does a slow headturn around the bar and as he does, everyone...freezes, with the exception of the three of them. A glass topples somewhere. And he turns to look back at Logan smoothly but squarely.

"My name is Charles Francis Xavier, son of Brian and Sharon Xavier, born in Westchester County, New York. As you can see, I am a mutant, and a telepath at that. A very talented one. Now, do I need to sit in a chair and appear bald as well before you'll believe me?" Subtlety indeed.

Edited 2012-01-15 11:32 (UTC)

Baedal does have that effect on people.

Laura makes a gesture like an aborted shrug; if it seems unnatural on her, it's because it is. She's not used to utilising body language the way normal people are, it's something she had to be taught. A Logan who doesn't remember who he is is probably not the best choice when it comes to sniffing out Candlelighter and Militia business, which is largely what Laura does in the Spatters, and when it comes to dealing with the petty (and not so petty) crime down here that is her lesser priority, she definitely does not need help.

Still, she does actually recognise the offer for what it is. She doesn't say anything -- the I don't need your help hangs clearly in the air, but not saying it is her way of holding out a white flag -- just before she swings up the fire escape of the nearest building and disappears that way, unceremoniously. She doesn't do goodbyes under the best circumstances, and he'll know where to find her if he wants to.

She's the only one in the city who smells like him.

He never answers Erik, but the look the metal manipulator gets is answer enough, a distanced sort of observation as if they were viewing one another through glass. It isn't the same stare Erik is indulging in, the same interested awareness; not nearly so flattering. And then, the air settles in that unusual way that Logan'd come to associate with one of Charles' more useful tricks, and he turns quickly towards the sound of the glass bouncing off the hard ground. It's an animal response, for this to have his hackles up, his expression steely.

He turns, observing the bar rendered frozen and silent from when it was all bustle and movement before. The gritty floor scrapes beneath his boots as he moves.

"No," he says, voice both gruff and hollow in the silence that's settled. He isn't getting any friendlier - the professor being among those he misses sorely, and this isn't exactly what he wanted. "A little show and tell goes a long way." Which is why he's suddenly moving, claws sliding out between his knuckles with a click of metal in the same time his arms swings to aim them for Erik and his face. Look alive, Magneto.

Oh, hello.

Had this fine gentleman not directed an unwelcoming look at him only moments prior, Erik would not have been nudged from observation into vigilance, and this may have ended differently just now. But he did, and he was, and given that Logan's skeletal enhancements are more or less singing to him, Erik—whose reflexes are at least quick enough to suspend bullets—is just prepared enough to retain his face.

His first and immediate impulse is to shove his friend aside with one arm while the other thrusts out toward Logan, which is easy enough to accomplish... unfortunately, there's no time to physically move him and so he uses instead a pulse of repelling force—as though the air itself has suddenly, invisibly solidified—that should at least knock Charles on his ass. (At least it's not full strength?) The initial rush of panic and adrenaline transitions fluidly into a hardening of his overall mien, and in this Erik collects himself with one hand still spread, whether to deflect a flurry of swipes or to provide a steady, impassable resistance against the one swing. Maintaining eye contact regardless of the method of attack. A severe gleam to his steely blue eyes.

Erik was not expecting this, but aside from the initial start it does not especially surprise him. Though he has heard only little of the probable future, it's been enough to foster the slow unfurling of a sense of inevitability.

And indeed, Charles lands on the floor, trying to catch himself on the way down by grabbing onto something (a chair) and things in the bar unfreeze for a brief, tumbling moment before he pulls himself up to a sitting position.

"Erik—" His hand reaches out, fingers splayed, which is partly to try and calm his friend down as quickly as possible as it is to realise too close. The adrenaline brings a rush of guilt along with it. This is his fault. He should have handled this better. He should have— Because he could have—

His breathing is raggedy as the other hand goes out in Logan's direction with a pointed glare. "Both of you, if we could please calm down." Also, no ripping of faces or skeletons. That would be lovely.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 2 of 3

where fast the Arctic nights set in

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject