multiversallogs | find us a trap door, find us a plane

Entry tags:

find us a trap door, find us a plane

Who: Magneeter and ~~Ponyboy~~ Pyro
What: manly Skyrail date
Where: ...the Skyrail, starting at Griss Fell station
When: about a million years ago at this point, we're slow
Notes: backdated the most
Warnings: possibly teenage cussin' /clutches pearls

Two o'clock on Thursday, he'd said, and as the university's great old tower bells across the river begin the traditional preludial peals, Erik looks in its direction. The pale-faced clock and its iron fixtures just visible between two buildings. His eyes follow the spire up into the belly of a cloud, and he wonders what his friend is doing—whether there's a lesson now, or more grading to be done, or what-else.

He has on a pair of sunglasses, and no hat, and his hands are in the pockets of his jacket. His trousers are scuffed at the knees and smeared with a bit of black grease and his feet inhabit a pair of heavy, dirty boots. As if on cue (but not on purpose), he turns his head with the final tolling of the hour and resumes watching people as they move past him down the stairs, or approach on their way to the Skyrail's platform, and looks for John.

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John had arrived early and resorted to skulking around the corner until the clock sounded the time. It was dumb, maybe, but Magneto, the one he's used to, had mentioned once in their European travels that in Germany, businessmen are supposed to exactly on time, not early, and not late. And remembering that and applying it are probably also dumb, just a different kind of dumb, but whatever, he can't be faulted for being exactly on time, and it always pays to be careful around Magneto.

Accordingly, he is a little stiff and wary as he approaches Erik, slightly more formally dressed in the sense that he's wearing a shirt with buttons rather than a t-shirt and hoodie, and he's carrying a thin sheaf of papers that he does not offer right away.

"Hi," he says rather blankly, watching Erik — something Erik hopefully does not mind because goddamn but he's always taken his cues from Magneto and he doesn't know how else to operate when he's with the guy. Even if it's not the same him.

"John—glad you could make it." Erik's smile may not be the widest, but neither is it feigned. It goes well with his overall manner, actually, and the casual way he takes the customary half-step forward to offer his hand in greeting. (Long fingers, cool and dry, assertive grip.) "Shall we?" Head up to the platform, he means.

Relax, kid, he hasn't even shown his teeth yet.

The unfamiliarity of it puts him, perhaps paradoxically, more at ease. He shakes Erik's hand (nothing noteworthy) and nods, following-accompanying him to the platform. It's busier up there and so it seems an appropriate time to offer Erik the few papers he's carrying. It's not like they contain sensitive material and it's more for the gesture of it than anything.

"It's, uh, a short report on what I've been doing and the contacts I've made." His tone grows a little wry toward the end, though he doesn't bother to further stress that 'contacts' is a generous term for it. But Samizdat is just that little bit significantly connected that it bears mentioning.

A report. Typed up, just for him, and now there in his hands as he looks down at it, momentarily taken aback—not only by John's apparent willingness to fall in line, but that he's stirred by this at all. By a few pieces of paper. It's not often that Erik has a reason to feel important, in all honesty.
He kind of likes it.

"A man of initiative, I see... well done." Sounding pleased (not overly so) (he is really pleased, though), Erik thumbs through the notes, but does not yet read them. "It's a good start, anyway. You've been working with the paper for how long?"

If Erik had sounded more pleased, John would have been uncomfortable again. As it is, he sticks his hands in his jacket pockets and shuts down the part of his mind trying to analyze every last thing that's happening.

"Two and a half weeks," he answers, and the wryness is there again. "As an intern, doing the crappy work. But they'll be shorthanded soon, and they'll need someone to step up."

If that sounds a little ominous, it is entirely unintentional; John is not moustache-twirling enough to plot the demise of one of the head reporters just to better his position, nor heartless enough to do so of his own accord.

If he were better acquainted with John, that might have provoked a wry look... alas, the boy has yet to earn a proper smirk. Erik likes that answer, though. If out is not possible, the next best direction is up.

"They'll appreciate your dedication to crap in the meantime, I'm sure." Yes. Yes, he did just say that.

Skipping nary a beat, then, he lifts his chin as though to greet the oncoming train, its suspended carriages still distant but growing ever larger in their steady approach. While he watches this calmly, his voice lowers to a timbre of mild, but true, fondness. "There she is." The Skyrail may be the only one of Baedal's features that he does not resent on principle.

He does not stare for too long, though; John's closest arm receives a light nudge soon enough. "Here." Follow him, young sir, to this end of the platform.

The "hn" he makes in response is entirely transparent in its false grumpiness. He's a grumbler by nature but he rarely means any of it.

Because he's doing his best not to stare at Erik, the nudge surprises him slightly, though John doesn't jerk or anything. The fondness for the train is in its own way also startling, but perhaps endearing, if John were susceptible to that kind of thing. He obligingly follows Erik to the end of the platform, and presumably, at some interval, onto the train.

Presumably, yes. Erik must first demonstrate why he enjoys it so much.

The Skyrail, you see, is not so busy at this time of day at this particular station. Malfunctions are common, too, in all things related to electricity. And so, when the doors of the penultimate carriage fail to open, the passengers waiting around them merely disperse to the adjacent cars—Erik, on the other hand, stands where he is until no more shadows cross theirs, then walks toward one set of doors. Naturally, they open for him, and remain open until just the pair of them has boarded.

As he avails himself of one of the many empty seats, he says, "This is probably illegal." Merely a fact, not meant to impress. It's just that he hasn't been bitched out for it yet, so until then he'll keep doing it whenever he feels like.

All right, maybe he thinks it's impressive... but he hasn't seen half the things John has seen, frankly. Other mutants are still sort of a novelty to him on the whole—which may explain why he's sort of eyeballing the kid now. The train will be moving within the next minute, and it's best, he feels, to wait to talk until they're well in the air.

It's not impressive the same way a more grandiose, combative gesture might be, but the execution is (in John's fanboyish opinion) elegant and something he simply can never do, being that fire and explosions are rarely subtle or understated.

"Probably."

He follows Erik on and glances into both the cars on either side — not, of course, that their inhabitants will be able to get in anyway — and reaches up to hold the handrail. Unless Erik sits, in which case he will withdraw that hand like a totally cool guy and also sit. But he likes looking out at the city, even though he's been here a while, and it provides him something to look at other than staring directly at Erik, something that would probably make him nervous. Eventually.

Erik is, indeed, sitting over here and John should totally copy him. They are the coolest dudes on this train.

The train glides free of the platform, the station slips past the windows on either side and the transparent sections of flooring beneath, the land falls away, the sky opens up, and Erik turns his gaze away from the window and says, "So." And he pauses, just looking. His pale and flinty eyes, his thin smile, the scar above his lip. Reddish hair and smooth jawline. "Tell me about yourself."

He places the notes on the next seat over, still unread.

The stoic expression he clings to doesn't make him any less of an open book, but since Erik isn't exactly familiar with him, perhaps that won't matter as much. (John hopes.) The pause before he answers is typical of the carefulness he's displayed so far. There is a little bit of coordination to be done with his answer, which, after all, treads by necessity some sensitive areas he inadvertently stomped across in their first conversation.

"Born in 1989, eventually I accidentally set my asshole dad on fire, had to run away for a while, and then I ended up at Xavier's Institute." Bam, first twelve years, that's sufficient, right? "Then that thing I mentioned happened. The kids getting abducted. After that, the Brotherhood made more sense. Not that I knew it existed before."

While he talks, he pushes the sleeve of his jacket up a little, reaching inside and tugging out the thing Magneto had had made for him, with the ignitor. He fastens it properly and sticks his hand out, palm up, inducing a little flame to rise from the center — just a little one.

"I was pretty young..." You know, like he's completely not anymore. "... but I guess it was just you and Mystique at that point so you took me along and taught me some stuff. Mostly," John concedes, wrapping his hand in fire and letting it crawl down his arm without any real reaction, "killing people stuff but also history, cause they do a shitty job of that in America, geography, some language basics."

He shrugs and extinguishes the fire before it gets too showy.

"Impressive." There is no hint of condescension—and it's not only the story, he means, either, as evidenced by the predictable focus of his gaze. That fire. It may seem as though he's weighing the usefulness of the boy's gift, but this Erik has never seen such a thing before in his life and is honestly thrilled by it. (He may also be considering its usefulness, but not in the way those who 'know' him here might assume.)

"And you're what, now, sixteen?" It's a guess. Sorry, John. But he does by default award more respect to those with a lot of history to tell at such a young age, rather than pity them, so at least there's that.

Edited 2011-12-04 21:53 (UTC)

The annoyed huff is of that transparently fake variety — that is to say, he is sort of annoyed, but not very much. He knows what he looks like when he shaves, which he had, of course.

"Eighteen." John says somewhat primly. As if two years makes a huge difference, but to him, it does. And in his case, that's a significant difference, admittedly. Mentally, if not physically. "And I can do it much bigger than that. I haven't really found a place to practice, though."

Even an instant can change everything, never mind two years. Erik knows this very well, himself, and so he doesn't make a big deal of the correction, only acknowledges it with a nod.

"There's the seashore," he suggests, nodding in its general direction despite its distance. If they stay on board it'll be visible eventually, but for now, not so much. "There's nothing especially flammable out there, and not many onlookers come wintertime, so long as we avoid the harbour proper. The wind might be a problem, though."

We, he says.

Though it's not a dramatic change, and not much of a physical one, he does perk up at that suggestion.

"Nah, not unless it's like a storm." Then he hesitates, deciding against talking more, because it's not anything very important and he doesn't want to come off immature. The possible significance of the 'we' hasn't entirely escaped him, but talking too much seems like it would be assuming a lot rather quickly. "Can I ask you a question?"

Without hesitation, Erik answers, "Of course." He seems encouraged by the request, even, and sits back in the padded train seat, rather than continuing to hunch forward with his hands folded by his knees like an interested vulture or some such thing. (He hadn't really realised he was doing that. It happens sometimes.) "Ask anything you like."

...Well. Not anything anything, but that should be a given.

In an endeavor to stay within the margin of 'things Erik would know' and 'things that aren't hideously personal', John (not without some concern) selects the topic carefully.

"There's kind of... nothing for mutant history, even by 2008," he says, the hint of resentment just about automatic. "Not much written down, and a lot of what is, is classified. So did it all start coming out in the 60s? Did you know many other mutants?"

What John actually wants to ask is 'what happened to them', but he's not sure Erik is in a position to know that, and also it sounds a little accusing. It just bothers him that there are clones of Emma Frost running around, yet Emma Frost herself is nowhere to be found.

"Regrettably, not many, no. Not personally." This is actually a sore topic for him, purely due to his current situation, but he's not about to shy away from it. He does, however, begin a slow return to looking about as serious as he did back on the network. "Not including myself, there were seven." No, eight; before anyone else, there was Shaw.

And just like that, his gaze drifts, loses some of its focus. His tendency to slip back through time is, in this place, stronger than ever. "...Charles, and Raven, and a few he took on as students once we found them. The ones who agreed to come. They were the first, I suppose." And for all he knows, thanks to this place and the sudden abduction, they may all of them be dead. Murdered by that smiling devil. Murdered like Darwin.

He stares directly at John, then. "The school was larger when you attended, wasn't it? More kids?"

Though he'd not intended to talk more about his own situation, something about the way Erik just sort of disappeared for a bit there makes him want to depict the world he knows more concretely, provide something else to focus on. But it can't be that comforting, to hear about random crap that happens forty years later. Even so.

He also wonders who Raven is, and if he or she died — if a lot of them died and that's why Magneto almost never talked to him about how the Brotherhood started.

"Yeah, about twenty, and three teachers besides Xavier. A lot of the students are really young, kids who can't fight. Not all of them have combative mutations, either. When that anti-mutant group attacked the Institute, they did it while the teachers were away, so there were only like five of us old or strong enough to fight — but we'd never fought before, we didn't know how." He sounds annoyed and a little scornful, but that fades. "I know there are way more mutants out there, but everything is underground. And I don't know anything about the remaining five. None of the teachers are old enough. Well... I don't actually know how old Dr. McCoy is."

"Hank McCoy? He's about ten years my junior." And it's good to hear that he's still around. A relief, frankly. Some of that momentary shadow seems to lift as he is reminded that John may know any or all of those he's missing, or at least know of them—he'd had the idea previously, of course, but when you've made a habit lately of being buffeted about by your feelings, well...

"Would you... might you recognize the name Angel Salvadore? Or Sean Cassidy, or Alex Summers?" The look on his face, though controlled, betrays easily his genuine concern; these are not merely followers, they're his people.

There is, perhaps, something a little strange about how John takes the news about Hank McCoy; he frowns slightly and nods, yet does not say yeah, I guess I could see that, it's just hard to tell because of all the fur because he does actually know that McCoy wasn't always like that. It was one of the few offhand exchanges he had with Mystique (and they've just about all been offhand, even when they were significant), something like 'it must have been hard for him growing up' and her response being 'he wasn't always like that', the end, no subtext whatsoever.

The momentary satisfaction in having words-words-wordsed some of the sad away is then deflated by his failure to recognize any of the names. Almost. John shakes his head to each but hesitates on the last.

"One of them is Scott Summers," he volunteers. "Codename Cyclops? Does these kinetic blast type things from his eyes?" He does not add his customary description of Scott, which is 'so he always has to wear special sunglasses like a totally cool guy'.

It's not exactly what he wanted to hear, no, but this does at least nudge his thoughts forward rather than back.

"That's interesting... Alex had a similar talent, although less focused. He would throw it, bodily. Had the potential to be devastating." He does not mention that it vaguely resembles hula hoops of death—but only because he's not in the mood, honestly. At this age, Erik would completely say something like that. "The two of them are related, I suppose."

After another pause, during which he eyeballs John for a moment longer—sorry, he's just thinking, and you happen to be right there—Erik goes on to ask, "What do you know about this Remy fellow?"

Edited 2011-12-12 02:01 (UTC)

Again, he wonders rather uneasily where Alex would be now. Perhaps it can all be chalked up to differences in universe, but it still makes him uncomfortable to know how many people are 'missing'. It's not something he's ready to question. Magneto would have told him if he needed to know, he believes that.

"Remy was loosely affiliated with a mutant group called the Morlocks, in my universe. Not one of them — not one of anyone, as far as I know, but he knew lots of people and had lots of connections. The thing is, a lot of the Morlocks got killed in a conflict with the government, and Remy disappeared on us for a while. So, ordinarily I'd say he's a little suspicious." John shrugs. "Here, though..." An awkward pause where he does not say he's dating your daughter. "He just seems concerned about mutants. Which is fair. And there's no denying he's useful. You know his mutation?"

"I do. Helpfully, he described it to me." Erik is trying not to seem overly suspicious, but yes, there is that whole dating part, which covers much of why he's so interested. That and the man's name kept popping up unsolicited. Since Erik likes to make a point of knowing what he can about influential people, influential mutants are not only a novelty but a priority.

The train begins a gentle northward turn, then, and Erik lifts his head to glimpse the passing landscape, mildly interested and for a moment seeming untroubled. The expression is brief... and as his attention leaves the window again, it seeks to lock into contact with that of his accomplice.

"So why exactly are you being so helpful, John?"

The clear blue of his eyes. His gaze is steady, serious, but not unkind.

That comes as a relief, as John hadn't wanted to furnish his highly technical explanation of Remy's powers. The explanation would have consisted of 'I don't know how it works, but he touches things and they explode'. The relief is short-lived, however, as seems to be a trend with Erik. The elephant in the room question flusters him just a little, that's pretty clear. Magneto had never asked. He's never had to articulate any reason for joining the Brotherhood, and he doesn't want to get all fanboy about it. So he does look away out of awkwardness, but immediately looks back, because he's not going to be hesitant or anything, that's not going to impress Erik.

"You're him... or the closest thing." John shrugs again, trying to act like it's not as important as it is to him, because he can't sort this out on the spot. "I'm not like, gonna follow you around if you don't want, that's fine, I'll just work with Remy and do my job at the newspaper or whatever. Maybe the Brotherhood isn't even necessary here, I don't know. It's just been my life for the past four years, so... whatever, I'm here if you need something set on fire." The self-deprecation there is a little grim.

Someone else may have chosen to show amusement in this moment, to widen the gap between perceived leader and follower. Erik only nods. "Fair enough."

He's not going to leave it at that, though. Now inspired to leave his seat, Erik rises to stand on one of the transparent glass portions of the carriage floor—not to fold his hands and gaze out the window, however, but to lean there, still facing John, now framed by open air and the scrolling cityscape. Nearly every movement of his comes with a leisurely grace; this, at least, is perhaps similar to any number of his counterparts.

"But don't sell yourself short. If I wanted to start a fire, I'd use a match. You've already proven yourself far more valuable than that."

Well. That's what he wanted to hear, but it doesn't quite shake the uneasiness. Why the parallel response doesn't comfort him, he's not sure. Maybe it's because he's older, and Magneto is younger. Maybe a million things. John relegates it to the ever growing category of let's not think about it right now, a category that conveniently renews itself in terms of 'right now'. He just shifts and straightens up, a sort of unconscious response to Erik getting up.

"Okay." That's a great reply, really, but he can't think of anything else. "... I probably won't have anything else to report for a while."

"Fine." This word alone does not sound even remotely petulant, despite that being its most common use anymore. "We can focus on conditioning in the meantime."

For emphasis, Erik pauses here, his arms folded loosely across his chest, and pushes his head forward in a kind of provocative little nod. His eyebrows hardly lift, and in the way his mouth plays at curving just so, again he manages to make the promise of a friendly look seem more like a threat. "If you feel you're up to it, of course."

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