paradisalost | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who:

inmylight_comdr
What: A Spartan and an X-Men walk into a bar ...
When: May 12th, after this thread
Where: Death Match
Rating: None ... yet ... ?

Out of armor, free from grease and oil (mostly), Kat arrives a few minutes late. A bit abnormal for her, but recently she'd been out of sorts, dwelling more and more on her team and the fact that she wasn't quite sure what to do without them. Building the Falcon helped, a strenuous task that kept her mind and her hands busy, but it wasn't enough.

Hopefully meeting with someone who was more familiar with the Lone Wolf tactics would help. At the very least, she was still fascinated by the similarities and differences in her and Wolverine's programs and augmentations, and any chance to pick his brain more about it, she'd take.

She walks in, ducking a little to miss the doorway, and glances around.

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Wolverine's already at the bar, which has been graciously restored by either the castle, or the workers there. Logan really doesn't care either way, but obviously the employees do, by the way they're all muttering together and shooting glances down his way from the far end of the bar. He just slowly turns his head down that way to fix them with a stare intended to shut 'em right up - and it does the job. When he turns his head back over his shoulder, he sees Kat coming in, and takes another sip of his beer.

He figures she'll see him. ~~It's hard to miss the hair.~~

He is hard to miss, everything considered and in addition to the wide berth he's given. The employees don't look entirely too happy at her either, 6'9" of cut, toned muscle and enough dense bulk to make the stool whine in protest as she takes a seat next to him.

She immediately pulls down a drink menu and starts flipping through it, perplexed. "You'll have to excuse me, I don't do this often. What's good here?"

"What, you don't go to bars?" he asked. He'd sort of taken her for the kind of woman who was likely to, but then again, even after all these years, seemed like women could always find some way to surprise him. He gestured with his cigar to the barkeeper who came over, skimming a wary eye between them. Logan placed an order for a second round of what he was having, and an extra for her, figuring she could at least hold her liquor.

"Never had a chance until I came here." There wasn't much opportunity for bar-hopping between missions. Her whole experience outside of MREs was whatever Marines were willing to share, and Noble Three's cooking, and while she didn't know her limit, it was going to take a concerted effort to find it.

She takes a drink, considering the taste before nodding, ignoring the looks they're getting from the barkeep, having gotten used to that sort of reaction from the civilians and marines she'd come in contact with. "Not bad. You do this sort of thing often?"

"Wherever there's a good bar around," he replied. Logan wasn't about to launch into an explanation of why he found bars comforting, since it wasn't as if he'd psychoanalyzed his own reasons for it ever. But people tended to leave him alone there, or even when they didn't, it usually ended in a good scrap, which he could also chalk up to a good day.

"One thing you can find almost anywhere, luckily."

"Well, there was a sad lack of them at the bases I frequented." A wry smile. Even if there were public venues within reach, Spartans were generally not socially suited for such interactions. Kat's saving grace was that she'd been here so long already, and was one of the few Spartans who was better suited for interactions with non-Spartans.

"So, you prefer the Lone Wolf tactics?"

His response was an affirmative grunt, as he dug in his pocket for a light.

"Never did like anyone tellin' me what to do, for starters." Using that phrase 'never did' made his brow furrow, however. Hell, for all he knew, maybe he used to be the poster boy for falling in line. Too much he didn't know. But he had to deal with what he did. "And usually havin' someone else in my path's a bad idea, and a good way for them to get hurt."

She catches that brow furrow, but she doesn't comment on it; just another little mystery nugget she'd have to mull over later.

At the second part she gives a little heh, lifting her beer for another drink. "I think that part I know first hand." Thankfully she'd been able to rely on York to effect repairs. "How was it someone like you ended up with a team in the first place?"

He frowned a little, thinking back. For some reason, the memory was much more indistinct than it should have been, considering how sharp his mind usually was, and how important it'd been.

"The team kinda ran into me, actually, when I got attacked by another mutant. Woke up in their headquarters, no clue what the hell was goin' on... Real high tech crap."

She chuckles, "So they adopted you? What kept you around?" She looks over slyly before taking a drink, because she knows three words in there that would have kept from roaming; High Tech Crap was Kat's kind of vice.

"Guess I was curious to see what the hell it was all about," he said, with a shrug. "The Professor - the guy who's the leader of the whole outfit - was a telepath, so he knew which buttons to push right off the bat, and what I was lookin' for." He still felt like he was missing a piece of the puzzle that was his own life, which was unsettling, and reminded him of the disturbing implications of what Charles had done to Jean's mind... and maybe his too, if she was right.

"I can empasize." Curiosity was a pretty strong driving force with Kat.

She frowns a little at the mention of telepathy. That wasn't anything she was familiar with from her world, and she glances at Wolverine, narrowing her eyes slightly. "Really? What was that like?"

Logan considered this for a long moment before landing on an answer that summed up the extent of it.

"Annoying."

He valued his privacy, especially when it came to his personal feelings on things, and even though he trusted Chuck - or had at least - fully, it didn't make him any happier about someone knowing him from the inside out.

"I can only imagine." She works at her beer for a moment in thoughtful silence, and then gives her head a little shake. "I've never dealt with anything like that before, at home. Are these powers hereditary?"

"Back in my world," Logan started, "some of us are born with genetic mutations that lead to this kinda thing. Some of it's hereditary, some of it pops up outta seemingly nowhere. A few mutants think that kinda thing makes us better than humans, a lotta humans think it makes for freaks, who they just want outta their damn yard."

He shrugged, as if none of this really affected him too much. "We gotta get by, like anybody else though, and we're sure as hell not goin' anywhere."

"Can't say that sounds entirely unfamiliar to me, unfortunately. We at least have the war to keep us busy; I can't imagine trying to survive like that as a civilian." Spartans were never intended for normal society.

"There's always some kind of war goin' on," Logan remarked. "No matter where or how it's bein' waged." Considering the way he'd lived his life as long as he could remember, at least, he rarely ever thought of himself as a 'civilian' per se. Civilians had homes they stuck around, picket fences, jobs they could really hold down.

"Isn't that the truth." She works at her beer in companionable silence for a bit, and if she knew what was going on his head she'd whole-heartedly agree. "The hallmark of Man. In a way, the Covvies saved us from ourselves; although the splintered Insurrectionist cells continued to prove a problem, we were at near civil war before the aliens showed up."

"A flag for everyone to unite around, I take it," he said, with a snort. Wasn't anything new to him. That was the way of history. "Good timin'."

"Pretty much. There were still those who were far enough removed from the Covenant threat that they thought it was a hoax, the UNSC trying to scare them into compliance. When the going got rough, they'd send us in, we'd take care of it." She gives a little shrug.

"So then I end up here. It's been an adjustment period, I'll tell you that."

"Hmm," he murmured, dangling his glass between two fingers. He was still curious about her little set-up, but stuck with a more basic question for the time being.

"How long you been here?"

Now's as good a time as any. She was never really good with the whole 'classified' thing, and if she continues with the beer she'll probably start loosening up a little more. She's already starting in on her second pint.

"Seven months. Seven goddamn months."

"Some people are sayin' years when I ask 'em that. Good to have somethin' to look forward to," Logan mused bitterly. To be honest, this place itself wasn't so bad. Hell, if anything it was kind of nice: 'least here he actually wasn't seen as a freak by anybody, which was ... different. But the fact was he didn't like being anybody's plaything, and he needed to know what was going on back home.

"You got somethin' worth gettin' back to?"

"York and Delta have been here at least two years. They're from my world." She gives her head a shake. "I wonder if I can even handle being in a place like this that long. Between the magic and the downtime, it's been pretty rough so far." Caught somewhere between itching for action and listless, missing her team, the past month or two have been particularly hard for her.

At that question, she has a definite answer. "Yes. Saving humanity."

"Pretty big on that duty, honor, hero bit, aren't you?" he asked, and despite the amusement and cynicism battling in his tone, there was real respect there as well. Wasn't like he could argue that he was much different - just didn't take orders on how to do it very well.