paradisalost | (no subject)

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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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"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.

She shrugs. "Doesn't really matter what I get out of it, so long as I succeed. Covvie bastards glassed my planet, Spartans are the only weapon capable of stopping them. That's what it boils down to."

She worked with her team and took orders because she was conditioned to do so, and being a somewhat secret program, she didn't expect to get any sort of 'heroic' recognition. Spartans in general couldn't even expect acknowledgement of their death, being marked as MIA or WIA to keep up public morale.

Edited 2011-06-10 03:16 (UTC)

"So what kinda other tech are you sportin' in there?" Curiosity had to get the better of him eventually. "Or is it all space age crap that I wouldn't recognize?"

"Heh. Maybe a few hundred years from your last New Year's but it's evolved from all the tech that man's created before it, I'm sure some of it will sound familiar."

She reaches across the bar and tugs out a napkin, wishes up a pen, and starts sketching some chemical molecules.

"Our augmentation process involved four separate chemical concoctions; carbide ceramic ossification catalyst, fibroid muscular protein complex, retina-inversion stabilizer, and -- I can't remember the last one offhand, it improves the colloidal neural disunification solution." She side-eyes him a little to see if she's lost him yet."

She slides the napkin with the molecules over to him and pulls out a fresh one, starting mecanical schematics. "The armor plating is titanium alloy. The undersuit is finely woven titanium-alloy mesh with an inner surface of liquid crystal that links up with a neural implant to reduce twitch-time reactions." She pauses a moment to turn her head and push her hair aside - which was badly in need of a shave - to show off her own neural implant, before turning back to sketching out the backpiece of her armor. "The suit is powered by a localized miniature fusion reactor."

"Anything you didn't recognize?"

Edited 2011-06-10 04:41 (UTC)

Logan watches over the rim of his glass, keeping a close eye on her doodles even if he only appears to be half-interested. Just because he mostly relies on brawn doesn't by any stretch of the imagination leave him an idiot: he's lived too long of a life for that. He can push past the techno babble to get the drift of what's she going for and just nods for her continue.

He drew the napkin closer with just one finger, frowning down at it as she kept going. "Fusion reactor," he repeats, locking on to one thing. "That's packing a lot of power." Dangerous amounts, really, and his tone makes it clear that he's aware of that. "What happens if something breaks down?"

She's quiet a moment, considering her beer before answering. "There are fail-safes and redundancies in place, don't worry, and I keep it hyper-maintained."

"Usually, in the case that it gets damaged enough to be an issue? It's not making it out of the battle. Hopefully the resulting blast to take out military issue equipment would take out a few of Covvies with it."

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I-I am so sorry. I couldn't stop her.

hahaha it's ok!

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