Marvel, Rebirth:

IC:

"Well, your emotions do turn my beer pink."

-Tyler

IC:

"What?"

IC:

"Empathy joke."

-Tyler

IC:

These woods...these were the ones where...

A glare of light and a shriek of sound pierced her already throbbing skull. Groaning softly, she covered her face with her hands. The soft patch of fabric covering her secret weapon scrunched under her palm as she tried to block out the disturbances. Make it go away, please... she begged. This had been a terrible idea, but Tayen was insistent that she come here. She crouched lower on the branch that she was trying to stay balanced atop. The rain was soaking her already weakened frame to the bone, and her left eye socket kept smarting like crazy. He's still having a hard time maintaining density...

She slid out of the dense coverage of the tree and walked farther into the forest, watching for any sign of human activity. What she found surprised her. A woman standing there, her arms out and yet strangely still. Sierra flipped her hood up, for all purposes now looking like a walking cloak. She took a raspy-sounding breath and spoke. "You...you're not human, are you?"

IC:

"I have never understood how your empathy works, so I shall have to take your word for it."

IC:

"Empathy's not a brainbender, power-wise. It's a bit like...holding your eyes closed as tight as you can, and when you open them you see the little sunbursts. When you're fighting, or excited, or you're putting up with me? I see pink sunbursts. When you're feeling happy, or you catch yourself caring about someone...sunflower yellow. When you're grumpy, or sad, or...hurt, I want to kill as many things in the world that I can get my hands on."

Dallas' face was still as he mixed a straw around in the untouched soda; his eyes broke first, rolling slightly while his mouth, curled slightly upwards, was taking a drink of beer.

"So it's kind of like a ###### brown."

-Tyler

IC:

"That's my job, remember?" Finishing a fry, she gave the other Ultimate the faintest hints of a dry, half smile. "Keep everyone sane and in one piece. Neutralize anything that threatens that. Hold the line. Et cetera. I appreciate the concern, I genuinely do. But I can't have you feeling wrathful whenever I get a little melancholy."

"But I owe you an apology. For any times you have had to deal with a disgusting shade of brown clouding your day."

IC:

Dallas was markedly and uncharacteristically silent until the four pizzas arrived, and he carved himself up a couple slices of cheese and one slice of bacon before he replied.

"Don't sweat it. They're usually worth the company." He took a thoughtful bite of bacon pizza and chewed. Then another, somewhat less thoughtful. "Still say you need to be hooked up to someone with an ego through IVs and get yourself a self-worth transfusion."

-Tyler

IC:

"My self worth quite accurately matches my actual worth." The dark-haired woman shrugged slightly, pulling four slices of pizza onto her plate and taking a large bite. "But this is hardly pleasant conversation for dinner. We came out to have a little fun, not worry about what's going on in my head."

IC:

Dallas watched Bekah eat with macabre interest, like the moments leading up to a climatic fight scene and then pausing just before the turning point. His best friend ate like Oberyn Martell fought; one day, the mountain would catch her, and on that day it would probably go for him the worst.

"Right. Little fun." Dallas finished his beer and finally moved on to his Dr Pepper, taking a sip and a particularly large, bacon-filled bite.

"Want another beer?"

-Tyler

IC:

"I shouldn't. I intended to consume one."

IC:

"You dodge questions like you dodge bullets, babe. C'mon, I got plenty of money."

-Tyler

IC:

"Adding further costs is unnecessary. I need to drive, anyway."

IC:

"Sure you don't trust me to drive?"

-Tyler

IC:

"You'll have had as many as I. And I trust no one to drive better."

IC:

bad boy pout

" it, fine, if you say so." Dallas started in on the cheese pizza. If he ever saw that chick again who'd recommended this place, he'd have to thank her. Sauce was good, had a lot of flavor to it with a hint of bite, the cheeses were fresh, not too oily. Maybe it'd be worth forking over his number.

...Nah.

He took a drink of his soda and, slowing down on his own dinner, watched Bekah maneuver her way into the highest tiers of competitive eaters.

-Tyler
 

IC:

"I must apologize. I'm being inordinately stubborn."

IC:

"Oh, that. Relax." Dallas finished up his second slice of cheese pizza and portioned off a piece solely of the bacon pie. "There's things you don't trust people with. I mean, you're my favorite person in a four thousand mile radius. Doesn't mean I'd let you near my shampoo."

-Tyler

IC:

"Right. Of course you would not." The Ultimate replied easily, taking a large bite of her food and chasing it with the remaining sip from her drink. Then she took another bite, entirely unconcerned by both the quantity, and rate at which she was consuming, her food. "That would be unusual."

IC:

"Well, not unusual, just means that I've been showering at the wrong times. I'd know if my...shampoo...left..."

Dallas squinted.

"...Are you alright?"

-Tyler

IC:

"Perfectly fine."

IC:

Dallas' eyes narrowed further.

"...Do I smell blackberries?"

-Tyler

IC:

"You do not. Unless you're smelling yourself, I highly doubt anything in this place smells like blackberries. And if it were me you would have noticed on the way here."

IC: Nero started in his chair as he regained focus. "That.. was weird." he muttered to himself looking around confusedly. Not entirely sure what caused him to drift off like that, but it was over now. 

"Back to food." Nero affirmed to himself before carrying on with his plan, wheeling towards the cafeteria. Assuming it was still there. You could never be too sure these days. With all the times the school got wrecked, someone could have just forgotten to put a cafeteria in the budget.

IC (Alecto)

Alecto stood outside Wild Wings, trying not to note just how cold it'd gotten since he'd walked in. He could see his breath. His breath. Goddamn New York with it's goddamn weather...and he'd neglected to slip on his jacket before strutting out. Which, in fairness, he still held to be a good decision. All things considered. "So. Uh." Alecto shrugged helplessly and addressed Aramis. "I'm going to need a minute to flail around here. Jacket. Wings. Not all that great for coordination."

IC (Aramis):

Standing on the frosty, wind-blasted wasteland sidewalk, Aramis quirked an eyebrow at Alecto as he struggled into his jacket.

"Okay, while you're doing that, you know that book won awards, right? Award-winning books usually aren't read by just one person. Might as well be surprised that other people need oxygen to survive, too."

IC (Cynegild):

The original plan had called for taking the elevator down to the first floor, perhaps adjusting his tie in the reflective surface of the interior control panel, and giving his moustache that extra twirl to make Captain Hook jealous.

The original plan had not taken into account the possibility of someone stealing the exterior control panel, and replacing it with a crude sketch of what might be a liquor cabinet with Lacey next to it, doing shots with "GLUG GLUG GLUG" scrawled above it, but also might be a dinosaur doing shots next to a school bus.

Well then.

If the elevator was done for, there was no question that she had also taken out the stairs. The waterslide would likewise be out of commission, given that most Hellfire personnel were more aware of it than of the stairs. That left a rather limited field of options for getting down to the ground floor.

Sighing at the lengths Lacey would go to to get her hands on his whiskey, Cynegild undid the latch on the window, and pulled it open, stepping confidently onto the sill. Looking down...

Well. He couldn't see clouds, but cars didn't exactly look full-sized, either. Not technically surprising on the fourteenth floor, but not a huge comfort, either.

Well, nothing to be gained by letting Lacey run out the clock.

Sighing theatrically, he turned around, and backed carefully out of the window, keeping his hands on the ledge as he lowered himself over the edge of the marble pediment that had once decorated the rooftop and now marked the boundary between the thirteenth and fourteenth floors, and caught his footing as a statue of George Washington Carver, sitting triumphant upon a throne of peanuts, came into view. Cynegild knew it was George Washington Carver because of the name embossed in gold on the white crown the statue was wearing.

Making a mental note to put proper study into HeIIfire's pediments in the future, he shifted his group to the bottom of the pediment, dangled his legs for a few seconds, and dropped past the windows of the thirteenth floor to the top of the next pediment, thankful that some architect had been utterly convinced that building wide ledges would attract scores of nesting falcons.

It hadn't, but it made Cynegild's trip to Starbucks a lot easier.

IC (Alecto)

Somehow, in the chaotic mess of jacket-wing-probably another bit of jacket-Alecto managed to clearly display a certain hand signal to Aramis. It was, in fairness, rather simple as methods of communication go. Only used one finger. "Keep it up Jeff Schoep and you might just burn off the last bit of goodwill you've got from me." Alecto *finally* managed to slip into his jacket...leaving his hair somewhat...ruffled....from the experience. "But hey." Alecto's lips quirked upwards. "I left half a meal behind. You ever had New York Pizza?" 

IC (Aramis):

While giving perhaps the grandest shrug-eyeroll combo in the history of mankind (or at least the history of frozen wizards in New York), Aramis worked out what he thought would be a proper response, figuring that gesture probably meant Batman was about out of jokes.

"Alright, I'll drop the book thing for now. As for the other... yeah, pizza sounds great, if we can have five minutes of conversation where we use real names instead of referring to each other as dead white guys."

IC (Alecto)

"Works for me." Alecto didn't show it-and he die before he'd admit it-but he was about spent. To say the day hadn't gone as he'd expected would be something of a massive understatement. "Dead Asian guys it is." He kept up the devil-may-care-grin for about a second before he dropped it. "But fine. Fine. Normal conversation."

Alecto paused.

"....."

"......So. Where you from?"

IC (Aramis): Aramis pulled his coat tighter around him as the wind picked up, and he waited for Alecto to lead the way to pizza.

"New Orleans, down around Algiers Point. Spent a year or so in Chicago before I got into a disagreement with one of the locals, had to move out before things got rough. How about yourself?"

IC (Lucia)

Lucia raised her eyebrow. "Yes. I can imagine faces like that don't promise good things for you in the future. Blood for instance." It hadn't taken long to figure it out, all thing considered. The girl carried herself like an older woman, with an easy sort of confidence.

Plus she had blood on her breath. Bit hard to hide that. "I deal in many kinds of lore." Lucia pursed her lips for a moment, before settling into a confident sort of smirk. "Though, if matters of the Outer Dark make you pale, I have some tomes upon the lore of dreams. And other matters. Some concerning your....condition."

IC (Alecto)

"The south. Uh. North Carolina I think. Some small ####hole I try to forget." Alecto shrugged noncommittally as he made his way towards the nearest pizza place-about a block away, give or take. "Aside from that. I've been living in New York awhile. Before that....just been around. Work took me all sorts of places. Went to Germany once." Alecto paused. "That was. Uh. Interesting."

Evidently he was bad at small talk when it didn't involve insults.

Of ###### course. 

IC: Abigail

Abigail gave Lucia a toothy grin, consequently showing her fangs. "Wow, and here I was thinking this was going to be one of those magic shops that sells rabbit feet and tells your fortune from a crystal ball. I wasn't expecting someone who...actually knows something about magic." She shrugged. "I don't mind being proven wrong though, the name's Abigail."

"Okay I'll bite, you said you have some things about my condition?" Anything about vampirism pecked Abigail's interest, for obvious reasons.

IC:

Dallas loved treadmills. No shirts, no arms, no problem. There's just one foot after the other, faster and faster as he cranked the level up. There's leaning forward to take a long sip from a straw cocked inside one of two grape Gatorades, and there's the burn in his legs and bass in his ears. There are thoughts of people alive and dead, and every one of them was a color in a crayon box to Dallas. They were easier to think of in terms of blue and red and gold and razzmatazz than they were in colors like 'dead.'

'Alive.'

'In love.'

'Cruel.'

He prefered the kind of colors you needed for art class.

But Dallas was a colorful guy, and there wasn't any changing that.

That's enough burn for today.

Dallas turned the treadmill off with a huff and a soft smile. He'd conscripted Alex into working out with him before breakfast, but so far his workout had consisted of watching Dallas and bumping up the treadmill's speed a notch depending on a thumbs up or thumbs down from his chronokinetic friend. Now, after thirty minutes, the time for the promised breakfast had arrived. No more thinking about people, no more anything except for Alex, some bacon, and maybe an ice cream sandwich.

In the most palatable order.

Pulling a tank top over his head, Dallas ruffled his short hair and beamed.

"Starving."

That was sufficient enough.

-Tyler

IC:

"After half an hour on the treadmill, I wonder why." The technopath quipped, blinking as his eyes refocused on the specific details of the world in front of him. Alex tended to space out when he was focusing more on whatever was in his head than on what was around him, and after half an hour of being mostly still, he had definitely been paying attention to other things. Things like, if anyone could have read his mind, his company's quarterly report, his servers, and the Institute's security systems. Lots of calibrating.

"Cafeteria should be open by now."

IC:

"I want a lotta bacon. Maybe some slices of tomato or something. And more bacon. Think they'll serve me?" 

The chronokinetic pulled Alex up onto his feet easily and walked out of the gym. The click clock click clock of his tongue against the roof of his mouth was the only sound between the two of them for a while, but when the cafeteria was in sight, Dallas spoke again.

"You ever thought about it, man? That we're still together. Man, we were talking about that first Danger Room sesh...man, it's just got me thinking that we weathered everything. All we can do is to do better. I dunno. S'just something that I started thinking." Dallas crossed both hands behind his head, raising ridges in blonde hair where his fingers crossed. "It's just wild, that's all."

IC:

"Uh...huh."

Dallas narrowed his eyes further at Bekah and took a sip of soda, but didn't press the issue. Verbally.

Just gotta work something out later, he thought, grabbing another few slices and ignoring the first crimp in his jaw that hinted maybe it was time to stop eating pizza.

"Love ya."

-Tyler

IC:

"Not the two people I'd have thought would be left." Alex commented idly, slipping his hands into his pockets and stepping into the cafeteria. "Always figured you'd be off in a movie. Music industry, maybe. Thought I probably would have quit and gone to work at my company full time."

"Not really where you thought you'd be, is it?"

IC:

"Why do you look skeptical?" 

The former Weapon asked, in between bites of her seventh piece of pizza.

IC:

"No. But I killed too much class time in my dorm to do much of anything else."

IC:

"Maybe 'cause I'm skeptical."

-Tyler

IC:

"I'm sure you could be Wizard Industries' mascot."

IC:

"Why are you skeptical? And what of?"

IC:

"What do you even make? I mean, you're rich as , right? But all I own is Apple stuff. It's kinda weird, actually, I've never really put any thought into it."

IC:

"I think you've..."

Dallas took a bite of pizza, carefully chewing over his words.

"...been stealing my shampoo."

-Tyler

IC:

"Low-profile items. Used to be that I only made things and patented them, and then made money making the big-brand companies pay to buy them. Mostly because I was ten and couldn't actually run a real company." The technopath commented, grinning. "I've got a backlog of patents built up. We release very expensive technologies to very wealthy buyers when the market seems right to introduce one of them."

"Could have some very high profile buyers, if it weren't for the fact that people are leery of buying from a company owned by an eighteen year old mutant X-Man."

IC:

"Absurd."