xp_logs | Garrison and Crystal

Crystal comes across Garrison, who is suffering from a case of poisoning by ninjas. They have to avoid being slain by killer eggplant and face the frightening possibility of being annihilated by a paperclip deathray.

Garrison sat at the counter on one of the stools, his forehead resting on the cool tile of the countertop itself. Occasionally a small groan would issue from the Canadian, usually when something extremely loud to him, like a light breeze or an ant on the tiles, made noise. Beside his head, coffee was percolating, the smell starting to fill the kitchen, and a very large tray of supplies was sitting on the counter by the stove. There was almost something ritualistic about the hangover. It was intentionally later in the morning, when most of the students and teachers had already started classes or had eaten. Some rituals required solitute.

Which wasn't really far off. A Canadian, with an English father and a cop by trade, Garrison had both genetics and stereotype urging him to drink, and that meant occasionally paying what he refered to as the wages of gin in response. The only small comfort that he could take was that some people feel like this after every time they drank. Once the top of his head stopped trying to unscrew itself, he'd be gladdened by the thought.

Crystal still didn't make very many trips to the kitchen, but now that she and Lorna had finally had a real, decent conversation, she wasn't avoiding it as much. She had decided to come to the kitchen at random intervals, if only to prove to herself that it was not the frightening, forboding place it had once been to her. Crystal wasn't sure what she'd expected to find in this kitchen that morning, but the sight that greeted her when she floated in certainly wasn't it. He wasn't dead, but was he hurt? "Do you require a visit from a doctor?" Crystal asked.

"No. No doctors. Doctors like to be loud and poke you with things. I need to avoid doctors. And determine who did this to me." There was a ping, and Garrison reached for the coffee pot, and poured a cup without lifting his head from the counter. He managed it without spilling a single drop. "I think I've been poisoned. By ninjas."

Crystal blinked. Poisoned. By ninjas. Right. Although, come to think of it, that probably was one of the things that could happen here. "If you believe that you have been poisoned by ninjas, you certainly need to see a doctor even if doctors do tend to poke you with things. It is necessary, as they must discover what is wrong with a person before being able to begin the proper treatment."

"I already have the treatment." Garrison finally pulled his head off the table and took a long draught of what was fairly hot coffee. He set the cup down and sighed. His head was killing him. "A very large breakfast, followed immediately by my ritual suicide as I chop my own head off with a sharpened asperin cap. What are you doing down here? Don't you have, uh, class or something?"

"I am visiting the kitchen," Crystal replied, "and no, I do not have a class at the moment." She peered at him quizzically. "I know that you do not really mean that you intend to kill yourself, and that ninjas were not actually involved in what happened to you, but it is clear that you are not feeling well at this moment. At least you are choosing to have breakfast and do not require people to fulfill the Xavier's tradition of bringing food to people."

"Yeah, I'm not exactly comfortable with the whole forced feeding thing. Plus, while hungover, they'll likely try and bring me granola or something. That's just wrong." Kane swung himself off the stool and opened the fridge. He pulled out a tray from the fridge, which he had already had put together earlier. "You hungry?"

"Now that you mention it, I do not believe that anyone truly forces anyone to actually eat," Crystal said thoughtfully. "It seems to be the act of bringing food that is popular. I wonder if all of the food that is brought ends up being eaten or if many of the recipients just pretend to be interested in eating the food that was offered to them. I ate earlier, but I can eat something now." As long as it hadn't been poisoned by ninjas.

"I always wondered why the pigeons hung around under the staff windows." Garrison said, putting several pans on the stove. He tended to cook his own meals in the mansion, due to his weird hours and his own specific discomfort with being cooked for by anyone he wasn't paying, sleeping with or related to. "Uh, coffee? Do you drink coffee?"

Crystal was fairly certain she'd ingested more coffee in the past eight months since her arrival at the mansion than she had in all her previous years of life. Next to offering and bringing food, offering coffee seemed to be a popular thing to do. "Coffee is fine, thank you."

Garrison poured a cup, it was from his Tim Horton's stash and slid it down the counter at her. The bumping made his head ache more, but he ignored it. He flipped a bit of butter into the pan and turned to his chopping board. "So how's school going? I haven't talked to you since the dance." He gave her a thin smile over his shoulder. "I appreciated the food, by the way." To be honest, even cold, they were still pretty good.

"My classes are going well." When the teachers aren't busy getting pneumonia after involuntarily swimming in cold rivers. "There was a lot of food left over, and although I was not sure what kind of food you would prefer, I was fairly certain it was not the meatballs. I saw you eat the pastries, so..." she shrugged lightly.

"To be honest, I eat almost anything. Habit." That and weird shift work both on the force and with the Flight Program. The pile of vegatables were slowly growing beside the cutting board. "Oh, you don't have any allergies or religious observances I should know about? Because as much fun as anaphylactic shock is, I'd likely screw it up and end up intubating your ear or something."

She should run. She was standing in a kitchen with a crazy man. "No, I do not have any allergies or religious observances that prevent me from eating certain types of food," Crystal responded politely. "However, in case, for some reason, we suddenly discover that I am allergic to something you are preparing, I would like to request that you do not attempt to do anything that might possibly result in my untimely death. I am fairly certain that I can continue breathing in cases where other people might find themselves suffering from an inability to breathe."

"So in the event of a sudden case of eggplant, just let you sit there? Hey, it's your airways, eh." Garrison scraped off the board into the pan, and poured a touch of olive oil in after. He had split the boiled potatoes into small chunks, and tossed them into a second pan once the butter was bubbling, with a handful of green onion. Finally, he picked up the sausage from the tray and put them into their own fryng pan. "What is today? Wednesday? Yeah, what's on your schedule for Wednesday?"

"I can take care of myself." From a safe distance, Crystal watched Garrison's cooking actions intently. "Yes, today is Wednesday. What are my plans for today... Attend classes. Fly around campus.. Study and complete my homework. Workout and dance. Play video games. And, apparently, avoid coming down with a sudden case of eggplant."

"Be wary. Eggplant is one of the most cunning of all the vegetables. They call it the Garden Assassin." Kane wasn't much of a fan of eggplant. His mother had grown them, and like any vegetable that no one likes that much, it outproduced every other plant. He yawned. "Sounds like a pretty standard day. Must be relaxing."

"Well, yes, those are the plans for a standard day for me," Crystal replied. "Considering the alternatives around this place, one of which now seems to be killer vegetables, I suppose that we should all be grateful for standard days. Surely it is not as exciting as visiting different places while dressed in a black leather uniform, but it is better than spending the day being kidnapped, assaulted by psychotic supervillains, or spending over a day in a coma."

"Hey, I like standard and non-exciting day. I don't get enough of them." Kane dropped the bacon into a pan, and finally cracked a series of eggs. He whipped them together and poured them over the vegetables in the one pan. Tomatos, slightly coated, went in beside the bacon. "Although I think I'll stick with making it a sober day."

Standing behind Kane, Crystal raised her eyebrows. "I see." The air shield was up in case of spatter, but Garrison seemed to know what he was doing. "May I ask why you did not start the day off that way?"

"What? Standard or sober?" Garrison drained his coffee and pulled out a couple of plates from the cupboard. "I was taken out last night by the Secret Service. The very off-key Tragically Hip you heard in the hallway? That would have been me."

"Oh, of course," Crystal said, finally moving closer to the stove. "The Secret Service made you drink alcoholic beverages to such an extent that you ended up with a horrible hangover this morning."

"Oddly enough, that's pretty much exactly right." Garrison said, himself a little surprised at the fact that did sum up his night. He quickly apportioned the food between the two plates; a heaping amount of fried potatos, bacon, sausages, omelet, and fried tomatos. Kane believed in big breakfasts, especially since he needed a lot of food to support his frame. He passed one of the plates over to her as he refilled their coffee.

"I see." Surely the Secret Service agents had held guns to his head and forced him to imbibe drink after drink. Crystal looked at the huge amount of food on her plate, hiding her amusement. She wasn't Angel. There was no way she could possibly eat that much food without becoming ill. Maybe Garrison was trying to poison her after all.

"Good people though, even if a touch heavily armed." His own gun had been carefully locked up in his gun safe by Marie. It had been extremely unlike Garrison to not have done it immediately, especially considering his own feelings towards firearms. He wolfed down a couple of bites and a swallow of coffee. "Now to figure out what I'm going to do with myself for the next two weeks. All the staff are relatively healthy, which means no subsituting for me, and no office hours. What would you do with two weeks off?"

"It was my belief," Crystal said, sitting down, "that the main cause for the need of substitute teachers here is the sudden yet recurring need to save the world, or at least certain parts of the world, maybe even just one or two people, not that it was due to health issues. Unless," she added, "you include becoming ill as a result of certain events that occured while someone was being saved." Crystal took a small bite. Crystal was appalled by Garrison's table manners; did he think his food was going to run away if he did not finish it quickly? "Most of the time, it seems that only certain staff members are required to be involved in the aforementioned worldsaving, and then substitutes are needed. Of course, it appears that certain cases warrant involvement by nearly all staff members, even those who only teach on an as needed basis." She sipped her coffee, looking thoughtful. "If I did not have to attend classes here for two weeks, I would go home."

"Well, I can't really schedule for the saving the world part. However, no one currently confined to the medlab or away in the Congo or something should mean I'm not needed until Magneto pops up with a death ray made out of paperclips. And it's minus twenty-seven in Toronto right now." Garrison said, getting up to hunt for the HP sauce. "Maybe I should go to your home. What's Attilan like in January?"

Oh God no. Wait... he just meant Attilan, not the palace, right? "On average, the temperature there does not go lower than 14 degrees, which is as cold as it tends to get in the winter." She took another bite and eyed Garrison, wondering if his drunken state had killed off too many brain cells or given him amnesia. "It is February now, and I believe the current temperature is approximately 17 degrees." Deathray paperclips and killer eggplant... would his strategy in those cases be hiding behind Cain?

"Seventeen? That's not bad." Garrison rubbed the bridge of his nose. The headache was slowly subsiding, but that had only downgraded it from the 'I want to die' stage to 'mostly unbearable'. "I meant to go over once, when I was working in Portugal, but never got around to it."

"It is very beautiful there," Crystal said. "One can say that I am biased, but it a very nice place to visit. Beautiful scenery, nice weather, excellent food. It is quite lacking in the 'unscrupulous telepath' and 'insane supervillain' department, though. Oh, and you can find an abundance of different varieties of wine there, as well as other alcoholic beverages."

"I wasn't planning to bring the Secret Service with me." Garrison said as he polished off the rest of his breakfast. He didn't fool around when it came to eating. "But let's be honest. I doubt I'll end up anywhere close. The afore mentioned paperclip death ray will end up showing up by the weekend, and that will kill my non-refundable discount plane tickets."

"Perhaps you should devote your time to discovering the best way to properly dismantle a paperclip deathray, then," Crystal suggested. "I am sure that preplanned strategies will be welcomed when the inevitable happens."

Garrison grinned over the top of his coffee cup. "You're mocking me. I'm a teacher, or something, here, you know. I could assign homework, I think."

"You are a substitute teacher and therefore do not teach a specific class that I am in, you apparently believe that you will not be required to act in a teaching capacity for two weeks, and I do not have the same aversion to homework that many students seem to have," Crystal pointed out calmly.

"So what you're saying is that if I incapacitate, say, your dance teacher, I could get the job and subject you to two solid weeks of the Chicken Dance. It's a thought." Garrison rubbed his upper lip. "I'll need my lacrosse stick for that."

Crystal frowned. As much as Garrison's previous "jokes" hadn't been funny, the suggestion of attacking a teacher in order to torture her was ten times less amusing. "I do not take dance class here," Crystal informed Kane, "and I do not believe that anyone will take kindly to overhearing you say anything about harming Mr. Sefton, be it with or without a lacrosse stick."

"You have a point. In that case, I'm going to have to go and arrest myself later." He picked up his plate and put it in the sink. He'd forgotten how prickly Crystal could be. Kane refilled the cup again, and headed for the door. "I should get back to that. Gosh, I hope I agree to go quietly." He said as he left the kitchen.

"Thank you for the breakfast," Crystal called out as he headed for the door. "Enjoy the deathray and have fun arresting yourself," she murmured after he left, shaking her head. He was going to arrest himself... right. Surely there were ninja Secret Service agents who would be more than willing to poison him and arrest him at the same time.