xp_logs | BACKDATED: Kevin & Tabitha (Reply)

Kevin and Tabitha are assigned to work together to help those snowed in at Whistler. They don't exactly get on. Takes place before this log.

Great, leave New York and there's an avalanche? Kevin considered that life at least only had one bad mark in the South. It was a big black mark, but it wasn't an avalanche. Maybe he should really stick to always being south of the Mason-Dixon line. There weren't avalanches down there.

He stared at the mass of snow, the panic and mostly thought, How'm I supposed to help? Kevin looked down at his hands and realised his mutation was never so useless as it was with snow He couldn't exactly melt the snow like he could disintegrate a person or a plant or anything like that. "Righ'," he said to himself and looked over at Tabitha. "Guess Ah could just, like, pull people out an' all." Mutation was useless with snow, but Kevin was at least physically strong. He may as well put his muscle to use for something other than pinning Jay against a wall. Not tha thought ya need ta be havin' righ' now, Kev.

Tabitha pulled her mittens fully on to her hands. "Days like this, I almost wish I'd stayed in Monterey." She checked the straps of her pack. "You ready to rescue, sweet cheeks?"

Kevin made a face as he looked at her. Mostly the look was for calling him sweet cheeks. 'Cause Ah look like a 'sweet cheeks,' righ'? "Never agreed ta playin' hero when Ah signed on." He just wanted to get away from the damn mansion.

"It's something that just kinda happens to most of us," Tabitha smiled in sympathy. "But we've got the power and the training. Why not use it?" She shook her arms and legs a bit. "Do I look like the abominable snow man?"

"You got tha trainin'. Ah just decompose thin's by touchin' 'em." Which, really, not really the stuff of superheroes here. Not by a long shot. He looked over at her, quirking an eyebrow. "Nah, bu' ya look like ya might freeze an' tip over er sumthin'."

"Thanks, I appreciate it." She pulled her goggles over her eyes and took a grip on her walking sticks. "Let's get our butts in gear, it's only getting colder."

"Righ', so what're we gonna do exactly? Ah can shovel an' you can cause another avalanche?" Which, really, not the best idea ever. Maybe he could sit on a tree somewhere so he could claim being useful.

"Oh, sweet cheeks, tell me you forgot your shovel." She held her walking sticks in one hand and reached back into her pack. She pulled out a plastic spade-shaped container. "It even has directions on the inside."

"Didn't get one." That thing didn't even look like a shovel. It looked like a glorified bucket to make a weird sand castle. This hero thing? It wasn't for Kevin. At all. Considering it was quite likely that he was going to do more harm to people than good it should have occurred to other people as well.

"You can grab one from the supply truck, over there," Tabitha pointed."Unless you want to use mine, young studly specimen of post-pubescent manhood." She hid her grin in putting her shovel back.

Kevin raised an eyebrow at her. She did not just seriously say that. Young studly specimen of post-pubescent manhood? "Ah'll get mah own." He trotted off toward the supply truck, wondering if she practiced at being that condescending.

Yes, I'm going to hell to sit in the Dirty Old Ladies' Knitting Corner. We'll all knit obscene body warmers together/ She thought to herself as she put her pack back together. She shook it back into place and transferred her walking stick back to the free hand.

Kevin came back with a shovel in hand, shivering slightly at the cold. He didn't like cold. Sure, he could handle it with maybe a few more layers or something, but really cold shouldn't even exist. It was detrimental to his mood and just made him more surly than usual. "Well, we goin' then?" he asked her, nodding over to the house that needed to be dug out.

The pair climbed awkwardly over the snow to the house. Neither had much experience with snow shoes. Once there, they broke out their shovels, complete with directions. As a team, they painstakingly followed those directions. One vertical cut followed by one or two side cuts to form a block. With sides roughly equivalent to the shovel blade, it went surprisingly quick, though by no means easy.

They were covered in frozen sweat and three feet down when a shovel hit something hard and solid sounding. Tabitha looked up at Kevin. "Crap."

Kevin quirked an eyebrow up more at her reaction than anything else. "Well we were diggin' ta hit somethin' 'ventually, weren't we?" Was it possible to be both hot and cold at the same time? Hot and sweating but being chilled by the air on that sweat? It was like a strangely cruel game the world wanted to play on them.

Ignoring his crankiness with the cold, Kevin crouched down to scoop and brush away the snow to see what it was they'd hit exactly. "It's jus' a downed tree's all," he told her. Kevin glanced up at Tabitha with a wry look on his face. "Can' jus' blast through it withou' causin' another avalanche, can ya?" He didn't actually wait for an answer, but rather he began pulling one of his gloves off. "Yeah, didn' think so. Too bad. Woulda been faster'n this." He laid his hand on the back and watched as the tree was slowly eaten away beneath his skin, the decay spreading out over the surface and probably going down into it. It'd probably take a good twenty minutes like this, though, so he pulled his other glove off as well. More skin meant faster decomposition. They just had to get through technically, but it was a big tree and it was dense material.

Tabitha kept digging around him as he worked on the tree. She stopped a minute to catch her breath. "Y'know," she said on a pant. "It'd be way quicker if you stripped. And I'm sure the entire valley would appreciate the view." She teased.

Eyes narrowed slightly in response to that tone. It was really too bad that she had a point. "Ya gonna dump boilin' water over mah head when Ah start turnin' blue?" But as he asked the question he was standing and pulling off his jacket. Just because she'd gone and said something, and the way she'd said it, he threw it at her, hoping it would land on her head. Kevin didn't take the time to see if it did, choosing to pull his top two shirts off instead. The wife beater was only coming off if it was dire. He threw the shirts at her as well.

The jacket hit Tabitha in the head, as she was too busy gaping. She didn't think he'd actually do it. She snapped her mouth shut in time to catch the shirts. For once, she had nothing to say. She could only stare with wide, if appreciative, eyes.

Kevin wasn't paying attention to her in the least as he pressed his chest against the tree, arms spread and pressed against the bark as well. He was trying desperately to not shiver to death and instead chose to watch the decomposition intently. Even when it was just ash touching his skin minutes later he continued to stare. Weapon o' mass destruction. Tha's me. It was nearly twenty minutes before Kevin could pull away, letting the ashes fall down, the thick trunk now in two with a path wider than Kevin through it. His back hurt from being in the position so long and his skin tingled more as he stretched. Now where'd he leave that shovel?

Tabitha pushed his clothes back at him. "Put these on first," she said. "Your teeth are rattling." She grabbed both shovels and shouldered Kevin aside to do some work of her own. "Showoff, making me look like an overgrown firework," she muttered as she dug out more snow.

Kevin quite literally jumped away from her when she tried to bodily push him aside. "Wha' abou' tha' didn' you jus' get?! Kevin? Skin? Contac'? Bad idea!" He pointed at her jacket, shaking his head. "That's not synthetic." He was going to leave the shirts off just in case there was another tree but at this point he had to put them on not for a fear of the cold but because the person he was stuck working with was clearly too stupid to remember not everyone could turn their mutation off!

"Nylon and polyester, dorkfish. I checked when I found out I'd be working with you." Her next shovelful revealed the top edge of a window. "Paydirt!" She dropped to her knees to use her hands to pack the snow away from the glass. Faces pressed against the window pane, full of wide eyes and hope. "I know you like being nekkid, sweet cheeks, but I've gotta hand them up to you. Don't worry, you can strip again as soon as they're safe." The kid was jumpier than the Mexican jumping beans sold in tourist traps around the country. It was just possible that she should turn down the dirty old woman humor JUST a bit.

He didn't believe her about the nylon and polyester from the looks of the jacket. He'd gotten pretty good at sizing up material visually out of necessity. Maybe it was part nylon and polyester, but he was willing to bet it wasn't entirely. Kevin really had to bite back the urge to tell her to fuck off, quite honestly. Any and all patience he normally had flew right out the window around her for unknown reasons. "Bad planning," was all he muttered. Pairing the two of them up was the first bit of bad idea. Handing anyone to him was the other.

When things were weighed out, it wasn't worth the risk of panic attack to hand him anyone, to be honest. He'd be of no use to anyone like that and Tabitha already had him teetering on the edge as it was. "You work on them, Ah'll get someone actually useful." He didn't even wait for her to respond before leaving. Kevin could find someone to swap with easily enough. There were people all over the place. He'd do something else useful-like and he'd find someone else to be touching people. That brain thing? He wasn't sure some people actually used it too much.