Morgan & Clarice | Friday Afternoon

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Morgan meets Clarice who assures her that while she's definitely a slut Morgan is at least not skanky.

Unlike the past couple years where she'd been so busy with school and training and missions and life, Clarice had a lot of free time on her hands now. She hung with friends, she worked out, but really, she was bored. There were no missions or training, no school. So she had a lot if time to spend on other things. Like redecorating.

So far she'd sewn a new comforter and sheets set for her bed with pillows and had the material for drapes once she decided how she wanted to hang them. Today though, she was working other things for her room. It was going to be so stylish, HGTV wouldn't know what hit it. Right now though, she was pinning the fabric together and trying to decide if she wanted to add fringe to the table skirt or not. Sometimes the music helped her decide, but the new Def Leppard album she'd downloaded was not really a fringe-friendly album. Very hard rock. Though the fringe was cute on the pillows and she had enough.

Opening the door, Clarice's poked her head out into the hallway to see who was availible for an opinion. Ah ha! "New girl!" she called, spying a white head not attached to Ororo. "I need an opinion!"

Morgan was meandering because it was most of what she did around the place for the most part. She had training sessions with the telepathic doctor and she helped move stuff around as the place reinvented itself with this Institute thing, but mostly she took off on her bike or swam or had target practice. It got pretty old pretty quickly and she was considering poking around that library for a good long while because she knew that movies had no hope of keeping her attention for more than fifteen minutes tops today.

While she sauntered down the hallway like she had all the time in the world, which she did and which made her slightly cranky, she heard an unfamiliar voice. No big surprise there, they were all unfamiliar voices. She spun on her heel and saw a purple girl's head poking out of the door she recognized as the one to the suite Monet lived in. Well, at least now she knew what the roommate looked like. An eyebrow quirked when she was informed an opinion was sought after and she replied with an offhand, "Don't use teeth unless you know he'll appreciate it and never more than a very light grazing unless he's a pain slut." Hey, she hadn't told Morgan what she needed an opinion on, just that she needed one. It was an opinion, just not the one the purple girl was looking for.

"That's not an opinion, that's advice," Clarice nitpicked, "I need an opinion. Come here and give one unless it's time for your hourly STD check downstairs," she retorted, completely unoffended by the other girls comments. Kyle appreciated teeth, though he wasn't as it was put 'a pain slut.' Clarice had slightly more tact than to actually tell her that though. The new girl probably had no idea she was dating Kyle anyways.

"All advice is just someone's opinion," Morgan pointed out, completely unfazed by the STD comment. "I've actually been passing my checks often enough that I only have to do them every eight hours now." She smiled sweetly at the purple girl. After a moment of consideration she strolled up to the girl who seemed just as abrasive as she was. Lovely. Her long legs cleared the distance swiftly and she stopped right in front of the demanding female. "That wig looks like shit on you." Again, what opinion hadn't been clarified.

"Kinda like your face," Clarice agreed readily. The wig did look like shit, but it was better than being bald or worse, the scraggly little ickle hairs she was growing. Now her head was worse than being bald, it was patchy. One day though it would be gorgeous again. "They don't make wigs in my natural colour though. You should see me as a blonde."

Wow, that was kind of a pathetic come back. "Could be worse, I could be wearing yours." Purple did nothing for her mood, the thought of having a purple body nearly made Morgan cringe. If she hadn't bitten back the impulse she very may have. "It's not the color that's the problem. It's not the best quality and the cut blows." She arched an eyebrow before asking, "Enough opinions yet? Am I dismissed?"

Rolling her eyes, Clarice held up a pillow with fringe and the unmade table skirt in the same base fabric. There was stuffing all over the floor, "To fringe the table skirt or not?" she asked. "Final opinion. And you leave my wig alone. It's sensitive. Unless you want to be bald too? Join the crowd and be one of the cool kids?"

Morgan's nose crinkled up almost like she smelt something particularly foul. "Not. Unless you're planning for children to run under it and tug to cause a scene at an inopportune moment. Otherwise? No." She had never seen the purpose of fringe. Or things like sewing fringe onto things. Morgan lacked many feminine qualities, among them sewing and the desire to care about most things vaguely domestic that she didn't view as practical. "Unlike you I could just borrow someone's body while it grew back. Or, you know, get a decent wig. You really should upgrade that thing. It's on par with a bad toupee." She wondered how Monet allowed her roommate to walk around with such a monstrosity. Monet seemed the sort to be physically pained by the mere sight of such a thing.

"Fringe it is then," Clarice decided. Whatever this girl thought, Clarice was going to do the opposite. "Fringe is fun. And the beading is nifty," really, she'd found some awesome fabrics and things. Her room was going to be awesome.

The wig wasn't that bad. Sure, the cut was awful, Clarice hated the cut, but it was real human hair and the quality wasn't as bad as the other girl thought. It just looked off on her, Clarice's hair was not black. "Do you have a name Miss Opinionated?"

"Fringe is obnoxious," Morgan countered. The person endorsing the fringe was as well so it probably suited. She wanted to unleash a half dozen hyperactive kittens on the suite to fuck up all that fringe. If it wasn't for the fact that Monet also lived behind this door she might have actually seriously considered it. Maybe she'd consider it anyway.

A bored and vaguely unimpressed look crossed Morgan's features. "You manage 'new girl' but not enough to figure out a name first. Nice." She considered the pro's and con's of giving the girl her actual name--and by "actual name" she, of course, meant her current alias--before deciding the confusion would be fun. "It's Keira."

"As in Knightly?" Clarice asked. It would totally explain the actress if she were a mutant. A blue mutant especially. "I'm not as stupid as you think I am. Try again," she'd seen something on the journals...."Pancake and rabbit!" she said randomly, snapping her fingers. "You were talking with Kyle."

Morgan rolled her eyes. "Aye, because no one possesses the name Keira in the entire world aside from one actress? It took Morgan more than a few moments to realize what the hell the significance of pancakes and rabbits, particularly when linked, had. Right, rabbit with a pancake on his head. "Kyle's the feral but not feline and definitely not canine one, yeah?"

"He's a fox," Clarice agreed. Wow, she kept up with Clarice-logic surprisingly well. Impressive. She meant he was a fox in more than one way, it was part of his mutation to be sure, but he was also hot. "You're something with an M? Moran, Morgan, Megan? Something like that. I remember now."

"Vulpine is definitely in the canine family," she pointed out, refusing to address the issue of apparent physical attraction. From the icons Morgan would agree he was cute...for a kid. There was a definite cut off point on the lower scale of the age range when a person just became too young to be defined as hot to her. For Morgan that line hovered around the age of twenty-one or so. There were exceptions, but very, very few of them were teenagers. "Apparently that memory of yours is a steel trap, innit? Mostly functions but a bit rusty and hard to wrestle anything out of."

"You get nuked and see how much you like it, bitch," the bitch part wasn't really necessary, but it was fun. And her lack of memory had nothing to do with being nuked, but it was fun to blame everything on the nuking. And it was a fun word. Clarice was turning 20 in a little over a week so Kyle being a year younger wasn't a big deal. She was practically a kid herself. As an old birthday card of hers had said, 'Aging is inevitable. Maturing is optional.' "I don't bother to remember trivial things like your name."

"What, and it miraculously affected your memory retention in addition to giving you an excuse into the world of badly suited wigs?" If Morgan was in any way hurt or the least bit ruffled by the purple pixie's words it didn't show. Clarice didn't actually register high enough on Morgan's scale of things to affect her much. Mostly she was kind of amusing in her knee-jerk reactions. It'd be a blatant lie to say Morgan hadn't been antagonizing the girl on purpose just for the fun it. "Then you can do with Keira." It was a name she used once, but Morgan thought maybe it had only lasted a week or so before she'd needed to pick up a mimic because it didn't trigger any memories at all.

"Nah, I'm going to call you..." Clarice paused to think of a suitable name, "Blanche. After the Golden Girl. You remind me of her."

Morgan made a gesture with her hand as if inviting her to go ahead and use it. "Blanche...is that the old senile one?" For some reason she wouldn't have put it past the girl if it was. Morgan hadn't exactly been up on her television since the age of fourteen and before that she hadn't watched it much anyway. The old senile Golden Girl was the only one she actually knew of.

"Nope that's Sophia. She's the awesome one. Rose is the naive one, Dorothy is the smart one. Blanche is the slutty one," Clarice told her, she'd gotten way too acquainted with the Golden Girls during her convalescence. They were pretty funny though. It was too bad Estelle Getty who'd played Sophia had died. They couldn't have a Golden Girls reunion special now and Clarice kinda wanted one. It'd be awesome!

Morgan wore an expression that suggested she was carefully considering this until she nodded slowly. "How original. You could have gone for Jenna for the same effect but very well, call me Blanche." She spoke with a calmness she hadn't used in the entire short span of her conversation with Clarice. The issue of names was one that didn't get to Morgan much given how often she swapped them out anyway. To her they were just words without significance or real impressions of their own.

"Jenna? Like Jamison?" Clarice made a face as she carefully unpinned the fabric to add the fringe in and repin it, "Ew. No. You're not like her. She's all ugly and skanky. You're not a skank," it was a backhanded compliment given that she'd already called Morgan a slut and a bitch, but that was Clarice for you. She called a spade a spade, "You can be a slut without being a skank. Blanche is not a skank either."

A single eyebrow arched and raised. Exactly how could one manage to be a slut without being a skank to some degree? "What if I'm not a slut? What if I'm just a whore?" On one hand Morgan was glad to know the mask she chose to wear so people didn't end up digging into his mercenary history was effective. On the other hand she really had to marvel at just how quickly people are willing to jump to the easiest conclusion and the lowest common denominator. People were some of the most astounding creatures, but then they really did like simple, didn't they?

Skankiness really depended on how the sluttiness was presented. For that matter a person could be a skank without being a slut too, one was not always indicative of the other. "Then you're a smart slut," Clarice replied, still pinning her cloth back together, "Never give it away for free. If someone wants it, they'll pay." Clarice wasn't jumping to conclusions, she was bored and entertaining herself at Morgan's expense, though Morgan didn't seem to mind. It was a win-win in her eyes.

"Right," Morgan said the word slowly, resisting the urge to just shake her head at the girl. "Tell that to a prostitute some time, see what she says." That had to be one of the most idiotic things Morgan had heard in a while. Yes, whores were smart. They were also usually junkies and so psychologically fucked that most psychiatrists wouldn't know where to begin. Wow. "Well, this has been real enlightening but now that you've got your dire fringe debate settled I'll be moving on to more stimulating things. Preferably ones that involve working brain cells."

"Uh huh," Clarice was having problems the fringe and was intently working on it and didn't really care if she stayed or went. "Bye bye," she replied distracted by the fringe. If she had actually been listening she might have been offended and protested, but right now she didn't much care.

Note to self: You hate children so stop talking to them so much, Morgan reminded herself as she walked out the door without another word. Jesus, was anyone over the age of twenty and decent around there other than Monet and the Professor? Maybe she had to give it more time. Too bad her patience wasn't one of her known embraced virtues.