xp_logs | Amanda, Cain and Garrison

Two X-Men and a Trenchcoat meet in a bar and talk about the weirdness of their lives.

"Seriously, I convinced Harry to hire him for a gig." Kane said into his cell phone. "I know. You got to tell Heather and make that 'nyeh nyeh' gesture at her. Yeah, sure, I know she'll spam me with all sorts of midget porn to get back at me, but it's totally worth it!"

Garrison snapped the phone shut and walked through the front door of Harry's. It had taken a great deal of persuasion but Harry had agreed, grudgingly, to offer Kane's friend a trial set on a quiet Tuesday night to see whether or not he fit in with the general mood of the bar. Kane hadn't told everyone about it yet, just in case it didn't work out, but had to make the traditional crowing call back to Alpha Flight to mock them.

Inside the bar, there was only a handful of patrons, and a set up on the raised area that held the odd act or karaoke night that occasionally happened when Harry was out of town or on vacation. He was just about to order a beer when the lights and bar in front of him was eclipsed.

Cain looked down at Garrison, then arched an eyebrow at the band warming up on the small stage. "I swear to God," the big man said after a long drink of his beer, "these friends of yours play any of that 'All Outta Love' crap, I'm gonna skip your Canuck ass clear 'cross the pond."

With a stifled belch, Cain pushed his oversized stein across the bar for Harry to refill. "And if it ain't in English, I'm tossing the lot of you back to Canada."

"Jean-Paul used to play his Montreal rap albums for you guys too, eh?" Garrison accepted the pint with a smile and raised it to Cain. "I promise no Air Supply, no French, and I'm afraid no Alison Blaire, unless you're providing an awful lot of drinks to the band."

On the other side of Cain, an English accented voice ordered, with just a touch of glee, a pint of Guinness. Shortly after, a short, blonde witch appeared at Cain's elbow, looking up at the two of them. Despite the tiredness and worry in her face, she gave them a grin. "So, you got your mate Johnny in? Brilliant," Amanda said, raising her pint to Garrison. She'd decided to drop into Harry's on the way back to New York after a visit to Nathan, and it was turning out to be a good idea.

Cain looked down and blinked, then pointed at Amanda, then to Harry and back again, eyebrows raised in a silent question to the barkeep. When his old friend nodded, Cain looked back at Amanda and Garrison. "Well, holy crap. You went and got yourself all legal at some point. Damn. I'm gettin' old."

He paused for a moment, then raised his stein to Garrison. "You know that means she buys a round, don't it?"

"Absolutely. See, if this was in New York, we'd have to buy her round, but because it's in Westchester, she has to buy ours. It's in the regulations or something." Garrison said sagely, noting the baseball scores on the television and wincing at the CFL coverage being reduced to a single line on the ticker. "If you can guess where Favre's going, I'll pick up the round." He said to Amanda after a moment.

"No fair asking me political questions!" she protested. "Um, Belgium?"

"Next round's on the girl, Harry!" Cain crowed around another pull of his beer. "Seriously, you're working in New York, dating that kid from L.A., you gotta learn more than fucking cricket. Shit, even Remy paid attention to Sportscenter now and then between his weepy Joanie Loves Hajji soaps."

Amanda mock-pouted and pulled her wallet out of her back pocket. "Fuck, I don't even pay that much attention to sport back home." A part of her was secretly amused that she was "grown up" enough to buy Cain a beer. "Besides, I think I probably owe you a few of these after some of the stunts I pulled as a student, old man."

"Not to mention the fact that all that graffiti you done painted on my house went up in flames a while back," Cain growled.

"Wait, what?" Garrison paused with his beer halfway to his mouth. Amanda had set fire to the mansion and still had all her limbs? Obviously there was something that Garrison had missed between them. Maybe Cain was secretly Amanda's father and she was the product of some torrid relationship between him and a female British agent in Vietnam in 1962. Wait, no, that would make her forty-five. A roving British hippy, lost at some proto-Burning Man festival in the eighties and finding a roving man of quiet wisdom, who moved from place to place, solving crimes to an Alison Blaire soundtrack, cursed to forever wander alone...

"Not my fault the fucking Enchantress came calling," Amanda retorted, blissfully ignorant of the terrifying path Garrison's thoughts were taking. "She went and burned out my wards in the process of kidnapping the firestarters, didn't she?"

Cain pointed a finger, shaking it at the young witch. "Ain't nothing I hate more than them damn Ass Guardians. Son of a bitch cut me..." he mumbled, rubbing absently at his leg. "But shit, yet another time we all made it out all right, yeah? Buncha charmed fucking lives we lead."

"No kidding. It's funny, as a kid, whenever my dad was in town, I'd hear all these stories about these crazy people. How he ran around dealing with them, and it never becomes real until you actually have to face them. Seriously, Zemocopters? Doom Fortresses? We survived an action figure playset."

Amanda nearly snorted a mouthful of Guinness up her nose at Garrison's remark. "Ow," she managed when she was done spluttering. "Talk about charmed lives. We came up against a bloody Nazi made out of bees. Doug nearly had a fit." She added to Cain. "I'll redo the wards, see if I can't include some kind of non-flammable warning system. But if it's any consolation, that fucking bitch gave me a migraine when she came through."

"Made out of bees?" Cain repeated incredulously. "That almost beats a sixty foot dragon stuffing Clarice down its pants. That gave me a bit of an uncomfortableness."

"She really wasn't all that impressed with the DragonBallZ shirt I got her following that mission. It cost me fifteen bucks and everything."

"Ow. Again." Amanda shook her head, pinching her nose. "Garrison, you do that to me again..." She left the threat hanging. "Wait, Clarice got shoved down a dragon's jockstrap?"

"More like a..." Cain motioned to his midsection, the motion sloshing his beer about in the stein loudly. "Loincloth! That kinda thing. I'd've laughed, except the big green bastard swatted me halfway to Taipei. You know, between big green dragons and giant doom puppies and dinosaurs - goddamn dinosaurs - in New Fucking York..."

"So, I hear there's a Swiss Chalet up for sale in Manitoba. We could take over the lease, serve chicken and fries to tourists. Cain could run the bar." Kane said, receiving blank looks in return. "Maybe not. Looks like Johnny is getting set up. Quick quiz; if you had to face a former foe, who would you choose?"

Amanda scrunched up her nose. "I'm not sure I'm old enough for this one... Um, Arcade. He owes me a new eyebrow piercing for the one he ripped out, and I'd like to see the expression on his face when he realises Remy didn't actually blow my brains out all over his carpet." She looked up at Cain. "You?"

"Lessee," Cain drawled, thinking for a moment. "Wouldn't mind getting my hands on Gideon again. Except he's dead. Cyttorak... him too. Sabretooth? Me and Sam done ripped him a new one. I'd have to say those robot bastards, you know, the ones that almost shot my cat?" He snapped his fingers. "Reavers! Them. They take a punching real good."

"I'm thinking the Magnetic North guys. The one nearly cried, and the girl was about as actually badass as, well, the majority of our female students. She might as well have had her tongue pierced and listened to a lot of Linkin Park as her mutant power."Kane shook his head. "I think this is the very definition of graveyard humour, laughing about the people who are trying to kill us for utterly irrational reasons. And I think we have band sign here."

Garrison paused, and the first few chords of 'Folsom Prison Blues' wafted across the bar. "That would be the case."

Amanda hooked a barstool over and perched on it, head almost on a level with Cain's chest. Almost. At least this way she'd get less of a crick in her neck. "We caught him in New York for my birthday pub crawl," she explained to Cain. "Back when I got legal."

Cain just shrugged at Garrison. "That's the thing, ain't it? They keep getting older and we... wait, no, that ain't it. Aw hell, they know some Cash? They'll do," he proclaimed, turning his attention to the band.

"See, what did I say, Harry, eh?" Kane spread his hands and got a scowl from the bartender. "Guess not. Still, the most important thing is that we're alive to hear a bunch of Canadian songs that neither of you know. That's what life is really all about."