xp_logs | Day Zero: Team Charlie

Catching their breath, Amanda and Callisto talk about the effects the changes to New York are having on both of them.

They snatched a brief respite in a small chamber that might have been
some kind of maintenance storeroom once, but now was little more than
a concrete cell, dimly lit by the weak glow of a single naked light
bulb hanging from the ceiling. With a watch posted on the doorway, the
rest of them tried to catch their breath.

Easier said than done - Amanda winced and groped in her pocket for the
bottle of aspirin. It had been full when they'd started and it was
already a third of the way down. It didn't bode well for her liver.

"You haven't got some ibuprofen or paracetamol to stack with that?"
Apparently sneaking up before speaking was a gimmick of Callisto's, or
at least a product of her habit of moving quietly. The pair of them
were standing far enough away that it was obvious it would be impolite
to listen in, but the taller woman turned her back to the rest of the
group anyway before going on. "You holding up okay?

"Fine, if you don't count the way my brain's trying to crawl out my
ears," was Amanda's response. It was easy to see the witch was using
humour to mask the pain or the effort it took to think and reply
coherently - the tendency to lapse into "Bedlam talk" was insidious.
"I wanted to say thanks, by the way. For the whole bodyguard thing. 'M
next to useless until we can break whatever this fucker's hold on New
York is."

Callisto's eyes narrowed a little in thought. She hadn't even meant
for Amanda to notice her intentional proximity to the witch when Sarah
was taking her turn at the lead. It had only made sense - everyone
else seemed able to hold their own, where Amanda seemed to barely be
holding herself together. She cleared her throat, her tone a
little gruff. "Yeah. Well. It's fine. I mean, no problem," she managed
awkwardly.

Amanda smiled a little to herself, masking it as a cough. Callisto
reminded her of Sarah, back in her early days at the school, all gruff
and trying so hard to convince people she was some kind of monster.
Not that Sarah wasn't a monster in her own way, but Amanda knew
it was something they shared. All of X-Force did, really. "'S kind of
frustrating - I mean, I know New York. I've been absorbing
energy from it for almost three years now. And all of a sudden, the
door's been slammed in my face and that's apparently time for me to go
barmy again."

Callisto frowned as she processed this. "Right," she said, her tone
making it clear she didn't quite understand but was going to take
Amanda's words at face value for now. "I guess... we've all been
thrown off by this. Stuff's kinda out-of-whack."

It was now, in the dim, flickering light, that Amanda could see how
worn Callisto looked. Their trek through the tunnels and encounters
with the meatspores wasn't the sort of thing that should really take
it out of someone with Callisto's talents, but the unfamiliarity of it
all seemed to be taking its toll - she was sweating a little, there
were dark rings around her eyes, and her shoulders had an
uncharacteristic slump to them as she leaned against the filthy wall
of the chamber.

"A bit like coming home to find someone's rearranged the furniture and
is sitting in your favourite comfy chair, yeah?" Amanda replied, not
wanting to insult the proud woman with overt sympathy but wanting to
convey that she understood what both Callisto and Sarah were dealing
with.

Callisto snorted derisively at the 'comfy chair' comment. "This place?
I hate it. Always did." The bitterness to her tone suggested a
relationship with and memory of the tunnels that was a million miles
from Sarah's, rather unexpected coming from the some-time leader of
the mutants who'd lived there. After a moment she added, "but... at
least I knew it."

The remark raised Amanda's eyebrows. She hadn't expected that - Sarah
had been so adamant about Callisto's 'upworlder' attitude that Amanda
had pictured in her head someone who saw the tunnels as their true
home. "What kept you down here, then, if you hated it so much? You
could have left."

"The Morlocks," the other woman said simply. "They needed someone to
hold them together. I was..." She shrugged. "They were just kids, most
of them. Scared, homeless kids who'd been told they were monsters so
often they believed it. Hiding down there like... that guy... with the
mask. And the opera. I wasn't much older than they were, but I'd been
taking care of myself a lot longer."

Amanda smiled faintly at the reference, the expression fleeting as
another surge of pain jabbed through her temples. "And now you're
doing it again. Holding a group together. Only this time, the monsters
are real."

Callisto's pale-eyed gaze flickered over to where Sarah was examining
the exits, exchanging a few words with Forge as he presumably
consulted his maps. "I don't think I'm the one holding things together
this time," she murmured, her tone carrying the tiniest hint of
something almost like pride to it. Though you have no right to be
proud of her. You weren't the one who made her who she is today.

"Well, I'm glad you're down here. Need someone to keep me from
wandering off with the fairies." Amanda caught the glance, the tone,
and filed it away for later. Once a meddler, always a meddler, but at
least these days she'd learned tact. Mostly. "I've never wanted to
kick someone in the face as much as whoever's doing this, I can tell
you."

Callisto nodded, pursing her lips and straightening, sticking her
hands in her pockets. "Well let's hope you get the opportunity."