Mark & Scott, backdated to Monday 11/10

[x-pressive.livejournal.com]

Mark takes advantage of his temporary lodgings to get in a training session with Scott, where they talk about the fall of New York and what will happen next.


"I will master this trick some day," Mark grunted over the sounds of Devo. Half a dozen iron marbles danced lazily over his outstretched palm. "Forge told me Magneto does this to keep in shape, so to speak. Kinda hurts my brain, though. The world looks like a drawing of magnetic fields that you see in physics textbooks. Also, the music sucks."

"You should see the sort of object-manipulation my wife and Nathan can do with their TK sometime," Scott commented idly from where he was leaning against the wall of the Danger Room. It hadf been simple enough to set Mark up with some training time; not many of the team were keen on the idea of throwing themselves fully back into training as of yet, even those who hadn't been injured in New York. "It can be a bit terrifying. Walking through a barrage of rubber bullets and spelling their names with the ricochets. That sort of thing."

"Finesse has never particularly been my strong suit with my mutation. I'm more of a 'just shove all the power in there and hope for the best' kind of guy." The marbles ended their escapades and started revolving around Mark's wrist like tiny satellites. "Not terribly efficient, I know. Emma's suggested doing this kind of stuff more often to get that fine control. This specifically, though, tends to kill any electronics around me. And a grumpy Doug is an annoying Doug."

"Still. You never know." Working with Mark, as always, was oddly relaxing; he didn't demand much, he listened, and he didn't tend to blow things up. "Temporary accommodations all right?" Scott asked after a moment, not quite dryly.

"It's no Four Seasons but I guess it'll do," Mark teased. "It's nice to be out of the city for once, and not because I'm abroad or in Hell or whatever. And I don't have to go to work, which is pretty sweet. I'm antsy to go home, though. I don't do well outside of New York for extended periods."

"Shouldn't be too much longer." Scott folded his arms across his chest, letting his head rest against the cool metal of the wall behind him as he watched Mark. "So, discover any new tricks under pressure in New York?" he asked, and wondered if the question sounded too pro forma. With too many of the conversations he'd been having lately, it had felt like he was going through the motions. People wanted to say specific things, and hear other specific things in return...

The marbles faltered but Mark quickly sent them back into rotation. He hadn't even really talked with Marie-Ange or Jean-Phillipe about it yet. "I learned I'm capable to generating at least six thousand volts of electricity and sustaining it. Kinda like three electric chairs at once."

"Ah," Scott said quietly. "Lethal tricks. Just the sort of thing one wants to discover, huh?"

Mark picked a marble and charged it, attracting the others to stick to each other as if they were all magnets. "I don't lose any sleep over it," he admitted. "This hydrokinetic killed a kid and would have kept killing if he wasn't stopped, and he wasn't about to be reasoned with. I don't like it and I'm sure people would say that I had other options, but I don't think that matters."

Scott watched the marbles. "I had to make a choice I didn't like, either," he said after a moment, "and given that I'm the chief preacher of the gospel of 'do not kill', it makes it sort of sadly ironic. And possibly hypocritical. But, well, when you have a neutron bomb about to go off..." He stopped, shrugged. "I think a number of us made choices or acted in ways we wouldn't, under closer to normal circumstances."

Mark swung the marbles around and focused on the odd green lines of the magnetic field that kept them connected. "I think we all get a break from our normal ethics," he posited. "I don't think I could blame anyone for the decisions they made, however dumb they may've been, since there was no time to plan or think and we're not all like you or Remy who can strategize on their feet, you know?"

"Strategy's a funny thing," Scott said, with a smile that was humorless enough to indicate that he did not mean 'funny hah-hah'. "I'm not surprised I had to defend ours from that last fight with Apocalypse - on the surface it did sort of look like I let the X-Men run amok."

Mark snorted, his expression mirroring Scott's. "Please. I was there, too, and had I been running on more than three hours of sleep over four days, I'd have done more than just choke the bitch myself."

"I'm surprised I haven't had X-Men yelling at me," Scott said, somewhat heavily. "I knew I had to let them use all that anger, if we had any chance of putting him down for long enough to take him into custody. There just wasn't any other way to counter his powers. You know, I was most worried about someone going too far? I didn't even stop to think about the legion of people who were going to jump to conclusions in the aftermath."

"Every fucker's gotta take out their frustration on something. We make ourselves an easy target, I guess." The marbles fell and Mark caught them with his right foot, which he kicked so he could catch the marbles on his left foot, like a Hacky Sack. "I'm pretty much willing to ignore everything that's happened in the past couple of weeks and start keeping score again after Thanksgiving so people can calm the fuck down and get some perspective."

"Enjoy that particular privilege," Scott said, but he was smiling as he said it. "I've got to worry about the whys, and the wherefores, and the 'But the LAST time, you let us kick the shit out of the bad guy!' complaints."

"Maybe you need to raise your standards. 'No X-Men until you learn how to judge situations appropriately and stop drawing false parallels.'" Mark shrugged, kicked the marbles back into his hands, and turned the music off. The sudden disappearance of the magnetic fields was like walking into a dark room after being out in the sun for hours, and it took him a few seconds to readjust. "I know there's sometimes some tension between folk here and folk at our place, but I also think it's kind of exaggerated, know what I mean? It's like a territorialism of mutancy."

Scott was watching Mark rather keenly as the music went off, looking for the reaction - Mark didn't always handle variants on his powers the same way as those who had it as their primary mutation – and didn't react to his words at first. "The shift was a bit jarring, wasn't it?" he said. "Don't worry, with practice that should improve." Mark's comments registered, finally, and Scott's eyes narrowed very slightly. "I won't deny things are not always harmonious," he said.

"I don't see why they shouldn't be," Mark countered, still rubbing his eyes. "It's not like you're regularly asking us to come on missions with you or we ask you all for some, er, 'external consulting expertise.' We encounter different issues and handle them differently. Whatever. We've got enough strife in our lives to artificially create more."

"You're more or less preaching to the choir," Scott pointed out, then paused. "Trust is a funny thing," he said after a moment. He liked Mark. He just wasn't about to be entirely forthright with him. "Lots of ins and outs and unexpected twists. I would point out that you all currently have beds and a roof over your head, whatever was said or thought out in the field." He shrugged, smiling crookedly. "I tend to think actions speak louder than words. Even the small actions."

"And I'm sure everyone appreciates it, even if they're too much of a jackass to admit it. Here you go." Mark handed the marbles back to Scott. "In any case, we probably won't be here for much longer. They're bound to start letting people back into Manhattan soon, and I bet Emma will make it so we get first dibs on the borough."

"She does have a habit of pulling strings. I imagine it'll be good to be home," Scott said. "Or at least back where you can start making it feel like home again, huh?" He gestured around with his free hand, giving Mark a wry smile. "This place has seen its share of action over the years. So I know there's no 'getting back to normal'."

"I'll settle for something vaguely reminiscent of the status quo. I miss my apartment and all my stuff. And I will not be happy if they cancel the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving. That's my favorite part of the holiday." Along with the drinking which he longed to return to.
On a whim, Scott flipped a marble up into the air and sent it flying in the other direction with a flicker of an optic blast. The slight grin he gave Mark had a definite edge of I'm showing off, yes, I know. "Okay, so, productive session," he said. "Let's do this again before you do wind up going home, all right? Mucking around with the equivalent of magnetokinesis can be a little tricky and I wouldn't want to see you accidentally impale a teammate. They tend to hold grudges."

"As if Amanda doesn't already have enough piercings."

Comments

[xp_daytripper]

"As if Amanda doesn't already have enough piercings."

*giggles* Nice job, you two.