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xp_logsJean visits Amanda at work to ask about magic
Jean made it past the reception desk. it helped to know the staff. Amanda had been expecting her so there was no real surprise for her arrival.
"Hey," Jean said as she stepped into view.
"How're you feeling?"
Amanda looked up as Jean came into the main office. "Welcome to the Snow Valley Memorial Centre for Mutant Affairs," she said with a grin. "I'm doing fine - leg's still a bit stiff, but it's healing all right. What brings you here?" An expression of worry crossed her face. "Nico's all right, isn't she? I didn't sense anything..."
"Frankly I'm a little disappointed, "Jean said, glancing around. She had her thumbs through the loops of her jean pockets, not quite dressed as formal as usual, like a teacher or doctor. Just a normal person in a t-shirt and jeans. "I expected something more James Bond."
Jean smiled and shook her head.
"Nico's fine. I thought I'd stop by. I'd been giving some thought about it since what happened...about magic. It's something I'm wary about and I'd like to understand it better."
Fear often came from misunderstanding things. She wanted to fix that.
Amanda visibly relaxed. "Well, it wouldn't be a very good cover if we had 'Spies R Us' on the front," she replied with a chuckle. She rose, putting her computer to sleep and locking the keyboard. "Ah. Magic. I had a feeling this might come up. Come on to the boardroom, I'll get us a cuppa and try and help with that whole 'wary' thing."
"I'm always on the look out for one of those places. I'd really like to try out some spy gadgets. Though I suppose Hank would make some for me if I batted my eyelashes enough," Jean said. She then nodded.
"And lead the way."
Did magic cease becoming magic if you understood it? Wasn't the concept of magic supposed to be this mysterious means to an end?
The blonde witch led Jean past several offices, the server room (where Doug was engrossed in something) and the storeroom which had been commandeered as the magical volume storage. The boardroom was used for mission reports, research and the occasional meeting with people from outside of the team, and once she'd paused to make a couple of cups of tea - Amanda only drank the office coffee when pulling an all-nighter - she joined Jean at the large table.
"So, here we are," she said, wrapping her hands around her mug. "How about you ask the questions and I try to answer them? Avoids the big info dump that way."
Jean took a seat, peering into her tea. Tea. She'd remembered stories of people who could read fortunes with tea leaves. A true mutant power or magic ever still? She fell silent for a few moments.
"I'm not sure what to ask, actually. Magical principles aren't quite the same as scientific ones, are they?" she said, admitting a faint smile.
"Actually, they're more similar than you think," Amanda replied. "Forge and I did a bit of work together, back at the school." Her expression went distant for a moment. "Him and me and Charlie. Any way, we worked out a lot of magic is basically energy conversion. One type in, one type out."
Jean studied her, resisting the urge to put her hand on her arm but nevertheless sparing her a soft, sympathetic look before she set down her tea mug.
"One type in...like life energy?" she said. Amanda drew power from people and cities, Nico seemed to be displaying the same tendency.
"But magic as a whole...the end result....it almost verges on being able to do so many things. Where is the structure? These rituals that are conducted....like with Nico's parents....using words the invoke that...being...within her...as well as sacrificing people....how is that just energy conversion?" To simply label it as that seemed...too simple.
She had a few theories, once the words left her lips, but the idea of it all still seemed rather intricate and involved.
"Okay, let's start with the energy in." Amanda said, seeing the confusion on Jean's face and remembering she was a scientist, not an occultist. "Magic users get their energy from a lot of different places. You don't even have to be a mutant, like Nico and I - we're kind of unusual in that way, so I'll get to us in a minute. Generally, tho', the energy comes from a few sources. Magical objects, mystical places and..." She paused. "Living beings. Life energy. The thing is, the type of energy tends to reflect the type of magic. Good energy means good magic. Bad energy..." Again, she paused, thinking of Nico. "Well, yeah, you get the picture. Life energy generally isn't on the good column."
"Black magic?" Jean said. She watched TV, but wasn't sure if it was a term real magic-practicing people used.
"So these things serve as a sort of fuel? Good energy burns clean, Bad energy is like coal, creating harmful byproducts?"
"Black magic's as good a term as any. The thing to remember is that intent's important for magic as well, Bad intention and bad energy equals bad magic, out the wazoo. And vice versa - you make a habit of using bad energy and doing bad spells, eventually, something rubs off. Which is why I work so hard with Nico on not using her magic for selfish ends - she has enough strikes against her and I don't want her thinking it's easier to just make things go her way. That leads to bad." Amanda sipped at her tea, gathering her thoughts. "I guess this is how it gets all tangled - the caster impacts the magic, and the magic impacts the caster."
Jean steepled her hands, resting them against her chin thoughtfully. "But, as you said, most magic casters are human and not mutant. Is magic casting, when you're a mutant, more personal, in a way? It's more of a balancing act?"
"It can be. A mutant power that lends itself to magic... well, it acts as a short cut. Instead of training and honing your body and your mind to be able to channel magical energy, we just do it." Amanda smiled wryly. "And as you said, yeah, it's a balancing act. Your body does naturally what most magic users train for years to manage, plus a whole bunch of hormones and teenage stuff and you've got something of a powderkeg. Which is again why the training with Nico."
"Her staff....is that run through black magic?" Jean said. She'd had it before and could use it, now with her new found abilities, had it found another 'power source?'
"Yes." Amanda's expression darkened, remembering how Tante had reacted to that particular item. At least they had Tante as an ally against it now. "It's tied into Nico's family and into their magic. Everything Nico does with it tends to be tainted by it, which is why I'm teaching her magic on her own. It's in her blood, but what she does with it isn't determined by destiny, no matter what prophecy might have to say about it. If I teach her as much as I can about using magic responsibly, as much light magic as I can get hold of, I'm hoping to counter the effects of the Staff. And eventually, I'm hoping to separate it from her. I can't yet - bloody thing's tied into her life force and if I just remove it, I could kill her. Even if I knew how."
"Even human beings if she uses the staff on them are tainted?" Jean asked, sitting up. "How? In what way?"
There was a lot of things she was trying to process from what she had just said and she was taking them in the order that they were given.
"No, not like that, not exactly. The magic's tainted, which means if she casts a spell on someone using the Staff, it might not go exactly as she means to." Amanda hastened to correct herself. "It's like... okay, the first spell I ever learned was to summon light." She snapped her fingers and George the werelight appeared, a happy little ball of brightness bobbing around their heads. "Because the magic source I use, the energy of the city itself, is a 'good' energy source, the spell's not tainted. When I taught the spell to Nico, back before her mutation surfaced and all her magic was coming from the Staff, it came out differently. Sort of an anti-light, really, all black and spiky and kind of aggressive, for a werelight, reflecting the source of the power. And now she's got two darker sources of magical energy, the Staff and living energy, so she's going to have to be really careful about keeping her motives pure and using the Staff as little as possible. It can't be trusted to not have an agenda of its own."
Jean nodded. "So it creates chaos out of order?" She was reminded somewhat of Wanda's powers in that respect.
"If I can help in any way with anything, please let me know. Other than what we're doing." She wasn't too afraid to defer to an expert if there was something she didn't know about. And this was definitely less charted territory.
Amanda nodded back. "Yeah, basically. As for helping... you lot can do a lot for her. It's not so different from normal powers ethics, really - teach her to think about consequences, about what she's trying to achieve with a spell and why. I can work on the practicalities, but, to be honest, I can't be there all of the time. Not with Remy gone and the rest of us trying to do damage control."
"I'll do what I can," Jean said. As long as she had a basic foundation of how things worked, and how to approach it she could pretty much wing it up to a certain point.
Jean glanced up. "How's the search going?" she asked quietly. She'd only heard what was in the report, and both knew what could be said and what couldn't when it came to the specifics of missions. It was mostly an acknowledgment of circumstances. She knew what it was like to have to wait, not knowing where your teammate was or what was being done to them a bit more intimately than most when your teammate was also the one you loved.
The witch sagged, looking tired and much older than her years. "No sign of him," she replied quietly. "I've tried my location spell, but I'm not picking up anything. Which doesn't mean much, just that he's probably not in a large enough city for me to get a bead on him." She rubbed her forehead. "I just wish we knew for sure what was going on. Even knowing he was dead.." She swallowed hard. "Even knowing that would be better than this."
"If they took him, it means they probably need him for something. Leverage, information...something. If they know who he is, it seems unlikely they'd just kill him outright," Jean said.
Unfortunately in those circumstances death was probably the better alternative to living, but she wasn't going to say that. She wanted him back safe and sound as much as the others.
"I wish for once he'd be trackable with telepathy. Then we'd be able to try to use Cerebro," she said. Not that it did a lot of good lately. Everyone seemed to be using psi-scrambling technology more and more.
Amanda nodded in agreement. "That'd just make things easy, and apparently we don't get that. What we do get is doing it the old-fashioned way. It doesn't help we don't know how much of our resources are compromised - these people knew who we were, which is fucking disturbing for a secret spy team, I can tell you."
A few possibilities popped into Jean's head at the thought, none of them good.She had a vivid imagination.
"Perhaps someone from Remy's past?" If they were out to get him, they could've done their homework.
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm sure you guys have thought about all of this. I'm just concerned." Even if she was worried for the man, she knew he had a whole team behind him searching for him.
"Oh, we have a pretty good idea who, it's more the where we're trying to work out. Seems like one of our first jobs is coming back to bite us on the arse. Of course, how they managed to work out who were were is a worry as well." Amanda sighed and shook her head. "We're doing our best, that's all we can hang onto."
Jean reflexively reached out to gently put her hand on Amanda's arm.
Despite the differences in their work, they still often had the same concerns, and the same assurances to get them through the day.
Warren puts himself on 'check on Amanda' duty.
Between Remy's capture and the incident with Nico's powers, it might be said the witch wasn't exactly on top of the world. Or even living in it: she'd been spending most if her awake time either with her books or in her computer, alternating between looking for clues of Remy's location and researching magic users with powers like Nico's, searching for a way to help her. So it was with some surprise she realised someone had been knocking on her door. "Um, just a sec!" she called, getting up from her kitchen table to open it.
Never let it be said that Warren was completely self-absorbed - he'd had a lot going on in his life, and most of it self inflicted, but it hadn't completely escaped his attention that he'd seen very little of his friend recently. He was peripherally aware of the reasons surrounding it, but that didn't stop him from showing up on her door to kidnap her. Even she had to take a little time off occasionally.
"Hello," Warren announced when she opened the door, flashing her a grin. He was dressed much more casually than usual, and more importantly, without the usual heavy jacket to hide his wings. No, they were folded neatly against his back, and Warren was more than enjoying the freedom from his harness. "I've come to kidnap you. Just so you know, this will go a lot better if you don't resist."
Amanda blinked owlishly at him, taking in the change. "New look?" she asked, taking in the lack of Giant Overcoat.
"I thought I'd try it out. It's been working for me so far." He grinned at her. "If you want to get changed before I make you leave, you've got about two seconds to scoot out of range."
Looking down at her track pants and faded Sex Pistols shirt, Amanda decided to cooperate. If only so she didn't wind up freezing her butt off. "Come in and make yourself comfy," she said, opening the door wider in welcome. "There should be some beer in the fridge if you want something while I change."
"Thanks," Warren replied, his hands sliding into his pockets as he wandered into the apartment. "I'd ask how you are, but since I did hear about Remy going missing, I thought I'd save you from stating the obvious." And he was supposed to be a distraction from that anyway.
The slight limp as she headed into her bedroom to change spoke for itself as well. "Yeah, well," was her lame reply. "What about you?" she called to him as she pulled her t-shirt over her head. "What brought about the whole out and proud look?"
"Combination of things," Warren replied, lingering not far from her door rather than taking a seat. If they were going to keep talking, then better off not to have to yell too much. "Fighting with my dad, and then there was something of a scare when I was in Rome over Easter. And I just didn't see the point any more. The only reason I was still in the closet was to make my dad happy, and considering that I'm pretty much incapable of doing that anyway, why bother? I might as well make myself happy."
"About bloody time," came the somewhat cheeky reply as Amanda flipped through her closet for something to wear. Nothing too short or too tight, stupid bandage. "What was the scare?"
Amanda couldn't see it, but Warren had the decency to look a little embarrassed before telling the story. "I may have been drunk and stupid enough to sleep with someone I don't know. We ended up tracking her down and getting all the images from her, but she certainly led us on a merry chase."
Luckily for him he couldn't see her face either. As it was, she stuck her head around the door to stare at him. "War," she said, rolling her eyes at him, not caring she was in her bra, panties and leg bandage. "Was it a decent fuck, at least?"
"Of course!" He protested. He did have some taste. "Well, I'm pretty sure it was. I was fairly drunk. But I can tell you she was damn gorgeous. I do have standards, you know."
She shook her head at him. "War, War, War," she scolded. "It's not like you're short of gorgeous women here who won't try to blackmail you, yeah?" She shook her head at him again. "Come here and help me get dressed. I'm having trouble. Little black dress that mostly hides the gunshot wound, or can I get away with the slacks and shirt combo?"
"True," he replied with a grin, wandering into the room. "Though I think I'll be sticking to the one just for now. It seems safer that way." He glanced over the options, and wrinkled his nose up at them. "They're fine for a funeral, but since I'm pretty sure I plan on taking you out for dinner, I think you can do better than that."
"Fine." She stuck out her tongue at him and rummaged through her closet again, pulling out a medium blue dress that came to mid-thigh. "Is this one person you're sticking to anyone I know?" she asked as she pulled the dress on over her head.
"Perhaps," he said with a grin. He tilted his head to look at her, examining the dress she was putting on as best he could.
"Okay, that's it. Who are you, and what have you done with Amanda? Because the Amanda I know would not voluntarily wear a dress. Or funeral clothes."
Her head emerged and she stuck her tongue out at him. "I wear dresses. I wore one for your birthday dinner, remember?" she declared, blithely ignoring that as for a bet. "And I haven't been wearing funeral clothes, they're for work." Again, ignoring the evidence that was hanging in her closet.
"You didn't wear it by choice," he replied, still grinning at her. "And since when did Snow Valley have such a boring dress code? I think I must have missed something."
"Dress code?" Amanda looked at her closet again. Lots of black pants, white shirts and a couple of black jackets. "Huh. I hadn't noticed that." She shrugged. "It's... practical?" She smoothed down the dress, which mostly covered her injury and pulled the elastic band holding her hair in a ponytail. "Okay, do I pass?" she asked, striking a pose. "Considering your high standards of physical appearance and all?"
"You bought all of it." Warren shook his head. "Sometimes I despair for all the women I know. You're all hopeless." He took his time in inspecting her, finally flashing her a smile. "I suppose you'll do. I feel like I can be seen in public with you now." He offered her his arm. "Shall we?"
"Hey, I usually just let Angie pick stuff and lay down the plastic," Amanda protested, although her tendency to make faces and complain meant she wound up having more than a little input on their shopping trips. "And I'll even leave the cane behind, just for you. As long as we don't walk any marathons, that is. Jean'd get pissed off if I strained it again."
"You should try shopping with Monet sometime," Warren laughed. He'd watched her bulldoze through an impressive amount of stores when they'd been in Rome. He still wasn't sure if they'd recovered.
"If it starts feeling too sore, I can always just fly you home. I wouldn't want to face her wrath."
Jean made it past the reception desk. it helped to know the staff. Amanda had been expecting her so there was no real surprise for her arrival.
"Hey," Jean said as she stepped into view.
"How're you feeling?"
Amanda looked up as Jean came into the main office. "Welcome to the Snow Valley Memorial Centre for Mutant Affairs," she said with a grin. "I'm doing fine - leg's still a bit stiff, but it's healing all right. What brings you here?" An expression of worry crossed her face. "Nico's all right, isn't she? I didn't sense anything..."
"Frankly I'm a little disappointed, "Jean said, glancing around. She had her thumbs through the loops of her jean pockets, not quite dressed as formal as usual, like a teacher or doctor. Just a normal person in a t-shirt and jeans. "I expected something more James Bond."
Jean smiled and shook her head.
"Nico's fine. I thought I'd stop by. I'd been giving some thought about it since what happened...about magic. It's something I'm wary about and I'd like to understand it better."
Fear often came from misunderstanding things. She wanted to fix that.
Amanda visibly relaxed. "Well, it wouldn't be a very good cover if we had 'Spies R Us' on the front," she replied with a chuckle. She rose, putting her computer to sleep and locking the keyboard. "Ah. Magic. I had a feeling this might come up. Come on to the boardroom, I'll get us a cuppa and try and help with that whole 'wary' thing."
"I'm always on the look out for one of those places. I'd really like to try out some spy gadgets. Though I suppose Hank would make some for me if I batted my eyelashes enough," Jean said. She then nodded.
"And lead the way."
Did magic cease becoming magic if you understood it? Wasn't the concept of magic supposed to be this mysterious means to an end?
The blonde witch led Jean past several offices, the server room (where Doug was engrossed in something) and the storeroom which had been commandeered as the magical volume storage. The boardroom was used for mission reports, research and the occasional meeting with people from outside of the team, and once she'd paused to make a couple of cups of tea - Amanda only drank the office coffee when pulling an all-nighter - she joined Jean at the large table.
"So, here we are," she said, wrapping her hands around her mug. "How about you ask the questions and I try to answer them? Avoids the big info dump that way."
Jean took a seat, peering into her tea. Tea. She'd remembered stories of people who could read fortunes with tea leaves. A true mutant power or magic ever still? She fell silent for a few moments.
"I'm not sure what to ask, actually. Magical principles aren't quite the same as scientific ones, are they?" she said, admitting a faint smile.
"Actually, they're more similar than you think," Amanda replied. "Forge and I did a bit of work together, back at the school." Her expression went distant for a moment. "Him and me and Charlie. Any way, we worked out a lot of magic is basically energy conversion. One type in, one type out."
Jean studied her, resisting the urge to put her hand on her arm but nevertheless sparing her a soft, sympathetic look before she set down her tea mug.
"One type in...like life energy?" she said. Amanda drew power from people and cities, Nico seemed to be displaying the same tendency.
"But magic as a whole...the end result....it almost verges on being able to do so many things. Where is the structure? These rituals that are conducted....like with Nico's parents....using words the invoke that...being...within her...as well as sacrificing people....how is that just energy conversion?" To simply label it as that seemed...too simple.
She had a few theories, once the words left her lips, but the idea of it all still seemed rather intricate and involved.
"Okay, let's start with the energy in." Amanda said, seeing the confusion on Jean's face and remembering she was a scientist, not an occultist. "Magic users get their energy from a lot of different places. You don't even have to be a mutant, like Nico and I - we're kind of unusual in that way, so I'll get to us in a minute. Generally, tho', the energy comes from a few sources. Magical objects, mystical places and..." She paused. "Living beings. Life energy. The thing is, the type of energy tends to reflect the type of magic. Good energy means good magic. Bad energy..." Again, she paused, thinking of Nico. "Well, yeah, you get the picture. Life energy generally isn't on the good column."
"Black magic?" Jean said. She watched TV, but wasn't sure if it was a term real magic-practicing people used.
"So these things serve as a sort of fuel? Good energy burns clean, Bad energy is like coal, creating harmful byproducts?"
"Black magic's as good a term as any. The thing to remember is that intent's important for magic as well, Bad intention and bad energy equals bad magic, out the wazoo. And vice versa - you make a habit of using bad energy and doing bad spells, eventually, something rubs off. Which is why I work so hard with Nico on not using her magic for selfish ends - she has enough strikes against her and I don't want her thinking it's easier to just make things go her way. That leads to bad." Amanda sipped at her tea, gathering her thoughts. "I guess this is how it gets all tangled - the caster impacts the magic, and the magic impacts the caster."
Jean steepled her hands, resting them against her chin thoughtfully. "But, as you said, most magic casters are human and not mutant. Is magic casting, when you're a mutant, more personal, in a way? It's more of a balancing act?"
"It can be. A mutant power that lends itself to magic... well, it acts as a short cut. Instead of training and honing your body and your mind to be able to channel magical energy, we just do it." Amanda smiled wryly. "And as you said, yeah, it's a balancing act. Your body does naturally what most magic users train for years to manage, plus a whole bunch of hormones and teenage stuff and you've got something of a powderkeg. Which is again why the training with Nico."
"Her staff....is that run through black magic?" Jean said. She'd had it before and could use it, now with her new found abilities, had it found another 'power source?'
"Yes." Amanda's expression darkened, remembering how Tante had reacted to that particular item. At least they had Tante as an ally against it now. "It's tied into Nico's family and into their magic. Everything Nico does with it tends to be tainted by it, which is why I'm teaching her magic on her own. It's in her blood, but what she does with it isn't determined by destiny, no matter what prophecy might have to say about it. If I teach her as much as I can about using magic responsibly, as much light magic as I can get hold of, I'm hoping to counter the effects of the Staff. And eventually, I'm hoping to separate it from her. I can't yet - bloody thing's tied into her life force and if I just remove it, I could kill her. Even if I knew how."
"Even human beings if she uses the staff on them are tainted?" Jean asked, sitting up. "How? In what way?"
There was a lot of things she was trying to process from what she had just said and she was taking them in the order that they were given.
"No, not like that, not exactly. The magic's tainted, which means if she casts a spell on someone using the Staff, it might not go exactly as she means to." Amanda hastened to correct herself. "It's like... okay, the first spell I ever learned was to summon light." She snapped her fingers and George the werelight appeared, a happy little ball of brightness bobbing around their heads. "Because the magic source I use, the energy of the city itself, is a 'good' energy source, the spell's not tainted. When I taught the spell to Nico, back before her mutation surfaced and all her magic was coming from the Staff, it came out differently. Sort of an anti-light, really, all black and spiky and kind of aggressive, for a werelight, reflecting the source of the power. And now she's got two darker sources of magical energy, the Staff and living energy, so she's going to have to be really careful about keeping her motives pure and using the Staff as little as possible. It can't be trusted to not have an agenda of its own."
Jean nodded. "So it creates chaos out of order?" She was reminded somewhat of Wanda's powers in that respect.
"If I can help in any way with anything, please let me know. Other than what we're doing." She wasn't too afraid to defer to an expert if there was something she didn't know about. And this was definitely less charted territory.
Amanda nodded back. "Yeah, basically. As for helping... you lot can do a lot for her. It's not so different from normal powers ethics, really - teach her to think about consequences, about what she's trying to achieve with a spell and why. I can work on the practicalities, but, to be honest, I can't be there all of the time. Not with Remy gone and the rest of us trying to do damage control."
"I'll do what I can," Jean said. As long as she had a basic foundation of how things worked, and how to approach it she could pretty much wing it up to a certain point.
Jean glanced up. "How's the search going?" she asked quietly. She'd only heard what was in the report, and both knew what could be said and what couldn't when it came to the specifics of missions. It was mostly an acknowledgment of circumstances. She knew what it was like to have to wait, not knowing where your teammate was or what was being done to them a bit more intimately than most when your teammate was also the one you loved.
The witch sagged, looking tired and much older than her years. "No sign of him," she replied quietly. "I've tried my location spell, but I'm not picking up anything. Which doesn't mean much, just that he's probably not in a large enough city for me to get a bead on him." She rubbed her forehead. "I just wish we knew for sure what was going on. Even knowing he was dead.." She swallowed hard. "Even knowing that would be better than this."
"If they took him, it means they probably need him for something. Leverage, information...something. If they know who he is, it seems unlikely they'd just kill him outright," Jean said.
Unfortunately in those circumstances death was probably the better alternative to living, but she wasn't going to say that. She wanted him back safe and sound as much as the others.
"I wish for once he'd be trackable with telepathy. Then we'd be able to try to use Cerebro," she said. Not that it did a lot of good lately. Everyone seemed to be using psi-scrambling technology more and more.
Amanda nodded in agreement. "That'd just make things easy, and apparently we don't get that. What we do get is doing it the old-fashioned way. It doesn't help we don't know how much of our resources are compromised - these people knew who we were, which is fucking disturbing for a secret spy team, I can tell you."
A few possibilities popped into Jean's head at the thought, none of them good.She had a vivid imagination.
"Perhaps someone from Remy's past?" If they were out to get him, they could've done their homework.
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I'm sure you guys have thought about all of this. I'm just concerned." Even if she was worried for the man, she knew he had a whole team behind him searching for him.
"Oh, we have a pretty good idea who, it's more the where we're trying to work out. Seems like one of our first jobs is coming back to bite us on the arse. Of course, how they managed to work out who were were is a worry as well." Amanda sighed and shook her head. "We're doing our best, that's all we can hang onto."
Jean reflexively reached out to gently put her hand on Amanda's arm.
Despite the differences in their work, they still often had the same concerns, and the same assurances to get them through the day.
Warren puts himself on 'check on Amanda' duty.
Between Remy's capture and the incident with Nico's powers, it might be said the witch wasn't exactly on top of the world. Or even living in it: she'd been spending most if her awake time either with her books or in her computer, alternating between looking for clues of Remy's location and researching magic users with powers like Nico's, searching for a way to help her. So it was with some surprise she realised someone had been knocking on her door. "Um, just a sec!" she called, getting up from her kitchen table to open it.
Never let it be said that Warren was completely self-absorbed - he'd had a lot going on in his life, and most of it self inflicted, but it hadn't completely escaped his attention that he'd seen very little of his friend recently. He was peripherally aware of the reasons surrounding it, but that didn't stop him from showing up on her door to kidnap her. Even she had to take a little time off occasionally.
"Hello," Warren announced when she opened the door, flashing her a grin. He was dressed much more casually than usual, and more importantly, without the usual heavy jacket to hide his wings. No, they were folded neatly against his back, and Warren was more than enjoying the freedom from his harness. "I've come to kidnap you. Just so you know, this will go a lot better if you don't resist."
Amanda blinked owlishly at him, taking in the change. "New look?" she asked, taking in the lack of Giant Overcoat.
"I thought I'd try it out. It's been working for me so far." He grinned at her. "If you want to get changed before I make you leave, you've got about two seconds to scoot out of range."
Looking down at her track pants and faded Sex Pistols shirt, Amanda decided to cooperate. If only so she didn't wind up freezing her butt off. "Come in and make yourself comfy," she said, opening the door wider in welcome. "There should be some beer in the fridge if you want something while I change."
"Thanks," Warren replied, his hands sliding into his pockets as he wandered into the apartment. "I'd ask how you are, but since I did hear about Remy going missing, I thought I'd save you from stating the obvious." And he was supposed to be a distraction from that anyway.
The slight limp as she headed into her bedroom to change spoke for itself as well. "Yeah, well," was her lame reply. "What about you?" she called to him as she pulled her t-shirt over her head. "What brought about the whole out and proud look?"
"Combination of things," Warren replied, lingering not far from her door rather than taking a seat. If they were going to keep talking, then better off not to have to yell too much. "Fighting with my dad, and then there was something of a scare when I was in Rome over Easter. And I just didn't see the point any more. The only reason I was still in the closet was to make my dad happy, and considering that I'm pretty much incapable of doing that anyway, why bother? I might as well make myself happy."
"About bloody time," came the somewhat cheeky reply as Amanda flipped through her closet for something to wear. Nothing too short or too tight, stupid bandage. "What was the scare?"
Amanda couldn't see it, but Warren had the decency to look a little embarrassed before telling the story. "I may have been drunk and stupid enough to sleep with someone I don't know. We ended up tracking her down and getting all the images from her, but she certainly led us on a merry chase."
Luckily for him he couldn't see her face either. As it was, she stuck her head around the door to stare at him. "War," she said, rolling her eyes at him, not caring she was in her bra, panties and leg bandage. "Was it a decent fuck, at least?"
"Of course!" He protested. He did have some taste. "Well, I'm pretty sure it was. I was fairly drunk. But I can tell you she was damn gorgeous. I do have standards, you know."
She shook her head at him. "War, War, War," she scolded. "It's not like you're short of gorgeous women here who won't try to blackmail you, yeah?" She shook her head at him again. "Come here and help me get dressed. I'm having trouble. Little black dress that mostly hides the gunshot wound, or can I get away with the slacks and shirt combo?"
"True," he replied with a grin, wandering into the room. "Though I think I'll be sticking to the one just for now. It seems safer that way." He glanced over the options, and wrinkled his nose up at them. "They're fine for a funeral, but since I'm pretty sure I plan on taking you out for dinner, I think you can do better than that."
"Fine." She stuck out her tongue at him and rummaged through her closet again, pulling out a medium blue dress that came to mid-thigh. "Is this one person you're sticking to anyone I know?" she asked as she pulled the dress on over her head.
"Perhaps," he said with a grin. He tilted his head to look at her, examining the dress she was putting on as best he could.
"Okay, that's it. Who are you, and what have you done with Amanda? Because the Amanda I know would not voluntarily wear a dress. Or funeral clothes."
Her head emerged and she stuck her tongue out at him. "I wear dresses. I wore one for your birthday dinner, remember?" she declared, blithely ignoring that as for a bet. "And I haven't been wearing funeral clothes, they're for work." Again, ignoring the evidence that was hanging in her closet.
"You didn't wear it by choice," he replied, still grinning at her. "And since when did Snow Valley have such a boring dress code? I think I must have missed something."
"Dress code?" Amanda looked at her closet again. Lots of black pants, white shirts and a couple of black jackets. "Huh. I hadn't noticed that." She shrugged. "It's... practical?" She smoothed down the dress, which mostly covered her injury and pulled the elastic band holding her hair in a ponytail. "Okay, do I pass?" she asked, striking a pose. "Considering your high standards of physical appearance and all?"
"You bought all of it." Warren shook his head. "Sometimes I despair for all the women I know. You're all hopeless." He took his time in inspecting her, finally flashing her a smile. "I suppose you'll do. I feel like I can be seen in public with you now." He offered her his arm. "Shall we?"
"Hey, I usually just let Angie pick stuff and lay down the plastic," Amanda protested, although her tendency to make faces and complain meant she wound up having more than a little input on their shopping trips. "And I'll even leave the cane behind, just for you. As long as we don't walk any marathons, that is. Jean'd get pissed off if I strained it again."
"You should try shopping with Monet sometime," Warren laughed. He'd watched her bulldoze through an impressive amount of stores when they'd been in Rome. He still wasn't sure if they'd recovered.
"If it starts feeling too sore, I can always just fly you home. I wouldn't want to face her wrath."
