LOG: [Kyle, Marius] It's all fun and games until someone falls over

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After the fight a chat between Kyle and Marius becomes extremely one-sided.


Marius found himself unsure of how much time had passed since Moreau's profoundly satisfying decapitation, but it probably hadn't been long. He was still upright, for a start, and he imagined that he would not have been had more than half an hour passed.

He found his eye falling on Kyle, still in his mutate bodysuit. Granted, a mutate suit now missing the neck, shoulder, stomach area and part of the legs, and one whose secondary colour was now closer to dirt-grey and blood-rust than white, but a mutate bodysuit nonetheless. Marius drifted over, truncated tail waving idly.

"You know," he said, "If this was Genosha's fashion alternative, I no longer feel quite so troubled by the constant enforced nudity."

Kyle's eyes narrowed at Marius, but he was just too bone-deep tired to do more than raise a middle finger, broken-off and stained claw fully extended. "Least I'm not showing all of Genosha my junk." He glanced down, just to make sure he wasn't, and pointedly scratched an itchy place on his upper thigh. "Though, man, I kinda agree with you. I want this off. Don't care if it means going around bareassed."

"I would apologise, but after a certain point I could no longer be arsed to find a new pair of pants every forty minutes. Do you know what a bugger it is to shapeshift without a wardrobe of unstable molecules?" Marius sat down on a piece of rubble. The motion wasn't entirely voluntary; his legs had gone weak, and he felt lightheaded. The effects of Laurie's powers were wearing off, he supposed. Fatigue was catching up with him.

The smell that came from Marius was a mix of blood and rank sweat with a bitter sort of bite to it, and Kyle stared at him for a second before standing to sit next to him on the broken off concrete. "I think you get a pass, all things equal. I mean, you know you look like crap and you've got half a tail, right?" It was weirdly fascinating, even though Marius was sitting sort of limply, the tailstump was swishing around, and Kyle was just too damn tired to care if it was weird that he kept blinking over to stare at it. "How... do you only have half a tail, bee-tee-dubs?"

"Eh? Oh . . ." Marius glanced down at the maimed appendage, and for a moment some of the pleasant lightheadedness ebbed. "It was . . . Yvette."

"Uh. Well, that's gonna suck." Kyle scratched at his head, leaving a little snow flurry of flakes of dried blood on one shoulder. "It's kinda weird, I mean, it's like, it like looks like it's part of you. I mean..." He gestured with the non-scratching hand at Marius's back. "Is that weird? Having an extra part?"

Marius shrugged. "Had a tail before. Had wings before, come to that. Granted, it's a bit odd havin' one in an otherwise human form, and I cannot say it has improved the pants situation." He glanced around. "Eh . . . Yvette's not near, is she? Only saw her for a bit, and we were rather preoccupied. Seemed herself, but do you know . . . the ones who were taken, how much do they remember?"

"Dunno." Kyle said. "Not sure they remember much, I mean, I didn't get Laurie giving me shit for beating the living crap outta her." All he really recalled was that after the fight, he'd been covered in both of their blood. "Or her mauling me." The clawed out place in the stomach of his skinsuit was mostly Laurie, a little bit of Moreau and some of his own scratching. "Guessing they don't remember much. They all seemed pretty ... themselves and I mean, we were pretty fucked up from what we remember. I'd think they'd be the same, right?"

"It was different for them, right? The process. No drugs or treatments, just some sort of machine. Fast. Perhaps they don't remember." The inside of his head felt hot, like someone had filled his skull with superheated gas. Marius squeezed his eyes shut against the heat and gave his head a short shake. "It would be a mercy if they didn't, I think."

"How long until your tail... something?" Kyle asked. He didn't want to look at it closely, that'd be kinda pretty goddamn weird, but it wouldn't be long until one of them - until Yvette - came back, maybe worried about her friends. "Goes away. Falls off. Whatever your tail is gonna do. It was what, a week for wings?"

"About that. Hard to tell -- it's Cats' baseline, not a full body shift like that Krug bloke. Just showed up when I went cat an' never left. Don't really fancy the idea of having it surgically removed -- ah!" Marius snapped his clawed fingers and grinned at Kyle. "I may be in luck. Happily, I have acquired a power that may allow me to shed the superfluous appendage now that I'm not actively juggling chaos whilst being assaulted by inexplicable death spores . . ." The Australian began to struggle to his feet.

It took Kyle a minute to figure out what the hell Marius was doing. What did he have, he had chaos, that was Wanda, and spores, Moreau, and he'd said something about invulnerable... oh, and he'd turned into Geode Cat before, who turned into stone, oh, right Paige. Paige turned into stone, and then got naked and turned back into a Paige. "So you're gonna shed skin and turn back into just boring naked Marius instead of naked cat-Marius." Kyle stared at his friend, shook his head and shrugged. "Not helping this time, dude. I got you naked once already today."

"You speak as if this is a negative. And no, I should be fine. Identifying my own baseline shouldn't pose a problem at this point. The benefits of shifter-experience, one might say. Additionally, I'm a bit tired of the ache." And, though he didn't voice it aloud, he wanted very badly to prevent any questions on the subject from Yvette. Straightening up, Marius grabbed the skin of his chest with a clawed hand and ripped.

"There, you see?" he said, tossing the remnants away, including the unwanted tail, "No worries." The hot, lightheaded feeling was getting worse -- he realised he really needed something to eat. He pressed a hand to his forehead and it came away sticky with sweat. And water, too, Marius thought, but waved it away for the moment and forced out another smile at his friend.

"Tasteful nudity is one thing," Marius said, "but to flaunt a maimed appendage is . . . is . . . "

"Gross." Kyle finished, after catching his friend mid-collapse. "And you're never gonna hear this, so is carrying you around while you're naked." He shifted Marius, cradling him in both arms, because he didn't want vomit on top of blood and dirt and whatever else on him, God only knew how long it would be until they got showers, and went looking for anything who looked like they knew what they might be doing.

His nose gave him the sweet-pungent-musky smell of a fully empowered Laurie Collins long before his eyes gave him anyone else.