xp_logs | Artie and Jubilee.

Jubilee runs into Artie, wasting time in Central Park.

With school out and as he was currently out of a job and thus more constructive pastimes, Artie had taken to haunting Central Park and wandering around the streets he'd learned like the back of his hand a year ago when the ... Annalee stuff went down. There was something to be said for watching the hustlers work tourists on three card monte and hawk scalped concert and game tickets. If he was warier than usual, eyes constantly flicking from one point to another, tracking the motion and faces around him, well, no-one was to know.

It was with a flash of brightly coloured jacket, and the air hitting his head suddenly that Jubilee made herself known, flashing by on her skates as she yanked the baseball cap from his head and held it out with a laugh as she circled him on roller blades before coming to a stop.

"Marie-Ange let you out of her clutches early or something, dude?"

No matter how good Artie was at dealing with visuals, he wasn't trained in this and missed Jubilee's approach. He picked up his hat, taking a deep breath to steady himself. And then another one. Jamming the hat back on his head, Artie shrugged and pulled out his synthesiser, taking a moment longer than necessary to calm himself further. "I don't have training with her today. Figured I'd come and watch the pick pockets instead."

"Boring," Jubilee noted, starting to skate backwards and gesturing for him to

walk with her. "They're all complete amatuers here. Now somewhere like Bangkok or Phuket? Totally cool to watch."

"Never been there," Artie replied, following along beside her.

"Remind me to take you there one day, we could totally clean up." Jubilee replied, continuing to skate backwards even while avoiding the early afternoon crowd. "Any reason you wanted to watch them? Or just bored?"

"I don't know ... I'm kind of obvious." Artie opened his mouth to show his tongue, briefly tasting the air before closing it again. The woman he'd been watching made her move and began to move away, carefully tucking the wallet into her bag while the mark continued on, oblivious but... hell, if he could see it, then she really wasn't that good. "Just bored. But I could probs manage a better lift than she did."

"Dude, anyone could manage a better lift then she just did. As for notability, for just pickin' people's pockets? Depends on how you do it, you get good enough and bein' noticeable don't mean shit," Jubilee noted, doing a 360 around him before going back to skating backwards. "Something tells me that street work ain't your style though, right?"

"I don't know what you mean," and it was a blatant lie. He turned to watch as she circled him. "Will you stop that?"

"Stop what?" she asked, so much unassuming innocence in the statement it was like another person entirely before she undid it entirely with a shit-eating grin. "Dude, don't try to lie to a liar, yeah? You'd like, totally have to get up early in the morning to fool me."

"I wasn't lying!"

"Suuuuuure, you weren't," Jubilee replied, rolling to a stop as she gave him a serious look. "Dude, seriously? I don't care. You wanna play games, grift people? What the fuck ever, but like, I do this shit as my job, yeah? I can spot it, so don't bullshit me, it's totally insulting."

Artie stopped as well, snapping his fingers and pointing at the ground, even as he stuffed the synthesiser back into his pocket, projecting his words against the ground. "fine. I don't know how to pick pockets and there's too much a chance I'd get caught with not enough payoff to make it worth the risk. What if I got a guy w/out cash? I'd rather go something more reliable. 3 card monte, kiting checks, hell, getting $49 change off a dollar bill is more reliable. But RN, there's no point. I don't need to so it's not worth it. "

"That's more like it, kid," Jubilee replied, her words not whispered but suddenly tuned lower somehow, not traveling past the two of them. "Come on, let's get out of here. I'll buy you a coffee and you can bitch me out for picking on your stylish hat wearing ways."

"Sure. But seriously, if I don't need money or stuff, what's the percentage for you in knowing I'm not a pickpocket? Also, I'd like a donut."

"Mostly it's cause having to bail out people I know for getting caught doing stupid shit is a total bummer," Jubilee replied, heading toward the exit to the park and a coffee shop she knew that was both mutant friendly, and had a variety of different beverages on offer, as well as food. "Plus, getting arrested is like, the least of your worries when doing shit that gets you caught around here. The local gangs don't like people honing in on their turf, I'd hate for you to wind up as a John Doe, yeah? And lastly, information is also my job, never know when something that seems like it means shit all will be useful down the track."

"That's kind of what Doug said that time he bailed me out, minus the warning abt the gangs. Srsly, they're an issue? Also, you talk like I'm an asset or something, not a high school grad," Artie said, keeping the words running across the footpath in front of them as they walked. He really wasn't sure that he liked the way that Jubilee seemed to see the world. Don't be an idiot seemed to be everyone's damn watch word.

"Everybody and everything is an asset, except when they or it, is not," Jubilee replied, stopping out the front of the coffee shop to take off her skates, she shucked the bag off her back and pulled out a pair of ballet flats before heading inside. "And yeah, gangs are an issue, they're just not obvious about being gangs."

Artie let Jubilee choose their table and sat, again keeping his words small and projected against the able in front of himself. "it's not just you is it? you all," and he interrupted the flow of text to run a half dozen cartoon faces across the table, "look at ppl like that, don't you?" It made horrible, depressing sense. "FYI, you want to do that, you need all the info - i remember damn near everything i see. keep me away from your desk and ur stuff."

"Dangers of the job, dude," Jubilee noted, unapologetic as she waved down one of the wait staff and asked for the menu, and then waited for him to leave before she continued. "Although, some of us are less intense about it then others. So is that your mutation, or just a skill you picked up?"

She filed away the information he'd given her, you could never tell what was useful and what wasn't, it was all in the timing really.

"We think it's a powers thing but I've been working on it, too. you know, remembering pages of text and stuff?" Artie picked up his menu and scanned through it, quickly.

"Cool, not the crappiest power you could've gotten from life's little roulette wheel," Jubilee remarked, looking over the menu briefly herself. She already knew what she wanted, but every so often they updated with specials or new foods and she always made it her mission to try everything on a menu before recommending a place to friends. It's why having Kyle as her resturant buddy made so much sense, they both had the appetite to go the distance. "Order whatever you want, dude. Meal's on me."

Artie pulled his synthesiser out again - it looked weird for Jubilee to be sitting there, talking to the air while he didn't appear to reply at all. "I'lll have fries and a large iced coffee," he typed. "I know. I could have ended up like the dude version of Yvette." As he spoke, Artie wrapped a layer of illusion around his left hand, the one resting on the table, letting his fingers grow into long, stiff red spikes. Grinning, he lifted his hand and carefully scored three illusonary cuts into the formica table.

Jubilee waved over the waiter and ordered for them both, getting herself a latte and their all day breakfast special. It wasn't until she'd made sure that the man had moved away far enough that she spoke again.

"Or you could have had your lungs mutate just enough that you couldn't breathe air anymore," Jubilee offered, keeping an eye on the door. She'd taken the seat furthest from the entrance, strategically placed with her back to one of the walls. It wasn't a perfect viewpoint of the entire place, but she could see most of the area around them.

"Yeah, that would suck." The little voice on his synthesiser was disturbingly cheerful about the idea. Artie watched as Jubileee positioned herself. He had, by default, the seat facing away from the room and found himself taking in the way Jubilee's eyes tracked the motion around the cafe (door to counter to probably the windows and back). He might be jumpy and wary right now but she was getting damn close to paranoid - hell, was it paranoid to look at coffee shop like that when even he could add up the number of times that training with Marie-Angie had been cancelled because of ... Reasons. Carefully unspecified reasons. He switched to text. "This is a coffee shop and you're looking around like the cute waitress might jump us. Srsly?"

"Sorry dude, it's like, bleed over operational paranoia," Jubilee explained, noticeably trying to relax. She'd been on a high state of alert since getting back from Genosha. It was hard to ratchet down her awareness after so long of relying on it to keep her alive, if not safe. "it's a thing with field work, you kinda get used to it."

Right now she saw no reason to lie to Artie, he like many at the mansion knew her real job and she hadn't been asked any specifics that would compromise him or her, so the answers were easy to give.

"wow. that's kind of suckful." Artie had to wonder what would happen if he started flashing lights in Jubilee's peripheral vision and snickered silently before explaining. "I was thinking, if I flashed lights in your blind spot... it would end badly, wouldn't it?"

"Don't know, Dude," Jubilee replied, a grin suddenly appearing. "I figure it would all depend on if I knew what it was or not. I mean, there's only so much face melting you can get away with before people are like 'Dude, you are super jumpy, quit killing people', ya know?"

She'd made sure to answer him in a rather lower tone then the current white noise of the conversations around them. No need to freak people in New York out, not like Apocalypse hadn't left enough of a scar on their psyches at it was.

No-one else could see them. They were in a corner and his back was to the rest of the cafe so he thought it was safe to bring up a quick illusion of his face melting, holding it up over his own face for a single second. "Thanks." That came out of the synthesiser.

"Dude, you are just one sick little fucker, aren't you?" Jubilee said with a laugh, pointing toward his food that was headed their way. "Now eat you're damn food and stop asking so many questions."

"Gotta get my entertainment somewhere," Artie replied, before sitting back to eat his food.