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xp_logs2005-02-01 01:33 pm
x-cable.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2005-02-01 01:33 pm
Nathan and Alison, Tuesday afternoon
Nathan telepathically summons Alison up to the flyer's platform, where he's mulling over the phone call he just got from everyone's favorite Old Rat Bastard. MacInnis wants to talk. Nathan is wary. Alison has ideas on how they can make the conversation more pleasant for all involved. Well, maybe not for MacInnis.
The flyer's platform was... a little on the chilly side, on a day like this. But Nathan had badly needed the fresh air, to clear his head after that phone conversation, and he suspected Alison would understand when he explained. Sitting crosslegged on a spot clear of snow, he took a deep breath and then let it out again, tracing one of the meditative patterns in his mind. The sky above was perfectly, almost oppressively clear. He was tempted to take it as an omen.
Making her way up to the flyer's platform as something Alison was fair used to by now. Nathan's telepathic query earlier had enough urgency underscoring it that she'd set back the gym training and headed for the platform instead, while absently tugging a scarf around her neck and promising herself to indulge in some 'stay warm' type powers training. It wasn't as though keeping localized light going was a problem anymore. It took her a few moments to reach the platform itself, and soon she'd settled next to Nathan, waiting patiently for him to let her know what was going on.
"I got a phone call," he said after a short silence. "Just now. It was MacInnis." He looked sideways at her, smiling very faintly. "He wants to see me."
Her mind did one of those fizzle things, which involved going from calm to just a little bit homicidal in two seconds flat. "He did what?!" She still managed, a corner of her mind noted somewhat proudly, to not broadcast the question loud enough for all on the estate to hear. Somehow.
"He called me. Asked me to meet him tomorrow in the same bar from May." Nathan shifted, a soft, only very slightly amused laugh escaping him. "I may have inquired if he was indulging in recreational pharmaceuticals. He told me to bring as much backup as I wanted this time."
With some effort, Alison managed to keep from storming off to find MacInnis and slay him. A lot. Even though she understood why he'd called instead of emailed her, which meant telling Nathan now about what had happened was required. "I'm going." It was matter of fact, rather than autocratic, as statements went.
"I was sort of taking that as a given," Nathan said with a sigh. He rubbed at the back of his neck, tried to imagine tension draining out of him like water from a sieve. It didn't do much good. "I'm going to talk to Charles, as well. Ask him to come along in my head. MacInnis says... he's willing to put all his cards on the table. Tell me everything."
Alison did not make a strangled sound, though she wanted to. Taking a slow breath, she gave Nathan a sideways glance. "Certain events of late have pushed him there, yes. Which is what I was hinting about in that email the other day, the one about contacting him and all. I can... see why he'd do this, not that I'm not entirely about wanting to drop a mountain on his head." He'd called. Gah. Forcibly, she kept herself from pushing - Nathan had worked through something major. The triggers had been removed a while ago now. Maybe now was the right time for this.
Nathan nodded slowly. "I'd been wondering about those hints," he said, his voice very low. The silence dragged on for a moment or two, until he roused himself to explain further. "He wasn't trying to yank my chain, not like he has been in the past. He sounded desperate." Nathan stopped, shaking his head. "Which makes me wonder," he said, a bitter edge to the words, "whether this is just better-camoflauged chain-yanking. I don't trust him."
"Who said you had to? I don't trust him as far as I can laser him, and that's a heck of a lot really." Alison leaned back on her hands, summoning a bit of light to keep herself warm. The wind was biting, at this point. "From the message he passed along to us, he's in a desperate position, anyway." There was no smugness in her voice or thoughts, though she had indeed told MacInnis he needed them far more than they needed him, not so long ago. "And you know what to look for now."
"Who said I--" Nathan echoed, then trailed off, blinking. "Because since I left Mistra, I've never fought alongside anyone I didn't trust. Or couldn't control," he added, thinking about Hammer.
Alison nodded at that, smiling just a bit despite herself and her mood. More figuring out things was always good. "But you're contemplating it now." She looked ahead, breathing in the cold air slowly.
"I don't see a better option." Oh, there had been plenty of employers he hadn't liked, hadn't trusted during his time as a mercenary. But they hadn't had much to do with determining how he did the job. If he... if anything was going to happen with MacInnis, it wouldn't be like that. "It still seems to me that whatever kind of position he's in, he's still got the advantages. The contacts. The knowledge. I don't believe that he is going to show all his cards."
"Ah." Alison smiled, a touch contentedly. "But we have the best card of all, right now." She gazed up into the sky, suddenly feeling less worried about things, for an inexplicable reason. It wasn't as though there was nothing to worry about. "He needs us, Nathan. Not the other way around. And I think he may be more aware of this now than ever before."
"I still want to take plenty of backup," Nathan grumbled after a moment, almost fitfully. "Asking me to meet him at that same bar... even if he needs us, he's still playing games. And I'm not taking anything he offers me to drink this time."
"We can change the location." That MacInnis resorted to that as a standard methodology was noted and filed away. "Heck, fly in, have Kurt nab him and port him to the Jet, then toddle on in full flight for our talk, why not?" Who said MacInnis got to set the terms, anyway...
Nathan stopped to think about it. "I'd feel a lot safer on the 'Bird," he said with a grim little smile. "With back-up right there. Put him in the hot seat for once..." He sighed, rubbing at his face. "That sounds petty."
"It's common sense, to me. I know, it's not common, but still." Alison turned, granting him a serene smile, although something else lurked in her eyes. "And frankly, you've earned that, just a little bit." She had no problems with being petty about this, at all. "I'll run it by Scott for approval. We'll take Haroun to pilot. I'll ask Ororo if I can kidnap her second for an afternoon." She paused, then gave him a somewhat sheepish look. "If you don't mind my going all organizational on you like that."
"Quick in-and-out," Nathan muttered, and then nodded. "Sounds good. Minimize the contact with his people... " He stopped, stiffening a little at the sudden, insistent flash of memory. Pushing himself to his feet and out of the booth, lurching, his vision blurring but not badly enough to mask the two shapes moving in on him.... swallowing, he pushed the images away firmly.
"Minimize?" Alison noticed the reaction, the minute shifts in his features, but went on smoothly. "I'm thinking more like swiping 'im under their noses and dropping him off in their laps after. Just, you know, because we can." It was, without a doubt, vindictive and she wasn't inclined to make any apology for it either.
Nathan laughed a bit shakily, staring down at his hands. They weren't entirely steady. "I'm sensing something," he said after a moment. "After he called me. My precognition is twinging - the patterns are shivering. I think this is significant, whatever's going on."
A calm nod answered him. "It makes sense that something of this scale would have long term effects. Mistra are trying to build themselves an army of mutants, using children to achieve their goals. There's nothing small in that, in terms of impact." She eyes his hands for a moment, then tilted her head at him. "Hands are cold?"
"Not really." Nathan managed an uncertain smile. "They're just shaking. I think I'm nervous." He laughed hoarsely. "He shook me up a little."
"Human," she repeated gently, smiling encouragingly in return. "Nervous isn't bad." Heavens knew she had a boatload of that often enough. And more. She gazed at him pensively, wondering if now was a good time to tell him, or if she should wait until he was steadier, to not pile on the shocks. "Are you steady enough for something which might upset you? Or would you rather I tell you a bit later?" She asked the question simply, leaving the matter up to him to judge - and not making it about whether he trusted her to give him the information or not.
"Tell me." Nathan assumed this had something to do with the hints and 'certain events'. "I'm not going to fly off the handle." He was reasonably sure of that, whatever the news might be.
"MacInnis' group suffered some pretty severe attention from Mistra." It had been, Alison reflected, likely right after Mistra had stopped looking for Mick, too. "Full database wipe-out to keep it from falling in their hands, and a lot of safehouses getting blown up sky-high to keep Mistra from getting to any important data." She looked at him steadily. "He couldn't contact me through the usual means - so when he was in Berlin and saw Domino on the street, he decided to try and go through her. Wasn't as though Domino was about to cooperate when she heard his name though. So he drugged her drink," as he'd done for Nathan, "and implanted a light surface data dump in her mind before cutting her loose. Let her remember everything up to the actual blanking out, to keep the temporary location they had secured." She paused. "And to keep Domino from going back and blowing it up, though he didn't say it in so many words."
"He--" Nathan swallowed the rest of the instinctive reply. Right. He'd said he wasn't going to fly off the handle. "She's okay?" he asked hoarsely. First things first. And she'd come to Alison? Well.
"Yes. She emailed Pete and I. We went to check on her right away after she flew in. Charles scanned her, made sure she was fine," in that order, "then retrieved the data and made sure there was nothing of what they did left in her mind." A pause, and she shook her head. "He said that even though it was obviously done quickly, there had still been meticulous care in what was done. And Domino didn't want you to be upset, since it happened right after New Year's. That's why she came to us."
"Good. That's good. She must have listened to me when I told her that you were handling contacts with MacInnis." His hands were definitely shaking, now, and he folded them together. As long as Dom was all right. "Thank you," he said, almost automatically. "For handling that. You and Pete and Charles..."
"Hey. I laid dibs on handling that for a while, remember?" She reached out, one hand resting over his for a moment, feather light. "For as long as you needed it, anyway."
Nathan took a deep breath and then released it, trying to let some of the sudden panic go with it. They'd handled it, Pete and Alison, and he trusted them both. Trusted their objectivity a lot more than he did his on this issue, to be perfectly honest.
"I think," he said slowly, his voice steadier, "that it's time I started sharing the load again, though."
She patted his hand one last time, then set it down on the platform again to resume leaning back a bit, light glimmering around her as she kept herself warm. "Okay." It was, when all was said and done, that simple.
"Could change a lot," Nathan said after a moment, "if he's really going to tell us everything." He smiled a bit faintly. "He does after all have so much to tell." Despite his anxiety, he was already beginning to see the possibilities. "Information is information, whatever gets determined as to where he, or we go from here."
"Pretty much," Alison nodded in agreement. And they had ways to double check on enough that it should be safe, by now. As much as it could be checked or as safe as it could get, when dealing with Mistra. "Guess MacInnis is going to have to learn to play well with the other kids, mm?"
"Or we'll take away his toys," Nathan said - and rocked backwards, breathing hard at the sudden shift in the patterns. "Or actually," he said, a bit wildly, "I think we'd just better teach him the value of cooperation."
She reached out, one hand on his arm to steady him. "MacInnis is used to manipulation and being sneaky. So much that he doesn't, I'm thinking, know any other way." Which was why he'd resorted to an info implant in Domino's mind. Alison didn't ask what Nathan had Seen, didn't press that particular issue. "Cooperation can be learned, most times. I'm not settling for any less, from him."
"All right." Nathan took a deep breath, grounded by the solidity of Alison's hand on his arm. He laid his hand over hers for a moment, then took it away. "Let's get this thing set up, then. He suggested tomorrow night."
A short nod answered him. "I'll see about borrowing Kurt from Ororo for this, then, for the courtesy ride to the 'bird." She mentally went over the options, trying to keep it to a reasonable minimum, while keeping all the possibilities into account.
"I'll go talk to Charles," Nathan said, rising and offering her a hand. The patterns were still shivering in his mind, but had settled, at least a little. It made sense. They were making a choice, after all.
He had forgotten how good it felt to be the one making the choices.
The flyer's platform was... a little on the chilly side, on a day like this. But Nathan had badly needed the fresh air, to clear his head after that phone conversation, and he suspected Alison would understand when he explained. Sitting crosslegged on a spot clear of snow, he took a deep breath and then let it out again, tracing one of the meditative patterns in his mind. The sky above was perfectly, almost oppressively clear. He was tempted to take it as an omen.
Making her way up to the flyer's platform as something Alison was fair used to by now. Nathan's telepathic query earlier had enough urgency underscoring it that she'd set back the gym training and headed for the platform instead, while absently tugging a scarf around her neck and promising herself to indulge in some 'stay warm' type powers training. It wasn't as though keeping localized light going was a problem anymore. It took her a few moments to reach the platform itself, and soon she'd settled next to Nathan, waiting patiently for him to let her know what was going on.
"I got a phone call," he said after a short silence. "Just now. It was MacInnis." He looked sideways at her, smiling very faintly. "He wants to see me."
Her mind did one of those fizzle things, which involved going from calm to just a little bit homicidal in two seconds flat. "He did what?!" She still managed, a corner of her mind noted somewhat proudly, to not broadcast the question loud enough for all on the estate to hear. Somehow.
"He called me. Asked me to meet him tomorrow in the same bar from May." Nathan shifted, a soft, only very slightly amused laugh escaping him. "I may have inquired if he was indulging in recreational pharmaceuticals. He told me to bring as much backup as I wanted this time."
With some effort, Alison managed to keep from storming off to find MacInnis and slay him. A lot. Even though she understood why he'd called instead of emailed her, which meant telling Nathan now about what had happened was required. "I'm going." It was matter of fact, rather than autocratic, as statements went.
"I was sort of taking that as a given," Nathan said with a sigh. He rubbed at the back of his neck, tried to imagine tension draining out of him like water from a sieve. It didn't do much good. "I'm going to talk to Charles, as well. Ask him to come along in my head. MacInnis says... he's willing to put all his cards on the table. Tell me everything."
Alison did not make a strangled sound, though she wanted to. Taking a slow breath, she gave Nathan a sideways glance. "Certain events of late have pushed him there, yes. Which is what I was hinting about in that email the other day, the one about contacting him and all. I can... see why he'd do this, not that I'm not entirely about wanting to drop a mountain on his head." He'd called. Gah. Forcibly, she kept herself from pushing - Nathan had worked through something major. The triggers had been removed a while ago now. Maybe now was the right time for this.
Nathan nodded slowly. "I'd been wondering about those hints," he said, his voice very low. The silence dragged on for a moment or two, until he roused himself to explain further. "He wasn't trying to yank my chain, not like he has been in the past. He sounded desperate." Nathan stopped, shaking his head. "Which makes me wonder," he said, a bitter edge to the words, "whether this is just better-camoflauged chain-yanking. I don't trust him."
"Who said you had to? I don't trust him as far as I can laser him, and that's a heck of a lot really." Alison leaned back on her hands, summoning a bit of light to keep herself warm. The wind was biting, at this point. "From the message he passed along to us, he's in a desperate position, anyway." There was no smugness in her voice or thoughts, though she had indeed told MacInnis he needed them far more than they needed him, not so long ago. "And you know what to look for now."
"Who said I--" Nathan echoed, then trailed off, blinking. "Because since I left Mistra, I've never fought alongside anyone I didn't trust. Or couldn't control," he added, thinking about Hammer.
Alison nodded at that, smiling just a bit despite herself and her mood. More figuring out things was always good. "But you're contemplating it now." She looked ahead, breathing in the cold air slowly.
"I don't see a better option." Oh, there had been plenty of employers he hadn't liked, hadn't trusted during his time as a mercenary. But they hadn't had much to do with determining how he did the job. If he... if anything was going to happen with MacInnis, it wouldn't be like that. "It still seems to me that whatever kind of position he's in, he's still got the advantages. The contacts. The knowledge. I don't believe that he is going to show all his cards."
"Ah." Alison smiled, a touch contentedly. "But we have the best card of all, right now." She gazed up into the sky, suddenly feeling less worried about things, for an inexplicable reason. It wasn't as though there was nothing to worry about. "He needs us, Nathan. Not the other way around. And I think he may be more aware of this now than ever before."
"I still want to take plenty of backup," Nathan grumbled after a moment, almost fitfully. "Asking me to meet him at that same bar... even if he needs us, he's still playing games. And I'm not taking anything he offers me to drink this time."
"We can change the location." That MacInnis resorted to that as a standard methodology was noted and filed away. "Heck, fly in, have Kurt nab him and port him to the Jet, then toddle on in full flight for our talk, why not?" Who said MacInnis got to set the terms, anyway...
Nathan stopped to think about it. "I'd feel a lot safer on the 'Bird," he said with a grim little smile. "With back-up right there. Put him in the hot seat for once..." He sighed, rubbing at his face. "That sounds petty."
"It's common sense, to me. I know, it's not common, but still." Alison turned, granting him a serene smile, although something else lurked in her eyes. "And frankly, you've earned that, just a little bit." She had no problems with being petty about this, at all. "I'll run it by Scott for approval. We'll take Haroun to pilot. I'll ask Ororo if I can kidnap her second for an afternoon." She paused, then gave him a somewhat sheepish look. "If you don't mind my going all organizational on you like that."
"Quick in-and-out," Nathan muttered, and then nodded. "Sounds good. Minimize the contact with his people... " He stopped, stiffening a little at the sudden, insistent flash of memory. Pushing himself to his feet and out of the booth, lurching, his vision blurring but not badly enough to mask the two shapes moving in on him.... swallowing, he pushed the images away firmly.
"Minimize?" Alison noticed the reaction, the minute shifts in his features, but went on smoothly. "I'm thinking more like swiping 'im under their noses and dropping him off in their laps after. Just, you know, because we can." It was, without a doubt, vindictive and she wasn't inclined to make any apology for it either.
Nathan laughed a bit shakily, staring down at his hands. They weren't entirely steady. "I'm sensing something," he said after a moment. "After he called me. My precognition is twinging - the patterns are shivering. I think this is significant, whatever's going on."
A calm nod answered him. "It makes sense that something of this scale would have long term effects. Mistra are trying to build themselves an army of mutants, using children to achieve their goals. There's nothing small in that, in terms of impact." She eyes his hands for a moment, then tilted her head at him. "Hands are cold?"
"Not really." Nathan managed an uncertain smile. "They're just shaking. I think I'm nervous." He laughed hoarsely. "He shook me up a little."
"Human," she repeated gently, smiling encouragingly in return. "Nervous isn't bad." Heavens knew she had a boatload of that often enough. And more. She gazed at him pensively, wondering if now was a good time to tell him, or if she should wait until he was steadier, to not pile on the shocks. "Are you steady enough for something which might upset you? Or would you rather I tell you a bit later?" She asked the question simply, leaving the matter up to him to judge - and not making it about whether he trusted her to give him the information or not.
"Tell me." Nathan assumed this had something to do with the hints and 'certain events'. "I'm not going to fly off the handle." He was reasonably sure of that, whatever the news might be.
"MacInnis' group suffered some pretty severe attention from Mistra." It had been, Alison reflected, likely right after Mistra had stopped looking for Mick, too. "Full database wipe-out to keep it from falling in their hands, and a lot of safehouses getting blown up sky-high to keep Mistra from getting to any important data." She looked at him steadily. "He couldn't contact me through the usual means - so when he was in Berlin and saw Domino on the street, he decided to try and go through her. Wasn't as though Domino was about to cooperate when she heard his name though. So he drugged her drink," as he'd done for Nathan, "and implanted a light surface data dump in her mind before cutting her loose. Let her remember everything up to the actual blanking out, to keep the temporary location they had secured." She paused. "And to keep Domino from going back and blowing it up, though he didn't say it in so many words."
"He--" Nathan swallowed the rest of the instinctive reply. Right. He'd said he wasn't going to fly off the handle. "She's okay?" he asked hoarsely. First things first. And she'd come to Alison? Well.
"Yes. She emailed Pete and I. We went to check on her right away after she flew in. Charles scanned her, made sure she was fine," in that order, "then retrieved the data and made sure there was nothing of what they did left in her mind." A pause, and she shook her head. "He said that even though it was obviously done quickly, there had still been meticulous care in what was done. And Domino didn't want you to be upset, since it happened right after New Year's. That's why she came to us."
"Good. That's good. She must have listened to me when I told her that you were handling contacts with MacInnis." His hands were definitely shaking, now, and he folded them together. As long as Dom was all right. "Thank you," he said, almost automatically. "For handling that. You and Pete and Charles..."
"Hey. I laid dibs on handling that for a while, remember?" She reached out, one hand resting over his for a moment, feather light. "For as long as you needed it, anyway."
Nathan took a deep breath and then released it, trying to let some of the sudden panic go with it. They'd handled it, Pete and Alison, and he trusted them both. Trusted their objectivity a lot more than he did his on this issue, to be perfectly honest.
"I think," he said slowly, his voice steadier, "that it's time I started sharing the load again, though."
She patted his hand one last time, then set it down on the platform again to resume leaning back a bit, light glimmering around her as she kept herself warm. "Okay." It was, when all was said and done, that simple.
"Could change a lot," Nathan said after a moment, "if he's really going to tell us everything." He smiled a bit faintly. "He does after all have so much to tell." Despite his anxiety, he was already beginning to see the possibilities. "Information is information, whatever gets determined as to where he, or we go from here."
"Pretty much," Alison nodded in agreement. And they had ways to double check on enough that it should be safe, by now. As much as it could be checked or as safe as it could get, when dealing with Mistra. "Guess MacInnis is going to have to learn to play well with the other kids, mm?"
"Or we'll take away his toys," Nathan said - and rocked backwards, breathing hard at the sudden shift in the patterns. "Or actually," he said, a bit wildly, "I think we'd just better teach him the value of cooperation."
She reached out, one hand on his arm to steady him. "MacInnis is used to manipulation and being sneaky. So much that he doesn't, I'm thinking, know any other way." Which was why he'd resorted to an info implant in Domino's mind. Alison didn't ask what Nathan had Seen, didn't press that particular issue. "Cooperation can be learned, most times. I'm not settling for any less, from him."
"All right." Nathan took a deep breath, grounded by the solidity of Alison's hand on his arm. He laid his hand over hers for a moment, then took it away. "Let's get this thing set up, then. He suggested tomorrow night."
A short nod answered him. "I'll see about borrowing Kurt from Ororo for this, then, for the courtesy ride to the 'bird." She mentally went over the options, trying to keep it to a reasonable minimum, while keeping all the possibilities into account.
"I'll go talk to Charles," Nathan said, rising and offering her a hand. The patterns were still shivering in his mind, but had settled, at least a little. It made sense. They were making a choice, after all.
He had forgotten how good it felt to be the one making the choices.