Who: Cain Marko and Piotr Rasputin NPCs: None When: Sunday, November 15, 2009 (backdated) Where: The basement of X-Force HQ What: Cain's still cooling his heels at X-Force awaiting his assignment, and Piotr comes down to check on him. Rating: PG-13
The general consensus among X-Force, or at least as near as Piotr could tell, was to treat the Juggernaut sitting in their basement cautiously: he was the Juggernaut, after all, and he had turned himself in. The contradiction led to caution. Mostly, they left him alone, sitting in one of the temporary cells in the basement, knowing full well that if he wanted out, he'd be out. Still, every so often, as whims struck, they did check to be sure he was still there.
And in Piotr's case, he just needed a change of scenery from his room, the garage, and the streets of Chicago. So he picked up his sketchpad and trooped downstairs, where he could be assured of general peace and quiet, assuming no one needed to be rushed to the infirmary or the Juggernaut did in fact break out. He gave a cursory glance at the cell - yes, Marko was still there, which frankly made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up: he was here in their home, no matter that he was leaving in another day or so, and it was unsettling to all of them. And then there was what was going to happen with him...
And yes, more than half of him wanted a chance to get in a few more hits. But that would be about as low as gawking at him in the cell.
With an inward sigh, he settled down on the steps, and opened his sketchbook. Hopefully, this would be a more suitable way to forget about his troubles than a bottle of vodka.
At least Colossus wasn't openly gawking at the spectacle of "Juggernaut in a cell". In fact, from the way he pretty much just glanced at Cain and then away, he seemed almost intimidated. Kid knew what was good for him, then. He hadn't forgotten that he'd gotten thrashed in their fight.
However, when he didn't just buzz off after having made sure that Cain hadn't taken a walk out of the place in the last hour, Cain raised an eyebrow and resettled himself more comfortably on the bunk, turning back to the well-thumbed copy of "Anna Karenina". Probably from Tin Man here, given that it was Russian literature. He'd never read this book before, but for anyone who thought that literature was boring, they needed to pick up some Tolstoy. Seriously, there was enough family melodrama, violence, hypocrisy, sex, and all that to make your head spin. It was a damn soap opera.
If the guy didn't go away soon he was going to say something pretty clearly, but for the moment, he really didn't feel like giving him the satisfaction of letting him know that his being here bothered him.
Granted, being here was rather like prodding at a sore tooth, likely for them both, but Piotr couldn't seem to help himself. Besides, for all that he was, in fact, the Juggernaut, and the fact that he'd ended up in the lake notwithstanding, Marko was still quieter than the rest of X-Force. Telling himself firmly that he didn't care, Piotr turned to a clean sheet of paper and started doodling, hoping to find some sort of inspiration for a sketch in the random shapes that flowed out of his pencil.
To his dim horror, he found himself drawing a rough outline of the man on the bunk; he had not come down here to be a sightseer, and besides, sketching him was about the same as prodding at a caged lion. But, still, while he was down here and the subject presented itself...He reined in his impulses and did his best to hold to his principles. He'd work on the perspective of the hallway instead.
The Juggernaut reading - Piotr mused as he glanced up from his paper to figure out the angles and caught sight of their unwilling (willing?) guest again. He was sure there were people on the X-Teams who'd be absolutely shocked, but he readily conceded that the man was not an idiot. He himself was only somewhat surprised at his choice of reading materials, and was trying not to resent the loan of his book. It wasn't as though he didn't own another copy in Russian; it was the principle of the thing. Still, if the alternative to a bored Juggernaut who might get tired of waiting was the temporary loss of one of his books, so be it.
Bowing his head back over his paper, he flipped to a new sheet and sketching in earnest.
Oh, how nice. The Russkyi had come down to sketch him while he was sitting in the box. One last embarrassing memento to show around the X-Teams after he left tomorrow? He still wasn't happy about the news that he'd been assigned to Houston and Sean Cassidy. The perception of being deliberately set up for failure was one he couldn't quite shake--those morons knew how he and Cassidy felt about each other. Oh well. When they claimed he'd screwed up when he and Sean inevitably blew up at each other and tried to drag him off to prison, they'd find out once again that the Juggernaut was not someone you wanted to try to take on in a fight. This whole thing hadn't been his idea to begin.
Glancing up as he turned another page, he commented wryly, "Make sure you get my good side." After a brief pause, he added with sharp self-deprecation, "Oh wait, I don't have one." He knew how to deal with these types. Beat them to the punchline and state the insult like he accepted it as true and didn't give a damn, and there went all their fun.
"Then it is fortunate I'm not drawing you," Piotr said, successfully distracting himself as he glanced up and down the hallway and tried to match the perspective of the cell bars on his paper to the reality. As long as he didn't think about Marko being dropped on an X-Team, it wasn't really happening, right? He was desperately hoping that they never had to work alongside each other: this was awkward enough, and he didn't think he could actually bring himself to do so.
But he'd learned by now to never make promises he didn't know he could keep. And besides, he had far more concrete worries - such as, if Marko was with X-Corps, what, exactly, would he learn about the X-Men? Specifically, did he have to start worrying about Illyana being in danger?
The very idea of it made him half-sick, and restless - the sort that could only really be properly channeled by marching off to confront whatever it was that was making him upset in the first place. But he'd also settle for a good hard training session, and distracting his mind with art. If he was still twitchy later, he'd hit up the vodka and the Tolstoy: both were very comforting, oddly enough.
The frustration of being here, of knowing what he had to face still, was enough that Cain really just wanted two things: a beer, and to punch the hell out of something. Of course, denied access to both for the moment (though he was determined to get good and hammered the night before he went to Houston), he just had to grit his teeth and endure. He could take a lot of pain and suffering, true. But silently taking it on without fighting back? Not his style.
"I see. You're just down here doing randomly a still life of those crates in the corner." He shrugged. "Whatever suits you, Matisse." As for the X-Teams, he was starting to develop his plan. This was a contract, that was all, and he'd well proven he was a professional and knew how to handle those. He'd dealt with contractors who pissed him off and tried to provoke him before, and he'd managed to get through. Granted, that enmity hadn't been nearly as bad as this or for nearly as long, but clinging to some idea of how to make it through helped. He'd agreed to six months of them getting his skills, such as they were, exclusively. Though if they thought he'd give them personal information or unrelated intel, they were delusional morons. Still, a reliable merc didn't undercut someone they'd done business in good faith with by talking about that job with the next contractor. So no, he wouldn't talk about anything he learned from the X-Dorks...assuming they didn't screw him over. If so, of course, all bets were off.
"More or less," Piotr said absently. "But not Matisse - I don't much care for his use of color." He'd studied the paintings of the masters, of course, and wished he had an opportunity to do more, but with Chicago being what it was, he didn't have the time to devote himself to frivolous studies. Which was why he hoped he could fake the skewed perspective with some cunning shading.
He was doing his best to ignore the man behind bars, knowing full well that he would only increase his sense of frustration by paying any attention to him whatsoever. Piotr couldn't help but wonder if his real reason for protesting his temporary inclusion on a X-Team was the fact that now, he couldn't legitimately have a rematch. At least not for six months - possibly a great deal less than that, if all the dire predictions came true and Marko walked out on them after a week or two. And then there was the security breach to worry about...
But there really wasn't much he could do about it, was there? He'd grit his teeth, focus on drawing, and ignore the world, especially the world that consisted of Cain Marko.
Cain, to be honest, knew little about art (aside from a firm opinion that "modern art" looked like it was done by a three-year-old) and didn't much care. "Suit yourself, it's all pretty much the same to me," he shrugged. "Glad to hear it's all for the pursuit of art. And I thought you might be coming down here to gloat since you'll never get a chance to do it for real." Any rematch was going to end pretty much the same way, after all. Kid had a pretty damn good punch and a decent amount of guts, but his instincts were all wrong for a real scrap. Until he retrained those, he was hopeless.
Piotr forgot himself long enough to glance over, baffled, before the lure of art called him again and he went back to eying the hallway. "You turned yourself in," he pointed out. "We had no part in it, so aren't allowed to gloat. And it's rude," he added with a shrug. That, and mean-spirited, but while he was usually dedicated enough not to indulge himself, sometimes even he couldn't help it - that was where gloating in private came in, and certainly not to his face. For example, when Cain walked out on X-Corps, possibly leveling the building as he did so, Piotr would not say "I told you so," but that didn't mean he wouldn't be thinking it.
"Oh," he added, glancing over again. "I don't know if anyone bothered to tell you, but the money you sent went where it needed to go; your neighbors are rebuilding." If he could be good enough to offer it, Piotr could make sure he knew that it had gotten into the right hands in the end. And now the could go back to annoying each other in peace. With an inward shrug, he went back to his sketch.
Hell, Cain would be happy to tell Charlie and others, "I told you so" when this went south, as it probably would. It was a bad idea from the start as anyone with any sense could see.
The news about Bucktown surprised him a bit. He had pretty much figured X-Force would ignore the gesture since it didn't quite fit with pegging him as sadistic, brainless lowlife scum. So he lowered the book and nodded to Piotr in acknowledgment of it. "Thanks. Good to know that." That little courtesy done, he went back to reading as the Russian returned to sketching, but he couldn't resist adding, "So, gee, this is twice I've been here and haven't ripped up the carpet and thrown chairs through the windows. Still convinced I've got a sinister plot to come crashing through the front door and murder you all over the scrambled eggs?"
Piotr raised an eyebrow, but when he looked up, it was only to get an idea of the distances involved between two of his points. To be honest, he didn't know what to expect from the Juggernaut anymore, and that worried him into keeping his mouth firmly shut. Best his potential-opponent didn't know how much this whole affair unsettled him. Of course, he wasn't sure he could protest not having to fear the Juggernaut crashing in one fine day when they had plenty to worry about from the humans, but it still kicked his world askew; like this drawing, everything was almost right, but the imperfections made it confusing.
"We always thought you'd forgo the door and come in through the front wall," he admitted. "And who knows what the future holds?" he added with a philosophic shrug.
That actually gave Cain an honest laugh. Dry humor was something he liked, considering most of his was as dark (and often as bitter) as a mug of black coffee. Joking about the situation was coin he understood, so in its way, that was more appreciated than any kind of protest or apology would have been. "You're probably right about that, Tin Man. Gotta say it makes for a more dramatic entrance." He smiled wryly. "You never know what's comin' down the tracks, that's for sure." After all, two weeks ago, he'd never have guessed he'd end up in a spot like this. Idly he wondered how Tom was doing right now, and thought he could risk a call to Sonja Vitrenko when they finally sprang him from here. God knew how he'd eventually explain this to his old friend.
"Those of us who can enter through walls may as well when we can," Piotr agreed. If asked in court, he would confess that he'd occasionally enlarged doors to better suit his frame, as well as occassionally ignoring the door altogether, but he would make the plea that he did it all for a good cause...relatively, anyways. "The plaster dust is annoying, though," he griped - he may as well, so long as he was talking to someone who understood the problem.
Piotr made a rough noise in the back of his throat; while he agreed wholeheartedly with the future being unknown, he was somewhat puzzled by the metaphor, especially coming from the Juggernaut. "But if you don't like the...train, would it be? Then are you not able to move it out of the way?" Sometimes, it was a curse to be a superstrong literalist.
"That part does suck," Cain agreed, remembering all too well the scene in San Diego a week before. "Guess it just comes with the territory." Color him a bit surprised that the Russian, who had seemed duty-bound and sort of humorless after their meeting at the bar, would admit to something as destructive as wall-crashing.
"Yeah, it'd be a train. And I can't say I've ever tried to go out and stop one." He looked up at Colossus--"Peter Rasputin", that was what he'd found out his name was--and grinned. "I could, but not much point to it." The glory days of train robbery were long gone, after all. "And haven't nearly been both that bored and that drunk yet to think about just doing it."
The difference between Piotr and Cain was not only that Piotr had stopped a train, he'd done so for more reasons than he was bored and drunk. Still, he didn't bother arguing over the point in stopping trains - which was a really pointless gesture, if only because Marko would learn while he was with X-Corps, or he wouldn't, and little Piotr could say would make a difference. He did say wryly, "It is easier if they don't mind if it tips over." What with passengers and the possibility of an explosion, and then general cargo, he certainly hadn't stopped it like he'd stopped the tractor from hitting Illyana so long ago, when it was just a matter of punching it out of the way. But that was before he'd discovered the extent of his mutation, and before the Xavier Institute. "Otherwise, it's all just a matter of physics." And Marko knew all about physics, so he'd be able to fill in the gaps for himself.
"But the future," he said, frowning thoughtfully as he returned to the earlier topic, "I suppose if you don't like it, you can move it as well. Or change it, anyways."
He smiled to himself. "Ah, physics." Yeah, he got the idea from that. He would have been surprised to hear that Piotr had actually stopped a train. It must have been in whatever Russian backwater he hailed from, because it would have been big news on CNN here in America, and Cain certainly would have taken notice of a mutant that strong. Of course people minded if it tipped over, and that much force being stopped in its tracks in any case would certainly cause some injuries. And from that, complaints and inevitable lawsuits. Heroism wasn't all it was cracked up to be when people were going to be ingrates about a guy saving their asses.
"Not much of a life if you're not in control of your own destiny." On that point, he was damn certain, and he'd worked hard to make it so. Nobody owned him: not Cyttorak, not Charlie, and not Sean Cassidy. For his part, he'd chosen this path, tough and probably degrading as it was. Yes, he'd been somewhat desperate, but at least nobody had forced this on him. He'd chosen to save Tom, and to hell with his own consequences. That at least gave what he was doing a little more dignity, which at this point he rather needed.
As far as heroism as it related to humans being ungrateful to mutants (or superhumans, whichever) went, Piotr was at the point of answering 'yes, welcome to Chicago X-Force, don't expect anything different.' It seemed like they'd gotten to the point where if they saved the day, people grew suspicious, accusatory, and slapped around lawsuits, and if they didn't, people still grew accusatory and suspicious. They couldn't win, and it depressed him to try. But they had to keep struggling, or else they really would fail. After all, like Cain, he'd chosen his path. No one had insisted that he join the X-Teams after graduating from Xavier's, but he had. And he should have known what he was getting into to boot, and he'd still joined up.
"Mm," he agreed, going back to sketching for a moment. And because they were getting on so nicely and because he was curious, he added without looking up, "Russian literature?"
"Hey, it's what you folks gave when I asked for something to read," he replied. "Along with a couple of others." He'd finished "Cujo" yesterday after Tabby had come by. "I'm not complainin', gives me something to do. And at least it's not 'War and Peace'." He'd had to read that in high school and been miserable, which had been a real feat for a boy who had an interest in history, and military history in particular. "Too much of a bunch of rich jerks complaining about their problems. History should be interesting, not a damn chore to read."
"Nor is it Crime and Punishment, which is much the same," he admitted. He liked Russian literature - well, about as much as he liked any literature, which he often thought was rather pointless and full of commentary for the sake of the author hearing himself talk - not so much because he was required to, but because he knew what to expect from it. Of course, the fact that he was agreeing more often than not with Marko was part of the skewed perspective - it wasn't right, but it wasn't exactly wrong, either, and was mostly just damn confusing. So long as he remembered their central differences, they could have as many points in common as they wanted.
Still... "History should be relevant to today and the future," he argued. "Otherwise, what is the point in studying about a battle in the Middle Ages, except to know the date?"
He wasn't exactly in the mood to get into a debate about the nature of history. He left that crap to the academics. "Of course it's relevant. People wouldn't study it nearly as much if it wasn't." And he also was a bit wary about agreeing with Rasputin here far too much. But these were just little things. "After all, we're not all about to suddenly forget my history, are we, Rasputin?" He raised an eyebrow. "Don't know if you're related to Grigori Yefimovich, but that can't have been an easy surname to have in the old country. History wouldn't let it, whether you deserve it or not."
Piotr raised an eyebrow again - very well, Marko knew his surname. It was bound to come out. Now all he had to do was worry about someone mentioning the student Illyana Rasputin. Actually, he mused, it probably didn't matter much; her first name alone would probably clue Marko in. For the first time, he wondered if it had really been best to bring Illyana to Xavier's. At least in Russia...well, no, anyone who wanted to hurt him through her could easily get to her in Russia, and he'd even be too far away to do much good. He would just have to be comforted that Illyana had her own gifts and was learning how to defend herself, and she was surrounded by X-Men. He would worry over security breaches and her, of course, but at least he knew she was in good hands.
"Where we lived, it didn't matter very much," he said. On a Siberian farm, there hadn't really been time or purpose in worrying over names, not when winter was coming and they had a crop to harvest: all hands were needed, regardless of sire or grandsire. And he'd been told that it had also been one of the points of Communism, though he hadn't seen its effects - like with names, politics hadn't mattered terribly much in the face of Siberian snows. Everyone worked together anyways, regardless of what they had been told to do: it was cooperate or starve. "History can be interesting," he admitted, "but things should be useful." Glancing down at his sketchbook, he was forced to amend, "More or less, anyways."
In reality, Cain really wouldn't have cared at all about Piotr's little sister. He didn't go after family members rather than the problem itself--it was dishonorable--and he was rather more reluctant to go after after women to begin. Kids were entirely off-limits, and that included teenagers, as obnoxious as they were. It might not be a popular stance to have these days given women's lib, but in more ways than one, Cain couldn't help his upbringing. In this case, being a teenager in the '50's, and being influenced by a grandfather whose own moral code had been formed by both Victorian/Edwardian and blue collar origins, definitely left its mark. More or less, what he'd been taught and still lived by boiled down to "Be nice to women and if a guy hits you, hit him back twice as hard." A bit old-fashioned, but he thought it was far preferable than his dad's idea of dealing with women, which was to blame them for all his problems and then beat the crap out of them. Of course, the fact he'd missed the entire sexual revolution probably didn't help either.
"If a thing's useless there's generally not much point to it," he agreed, thinking that was a crashing statement of the obvious.
It may have been obvious, but then, Piotr was of the firm opinion that there should be fewer classes on metaphor in English literature and more on how to take something apart, fix it, and put it back together. While he eventually learned the use of math and science, he still had yet to learn why it was so very important that they spend several weeks on alliteration. Absently making a few lines, going back to sketching, he grunted agreement and suggested, "Maybe it's just that people are crazy." He was well aware this was a conclusion they'd come to before: it seemed to be something they could easily agree on and thereby table all other discussion.
"Pretty much." On that, it seemed, he and the Russian were firmly agreed. And it seemed like that was a decent place to end the conversation before they pissed each other off like they had last time. He went back to "Anna Karenina", leaving Piotr to his sketching.
And surprisingly, they both managed to pass a quiet hour or so without bringing the building down around their ears. Perhaps, Piotr thought as he stretched and lumbered to his feet after so long on the steps, this would work after all. At least, "work" as was defined by "not kill each other during or at the end of it." He closed his sketchbook and headed back upstairs into the real world.