clarice ferguson (blink). (blinkblink) wrote in mutanthaven, @ 2010-03-08 09:03:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | clarice ferguson, scott summers |
log: scott and clarice
summary: Scott shows up at Jack Diamond's office one night and unexpectedly crosses paths with a certain colorful member of Jack's crew. He's curious about her and she has a few questions for him, too.
CLARICE: She finished the job a lot faster than she'd expected. The night was still young by the time she'd sorted out the security cameras and dealt with the alarm systems and finally gotten what she'd teleported into the wealthy director's house for: a truly good take of jewelry, precious goods, and expensive knickknacks that she'd shoved into each pocket and wrapped her arms around before teleporting out of the estate. Back to Jack Diamond's place. He wouldn't be back yet, she knew, so she was able to breathe easily as she reappeared in the room that he generally called his office with a flash of pink portal light. Then she started emptying the take onto his desk. She was wearing all black -- a black hoodie pulled up close around her face, black jeans, black shoes and even fingerless black gloves to hide most of her distinctively-colored hands. It didn't take her long to rid herself of stolen goods. She patted herself down carefully once to make sure that she hadn't forgotten something or other in a well-hidden pocket -- she had once, and she felt a surge of fear at the memory resurfacing that she quickly stifled -- and, satisfied that she was good to go, turned around. And nearly screamed. Someone was in the room, someone who might have just come in a minute ago without her hearing or who might have been in there the whole time staring dumbfounded at her, and it wasn't someone who she recognized. Instead of shrieking, she froze. One glowing shard of light glimmered into being in her hand, just in case, and finally she reached up to push her hood off and down to her back. There was something oddly familiar about him, despite his face being new to her. And those strange glasses... "Are you Scott?" Clarice asked at last, her colorful face fixed somewhere between an annoyed scowl and confusion. "Jack's muscle guy?" She'd heard about him. The other kids had told her about Scott, one of Jack's old charges who had been brought back into the business. She'd heard about what he did and what he looked like, but yet somehow, their paths had never crossed. Strange.
SCOTT: Scott had seen some of Jack's newest crew, in his trips between the man's latest flophouse and whatever other location he had Scott running to. They all looked familiar, in that sort of vague way where someone reminds you of a person from too long ago. Except in this case, of course, it was Scott himself and his foster brothers and sisters that these people reminded him of. He didn't know what happened to any of the rest of them. Jail, drugs, death, he was assuming. Jack didn't have a lot of use for workers who got too old. When you got old, you got ideas. You wanted more, but you also produced less. You didn't get into places as easy, didn't attract as much sympathy. So you got put out on the street again. Unless, of course, you had some kind of particularly useful thing about you that Jack wanted to keep around. Like Scott. Or, as it turned out, Clarice. Jack had kept the two mutants away from one another specifically, not wanting Clarice's mutation to trigger some kind of protective instinct in Scott. She was, after all, extremely valuable to Jack, considering how she could get into most any place she wanted. So it was by accident that Scott ran into her now, walking into Jack's office to drop off some money that he'd been out collecting. He stopped when he saw the person, thinking at first that they were taking stuff, but then realizing it was another drop-off. Strange, he hadn't seen anyone else head up here. Of course, then the person noticed him, and something appeared in their hand. His muscles tensed slightly, reflexively, but he didn't move. His eyes moved back to her face, although that of course wouldn't be easily known given how opaque his glasses were. "Yeah, I'm Scott. What's in your hand?" Didn't look like any knife he knew of. He also didn't seem thrown at all by her coloring or markings. ...Possibly because from behind his red lenses, he couldn't tell that she was purple and pink at all. He thought the marks were just strange tattoos.
CLARICE: This wasn't exactly a common or usual situation for Clarice to find herself in, but it wasn't the circumstances that surprised her as much as Scott's reaction to her -- or lack thereof. No recoil, no shocked expression, no telltale twist of his mouth to convey his confusion or even disgust. She'd gotten used to seeing all of those. People generally didn't respond kindly to someone who looked like such a...well, freak. And honestly, faced with his bland expression and innocuous question, Clarice wasn't sure how to act. Or what to say. "What?" Oh. She had to get it together here, she was already sounding like a prize idiot. He was talking about the teleportation javelin in her hand, naturally, which had appeared out of nowhere and probably given him at least a second's pause, despite the fact that her face hadn't. The problem was that she didn't have a great answer for him about the pink glowing thing either. She knew what it did, and how she used it, but she'd figured out her mutation more or less completely on her own. All the technical and scientific terms for what she did were way beyond her reach, and thus made a real explanation a little tricky. "This? It's nothing." She held it up for a moment, then shrugged. "I call them shards I guess. It's just part of what I do. Here --" As a demonstration, she turned slightly back towards Jack's desk and tossed the shard at an ashtray he kept there. It flared pink for a moment before disappearing, and reappearing in the span of a heartbeat on the other side of the desk. It was nothing huge but still, nothing normal.
SCOTT: ...Well then. While he didn't recognize the shard as a knife, he hadn't been expecting it to be some kind of offshoot of a mutation. Of course, given his glasses, it was still hard to read much emotion off of him when she demonstrated it; his brows knit together in a frown, and his mouth tightened a bit. Mutant. She could teleport things. No wonder Jack had her around. She must've been making him a mint. And he'd told Scott that he didn't have any other mutants working for him, either. He was sure Jack must've been trying to time their appearances so that they wouldn't run into one another. "You're a mutant." Not a question. Also he didn't sound overly shocked, or freaked, or awed by it. If anything, he seemed a bit...morose about the fact. "How long have you been working for Jack?"
CLARICE: Still not a reaction she was used to seeing. Most people reacted to the teleportation with at least surprise, if not awe. Scott somehow managed to look disapproving. Either something was wrong with him or she was missing part of the plot, here. As for what he called her, she wasn't really sure what to make of that, either. She'd heard the word "mutant" tossed around by TV, been called a mutie before by some of the other kids who were eager to pick up on new insults for the weird-looking girl, but she didn't necessarily identify as one. No one had ever told her that she was a mutant, just that something was probably wrong with her. "I guess I am." It didn't really matter what he wanted to call her. He got the point. Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned somewhat casually back against Jack's desk. If he got closer than she felt comfortable with, after all, she could simply disappear before he'd gone a step. Or make him disappear. "I've been with Jack for four years. Since I was thirteen." She cocked her head back slightly as she studied his nearly impassive face. "You were part of his crew when you were younger too, right?"
SCOTT: That made sense. It was about the age Jack had gotten him at as well, old enough to start really being useful. He gave a nod. "Yeah. Started around thirteen too." And then he'd gotten out, of course, but now he was back. And yes, he was fully aware of how pathetic that was. He moved over to the desk to where she stood, looking down at her take. "When did your powers come out?" He still didn't know about the skin mutation, but the teleporting could've been enough to get her parents or other fosters to kick her out. He didn't know if it was better or worse that she wasn't new. Better in the sense that it meant Jack at least presently was keeping to his promise of not recruiting more mutants. But worse for the obvious reason of this girl being subjected to him for longer. For a moment, the urge struck him to tell her about the hotel, to offer her a place to stay and a way out. But he crushed it down almost as soon as he felt it. Jack would know. And then Jack would come for the rest of them. It was too dangerous. And he felt for this girl, but he couldn't risk people like his brother for someone he'd just met.
CLARICE: When she saw him move forward, Clarice tensed warily. A bright oval of pink light flared around her body, and all at once, she was on the far side of the desk, leaning her elbows against the back of Jack's chair rather than find herself standing next to the new guy. Or old guy, she supposed. He'd been around a lot longer than her, even with his temporary break in Jack's employ. But at least he'd gotten out for a while. Maybe he'd even gotten the chance to see the world. This and the group home were the only places Clarice had ever really known. She'd never been kicked out of a family situation, or had any parents to speak of, fake or otherwise. There wasn't any place for her to go back to if she left here. "A few months after he picked me, I guess. I couldn't do anything good at first but I guess he figured that a freak like me would eventually do something useful so it was worth the gamble." It was weird, telling a near-stranger all this stuff. The people who knew her already knew the story, or didn't give a shit. And nobody else really talked to her. She wasn't desperate enough to start spilling her guts, but she did feel strangely exposed in a way that she wasn't sure she was comfortable with. The distance helped a little. "This place is better than the group home. At least Jack leaves me alone if I stay out of his way." Most of the time, she added silently.
SCOTT: He didn't seem jarred by her sudden disappearance and reappearance, but he did frown some when she said her powers came out after Jack had picked her -- but that Jack somehow knew beforehand that she would have them. "A freak like you? How did he know what you'd be?" Or were or what would stop being latent. However you wanted to phrase it. He didn't seem to notice how awkward this conversation could be, or how intrusive. It wasn't really like Scott to dig for details on someone's personal life, and especially not to willingly ask for secrets and such to be given to him. But, then, it was completely like him to want answers to his questions and not really stop to think of how his queries would affect the other party.
CLARICE: She stared at Scott for a few long seconds, her green eyes flat and calculating. Then, slowly: "seriously, are you fucking blind?" She had to know. Maybe that was the reason for the weird sunglasses, because she could honestly not think of any other reason why he'd be looking directly at her all this time and not notice the fact that she looked like she'd just popped out of a radioactive paint bath. Except he couldn't be blind, because he'd asked about her energy shard. And he'd been looking at the stuff she stole. The situation was making absolutely no sense, and it was starting to kind of annoy Clarice. "Look at me. I'm like, part of someone's acid trip." How could anybody miss her most obvious characteristics?
SCOTT: ....Oh. Well, he guessed that made sense. Kurt was a teleporter, and he was...well, freakish looking (apparently -- not like Scott could see his blue). Granted, Davis wasn't, but he was still young. Maybe he'd be green by the time he was an adult. His jaw tightened some, but he spoke anyway. "I can't see what you look like. Your skin color, I mean. You just look red." You know, with the sunglasses and all. Still, he didn't seem at all like taking the sunglasses off might be the next step for him. He wanted to ask her what color she really was, but couldn't figure out how to without being an ass (at a level that even he would recognize it as that). He knew she had to be something light though, since he'd thought she was white before.
CLARICE: Well, if he couldn't see her through the sunglasses, why didn't he just take them off? Clearly Clarice had heard some things about Scott, but she didn't have all the facts. She gave him a weird look but shrugged anyway. "Well, I'm pink. Like hot pink. And I have green eyes. And these," she pointed in an exaggerated way at the strange markings on her skin, the crescent around her eye and the diamond on her forehead. "And I was born that way, so that's why I wasn't in some foster home when Jack came calling." She didn't have to point out that nobody wants an ugly baby, much less an ugly teenager. Getting on this particular topic made her start to feel a little self-conscious again, however, and after a moment, she reached back over her shoulders and pulled that hood back up to cover her long hair. It was slightly over-large and hung around her face in a way that was guaranteed to cast dark shadows when she wasn't under direct light. "So why do you wear those if it makes everything red? That seems kind of like a pain in the ass," she fired back, preferring to turn the questions on him again if he'd let her.
SCOTT: Hot pink with green eyes? Scott wished he could see what she looked like, as that was probably extremely interesting. Although she probably preferred him like this and not being able to look at her freakishness. Whatever. He actually gave a half-smile. "Because I'm a mutant too." Which was likely why he wasn't terribly shocked by her being one. Also because Scott didn't get shocked by much in general. He couldn't really take his glasses off to show her why the glasses were needed, but he did reach up to them to pull them forward just a bit. Enough that the red energy that would otherwise slam out and shatter the desk was visible a bit around the edges of the glasses, flowing and moving like a strange mixture of water and smoke. The glasses were pushed back up after a moment. "They keep that energy back."
CLARICE: This time, it was Clarice's turn not to look shocked. Instead, his little display of power was met with a slow, secretive smile that transformed her face from wary to strangely...friendly. Because wow. She'd never met someone else like her. And it felt kind of good, this sudden and unexpected connection between them. Not to mention that his powers were pretty cool. It wasn't teleportation or anything (in fact, she wasn't actually sure what his powers were besides the fact that his eyes made these amazing crimson refractions that moved like they were solid) but it was extraordinary in of itself, and that was more than enough for Clarice. She straightened up a little, leaning around Jack's chair with full intention of closing some of the distance between them, but then she heard the slam of a door outside, and the smile dropped instantly from her face. Her eyes darted past Scott, then to his face again. "Bye," she murmured, and without further warning -- blink -- she was gone.