talia wangyal. (wangyal) wrote in theinvincibles, @ 2015-08-17 13:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, petros argyropoulos, talia wangyal |
WHO: Talia Wangyal [HALT] & Petros Argyropoulos [AZREAL] aka Targo.
WHEN: Saturday night, just before the alarm went off.
WHERE: Argo's apartment.
WHAT: Green Team leaders talk APEX, drink beer, eat tzatziki and have their night ruined.
WARNINGS: None.
"Make yourself at home," Argo said, gesturing around the room. "I'll grab some food from the kitchen." Petros Argyropoulos's studio apartment might have been the least homey place in the Lock. Standing sentry by the door, a cactus with a hole in the side provided the lone decorative touch. If Talia wanted a place to sit, her options were the bed (or rather, mattress and box spring on the floor) or one of a pair of folding chairs sitting by a flimsy-looking card table. But at least his apartment, unlike Capers that night, wasn't filled with gyrating eighteen-year-olds. "When are you going to buy real furniture?" Talia asked as she decided to take a seat on one of the folding chairs. "If you don't get on it, I'll buy you a couch myself." "I'll get to it eventually," he said, the same answer he'd been giving to that question for several years. "It's hard to fit Ikea into my seven days a year." An excuse -- he could easily order furniture or contract purchase out to one of his numerous non-meta relatives in the area. Changing the subject, "You want pita chips?" Talia pursed her lips slightly, but didn't pursue the matter. "Always." She reached for one of the bottles of beer at her feet; with a flick of her fingers, a small rush of force flipped the cap off. Checking the glass wasn't chipped, Talia did the same for a second bottle before offering it to Argo. He shook the last of a bag of chips into a bowl and set it in front of Talia, the cheap table swaying slightly under the new weight, before sitting down in the opposite chair. "Thanks," he said, grasping the bottle by the neck. He took a very deliberate swig. "So I've been thinking," he began. "You know, about the attacks, and the labs, and the lawyers." She reached for the chips, intrigue barely perceptible. "Yes." "Hold on, I think I have some dip for that. "You know, metahuman research is all top secret. We don't know where our powers come from, or anything about them besides how to use them, if even that," Argo continued with the conversation as he rummaged around in his fridge. He didn't host friends often, and his culinary idiosyncrasies meant that the vast majority of the food in his kitchen was or could easily be liquefied, but he still managed to produce two plastic tubs. "Salsa verde or tzatziki." "Tzatziki," she replied, taking her preferred dip from his hands. "You think the attacks are because APEX thinks someone's getting close with sorting out where powers come from? Or maybe they have, and--" No. She wasn't going to go there. APEX were terrorists, they wouldn't be preventing people from unleashing something awful. "I dunno. If it's all related, a law office suggests there might be some kind of patent involved. Or the lab needs to cover their asses." Argo sat down again. He took a chip and broke it in half before dipping it in the yogurt sauce. "Or it all means jack, and APEX is taking us on a wild fucking goose chase." "What else would they keep at a law office that APEX might be interested in?" Talia asked, frowning instead of eating her chip - which hovered somewhere between the dip and her mouth. "Dunno." Shrugging, Argo washed down his pita chip with another careful sip of beer. "If it is patent-related -- well, there were gonna be metahuman drugs someday, sooner or later. I'm surprised it's taken this long." "Drugs to what?" Even though she had an inkling. "There's so many different powers, though, which is a problematic variable, right? Even if they found something that worked on one person's power they can't assume it would work on everyone's powers." "Negators work on everyone," he pointed out. He snapped another chip in half. "That's the way I hear it anyway. Augmenters too." "Can you turn a human power negator into a drug though?" Talia wondered, and shivered at the thought. "Why would they develop something to augment our powers? It's not like anyone loves us being here." A snort. "They love the work we do for them." Without understanding how powers worked at all, let alone power negation, Argo couldn't comment on the science, but he, like any other metahuman, lived the politics daily. "Which we wouldn't have to do if none of us existed in the first place." "We don't have to do it." He shrugged. Talia fell silent for a moment. "No. But it's hard not to, considering." "Yeeeeah." He dragged out the word, his voice trailing off towards the end. "You know, in theory, I could get out of all of this, if I really wanted to. Team Leader, Operative, the DMS, everything." "Would you?" Talia lifted her chin, and looked him directly in the eye. "Because I wouldn't give it up - even to leave The Lock." He shook his head, breaking eye contact briefly. "I could do it legally -- reclaim my Greek birthright and return to the old country, but." At least he thought he could. He and the two of his siblings who shared his predicament had pored over the laws numerous times, each too apprehensive to try. Even Antonia considered herself too American to make the move. "Nah. I wouldn't even take a powers cure if there was one. We have a purpose here. Fuck APEX." Argo took another, slightly less cautious draft from his bottle. A trickle of beer touched his lip and turned rancid, but he was used to it and wiped it away with the back of his hand. "And fuck Paul." Ah. There it was, Talia thought as she raised her own bottle to her lips. "He's still dead. We don't know everything," she pointed out. "I'm not trying to be conspiratorial -- it makes sense for APEX to want to infiltrate our ranks... I don't know." She tipped back the beer, barely tasting it as it rushed down her throat. Who was she even defending anymore? What did she believe? "Fuck Paul," she agreed, forsaking her usual rule of not partaking in swear words. "For blowing this whole thing wide open. It's hard enough to foster trust between us and the agents. Now we'll all be due to prove ourselves. All over again." Argo raised an eyebrow, but he didn't press Talia on breaking her habit of not swearing. "As if we haven't already done enough to prove we're not rogues." "No one thought it was possible for Paul, though. The least suspicious of us will have to do it all over again." With a heavy sigh, he set his beer bottle down, and the card table rattled in response. "Jesus." For Argo, taking the Lord's name in vain indicated a greater deal of emotion than any other four-letter word. "I know we had time to prepare for this," he explained. "I even told Felix, better for us in the long run if he's a traitor, but. Fuck." Seeing that his bottle was near empty, he gestured at the six-pack. "I'll take another." Wordlessly, Talia did the same bottle opening trick with her power and passed it over. He thanked her with a nod. "Sure you don't want to talk about interior design?" she asked wryly, after a pause. "Yeah," he replied, voice dripping with sarcasm. "We can figure out how to feng shui --" He nearly spilled his new, full beer when the building-wide alarm sounded. Skull piercing with the sounds of a seemingly never-ending siren, Talia dropped her empty bottle and stood, fishing her phone out of her pocket. "Text the leaders, I'll try the team," she suggested, already penning a group message asking what on earth was going on. Before she could press send, a text from her half-sister came in. Talia glanced at the screen for a split second. "It's a riot. There's a riot at Club Night." She caught Argo's eye. This was going to be a long weekend. |