Remy Etienne LeBeau (_gumbo) wrote in tomorrowtoday, @ 2014-01-11 19:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | gambit, nara |
Log/Thread: Fish Tales
Characters: Nara the Atlantean and Remy LeBeau
NPCs: ---
Location: Stark's school gates
Timeline: 12/22/13 7pm after they talk [backdated]
Description: Remy meets Nara outside Stark’s.
Rating: PG-13
Remy had a feeling that there was a lot more to Nara than she wanted to let on to. But that was the case with most of the students he’d met at both Stark’s and Xavier’s. He hadn’t been back to the Stark school since the X-School had reopened. He had friends there, sure, but he made certain that their rendezvous were located somewhere other than the place he’d last spent significant time with Haroun. Though he’d had closure and was mending slowly but surely, Stark’s bore an unpleasant hurt on his heart when he pulled up to the grassy rooftop building. Haroun’s memorial had been there, right in the courtyard.
But fortunately, he didn’t plan on getting much closer to the grounds, or even stepping foot on it if he didn’t have to. Nara and he had made plans to meet out front, so Remy stashed his bike and pulled his jacket more securely around himself. It was dark outside already and it was cold. Fucking cold.
He approached the front of the building but stopped at the entrance before stepping onto the property, tipping his head to follow the lines of the peculiar architecture that made up Howard Stark’s School of Tomorrow. Darker thoughts crowded his mind and Remy shivered, casting a look around the courtyard before pulling a cigarette from his jacket pocket and giving it a light with the tips of his fingers that were bare in the modified gloves he wore.
“Fuck,” he breathed out, smoke curling from his lips as he ran a hand through his hair. Positioned and waiting for sign of Nara, Remy leaned against the gate and settled, arms crossed with an occasional lift of his hand to knock the ash off his cigarette. He didn’t know what she looked like, but they’d agreed to meet there. She’d turn up eventually, or he’d have to go in and find her.
---
She had brushed off the invitation initially, but after a long swim and some time spent doting on her hair, there was very little else to do. Eventually, bored and restless, she’d moved on from watching TV in the lounge area near Starbucks to irritably pacing back and forth by the windows, before finally going outside to settle on the edge of the empty fountain and lie in wait.
She wanted to know what kind of person this Remy was, and it irked her that she cared at all. A figure eventually appeared near the entrance, mostly hidden under a long coat, and Nara was patient as she leaned against the concrete wall of the fountain, watching the cigarette burn low in the darkness.
It took her some time to decide to stand and walk over, her soft shoes and easy stride making little noise against the pavement. As she neared the gate, a faint wind brushed her neck and hands, but the chill bothered her little compared to analyzing the one she was approaching . Nara stopped a few lengths away, her hands held loosely at her side despite the tension in her shoulders and her narrowed eyes. “Who are you?” she demanded.
---
Being approached by a stranger in the darkness was something that got Remy's senses on high alert, but his posture remained relaxed against the gate he was posted next to, one foot up against it and the cigarette nearly finished between two knuckles. He shook off the initial reaction to prepare himself for an attack, his mind going to assassins and other things he'd had the unpleasant fortune of running into in the past, and instead focused on her and didn't reach for his cards.
She was right, she wasn't 'petite'. The girl was tall, though Remy stood at several inches taller than she was, she was still taller than an average girl. Maybe it was the Atlantean in her, but there was definitely an exotic air about her and even, when that wind passed by, a smell of the ocean. Remy smiled and pushed away from the gate, his body relaxed and seemingly at ease.
"Remy. You must be Nara." The way he said her name probably wasn't right, what with his Cajun drawl, but he continued, taking in the whiteness of her eyes and the definite tint of blue to her skin when she stepped more into the light. The brim of his hat cast shadows over his eyes, but Remy tipped his head back intentionally to reveal his physical mutation. Maybe they could find some common ground on that small similarity.
He held his hand out to her in greeting, "Nice cold night, non?"
---
Even without her face mask between her and the outside air, Nara couldn’t smell much of the cigarette smoke unless she purposely inhaled through her nose. She could, however, taste it on the air when she opened her mouth to speak. “I am.” She regarded Remy coolly, noting the red in his eyes and the suggestion of muscle under his coat. He was either mutant or a super-powered human, she presumed. It would be interesting if he could fight.
The mention of the cold night made her shrug almost imperceptibly, and she waved away his hand with a dismissive gesture. “It’s tolerable.” Cold air had nothing on cold water, and the Mid-Atlantic was a mite cooler than the heated swimming pool underneath Stark’s. The strange cadence to his speech was bothering her far more than the temperature, however. “What are you, French?” Nara had dealt some with the French, and she liked them even less than the English.
---
Remy turned his palm out and inspected it, smirking a little that she had declined to shake his hand. He let it drop to his side and came closer to her, more curious to see how she'd react than anything. Nara's behavior so far, both on the journals and now in person indicated she had little trust for others. But his smile was in place when she asked if he was French.
"Nah, nothing dat fancy," he chuckled, rolling the cigarette butt between two fingers and giving it a subtle charge with his powers, making it glow hot pink. When he flicked it away, the butt disintegrated with the kinetic energy, exploding with a crack. "Remy's Cajun. You set, chere?" He flashed a brighter smile. Remy casually didn't make mention of his use of powers, both because it was something he did on a normal basis, destroy the filters rather than leave a carbon footprint, and because he was again gauging Nara's tenseness.
---
Nara stood up straighter as he neared, her chin level and her gaze set. No way in hell he was going to intimidate her with size alone, when she could throw him across the courtyard if she so pleased. Whatever powers he might have, she highly doubted suddenly weighing more than a few hundred pounds was one of them.
The unusual glow gave her a hint something was about to happen, but the unexpected crack still made her shoulders hunch and her glower darken despite---or maybe because of---his smile. She straightened up once more and stepped forward into Remy’s space, one hand darting up to give him a short but solid shove in the middle of his chest. “So you’re a bloody mutant, I take it,” she sneered, tilting her head to the side. “Or perhaps just a particularly irritating git of a man.”
---
Remy was a little surprised by the shove, but he stepped back and turned just enough so that her push didn’t send him over backwards, and his hands rose in defense, gloved palms out, though he didn’t touch her, “Hey now, no need to get touchy feely. Remy don’t mean you no harm, petite.” Nara was intense, he was learning, and he couldn’t wipe the smile from his face because this was possibly one of the most interesting first encounters he’d had in a long time.
“But, oui, I’m a mutant,” he affirmed, smirking a bit at the second descriptor she used. He was that, sometimes, too. “You ain’t gonna hold it against me, are you?” Eyebrow raised, Remy lowered his hands and put them back into the pockets of his duster jacket, both for warmth and to finger the cards he had stashed there. It wouldn’t come to that, he was certain. Remy had turned around more tense conversations than this and talked his way into good terms. And they were just getting started.
---
Nara stared at Remy in silence, not bothering to answer. She didn’t like him. The smirking, the smiling, the playing too nice. With a frown, she moved to stalk a circle around him, inspecting his coat, his stance, the way he kept his hands in his pockets. Aside from the eyes, he was disappointingly human.
She came back to center with a frown still marking her face, her eyes narrowed and her head tilted at him. After a beat, Nara raised her hand once more, slowly and deliberately, and with two fingers extended at him she moved to push Remy in the chest a second time. “Do it again,” she demanded in a low, measured voice, staring at him in challenge.
---
Remaining still for her circling inspection, Remy couldn’t help but feel a little more on edge when she paced behind him. But he didn’t turn to keep her in his sights, simply glancing over his shoulder as she came back around and kept his stance easy and relaxed. This wasn’t a confrontation, it was just a first meeting. And a part of him wanted Nara to relax while another couldn’t resist tempting his fate and seeing how far he could go. He didn't get the name Gambit from a cereal box.
This time when she pushed against his chest with just her two fingers, Remy remained still, raising an eyebrow at her in concert with his slanted smirk. "Sorry, belle," he lowered his voice, "I don't do tricks on command." Not here, out in the open, so soon after the MRA. As much as Remy liked to show off his powers sometimes, he'd gone through the terror of being chased by groups of sentinels and their weapons. He didn't think it would take much for humans to get worked up again about mutants, and after what Charles had told him about his actions, how they had consequences, Gambit had taken a more careful stock of the ripples he was making around him.
Still, it was hard not to rise to the challenge Nara had in her gaze.
---
“How boring.” The challenging stare shifted into a look of contempt as she shook her head and turned away. A mutant who didn’t use his powers was little better that the rest of the ground-crawling maggots that made up humanity, and Nara wasn’t in the mood to waste her time on that sort of spume. She’d been hoping he might be interesting, of course, to break up the monotony her life had settled into so easily, but his persistent smile had done little but irritate her since he’d arrived.
She drifted away a few paces and her eyes swept over the nearby city streets and the expanse of the park beyond them. The park officials, or guards, whatever they called themselves, had warned her off the reservoir, but a nighttime swim was sounding more and more appealing. As long as she didn’t get caught---but wasn’t that the thrill of it?
---
“Hold up,” Remy said as she turned to walk away, cocking his head to one side. “Why you wanna see it again? You know de second time it’s not as magical. Not when it’s expected and, besides,” he glanced towards the street, then at the courtyard, feeling trapped between the two, “I really don’t tink dis is de greatest location to make tings explode.”
He shrugged and shook his head, setting a hand on one hip, “You missed de sentinels, I take it.”