Moira Mactaggert Says Och (moiramactaggert) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-06-13 13:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, moira mactaggert, pete wisdom |
England herself is magical.
Who: Moira and Pete Wisdom
What: TESTS
When: Yesterday
Where: Jean Grey Outreach Center
Status: Complete
RAting: PG-13 for alcohol, language and needles
The primary medical center on the Jean Grey Outreach Center (formerly Urdnot Ranch) was above ground and about fifty feet away from the main administrative building. Like the rest of the ranch, it had that folksy quality, warm and welcoming. Several older children were playing cricket of all things, and a man was supervising another group at archery.
Underground of course was another story. Neena was down there, along with some advanced scanners, though Moira kept one in the main building.
Moira was inside the medical building, stitching up a young hispanic man with several tattoos and a scar on his cheek. “Lad, how many times do ye need tae be told ye cannae ride the bull?”
Pete drove at breakneck speed in his convertible to the whoever-that-was touchy-feelie center (formerly some ranch). He was one of those sorts that moaned and groaned about going in for psyche evaluations and routine physicals (including shots), so even showing up for having blood drawn was a huge, major thing.
He parked the car in what was really more like it skidded to a semi-controlled stop and took up two spaces instead of one. Then he was out of said badly parked car, slamming the door a little harder than necessary, and marching his nicely suited self into the building. For, indeed, this was not the Pete who slacked off on his appearance. He was clean and actually sober. He would save spiking his coffee, until he was in the office, giving people overseas the sort of hell that only he could dredge up and rake them through.
Once inside, he loudly and crankily announced (in the hopes it would irritate Moira), "I'm hoping you didn't need a fasting blood test, because I've eaten a full and proper greasy breakfast. If you don't like it, then you can take a flying fucking leap off a tall cliff into shallow bloody water. Scottish sadist! POKE ME."
Lucky for Pete Moira wasn't a psych doctor or she'd prescribe him looney pills and a straight jacket, but then things might be a little coloured with regards for her opinion of him. Oh, he wasn't a bad man but he got up her craw and her poor air filtration systems had never really recovered.
"I'll be with ye in just a wee moment," Moira said, with all the calmness of a doctor used to people who yelled at her. "An' ye coulda eaten a baby an' it won't affect this test. An' I wouldn't put it past ye tae do jus' that!"
She sent the teen on his way and then changed the gloves she was wearing into a fresh pair. She stopped and stared at him. "Good lord. What's this then? Where's yuir ratty trenchcoat? Yuir five o'clock shadow? I dunnae think I can handle this. I feel faint." She pressed a hand to her chest. "Yuir actually handsome. There's somethin' wrong with the universe. Did Jubilee muck up the timeline again?"
No, Jubilee, you're never living that down. Shaking her head, Moira pulled out the tools of the trade and got down to business. "Roll up yuir sleeve, lets see if I can find a vein."
He might look nicer, he might be more of a team player (especially back on his home soil), and he might be clean? But his rotten and snarky attitude was still his buffer and barrier against anyone or anything getting too close, and he used it to the utmost of his ability. Better safe and wary, than sorry and dead.
On that note, there were days when Pete felt like he needed a straightjacket, for the simple reason that if he wasn't bound up in one, he might start ripping everyone's heads off and drop kicking those heads through conveniently closed windows. Just to hear the glass break.
He also didn't want to even prattle off the things he had seen related to that sort of cannibalism, since it - unfortunately - existed. Instead, Pete merely squinted a little harder than he already was, for a second or two. Then it was right back to a cold glower and not knowing who the blazes this Scottish madwoman was. Damn it.
Something he could comment on was time travel, and he wasted zero time in opening his mouth and spewing out his opinion on the matter, all while unbuttoning his suit jacket and putting it aside. He also unbuttoned his shirt sleeve and started to roll it up, as instructed.
"I don't know what a Jubilee is, unless it's like the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, which I doubt you're going to be going on about. Everyone knows you're not supposed to muck up the timeline. Who even does that. Oh, and by the by, sarcastic arse that expected me to look like some sort of toerag? Get fucked."
And there goes his arm, sticking out, waiting to be needled.
Moira eyed him warily, before shrugging a shoulder and tapping at his vien. She tied up the rubber thing (technical term) and then smirked as she prepared the vial and the syringe. Somehow this felt like old times, though she doubted that old times were something that mattered with Wisdom.
Then, she plunged that icey sharp needle into his vein with the kind of glee usually reserved for someone about to burst into a showtune.
"I'm goin' tae take three vials, as I want tae save one tae see if somethin' manifests separate from yuir own body, An' dunnae worry I'll destroy the samples once we've got the date we need. Ye seem tae be the paranoid sort an' I'm told there's already been several of ye runnin' 'round." Moira laughed, sharply. "I even met one, an' he was more of a smarmy bastard than ye are!"
"Fuckingbuggeryshiteyouobnoxiouscow," Pete hissed out from behind gritted teeth, while rolling his eyes up behind his eyelids. Once the pain of the moment passed and the needle didn't feel like a shard of ice being jabbed into his arm, he relaxed. As much as he was capable of relaxing, that is.
"You'd better destroy the samples. And I'm going to get my hands on those sorry bastards and wring the answers out of them, myself. Once I manage to track them down." Off the clock. It had become something personal, by this point. Not a team adventure, really, and the mere thought made him eye Moira like she was more a resource material than a Scottish sadist. "Tell me what you knew about him."
That wasn't a request as much as it was an sourly spoken order.
Moira figured there was a line at this point, but Pete deserved a piece about as much as anyone did. That this group had it's fingers in so many pies was very concerning. But she was just here to patch people up and stop any potential biological agents. One didn't ignore a call from Nick Fury. Even if they wanted to.
"He had yuir sunny disposition. This was the first one. Ex-cop. Supposedly a liason with some government agency or some such." Moira moved onto the second vial. She always liked how the blood bubbled up.
If there's any lines to any hims, then everyone else can damn well get behind him to pick up the leftovers. He had first dibs, since it's his genetic material running about in his imposters that were doing all sorts of rubbish that he doesn't like. End of that story, don't even go there and GTFO of his way, kthanxbai.
His sunny disposition got even brighter. Of course, it really went in the entirely opposite direction of getting colder and much darker.
"Oh. Brilliant. With that first one, you didn't happen to catch what government agency, or was that left deliberately vague? My guess is that it was deliberately vague with faked, but very convincing credentials." He bristled at the thought and glanced down at his arm, before giving Moira a stern staring at. "You're actually going to bleed me dry. You're a sick woman, MacTaggert. Fucking deviant."
"MI something, I don't remember, I'm sure they scrubbed any data where it was mentioned. Might have been 6." Moira waggled the last vial in her fingers once it was full, then bopped him in the nose with it. "One thing I do remember, is he didn't go 'round tryin' tae get information. At least not obviously. He was subtle, or waited for it to come to him. God only knows what either of them actually got out of us but it seemed like they actually knew things from the dreams that they shouldn't have. Hence the theory that they used yuir genetic template."
She put the vial away. "But like the rest o'us they didnae dream until they came to Orange County. That's obviously the common denominator..."
That was what he was afraid of, that genetic template whatsit that Moira had just mentioned. It made him bristle at the thought of what sort of information they might have gotten their hands on, and what they did with it. It was a good thing that she was done drawing blood, because he was tense. Not jumpy tense, but every muscle in him was tightened up out of barely contained anger.
The nose bop didn't lighten the mood and thus the very exasperated staring at.
"Seems like. And the second one?" he asked, since Moira seemed chatty enough. Even if she was a mad scientist.
"He hooked up with a bloody fairy and was a lot less high strung," Moira replied. "They eloped around t'time I returned tae England. It seemed more like he was tryin' tae settle down an' wasn't as keen on goin' out an' doin' the adventure thing. So I dunnae know if he was aware or a sleeper."
Or if he was merely trying to do the impossible and settle down, which everyone claims to want and then discovers how absolutely impossible it is to do that without the spy business gnawing away at the edges and everything falling to pieces. Then again, a sleeper agent was a strong likelihood though, which was equally annoying.
"A fairy. Right then. That reminds me that I need to track down the fairy and ask her what the ruddy hell happened." He started to roll his sleeve down, buttoning the cuff while keeping a wary eye on Moira. He didn't even bother with the cover story of being a disgruntled toy distributor from overseas, since Moira seemed to know too much already. Also annoying, highly unsettling, but at least it was useful for information. And it wasn't as though he was volunteering information or admitting what division he worked in, either. "I don't suppose you’ve got samples off either of those sorry cunts, laying about."
“Ye might want tae go armed,” Moira warned him. “I don’t think she’s tae happy with Pete Wisdoms in general right now. But I dunnae think she’d be tae mad at ye. Just a wee bit cautious.”
She held up a finger. “Stay put, I’ve treated both of them so aye, I may have something layin’ about. It’ll help in comparin’ ye as well.” She walked into the other room. There was a wooshing sound. Then a few minutes later there was another wooshing sound, and she came out with two folders. She held them out. “All the data I have on Wisdom number one an’ Wisdom number tae.”
"First of all, don't tell me what to do. Second, contrary to whatever predispositions you lot have about me? I'm not a total arse. I didn't intend to meet with her face to face," he clarified, his voice increasing in volume as she walked farther away. "Primary contact through the network is enough, if she's been through any sort of experience with a sleeper agent. I’m not about to go starting a row with her."
He was quiet though, upon her return and when she offered the folders.
"I'll need to make copies, then return these to you," he said, taking them and opening one up to read through. "Hopefully this is in easy to understand terms. I'm not a scientist."
“There’s a sheet in both with a rough explaination for what’s in there, but there’s a lot of data as well,” Moira explained, poking her finger on one of the folders. “Ye really would want a geneticist tae look at these tae get the full picture, but I’ve summarized the important things.”
She seemed to have calmed down a great deal compared to how she was on the internet. It may also be, in some ways, a reaction to actually seeing him in person.
And in sharp contrast to how much of an asshole he was on the internet? Pete was quieter in person, but not enough to be considered a total introvert. It was quiet in a profoundly sullen way, making him seem at least somewhat tolerable. That didn't mean that his walls were down or he was any less guarded. True to form, he had taken into account all the ways to get in and out of there in a rush, made sure he skimmed over his surroundings outdoors, and he was still wary of others, even those he seemingly got along with.
"Oh yes, we’ll get a team of super scientists right on that. Because the toy company has geneticists on speed dial." He put his suit jacket back on, smoothing the tie down before buttoning it. "I'll see to it that it's looked at. It's a good thing you guilted me into coming in here. I've already had a dream, but I was young in it. No powers. Yet."
Moira shrugged her shoulder, and gave him a smirk. “Wee little Peter Wisdom, peeing on the lawn?” She’d had a friend who used to do that, and assumed it was sort of a Thing That Boys Did. Boys. Which were disgusting. “Were ye a wee cutie?”
"No, I was a very scrawny, very angry little bastard," Pete told her, and he wasn't lying. Anyone growing up in that environment would have been much the same, not to mention 'fondly' recalling the smell of alcohol wafting through the carpark while he waited for the adults to stop drinking and take him home. Insert an eye twitch of profound annoyance, here. "I didn't piss on the lawn. I pissed on the neighbor's flowers. Took more aim and precision, over the fence."
He drew in one of those breaths that was supposed to be calming, but didn't really get him nearer to a zen like state. By this point in his life, he was convinced zen didn't even exist and was a fat load of crap that hippy wankers went on about.
"What do you know about that Pryde prat. She seems like a bloody know it all." Which was dangerous. Pete didn't like bloody know it alls. They either blabbed too much or could use that knowledge against him. "You know her. Don't you."
"Ye definitely remind me of a bampot I used to know." She wrinkled her nose, getting a mental picture that she'd never, ever forget. "Ugh. I owe ye some scotch don't I."
She walked over to a cabinet marked with the biohazard symbol and pulled out a bottle. "It's safe, I just put the label on it tae keep people from stealin' me hooch."
"Aye, I know Pryde. She's come in a few times with dream related injuries, an' she nearly dissipated once when her powers went out of control. There was nothin' I could do until it fixed itself. She's...ah.." Moira waved a hand. "She likes tae stick her nose where it dinnae belong but her heart is in the right place. In the dreams she an' Excalibur spent a long time at my research facility when they needed a base of operations. Braddock messed with me skipper but he turned her into a beautiful flying beastie..."
"It's scotch. Don't you bloody dare call it hooch again, you cavewoman," Pete said with a note of disdain, even though he looked as though he wasn't going anywhere.
Even though he was also eyeing Moira suspiciously. He didn't know her just as much as he didn't know that Pryde girl, other than what his intel was able to scour up so he could do a background check of his own, once she was on his radar.
"Pleasant. I don't know anything about flying beasties or the likes, but I do know that the Braddocks are a bunch of posh society prats, and excalibur as is King Arthur's sword stuck in a rock or summat. Because nothing in England can be simple, including where swords are kept." He pointed a finger at her. "I can't really herd her into a corner if she can ghost through it. So tell me what the connection is that she knows me oh so bloody well, or I'm going to take that bottle and spit in it. And then it really will be hooch."
Moira threw her head back and laughed. She pulled out some glasses and poured them, handing one over that was a little overfilled. She doubted that he'd mind. Making her way over to her analyzer, she put one of Pete's vials of blood into it, and pressed a button.
"Nae, nothing is simple. Avalon, Author, Excalibur, all of that is true in our dreams. England herself is magical." Moira sipped her drink. "Ye came tae spy on us at first. Then...."
She was going to leave him hanging.
"Of course. It's a magical place filled with fish, chips, and elves shooting rainbows out every oriface." He didn't care if it was too full or not, he was going to drink it. As soon as he was done giving Moira the glaring of a lifetime. "Then? Then wot. GO ON. SAY IT."
Pete’s superhero name wasn’t going to be Captain Patience.
“Well yuir agency turned out to be filled with a bunch of evil people an’ ye turned against them. An’ then ye both started tae dance around each other like tae star-addled lovebirds.” Moira knocked her drink back as the machine dinged. “It was disgustin’. That poor girl.”
Pete had been taking a drink and more or less sprayed what he had in his mouth, all over the place.
Once he was done choking, coughing, and sputtering, Pete shook his head in vehement denial.
"Noooo. Oh no. Poor her? Poor ME." That was no way to get out of the business, and it was exceptionally idiotic on his part to go lovebird (of all things) after turning against any evil people. "Why would I even do that? And how old is she? She looks like a geeky student sort...and I mean of the freshly arrived at university variety. And besides that, I like blondes and gingers. That doesn’t even make sense."
In fact, his entire trackrecord was blondes and redheads...from Sari, to Michelle, to Maureen, to Tara, to the blond stripper of the night, prior.
This was a complication. It wasn’t even a good complication. Entanglements were bad and dream entanglements seemed almost messy and worse, because it was some other him bleeding over and complicating matters.
That caused Pete to down his scotch immediately and then hold out the glass, with a fierce scowl. The scowl was his way of asking for it to be filled up again.
"At the time, eighteen. Maybe nineteen. Ye argued like tae tomcats. Ye went off tae deal with somethin' and she insisted she go with ye. It was after that that ye were taegether but neither of ye ever talked about what happened." Moira looked at the printout. "Och...I'll be damned."
"No wonder she was acting odd. Best avoided. Now stop oching and fill my bloody glass, before I bite into it and start chewing," Pete insisted, before heaving out a very frustrated sigh. He sounded like he was at his wits’ end, which wasn't a very long trip to reach that destination. "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat. Wot wot wot wot wot are you oching on about?"
Moira absently refilled Pete’s glass, then turned the screen to face him. “See this? This is what the X-gene looks like. This is from another patient of mine. Ye can see it right here, colored dark. But here, in yuir blood…” She pointed to the other side of the screen. “The gene is fading in an’ out. It’s there, an’ then it’s not there. Now, when most dreamers who are mutants dream, they dunnae get their powers right away. Powers sort of...fade in, slowly increasing in potency. Ye’ve already started tae dream, but the gene isn’t really...there yet.” She rubbed at her face. “Och. I wasnae expecting something like this and I dunnae know how to explain it. It should be there, or nae be there, not this...in between.”
Pete raised an eyebrow at it, and didn't at all like the idea of some blinking thing in his DNA, like a light up sign that was an advert for weird to waltz right in and make weird happen.
"I suppose you can't simply turn that to the blinky off and leave it that way," he surmised, not at all looking or sounding enthused. "You're smart, you smart arse. Find the bloody off switch."
"Wisdom, I'm nae goin' tae turn off the x-gene! That's a can o'worms that we just dunnae want opened!" She looked at him aghast. "It would be like turnin' off the color of yuir hair. Or yuir eyes. It's nae easy an' it's...Well things like that I've seen nearly lead tae genocide."
"Can't you simply catch it when it's between things, like this, and make it stop being blinky? There shouldn't be a problem with that. It's not as though I'm asking for you to start wiping out entire swaths of superheroes, am I? No, I don't think I asked that."
He took a healthy swig of scotch, and tried to enjoy the flavor of it and not simply dive right into the need to get fantastically drunk before the sun went down.
"Stop looking like I've ran over a kitten and then licked the furry smear off the pavement," he said, impatiently. "It's blinking, and it's not as though I think it's a shite idea. I can get on just fine without the melty hands that Pryde so kindly mentioned and that I'm already aware of."
"I dunnae know. I suppose I could try, but there's nae telling if I'll figure it out before it's tae late an' ye go full mutant. An' if I turn it off, ye may never become one...An' lad, yuir powers have some good side benefits."
"Oh? I suppose I couldn't melt a lock out or light fags off my fingertips. Boo bloody hoo." He gave her a look. "Does it make me invincible for the next hundred thousand years? Can I punch meteors? No? Then sod off. I've gotten by this far without it, and it sounds like a whole fat mess that I could keep on getting on well without. Say that ten times, fast."
In actuality, he was an efficient enough killer. He didn't need a killing boost that his country could further monopolize, especially after the sheer number of bullets he was leaving inside the skulls of those Cerberus bastards during their field trip into dangerland. They hit the ground, after Ms. Rogers and Mrs. Claws banged them around or left them limbless? Pete helped by taking aim and making sure they didn't get up or crawl away with the limbs they had left. Job well done.
“Nae, but it increases yuir metabolism tae a point where ye can smoke an’ drink without ruinin’ yuir liver. Mostly.” Moira held out the bottle. “Do ye want this?”
"Then there's nothing good or beneficial about that. And don't ask stupid questions you already know the answer to."
Some people had destructive habits for a reason. When smoking left him winded while trying to run after bad guys he was going to leave dead and bloodied? Time to quit. It was interfering with things that needed doing. The drinking? Dying of blatant alcoholism seemed like a grand plan, if he didn't die in the line of duty before then. That was why one hand angrily swiped out to take the bottle from Moira.
Moira let him swipe the bottle from her, shrugging her shoulder. "Well, if ye want tae drink yuirself intae a stupor, saebeit. I'll see if I can ...." She gestured at the machine. "find a way tae turn it off."
"Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeers. I think I will." It wasn't every day one finds out they have a blinky inside them like a ticking timebomb of superheat and metabo-boost. He took a drink directly out of the bottle, like a drinky pro. "It might be dead handy to know how to do that, in case someone does go time bomb. And you never know, do you...that could very well happen to me, someday. What if it needs turned off so I don't have a meltdown? Figure it out, now, so you aren't caught with your knickers down 'round your ankles, later."
"It would be just great," Moira said, making a face. Her, making a mutant cure. Summers and friends would just love that, wouldn't they. "But aye, bein' able tae shut someone down without killin' them might be handy."
In the event it could get destructive, Pete would want something like that shut down before it went boom. He didn't care if Moira made faces about it or not, but he realized that such information needed to be kept out of the wrong hands.
"Do you have a way to secure that information, once you know how to do it," he asked. "Outside of the government or any agencies, I mean. You don't know who you can trust with it."
Moira held up a hand. “Lad, no one outside of this room will know about it unless I know they can be trusted with the information.”
"I don't care about us in the room, right now. I care if you write the information somewhere, like on a computer, and it gets taken from you. Get some to secure it if you're going to tinker around like some Frankenstein science monster with it."
There was a slow drink from the bottle, and Pete asked, "Do you need time to play with my genetic junk, or do you want to try it out on me, right now?"
“I’m goin’ tae need the time,” she said. “It’s a lot of trial an’ error, turnin’ things off and on and than seein’ if it sticks. Ye definitely do not want me doin’ that tae ye,live.”
"Fine, then. Let me know when you're ready. And while you're at it? See if you can find a way to turn it back on. Now you've got a job to do, and I've got a bottle of this t'go drink. Once I find a safe place to sleep it off. I can’t do that, here. You’ve got a vegetable laying about already, and I don’t want to wake up finding you holding a scalpel."
At this rate and given the information he now knew from talking to Moira? Someone was going to be a bit late to the office, due to taking a snooze in the back of his car.
"Don' go sleepin' it off near the gynmasium, ye'll likely end up filled full o'arrows an' I dunnae want tae have tae pull them out of yuir arse!" Moira bent over her microscope, all prepared to figure out this mystery.