ArchivedLogs:Breaking the Ice

Breaking the Ice
Dramatis Personae Sebastian, Shane, Tatters
In Absentia	2013-02-03 Better the reservoir draining into the sewers than the other way around, I guess.
Location <NYC> Central Park North
With a grunt, Tatters braces herself against the grate and pushes. Usually, this overflow drain isn't underwater, but with the recent snows melting and the indecisive reservoir dithering between liquid and frozen, the narrow channel was filled with ice cold water. Except for the top, which was frozen over. This was /such/ a good idea. In retrospect this wasn't a good circumstance for Tatters to test her suite of acquatic morphs. She hasn't figured out gills yet, but she's definitely bigger than she used to be, froglike blisters under her neck puffed up and filled with air, her hands and feet all webbed up and her limbs sprouting fins. She's wearing a tanktop and shorts, and her waterproofed backpack, which contains nothing that would help her deal with this damn ice. The grate rattles a bit, suggesting a modicum of progress, and with a bubbly grumble the Morlock returns to chipping away at the ice with a bone spike protruding from the side of her forearm. Any minute now. From the other side of the grate, there is a rushing push of water as something swims by -- something big. Bigger than most of the reservoir fish, anyway, though admittedly not large by ocean standards. The Thing is followed soon by a second. And then there are twinned streaks of blue circling back, and small blue figures, humanoid in shape, rattling at the grate from the other side. There are quiet noises in the water, but water makes for difficult communication. There's more chipping, though. From the other side of the grate. Chipchipchip scratchscratchscratch RATTLE. SHAPES IN THE WATER. Tatters steps (well, drifts) back a few feet and narrows her eyes, a reflexive gesture that accomplishes nothing but lowering the amount of light that reaches her bulbous eyes. Oops. Anyways, she unhooks a crowbar from her belt and raises it defensively as the figures come back into view, until which point as she's confirmed that they're not sewer monsters. Which means they /probably/ won't try to eat her. Accepting those odds, she attacks the ice once more with her arm-bone (the angle was too weird for the crowbar, okay? She's not /that/ dumb) and then finally hooks it into the edge of the grate and manages to pry it open a few feet. Edging around it, she leaps into the water and kicks towards the surface, smashing her crowbar through the ice and hauling herself up to oxygen. Only then, sitting on the edge of the ice, does she look back down and peer curiously at her assistance. "Hoy, thanks." Her assistance is a twinned pair of -- teenagers? Children? They're quite small. Very blue, though currently so dark a shade it is near to black. Webbed fingers, gills flexing slowly against their sides and down their necks. One of them pulls out of the water, at least enough for his head to stick out, thin arms resting against the ice. It takes a moment before he speaks, gills still fluttering slowly until he takes in a ragged gasping breath of air: "/Woah/ hey, I don't usually run into /people/ down there or I'd've put on clothes, uh," because he doesn't have any, though at least his lower half is still in the water. "You're not gonna freak or anything, are you, you don't look like the type to freak -- hey." He's kicking a leg downwards, towards the second boy. Who remains stubbornly beneath the water. "What're you doing here?" Shane asks this with as much presumption as he might ask why a stranger was in his living room. "I found a bit of sewer full of /clean/ water. I was seeing where it came from." Tatters shrugs and pulls her feet up, crossing them beneath her and shrugging off her backpack. She glances back down at the kid as she unzips her pack and struggles to open the trash back that fills it, pupils wide to see in the dim light. "And man, you're nowhere near the freakiest folks I've seen /today./" Beat. "Not that it's a competition. Unless it is." Now that she's in the air the translucent sacks at her neck are deflating, accompanied by a heavy exhalation of breath, her webbed fingers unwebbing themselves as she extracts a blanket from her backpack and throws it across her shoulders. "What're /you/ doing here? You live here?" "/Hey/, if we're competing I could bite you." Shane offers this amiably. He's watching the sacks deflate, lifting a hand to absently poke a claw towards one. "/Huh/. How's that work?" His arm drops back to the ice. "Nahhh, I don't live here do you live here? We just swim. Eat things." If he /has/ pupils they're hard to see, eyes a solid expanse of black. They're certainly wide enough, though. "Woooah, did your fingers change?" He lifts his own webbed hand, examining it curiously. Then Tatters's. Sebastian finally surfaces, a little tentatively, head poking up behind Shane. "Hi," he offers peering out from behind Shane at Tatters. "Were you stuck down there? Are you okay?" "If we're /competing,/" Tatters gives him a wide smile in return, revealing a mouth full of...well, normal looking teeth. But then the smile starts slowly getting bigger and bigger and revealing more and more teeth, new ones growing in behind the old. "I could bite you back." Her voice soundes strained and distorted with her mouth like this though, and when she closes her mouth she holds up a finger and dips her head as she puts everything back--though there's just a hint of a lisp to her voice when she continues that wasn't there before. Friggen mouths. "And nah, I live over...there?" Removing a grayish arm from the blanket she thinks for a second and then points in a /direction./ And slightly downwards. "I guess I'm homeless, uh, /technically/ because I don't have a friggen apartment or something. And eh, it's just...membranes, so I can put air in 'em, for when -- yeah, they change and--" and then the other twin pops up, and she turns to him and waves. "Hi! And only a little, but still, thanks! I'm fine. How're you?" "Hey, /cooooool/." Now Shane's finger is poking towards Tatters's mouth. His own teeth chomp together, though this seems less a threatening gesture and more an experimental one, as he eyes the woman's teeth. "Ohhh -- that's -- well it sounds pretty shitty," Shane decides, "though I guess you don't sound too bummed about it. Uh. That's neat, you, like, /store/ air?" "Don't poke," Sebastian murmurs, quiet to Shane as he tugs his brother's hand downwards. "We're -- good! I think. Hungry. But I heard the tapping that's not usual. I'm Bastian, by the way." He's extending a dark-blue hand, the sharp claws at its end retracting as he does so to safely small nubs. "And that's Shane. He's my brother." "Bastion. A strong name." Tatters garumphs and affects a posture of sagacity as she leans down and gives his hand a firm shake, nodding to him and Shane in turn. "'Sup. I'm Jill." Pulling back, she glances down at her neck, reaching up and lifting the deflated sack with her fingers. "Ugh. And yeah; needed to hold my breath, figured it'd be easier to put 'em up there than expand my whole damn chest cavity." As she speaks the membrane shrinks and pulls back into flesh, eventually leaving naught but a slightly puckered scar on either side of her neck. Which she can't actually see from this angle; they're probably get fixed the next time she looks in a mirror. "And eh, it ain't too bad. Know some decent people, and have a human-looking sister who helps me with...human stuff. It's alright." "I've got a human-looking brother but he's, like, seven. He doesn't really help with much except stealing my shit and losing it," Shane says with a snort. "Decent people? In New York?" He looks intensely skeptical. Sebastian smiles at Tatters' assesment of his name, quicker and brighter if considerably less toothy than his brother, lips staying carefully closed. "You can do that?" His eyes widen as the sacks disappear, and then he nods. "Coooool," he is echoing Shane, from earlier. And then he frowns at his brother, his smile a little lopsided. "Hey, Spence is cool. Um. And there's plenty of decent people in New York, I think looking like us helps find 'em easier. At least it weeds out the worst ones right away, you know?" "Yeah, I'm a metamorph. And yes, I look like this even though I can shapeshift, because it's all complicated and I'm not actually very /good/ at it. Growing membranes is pretty simple, though." Tatters shrugs and pulls her blanket more tightly about her. She isn't shivering, not even a little. But she does shrug, if that counts. "Uh, decent /enough,/ I guess. They're weirdos and there some, like, hard cases I guess. But it could be worse." "-- You shapeshifted into freak?" Shane eyes Tatters with skepticism. "You need more practice." "/Shane/." Sebastian sounds dismayed. He looks /apologetic/. "Hey." Shane waves a hand towards his own not-particularly-human-looking face. "Didn't say there was anything /wrong/ with freak." He looks Tatters over thoughtfully. "Weirdos. You don't say." "No, I shapeshifted right to the bottom of the Uncanny Valley. Smeagolface is a step up from creepy dollface with one eye half an inch out of place. So I'm sticking with this 'till I get better at it." She pauses and shifts in her seat, grumbling. "...and remember how skin pigments work, I guess. I'm not good at weird chemical shit like that." After letting the conversation lapse awkwardly for a moment, she blinks and.../starts/ shivering, looking annoyed at the necessity. "Aren't you guys cold?" "Freezing," Sebastian says, with a laugh. "Really freezing. Um. I feel you on the uncanny valley thing it'd be nice to move, uh, away." His own eerily just-not-quite-human face crinkles up in a brief moment of unhappiness. "What's an uncanny valley?" Shane asks, frowning at Sebastian and then at Tatters. "A valley," Sebastian says. "That's uncanny. Um. It's like when you're just enough human to seem human but not enough human to seem human /well/ and that's way more disconcerting than just being. Definitely Not Human. Like a robot that looks metal is okay but a robot that looks like a human face with emotions on wrong is creepy. And you're creepy. And I'm creepy. -- Has anyone ever taught you?" he asks Tatters, then. "Like. How to do what you do." "Yeah, I had to climb up the wrong side to get out've it. I aspire to live on the other friggen slope one of these days, but..." She shrugs, giving the...grayish? (It's dark, alright?) pair a sympathetic look. Know that feel, bros. But, other question: "Um, not so much? I read a lot of anatomy books. Still dunno much about replicating complex protein bullcrap, though, reading the chemical formula doesn't really /help./ Um, are you guys sure you okay? I don't want to, like, keep you chatting here until you freeze to death. I think that's probably rude." "Bastian will stay in here till forever," Shane says with a grimace, "we don't really freeze to death, though -- I mean, okay, we /could/, sure, but we kinda go into hibernation first. Like koifish." "You don't look anything like a koifish. Maybe we should put big /flowy/ fins on you," Sebastian suggests, more cheerfully than his grimacing brother. For a moment he glances over at Shane, and then looks up at Tatters. "You could learn," he suggests carefully. "I mean, if you wanted. Not, like, overnight. But there's places that can help you. Figure out how to do your stuff -- better." "Well, I promise I'll be polite and fish you out from the bottom of the lake if you cold-sleep. Um," Tatters raises an eyeridge at the suggestion, giving Bastian a curious look. "That sounds neat. I didn't know you could take, like, classes for that. 'Your Mutant Power And You: Mastery Over The Genome In Six Easy Lessons?' I guess it's on the down-low for a reason. Apparently some guy's trying to start up a Mutant Clinic too, which might be more helpful since it's probably the /least/ sketchy place I can get, like, hits of Random Hormone Number Fifty Three That I've Forgotten How To Make." "-- You know Iolaus?" the twins say, in perfect Twin Unision. "He might be sketchy. He's a doctor," Shane grumbles. "He doesn't /seem/ sketchy," Sebastian protests with a shrug. "But yeah," Shane continues, "there's classes for -- maybe not uhm, the mastery of the genome -- I mean there's /college/, but. Our school has a lot of practice helping people with their powers. If you wanted help. Maybe you could come." "I /met/ Iolaus. I'm at Evolve a lot, I meet a lot of people." Tatters shrugs, then nods, then facescrubs. "Ugh, school. We need to look into that too, my sis kinda went all Simon Tam to help me out and will probably want to finish her senior year at some point. But we're supposed to be off the grid. Um yeah, if you give us the 'deets' we'd love to check it out." "Is your sister a mutant, too?" Shane asks, curious. "She might could come even if not," Sebastian says, slowly, "but she'd feel a little out of place. UM. I don't --" He gestures to his own -- lack of clothes. Bag. Whatever. "My bag's way on the other side of the reservoir I don't have a pen." "Yeah, she's a weird kinda teleporter. Closeted 'cause /one/ of us needs to hold down a job, but you know. One sec!" Tatters drags her backpack back over and digs into the contents, sifting around until she produces a worn, slightly damp looking notepad and a ballpoint pen, flipping it to a new page and tapping it with her pen. "Here we go." "Um." Shane flicks water off his hand in short flickflickflick motions of clawed fingers, eventually deeming it Dry Enough. Though it is not really going to make the damp notebook any /less/ damp when he takes it to write down, in carefully neat print, two names: Shane, Sebastian; two email addresses (sholland and bholland at xaviers.edu, respectively); and an address and phone number. "That's the school," he says, "but, um, it's kind of -- on the downlow, you know? That it's Freak High. I don't think we want to get bombed or anything. But they're cool there. You can't just show /up/ it's kind of guarded but you can call. Or come as our guest." He is starting to shiver, as he gives the notebook back. "Yeah, they're cool. I mean, even if you don't want /lessons/ it's just kind of nice to have a place to relax, you know?" Sebastian shrugs a shoulder. He glances at Shane with a note of worry, curling an arm briefly around his brother's shoulders. "You should get in." Tatters retrieves her notebook and stashes it back into her inventory, unconcerned with the additional dampness. She carts the thing around the sewers, for serious. "Xavier's? Huh. I drove by there once. 'Freak High' sounds like the premise for some, like, Mutant Teen Drama." Frown. "It'd probably be terrible and stuffed with friggen stereotypes. /And/ a teen drama. I'm sure the actual place is nice, though, I'll have Lily shoot you guys an e-mail. It's her job because she owns an actual computer." Sweeping the blanket off her shoulders and rolling it into a ball compact enough to stuff back inside her backpack, Tatters gets to resealing the trash bag and nods down at Shane. "Yeah, don't, like, hurt yourself. I should go find a way back downstairs that's not underwater." "It's /basically/ nonstop Mutant Teen Drama," Shane says with a bright grin. He leans, momentarily, into Sebastian's side, and then disappears under the water without a farewell. Sebastian hangs around for a moment, though. "You gonna be okay, right? I mean it's freezing out here." Tatters pulls herself to her webbed feet, slinging the backpack over her shoulder. "Yeah, I've got clothes I'll put on when I'm not standing on a frozen lake, and I can burn some mass for heat if I need to. Um, pleasure meeting you two!" She salutes, with a grin. Sebastian returns the salute, smiling brightly, too. "You too!" And then he is gone, with a quiet ripple of icy water lapping at the ice. With a laugh Tatters starts off over the ice, slowly at first but quickly breaking into a run as it seems to be capable of supporting her weight. She leaps over a gap of thin ice to the shore and jogs off into the park, to vanish down the first manhole she encounters.