maskormenacelogs | I’ve traveled all this way for something

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I’ve traveled all this way for something

WHO: YOU.
WHERE: Eden East's cruiseship
WHEN: Saturday February 15th, around 5 PM EST
WHAT: Registration in motion... among other things.
WARNINGS: None anticipated; let us know if this should be edited.

" The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises -- it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook -- it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security. But I tell you the new frontier is here, whether we seek it or not. "
( from jfk's speech "the new frontier," 7/15/1960. )

The sun hasn't set yet and the temperature hovers somewhere just below 70 degrees this evening; imPorts, both recently arrived and not, will have been escorted to this event so that they can meet each other, have a good time, and of course officially state their registration status. Or lack thereof. It's your decision, they emphasize, even though the unspoken "but" is always there.

It's an elaborate spread, certainly much more elegant than last time. Eden East herself, elegant in her backless champagne-colored dress, meets and greets each and every imPort as she flutters to and fro. She'll find you and chat for a few moments, shaking your hand and complimenting your dress. She'll know your name, and she'll have an entourage of aids and cameras following her wake. Captain Holiday, in contrast, maintains the energy of someone who feels out of place holding the Swear-In ceremony somewhere so extravagant. As imPorts arrive he tells them where to be for the ceremony part of the evening, but that they are free to enjoy themselves until then and after.

( Please state your character's official status -- REGISTERED or UNSETTLED -- in the subject header of your thread. Characters who are UNDECIDED may be contacted later in the week for their decision via their IC contact post. )

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After he's touched base with Emma, Logan's first order of business is to get the hell away from all the cameras—and get himself a drink.

What he really wants to do is sneak off and see the rest of the ship, the rooms that haven't been prettied up for the guests; find out who their hostess is beyond the expensive dress and and the entourage. It's hard to trust somebody with their own damn cruise ship.

But he can't make himself invisible, and he can't wish Kitty into existence, so he's here at the bar in a hastily-purchased black shirt that's too big around the waist and way too small in the shoulders, holding a glass of whiskey (straight) and weighing his options.

Even with his stature being what it is, Logan stands out in a crowd. After spotting him, there is only a brief moment of hesitation before he moves forward. Frank supposes he isn't one to talk about height; with the chair, he's going to be looking up at Logan now.

He still owes Logan for what he did with Alves, but there isn't any guarantee that the man even remembers having done it. His memories may cut off long before then -- or, like Rogers, he may not even be the same man at all. Unlike Steve, Logan is ageless, so there's no obvious way to tell the difference. If Logan doesn't remember, that may be in Frank's favor; he isn't fond of being in anyone's debt. However, there's the other side of it too: the number of people he feels like he could trust in a fight in this place are very few.

He would trust Logan -- but the man won't ever hear him say that.

"There's smokes too," he remarks, "if you're going straight to vices."

Logan catches his scent through the haze of smoke and sweat and booze before he hears him, but he doesn't look around—until Frank's voice comes from the wrong height, and it makes him curious. "Haven't smoked in years," he says, turning, "they tell me it's bad for your—lungs."

Ordinarily, it'd be good to see him—or on the positive side of neutral, anyway. Logan's a realist with many idealist friends, and Frank's one of the few people he knows who understands that some pieces just don't deserve a place on the chessboard.

And that's why it's shitty to see him like this. It's like watching the guy next to you in the trenches, a guy who figures he's just doing his job, get his hand blown off. Frank's not a friend, but he's down in that same ditch.

None of this shows on Logan's face. He doesn't say Jesus Christ, Frank, with sympathy in his voice. He eyes the wheelchair and takes a drink of whiskey. "What the hell happened to you?"

If Logan is being honest about not smoking, or just being an ass, Frank can't tell. It isn't as if he spends enough time in the man's company to notice whether or not he's dropped the habit -- but only that one, since he drinks easily enough. Although it's doubtful that alcohol really gets to him, given his mutation. It is admittedly tempting to follow suit and order something himself, but unlike Logan, Frank has the risk of dulling his senses.

Since he's already laid-up, he can't afford any further damage to his system -- even if it's just a bit of buzz.

"End of the world," he supplies simply. "Just missed it."

It takes him a second to process that—this world. Or the world that came before it. Whatever.

"Yeah, I heard the abridged version." He's calculating while he talks: when was the last time he actually saw Frank? How long ago was the end of that other world? (It doesn't take him long to abandon the whole question. Timeline bullshit never gets less irritating.)

"Kinda surprised you're here," he says, moving casually away from the bar—and the bartender, and the other guests. There's nowhere in the room that's as quiet as he'd like, but at least they can mitigate the eavesdropping a little.

Frank follows Logan's lead when he leaves the bar. Considering his condition, it isn't as easy for him to find somewhere for a private conversation. Privacy may be a laughable idea here anyway, considering the whole affair; it's all probably watched far too closely.

"Couldn't say the same," he dully replies. He's given up surprise with anyone who suddenly turns up or vanishes just as quickly. A soldier adapts quickly, and after this long it's been clear that precious little is off limits now.

"Been almost a year," he adds belatedly. "Only about a month of that was here." A nod outward, indicating the space around them: this world.

"Ain't what I meant." He's looking out at the guests, searching for familiar faces, noting the ones that aren't. "I mean here," he gestures to the room with his glass, "where they're busy provin' Tony Stark right." Not that it's much less strange for him, being at a registration party—but the X-Men are, by some unspoken agreement, playing the game. For now.

"I tried to cut it out," he adds. "Went all around where it shoulda been. Came right back." His tone is flat, pessimistic: of course it did.

"Easiest way for recon," he says simply. If he doesn't attend, it's harder to know what's going on. He isn't in a position to intimidate answers out of anyone properly, and they're no one he trusts to do the work for him. So, he's here: reluctantly sitting through the show.

The next statement earns Logan a dull glance. "Should've expected that," he tells him, but he supposes it's nothing lost for Logan.

"Yeah, well. Either they're not as smart as they think or they're pretty sure nobody's gonna put up a fight. They got me in a house with Emma Frost." He says it the way someone might say yeah, he was messing around with a gun and he shot himself in the foot. "If they were careful, they woulda scattered everybody. Kept us apart and in the dark as long as possible. Guess they figure since it's just these," he glances at his wrist, "and they haven't done anything yet, we'll all just roll over."

He pauses. "Have they done anything?"

"Maybe," is his reply and that's all he offers for a moment. It seems too simple, and it doesn't line up with his militaristic line of thinking. If they wanted heroes, it isn't exactly the same as keeping soldiers, but the manner of discipline involved should be similar -- but their practice seems entirely removed. It looks as though they simply expect cooperation, for whatever reason that may be.

"Nothing yet," he says, before belatedly adding: "at least, hasn't been heard of."

With people coming and going, is it hard to imagine someone particularly disobedient being made to disappear?

The same thought had occurred to Logan. It didn't click with what he'd seem, up until now—but then, that was the purpose of a facade.

"Yeah, well." Clipped and cynical: nothing else needs to be said about that. He looks down at Frank. "You stayin' in town for a while?" If certain things have to happen, for whatever reason—and in his experience, good reasons always come up—Frank might be the only one he knows who'll be good with it.

"Not in much position to travel," he observes flatly. Even so, he knows there's another edge to Logan's question: asking without asking. The two of them aren't completely in agreement with one another, but they do align in enough ways that matter.

Allies are important. Frank operates as a singular machine, but there are certain forces that require more than one pair of hands. If there is anyone to trust, it's Logan: Frank knows he won't get invested or mistake alliance for something deeper.

He also has a convenient resistance to injury.

"Depends," he adds, "whether or not they're good on their word."

If he goes back to war, they may call arms up against him. Unlike New York, there may not be greater threats for the 'heroes' to concern themselves with.

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noifsandsorbubs - 2014-03-05 22:41 (UTC) - Expand

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fronttowardenemy - 2014-03-08 18:28 (UTC) - Expand

Rather than approach Logan in the ballroom, Laura finds the bar. She doesn't stay too close, keeping to the edges of the crowd, just near enough that she'll be able to spot him when he arrives. The crowd passes in a blur of party clothes, perfume, and laughter.

Laura pays little attention, keeping her eyes on the entrance and her hands hidden in her pockets. Something in her had twisted sharply at the sight of him, a feeling she couldn't name and didn't understand. All she knows is that she wants to see him.

But when he finally comes, she pauses, looking at the set of his shoulders and his tension through the crowd. There's something almost--but not quite--uncertain in her delay, and it takes her a few seconds to start moving.

She's counting on her scent to announce her before she can.

"Logan." A beat. "Hi."

It does, and the first thing he thinks of is her at home, like she isn't standing ten feet from him.

Should have called Laura.

He's had this fight with himself before; his defense is still there and still holding: Laura's tough. She doesn't need you calling her all the time.

Other people would argue, he knows; they'd tell him that he should pick up the goddamned phone and ask how she's doing; that maybe she might like to know he cares.

He tells himself it's misplaced concern. Laura's like him—whatever she has going on, she can handle it.

When he turns to face her, though, a twinge of guilt makes him feel suddenly stupid. He looks out at the buffet crowd instead of at her.

"Glad you're here." It sounds hollow even to him. "Could probably use your help."

Edited 2014-02-18 04:40 (UTC)

He doesn't look at her.

Her eyes are on him, but his are out over the crowd. She does not understand. It's as if she isn't there--until he speaks, and there's something in his tone that wrenches at her, the insistence that she's done something wrong.

She does not understand. Her fingers curl and she slips them into her pockets, waiting for him to look at her. Laura can feel something shrink deep within her chest. Her hands are balled in her pockets and the tips of her claws slide out between her knuckles, hidden by thick fabric. She does not understand.

The uncertainty threatens to overwhelm her, then, exacerbated by her already heightened tension at her situation. There's nothing to do at this point but what she has always done.

"Have you made a plan?" The tone is pure X-23, all of the unconscious, hesitant eagerness Laura had at seeing him crushed by her confusion and uncertainty.

But she can help.

She knows what Logan wants from her when it comes to helping.

It's a fucked-up kind of hypocrisy, he knows; treating her like a soldier. But she is, for better or worse—and he doesn't know where Storm is, and Gambit, useless asshole that he is, isn't around to handle this.

But the shift in her attitude hasn't escaped him.

He swallows the rest of his whiskey.

"No good ones."

Just have a normal fucking conversation.

He looks at her, finally. "What've you been up to, anyway? Haven't seen you in a while."

Edited 2014-02-18 23:23 (UTC)

It’s an old pattern, and dysfunctional as it is, familiar enough that Laura’s claws retract. The hurt is still there, deep in the pit of her stomach, but Logan won’t see it again. Not here, anyway.

She looks away when he looks at her, and there's a second's pause as she tries to think of what to say. The last time she had seen Logan had been at the Academy, approximately 45 days ago.

After that, she had gone to New York to find Blackheart. He had captured and killed her. She had dreamed that Logan had--

No.

Then, taken again. Forced to fight in a world she did not know. When she had escaped, the Purifiers had found her. They had tried to kill her and almost succeeded.

She had woken up in Weapon X and seen… Cyclops. His younger self.

She does not know what to tell Logan. On some level, Laura knows that telling him will only make things worse.

He is busy. She does not expect him to know what happens to her.

Her hands slip deeper into the pockets of her jacket as she looks back at him.

"I have been the same." Beat. "How are the others?"

It's probably the answer he would have given—same old shit; some good, some bad. He hopes for her sake it's been more good than bad, but there's no point asking about it.

"Fine; everybody's good." Probably, seemingly. When he has time to notice. (No sense bringing up the younger original X-Men, he decides; they're not really relevant.)

"Where you stayin'?"

Laura has no response to the ‘all’s well’ from Logan. She hadn’t expected anything else. But it had seemed like the right thing to ask.

She won’t ask how Logan is. He is here. He is alive. That is all that matters.

“I was assigned to #015.”

Edited 2014-02-19 21:13 (UTC)

"Good. I'm in fourteen." If she'd been Jubilee, he would have smiled—hey, how about that. Jubilee would have cracked a joke.

Instead he turned and set his glass on the bar, as humorless as she was. "Emma's there, too. You're with Storm, right?"

"Yes. Storm is there." If he'd been Jubilee, she'd have softened--you are next door. Jubilee would have cracked a joke.

Jubilee was not here.

"I saw Emma in the ballroom." Beat. "Who else is here?"

"Mutants?" Because he didn't expect her to care about Hank Pym (he didn't even care), and Tony was doing his social butterfly thing as obviously as possible—not that Logan expected her to care about him, either. "Nobody, far as I know. Guess we're gonna see how this plays out."

He gave her a knowing look. "Stick close, for now, huh? Stay with Storm. Least for a few weeks. We'll figure some way outta this."

"Okay." It wasn't clear if Laura was agreeing to stick close, or simply acknowledging that there were no other mutants at the party and that Logan wanted to see how it all played out.

She felt drawn to stay close to him, to do what he said--it would be easy to shadow Logan as she had in the past, to wait for his direction.

But she did not want that. Not anymore.

She had made her decision. Her fists unclenched in her pockets. "You think that we will stay for weeks." It wasn't a question.

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noifsandsorbubs - 2014-02-23 22:55 (UTC) - Expand

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guiloteen - 2014-02-26 21:24 (UTC) - Expand

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noifsandsorbubs - 2014-03-02 17:34 (UTC) - Expand

Where Logan was doing his level best to blend into the wallpaper, Ororo was attracting more attention than she cared for. It wasn't like she was doing it on purpose - she was drawn into casual conversation and social networking more than she initiated it - but Ororo being Ororo was just hard to miss by nature, even in the nondescript dress and shoes she'd acquired for the night. So it took her a while to make her way around to where she knew Logan would be.

When she finally made it to the bar, she was seriously considering asking for something stronger than her usual one glass of Shiraz.

"I thought I would never make it here."

It was comfortingly familiar, seeing all the attention she got—she hadn't bothered to try, like Emma had, but she never needed to. (And it was funny to him, a spiteful funny, that half the men in the room would be wondering why she'd waste her time talking to the short guy at the bar.)

By the time she got there, his mood had visibly improved.

"Me neither," he said, leaning on the counter. "Try not to look so good—it's workin' for me; I haven't had to talk to anybody all night."

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I’ve traveled all this way for something

Logan | Registered | Open

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what if we got in a past tense convertible and drove off into the past tense sunset

DRIVIN A DRIVE

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can I tag this late

sure can!