Logs:You Can't Pour From an Empty Glass

You Can't Pour From an Empty Glass
Dramatis Personae Ion, Jax, Scott
In Absentia Tian-shin, B, Mystique, Destiny	2024-10-05 "Have you back in sinning condition in no time." (Set some time after a successful and unsuccessful? mission.)
Location <MOJ> Champion's Circle - Mojoverse
Originally this was intended as a place for the games participants to relax and hang out in between events, but that idea quickly fell by the wayside when their initial participants were all too dead and/or traumatized to do any hanging out. Still. in preparation for hosting a bunch of Earthlings they've taken their best stab at what Earthers might enjoy for a little R&R, which has led to this... place. It's looks like it was kind of a bar, once. There are tables to sit at, though half of them come pre-knocked-over; there are several broken bottles and broken pool cues lying around (no pool tables in evidence.) There are numerous guns. Several of the bottles behind the bar are filled with bullets, a couple more with gasoline; some do have alcohol but none of it is drinking grade. There is also a game of darts. If there ever were any employees there are not anymore, but a very large number of cats are in residence here. The building doesn't end so much as just truncate like it's some kind of movie set. The open back of the "bar" opens up onto, a road that for some reason has a large ramp leading to nowhere. There are a variety of vehicles out there with keys in the ignition and though it's usually hard to tell this from a look, they have the indefinable air of cars that will explode at the slightest provocation. Maybe it's the unnecessary racing stripes. Despite his perma-reprieve from the Games, Jax looks like he's had a Long Day. He's slouched against the bar, the faint wisps of shadow ghosting around him only serving to accentuate his pallor. Of the several fresh wounds he needed assistance patching up this evening, the only visible bandaging is on one arm, though his careful-guarded posture when he shifts tells of the others beneath his fresh 'I ❤️ I ❤️ NY' shirt. He is plodding steady but unenthusiastic through a can of lentil soup, delivering the tail end of his sitrep between exhausted mouthfuls: "-- blew the gate, and I don't think nobody tailed us back. Guess if some slug gestapo descend in our sleep tonight I'll be making my apologies to y'all. Still, made more noise than we wanted but the thing's in place and B's already set to work programming it. Think if they spy it and remove it she'll notice, at least, and --" His lips press, brief, but his voice doesn't falter much, determined if not quite achieving cheerful when he continues. "-- if that happens 'fore we're ready we'll just go plant another." Just. "Thanks, Jax." Scott, despite his lack of perma-reprieve, doesn't look any more or less exhausted than he generally is, these several long weeks into Mojo's games, but his voice is low and a little hoarse. He's leaned up against the bar beside Jax, one boot propped up on the footrest of a nearby barstool, his expression tense around his visor. "Between you and Mystique, hopefully they won't know who they're dealing with until too late. They're not exactly running the -- tightest possible ship, here." Surely this is something to be grateful for, but Scott still seems a little disapproving. There's an unsteady shiver of the lights around them, and then Ion just appears behind the bar. He does not look exhausted at all, manic-bright eyes and manic-bright grin, but he looks maaaybe like he should look exhausted because unlike Jax he has not yet bothered with bandaging any of the new holes punched in him. He has rinsed off and changed, somewhere along the way, because the clothing that is clinging damply to him and getting patchily bloodstained is a fresh new unmuddied Brotherhood uniform. He jerks his chin up to the other men and grabs himself a bottle that claims it is rum, and even though their gasoline and alcohol supplies have long since been carefully separated he is still out of early-formed habit sniffing at it suspiciously before swigging. He drinks deep before clanging the bottle back to the countertop, and his sitrep is cheerfully, aggressively shorter than Jax's: "No fucking ship." "That's a good thing, sir," Jax is saying with a small laugh, "gosh but it'd make our jobs a hundred times harder if some slug with half your diligence was on their security. I can't imagine what today --" He pauses, considers, and then winces. "Oh, no, wait, I got a great imagination, I just done imagine it and I'm gonna be grateful for havin' a bland can-soup in this bizarro-world bar with you right now." He sits up a little bit straighter, expression brightening already in almost the same moment Ion has appeared. Not for long, though; just as soon as the telltale shiver of lights puts a smile on his face, Ion himself is pulling his (newly unpierced) brows into a frown. "Guess it was a longshot, but hey. I got tomorrow free if you do," he's offering lightly. "We can keep lookin' -- but sugar you got to get patched up you still leaking all over there." He's setting his soup can aside to glance from Ion's bloodstains to the cache of first aid supplies. Scott, with a wry, thin smile, plucks his own bland can-soup up off the bar -- just the dregs of soup left in it -- to give Jax a wordless cheers, the motion quickly aborted and the can abandoned back on the bar, as he turns around to regard Ion a little critically. Through the red lens of his visor it is anybody's guess how much blood he can actually see, but he's frowning a little deeper. "You're bleeding, you should --" he starts to say, through Jax, pushing himself (more) upright again. "Well. Darn," he says, a little impassively. He's crossing to the first aid on his own, picking through the boxes of supplies. "See anything that -- looked like a ship, at least?" "Some their fucking kapo-ass cops shoot me!" Ion attempts to pull himself up over the bar, winces, immediately gives up on this far-too-agile enterprise and instead blips around to reappear behind Jax. He drags a chair over and promptly fails to sit in it, snatching his rum back off the counter. "Not a damn thing. We see hell of them slimy bastard. Whole world of mud. Shit, though, you miss some bad-ass booming from your Razor-girl, we light a whole squad them assholes up. Sent some rich fuck to -- I hope not the same hell I gonna end up in." His head shakes. He takes another swig of the rum and digs in his pocket to pull out what looks like a smallish rock, nestling in the palm of his hand -- spiraling and stepped like a bismuth crystal, it glitters in a brilliant rainbow of hues. "Got shit to show for it. Some new damn scars. Thought you like this, though, pretty little thing." He's thumping the rock onto the table in front of Jax. "I check my schedule, huh. Make some space to go hunt sluglord with you tomorrow." "Well if y'got the time." Jax picks his soup back up, once Scott heads towards the first aid things. "Tian-shin's always a badass. -- Boy, sit yourself down, those bullet wounds staying in you whether you found the ship or not. You really think you going to hell, you one'a..." He's trailing off as he looks at the crystal. He shoves another mouthful of soup into his face and plucks the rock up, turning it over. A faint glow blossoms above it -- for a moment it sends a storm of glittering lights dancing out around the floor, which stirs the excitement of several cats. "Sure is pretty but please tell me you didn't go an' get yourself shot up over a pretty rock." "Starting to think human hell is slug heaven," Scott says, somewhat pointedly patting the back of the chair before he goes back around the bar to wash his hands. The frown deepens even further, down at the rock, or maybe Scott is just squinting at it from behind the visor. He tilts his head at it -- "Think anybody could identify it? I think we mostly brought our life sciences teachers." "Been a month and then some since my last confession, you know how many damn sins I can rack up, that long?" Ion does plunk himself down in the seat, sucking in his breath hard. "Over a rock re bonita," he corrects Jax emphatically. "Look them colors. Fine damn rock. Bet won't none your friends have no rock that good." He's grinning broadly over at Scott. "Next time you choose your team better, huh, Captain X? How we come all this far don't have nobody from your fancy school identify a space rock. Getting sloppy." "I mean, at home, sure, but how many sins you really packing in here? Gotta get a lil creative, we been had real limited scope for sinning." Jax is still turning the rock over in his fingers -- though the light disappeared for a moment soon after it blossomed, it's reappeared soon enough when faced with the disappointment of Several Cats. "Got colors we don't even make on earth," he's informing the others. Ion's joking is, finally, putting a real smile back on his exhausted face, and though he's probably still not enthused about the soup itself he's eating his next bite with some actual relish. "S'right, sir, could be if you'd planned a little better, brung along a geologist, we'd be back already." Scott turns the tap off with one elbow, his head tilted slightly, though he evidently doesn't feel comfortable weighing in on the topic of sin as he comes back around the bar, smiling slimly again. "Mm. My bad," he says. "What?! See, that a damn fine rock. I'd get shot all over again, bring you another. Hope you and the crazy fucking dykes did better than rock and mud, though." Ion peels off his shirt stiffly, idly wiping excess blood away from the pair of wounds gashed into his shoulder and stomach. His eyes are tracking Scott -- probably this is because of the promise of First Aid but in the wake of Jax's comment it lends a more teasing air to the slant of his grin. "Shit, not half so many as I'd like." He crumples the ruined uniform shirt into a ball, straightening a little bit where he sits. "But s'always tomorrow, though." Jax scoops out the last of his soup and slips off the stool to rinse out both his and Scott's empty cans, setting them aside with a box of others as if perhaps some extremely dedicated earthhugger is going to bring them back for recycling. His eye is ticking between the other two men, mouth twitching with a mooostly repressed smile. "Well, that's for sure the hope. Still don't know as I'd do too much putting off till tomorrow --" He just finishes this with a small hitch of one shoulder. "Please do try an' get some sleep if we trekking all over creation again tomorrow, sugar? -- And g'night, sir." He's pocketed the rock just before he slips out. Scott is pulling up his own chair, one foot hooked around the leg to drag it up beside Ion so he can have a seat too -- "Right, let's see you," he says. In contrast to either of his companions there is not a hint of suggestiveness in either his voice or his demeanor, here, just Business As Usual with Scott Summers, but surely, "Have you back in sinning condition in no time," is a joke. "Shit, la esperanza, where you think it come from, Sunshine? We damn well seeing tomorrow 'cuz we gonna drag each other the fuck there if we gotta." Ion lifts his bottle, still half-full, in a salute to Jax. He stretches an arm casually out to the wall, fingers brushing at an outlet there with an uncomfortable twitch, an audible zap and another brief unsteady-brighter surge in the lights. Some of the ferocity has gone out of his grin when he drops his arm, slumping a little lower in his seat and exhaling a slow breath. The photokinetic heading out is a blessing, perhaps; it means there is nobody, really, left to notice the red flush that's risen to his cheeks. "{Sure, yeah,} got plenty hell left to raise. Only a little ironic I in such good hands."