Logs:Tumult

Tumult
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Scott
In Absentia Jax	2024-10-21 "Nice to be right."
Location <NYC> Q-Tip - East Harlem
This is the kind of place you go to when you want a dive bar but don't want to wait for compete for use of the sole pool table covered with suspicious stains that always leans toward one corner pocket. Q-Tip may not be fancy, but its tables are solid and the drinks are decent. The bartenders are polite but taciturn, the regulars are diverse but largely blue collar men with a sprinkling of hipsters, and the neon-lit jukebox always seems to be playing classic rock. It's not terribly late in the evening, though late enough in the year that it's dark out nonetheless, the Monday night crowd small but a little rowdy where a cluster of young-ish men in work clothes are spectating the last game of an increasingly competitive round-robin tournament, though over the thump of the music (tonight with a more rockabilly flair) and the clack of rebounding billiard balls, only the most spirited trash-talk is discernable from where Scott is leaning low over the table, carefully adjusting the angle of his cue, the red color of his glasses muddied in the dim to look like he's just wearing sunglasses indoors for no reason. Aside from this he seems quite at home here, in worn jeans and boots, motorcycle jacket left open over a red flannel shirt. He takes another moment to deliberate over the angle of the cue before he sinks two more stripes. Lucien does not look particularly dismayed that his prospects for winning this match are rapidly dwindling. Then again, he does not look particularly anything; it would be easy enough for a casual observer to mistake his impassive expression and languid posture for disinterest in the game. He is, at the moment, leaning against the divider of a nearby booth seat, cue in one hand and his phone in the other, dressed a small step up from Scott (and most patrons here) although still casual enough in a leaf-green button-down with fiery yellow-orange paisley lining the inside of its cuffs, placket, and collar, the top button undone to show this to better effect, gray thin wale corduroy trousers, and white leather sneakers. He is swiping out a message without really looking at his screen, instead regarding Scott with as thoughtful as if perhaps he is taking notes. Maybe he is; when the balls clack satisfyingly into their pockets the small tip of his head is duly impressed. Once the shot is taken he is picking back up a thread of conversation politely suspended in order to avoid any potential distraction from shot-taking. "-- while the backlash from humans was certainly quite predictable, I really ought to have foreseen the tumult this is stirring within mutant community." He does not sound particularly troubled about this grave oversight but the small wrinkle that crosses his brow hints at some level of disquiet that he did not, in fact, prepare well enough in advance for the Sudden Influx of Aliens that the Mojo-ites brought back. As he strides back toward Luci, picking his glass of scotch up off the table, Scott shrugs this remark off -- "Tumult is just part and parcel with mutant community," he says, a little drily, though there's a pinch forming in his brow too as he takes a sip. "People are scared. People who already felt they were in a precarious position, twice scared, and it doesn't feel like this is about to get any less precarious. How has it been going with our -- visitors? Any luck calling home?" Lucien tucks his phone away, his hand tipping up then in a noncommittal sort of shrug. "A few, but I do not know that those calls will produce any less tumult. We are trying to arrange discreet pickups for some of them -- I think the last thing we need is a jumpy military triggering more interplanetary strife if they misinterpret an alien taxi as another invasion." His grip twists slowly around the haft of his cue, and his expression has smoothed back into its previous calm when he adds: "I also have some concern this military anxiety may continue to have some negative repercussions for you and yours, in particular. Some in the current administration are very keen to throw someone under the bus over this Genosha business -- I think they mislike to look soft on anything with the election looming so very near." "Hngh, no, I would imagine not." Scott's face is very impassive around the glasses as he slides his hand lower down the cue, swirling it in a loose fist on its bumper. After a moment he just closes his hand around it with a rather less impassive, dissatisfied grunt. "'Someone'," he echoes. Lucien's head tips in a very small incline. "Quite a few feds still believe Jackson has some kind of Brotherhood ties. Or find it convenient to believe that. It was not politically expedient to press the matter last summer, but this new development --" He picks up his own glass, taking a small swallow. "I think the Brotherhood has Jax ties, actually," Scott says, though the wry and possibly inappropriate amusement in his voice does not make it onto his still-inscrutable face. He shakes his head and takes another sip of his whiskey -- "Thanks," he says. "Sometimes I worry I'm paranoid. Nice to be right." When he sets the glass back down, he just stares down at it for a moment, before he switches the cue back into his right hand and stalks back around the table to line up another shot. Lucien is sipping slow at his Scotch and giving careful study to Scott's careful aim. There is amusement slipping through into his expression -- a small crinkle of his eyes, a brief flare of his nostrils though his soft huff of laugh is too quiet to be heard. He's lapsing back into a courteous quiet as Scott lines up the shot, but not before a lightly wry: "And yet I hope you will forgive my pleasant fantasies of a world in which you are wrong."