ArchivedLogs:Mutants on Ice

Mutants on Ice
Mutants on Ice & Other Calamities
Dramatis Personae Jim, Logan & Assorted Students
In Absentia	31 January 2013 Logan and Jim find themselves out by the lake, each there to blow off steam and 'get away' from whatever drama is chasing them. Some adventurous students decide to play on the lake... This cannot end well.
Location <XS> Lake
It's winter, but with a warm wetness, the partially frozen lake sweating off a thin curdle of mist creeping up the muddy half-thawed bank of rocks. There are few trees, accumulating moss along one side of their trunks -- also Jim, who is doing the same. He wears tatty tweed and a plaid fedora, standing with one hand crammed in his pocket, the other paying lethargic industry to his cigarette, in both the plucking-from and returning-to mouth business. He eyeballs the lake like it's vaguely offensive to him, and if one were to look down they'd note in spite of it being January, he's wearing cargo shorts. The legs reaching down /beneath/ are either very muddy, or made of tree bark, rooted to the ground through gnarled toes. This same gnarling is developing along the backs of his knuckles, and spreading from the nape of his neck to fade behind his ears. "Like hell, I am!" a nearby masculine, husky voice all but bellows. The voice belongs to a man of average height, hairy, grizzled and dressed in heavy jeans, boots, a red checkered shirt and a comfortable brown leather jacket - he has a peculiar cellphone held to his ear and he is growling into it, while he stalks away from the mansion toward the lake. There is a pause, amid the muttering. "I'm not doin' it, 'n that's that!" he barks into the phone. "Fucking waste of time," he mutters softly to himself a second later. "What? - well there're no students out 'ere to hear me. Go f--or a long walk off a short pier!" Logan notices the man standing by a nearby tree - but he is especially interested in the cigarette. His trajectory turns slightly, to bring him closer to the stranger. "Sport ethics?" he growls into the phone. "Combat ethics?? Lady, the bad guys aren't gonna play fair, so why would we? If a kid wins a fight by kickin' the other kid in the nuts - ya give him a fucking gold star, not detention!--" And just like that, he cuts the other person off mid-sentence. Giving the stranger an appraising glance, Logan puts the phone away and pulls out one of his favourite cigars. "Gotta light, bub?" he asks. Jim plays nonchalant like a pro, displaying zero evidence he even hears the phone exchange -- save that he's producing from his pocket a cheap Bic lighter as though he'd been waiting all day for this signal. The smoothness gets a little choppy when he is required to flick it three or four times to coax actual flame into life, his own smoke stuck out from the corner of his mouth like a miniature tree brach. It requires the eye on this side to squint against the rising smoke from it in a very prolonged wink. "Combat ethics. Kick to the nuts. Sounds like phonecalls I've had with my ex." Pause, for him to pull cigarette from mouth to exhale thoughtfully in the opposite direction. "Either of them." Pausing only to snip the end off his cigar with his own cutter, Logan leans forward gratefully to light it up and then steps back a pace - puffing away his irritation. Jim's comments earn him an arched eyebrow, a curt nod and a rueful half-chuckle, half-snort. "Thanks. That bitch has been on my case since I started here," he remarks blandly - his voice distorted slightly by the cigar clenched between his teeth. His keen, predatory eyes scan the entire lake while he continues puffing away moodily. "She's someone's ex alright." One of the more aquatic students bursts out of the water of the lake, apparently heedless of the cold, and then run on webbed feet toward the mansion. It is a girl, dressed in a swimsuit, blonde and barely a teenager - and she waves to both men without paying either of them much attention. Logan snorts with amusement. Then he lifts an eyebrow - again - at the cigarette-smoking man. "So who're you, bub?" "Aren't we all." Ex's, Jim means, his smoke bobbing when he speaks, faded blue eyes following the girl's path out of the water with a mild grimace. "Never gonna get used t'that," he mutters, snapping to the present all too willingly with an offer of rough-gnarled hand extended to clasp, "Jim Morgan. Not from around these fucking parts. What d'ya do here?" He doesn't speak with any significant New York accent, brogue slanting to the bland lack-of-drawl of the central Midwest, but he embodies the gruff /spirit/ of it like a glove. Accepting the offered hand, Logan grips it firmly - well, as firmly as he can without accidentally breaking bones (that would be unfriendly) - whilst his lips form a lopsided, rueful smirk. He lets go of the hand, and stuffs his into a jacket pocket. "Logan," he says laconically. There's a pause. And a snort. "I'm a professor here," he says - completely unable to say it with a straight face, or serious vocal-tone. Still, he doesn't offer much more in the way of helpful information. "So ya know about the school then," he asks - without asking. One of eyes remains fixed in a sidelong gaze at Jim, sizing the man up. The rest of the "question" - How do you know, and what do you do? goes unspoken for now - only implied in that look. Logan blows a cloud of spicy-scented smoke out through his nostrils, waiting. Jim's shake is rough-textured and firm, though with the advancement of treebark withdrawn to bare flaky-dryness, after which he turns back to facing the water. He must feel the other man eyeing him - what there is to see is wholly tatty and scruffy, his hair getting a little long, his big jaw a little bristly, his paunch a little portly - because so subtly, the corner of his mouth on his Logan-ward side twitches up, "Looks that way." Implicit questions sail harmlessly under his radar in the name of overt ones: "Professor in what. Wait wait." He waves out his cigarette, "Lemme guess - sport ethics? Combat ethics? You're the fucking Gym Teacher from Hell or something?" OK. That gets Logan chuckling. He takes the cigar from his mouth, long enough to chortle a little, grinning roguishly at the other man. Both his bushy eyebrows bounce up and down in a "nod" of their own, and he puts the cigar back to take a long pull at it. "Got it in one, bub," he says in a cloud of smoke. "I can think o' worse things to be - law for one. Too many rules. Too much... red tape. What about you, huh? 'N whaddya doin' here?" A group of students - about half a dozen of them - run out of the mansion, past the woods and toward the lake. These ones, boys and girls all dressed for winter weather, don't go diving in but they do start contests of skimming stones across the not-yet-frozen parts of the lake - while 2 of them run around to where the ice is thickest. Logan frowns, but continues to listen to Jim. And finish his cigar. "So?" he asks. Logan's commentary yanks out a rough smokers-laugh from Jim in turn. "Law school dropout," he taps a thumb against his own chest, "Though I can tell you this - you'll love what law can do a lot less if you /don't/ know it. Lotta us freaks are gonna be served up big doses of /that/ comin' up." As political commentary goes, this is unenthused, " Auctoritas non veritas facit legem -- authority, not truth, makes the law." He pulls a /fierce/ drag off his cigarette on this one, roving suspicious gaze following the teenagers... about the way any New Yorker tracks a pack of teenagers moving in unit. "Let's say I take good pictures," he comments at length, fishing into the contents of his inner jacket pocket to withdraw a business card; emphasis on card, less on business, it's printed on cheap cardstock and printed minimum information on a Garamond type face: James Morgan. Private Investigating. A phone number. A fax. No email. No address. To keep his cigarette in place, he moves his lips only to one side, and even then just barely, "Just not the kind you'd want put in your family album." He gestures gestures at their surrounding by virtue of his eyebrows alone, "I got brought out here by an old student of this place - Y'know him? Jackson Holland? He's got two shark-faced twins named 'Bastian and Shane? And I guess," he exhales smoke through his nose, "I got t'like it. Not a lot of places in New York I can put down roots, y'get me." He slants his eyes up and down the other man critically, "So what's your freak-thing." Logan... hmphs. "So you're a snoop, then," he says flatly. Either he doesn't like snoops - or he just doesn't care. Probably a bit of both. "Just don' take any pictures o' me, bub, an' well get along fine." The grizzly mutant goes quiet for a while - a minute or so - whilst keeping an eye on the students near the half-frozen lake. "I know Shane," he eventually admits. "Quick kid. Smart. Wants in on my classes." He hmphs again, this time with a shrug. "Reckons my 'freakness' is being badass." He narrows his eyes at the lake. "Could be worse. So you're a tree-hugger? Or morpher?--aww, wouldya look at this - this ain't gonna end well." He is pointing to the two kids testing the ice, a deep frown forming canyons across his brow. "Funny thing about snoops," Jim has a grimace that works just as easily for a grin, pulling tight at the sides of his mouth and squinting up his eyes, "If they take your picture, you won't even know about it." He holds his cigarette to the side to flick loose its end accumulation of ash, "If they're any good, anyway." For a long moment, he's eyeballing the disaster-in-potentia of kids on ice, which inspires an absent comment, "Shane's a good kid; smartass, but a good kid. Met him in the back of a squad car." All imparted casually, though it breaks up with a mild cough-laugh-wtf sound at the details of his company's mutation, "So what, take my courses, and in six weeks you'll be a badass, too? Teens are fucking cocky enough as it is, you might wanna keep that part close t'chest." With his cigarette burnt down to the filter, he draws it from mouth and flicks it off his thumb at the water, snorting, "You're not gonna catch me hugging any trees, at least. I couldn't tell a daisy from my hairy asshole. My parents were dirty hippies; not a lotta charm left when you're raised on tofu and nag champa." "Tofu?" Logan blinks, not bothering to hide the grimace on his face. "Bub, I hope for your sake ya lived a little since then." He returns his gaze toward the ice and shakes his head. "C'mon. Watchin' this is damaging my calm - takes all the fun outta good cigar." And with that he starts walking toward the six students by the water. The woods almost reach the edge of the lake where the kids are playing, providing a wind-break and minimal shelter. Branches overhang the area, all draped in snow. The four children that were skipping stones have already hung back from the water's edge - three girls and a boy, and all of them in their early teens. The two boys on the ice itself - one blonde and the other... well, green (skin, hair, etc...) - are daring eachother to go further out over the lake. Logan's ear twitches and he breaks into a run - not even checking to see if Jim is following. "C'mon! I hear cracking!" "Shit, I didn't sign on for this, guy!" Jim informs Logan /while/ breaking into a run right at his heels, his roots already raveled up from the ground to pelt on hard-gnarled bare feet. He branches off, though, cutting for the trees with a clench-teethed irritation, arms extended to stop his momentum between two oaks, palms slapping down against their trunks. A silence follows for a moment, then a subtle sound of wood straining, tearing through dirt below the ground. Root systems expanding towards the water reach further, beneath it, rising up towards the thin sheath of ice from below. Frowning. "C'mon, c'mon." Kids. What can you do? Put a lake out there, and someone will just have to swim too deep. Freeze it over and someone will have to walk where it's too thin. Human - or mutant - nature. The hairline cracks Logan heard become audible to the 'average' ear - including those of the students out on the ice'. The green, almost reptilian one is the first to react; he freezes on the spot, and drops to all fours - his hands and legs splayed out in different direction to distribute his weight across the ice. Smart kid. The other one - Blondie, in Logan's mind - lacks the same presence of mind. Logan reaches the lake's edge, bellowing a "Don't move, kid!" to the latter one. He hesitates. The hairy man, arms flexes, nostrils flaring and eyes wide, does not walk out onto the ice. That would be stupid. Instead, he cranes his neck back to look at Jim - and the moving roots. Now that's useful! "Stay there!" he calls back to the teenagers, holding his hands up, palms outward, to add emphasis. That's when the green kid's tongue lashes out and snags Logan's arm, like a lifeline. A sticky lifeline. Logan smirks. "Whatever yer gonna do, bub," he says to Jim. "Do it now. That ice ain' gonna hold more 'n a few seconds." Jim smirks back, though it's heavily strained. A few lobs of graying hair fallen forward around his face, which has gone over entirely to a dark flaky roughness that makes his faded blue eyes and the white of his teeth stand out starkly, "Easy for you t'say, jerkoff." The strained creak of the trees becomes a thunder-cracking squeal that makes a few of the students at the bank jump and cling together, defensive mechanisms set off: One girl's hair abruptly topples out from a short blond bob cut into loose rivulets of auburn that hang to her thighs, another young man in a scarf nervously begins to molt his outer layer of skin in loose silky flakes, which he restlessly scratches at. A third, a very large young man writing his hands timidly, goes invisible - but only to his dermis layer, exposing subcutaneous fatty layers beneath. The very fact that the other teens fail to even react to this suggests it's a regular occurrence. Puberty can be brutal, man. It can't be heard by normal hearing, but the icy ground beneath the frostline ripping open further does make a deep, meaty tearing sound as roots shove up harder in a sudden rush, pressing up against the underside of the ice just as it begins to ponderously sag beneath the two boy's weight. Water pours up over the surface of the ice and begins to follow this natural dip to wash icy-cold around feet and ankles. "Get the fuck back here, run, this shit won't hold!" Jim has a good rough voice for long-distance projection. Years of trashtalking will teach you that. Normally, Logan would be pacing the shore like a caged animal - adamantium has its uses, but it makes floating/swimming... well, embarrassing - but he has a tongue of all things (several meters long) wrapped around his arm. He shrugs. Then he rips his arm back, pulling with a terrific amount of force and the green-skinned kid comes flying off the cracking ice and straight into Logan's arms. Great. Now he has a bipedal gecko wrapped around him. The young mutant abruptly lets go and drops to the ground, massaging his jaw with both hands. His eyes, however, are on the blond boy still out on the water. Jim's cry stirs the terrified lad out of his almost catatonic state, and he hesitantly begins to walk. Then jog. Crack!! The ice practically snaps like a cracker into two parts, then more, as the boy falls onto the bank. Safe. He is already crying - a fright like that will do that to a kid. Logan, scowling, shakes his head - but he does give Jim a curt nod of approval. Jim stands slightly bowed over, leaning a forearm heavily against a tree and breathing raspily. While fitting a new Marlboro Red into the side of his mouth. He jerks his chin back at Logan while lighting it. The girl with the overactive hair is rushing forward to throw her arms around Blondie, suddenly sobbing and asking if he's okay, while he's mostly focused on squeaking curses. The (semi)invisible kid is mincing over as well, to offer a hand to the gecko-boy, "You alright, dude?" The flaky kid, walking quickly up behind them as well, murmurs, "Man, put your guts away." The (semi) invisible kid claps a hand over the vaguely transparent lining of his abdominal wall and flips his friend off over a shoulder. "Never," Jim says to himself, scrubbing a hand through his hair, "Never gonna get used t'this shit." Logan puffs on his cigar and waves a hand back toward the mansion. "Go on," he says to the students. "Lake's off-limits 'til I say so." The man is still scowling. "But," says one of the students - hanging back while the others reluctantly leave. "The Professor lets--" "I'm not the professor, aren't I?" Logan interjects with a glare. It's enough to send the last of them running back to the school grounds. Logan heaves a sigh. To Jim he says, "Gimme thugs. Gimme crooks. Gimme homicidal mutant masterminds - but fucking kids??? Wheels is a brave man. Nice trick with the roots by the way. C'mon - I've had my fill o' kids for a day. Buy you a beer?" "Yeah," Jim chuffs, shaking out his arms as he approaches at a trudge, "Let's do that." Once he reaches Logan he goes on to walk right past him. Presumably, they would need to go this way anyway, "Though make mine a ginger ale. On the wagon. Hell, man, you must have a hell of an arm, yanking that kid in like that." Logan grins - wolfishly - at the man walking beside him. So this Jim fellow isn't half bad - might even come in handy someday. Raising a hand to flex his fingers and then rub at his jaw, Logan makes his way (with Jim) past the woods and in the direction of the garage. Lowering his hand again, he gives a cryptic smirk. "Bub, you have no idea." END TRANSMISSION