ArchivedLogs:Bucking the Statistics

Bucking the Statistics
Or, Superheroes and Gaming Mistresses
Dramatis Personae Hive, Micah
In Absentia	15 February 2013 Micah and Hive meet in a diner and have "freak and geek" bonding times.
Location <NYC> Home - Greenwich Village
Nestled into the heart of the Village, Home is an unobtrusive place, with an unobtrusive name to match. A nondescript storefront opens up into an equally nondescript cafe, plain tiled floors, an assortment of veneered tables with plain wooden chairs or booths with cracking vinyl benches. What it /does/ have to recommend it is the food, hearty solid breakfast and brunch served twenty-four hours a day. Known to locals and little frequented by tourists, its friendly serving staff tend to remember their regulars, giving the place a warm feel that lives up to its name. It's late. Quite late. The city might never sleep but many of its inhabitants do, although on a Friday night perhaps less of them are in bed than might be on a weekend. At this hour, the diner contains more than its usual occupancy of drunken patrons, through clubbing for the night or maybe refueling between stops. Hive doesn't seem drunk, at least. He doesn't seem much of anything, nondescript in ragged faded jeans, weatherbeaten sneakers that have more hole than shoe to them, a beige t-shirt with an outline of Zelda's Link dotted onto it that reads '404 LINK NOT FOUND' over top. He has a laptop in front of him, and though it has headphones plugged into it the earbuds are currently just lying on the table rather than nestled into his ears. He has a menu in front of him, too, and he's currently paying this more attention than his laptop, biting down onto his lip as he peruses it. A slim young man with tousled auburn hair sits at a table alone. Micah has a fading bruise on his cheek that is a sickly greenish colour. It is suspiciously hand-shaped. His left arm is in a navy blue sling that has been scribbled over in silver Sharpie…probably decorated by children, from the looks of it. He is wearing a black T-shirt with “Reading Rainbow” written across a rainbow in the middle, Rainbow Dash curled up with a Derring Do book on a cloud beside it. A blonde waitress is taking his order for orange juice and waffles with /lots of strawberries/. She gestures at the sling. “What happened to you?” Micah grins a big, lopsided grin. “Eh…you should see the other guy,” comes his stock answer, immediately followed by a grimace as he pictures the “other guy”—a melty looking face and crazy eyes. “On second thought, you shouldn’t see the other guy. He’s kind of terrifying.” The waitress shrugs and wanders back toward the kitchen. Hive is still perusing his menu, though it's Micah's thoughts more than his words that draw the telepath's attention, eyes flicking up from the page at the image of meltyfaceguy. His lips press together, thoughtfully, and eventually he folds his menu in front of him. Universal waiter-summoning gesture. His own order is eggs benedict, homefries on the side. And a large glass of orange juice. It's only after he's thanked the woman and turned over his menu that he scraaaaapes his chair against the floor, turning it towards Micah's table. "How terrifying is terrifying?" Micah looks up with a slight bit of surprise as he is addressed from another table. “Oh, pretty scary. I think he may have been a war vet or something. Probably a burn survivor? PTSD would explain a lot, too.” Or being crazy /and/ a warrior for the Mutants with Scary Faces cause, he adds silently. He chews at his lower lip. “Mostly scary in the ‘let me do random violence to strangers’ kind of way.” "Thaaaat's," Hive says, drawing the word out slowly before he just decides simply: "Pretty scary. S'just funny cuz I had someone warning me just the other day to be on the lookout for a scarymeltyface dude. You seem like you came out of it --" He hesitates, squinting over at Micah's bruise. "Well, without your face melted, at least. So that's a good." Micah’s eyebrows try to see if they can meet up with his hairline. “Face melted? What, is this guy running around setting people /on fire/?” His mental dialogue continues with more interesting questions: Was he a fireball throwing guy? Did people /have/ mutations that just melted faces? That seems oddly specific… “I wish I had gotten that APB /before/ he ran into me.” "I don't think there's fire involved. I dunno, I didn't get the impression there was fire, anyway. They said don't let him touch me cuz --" Hive's fingers gesture towards his own face. "Facemelting. I guess it's like a superpower but minus the super and just, uh, creepy. Creepypower. You come off it okay? 'Cept, uh, the bruises?" So there /are/ people who have mutations that just melt faces. Whodathunk? X-gene, you so random! “Now I’m doubly sure I don’t want to run into him again.” Micah cringes at Hive’s inquiry into his wellbeing. An unbidden memory of his arm wrenching in a not-good direction, searing pain in the shoulder. The ache reminds him that the damage isn’t fully healed yet. “Yeah, pretty much. Just that and the shoulder.” "Sounds kinda shitty." Hive winces, in time with that memory surfacing. "This city, eh? Can't go out without some asshole trying to melt your face off. You get that a lot? I bet it's cuz you're pretty," he decides, scraping his chair back towards his table as their orange juices both arrive. "I mean, come on, if /you/ could melt faces wouldn't you want to go for the pretty ones? Uh, assuming you were the type of asshole to go for anyone." Micah’s cheeks flush /bright red/ at that. Dammit, redhead curse! “Ohnono, nothin’ like that, he just ran into me by accident. Literally. Got pissed off that I asked if he was okay.” /Stop blushing, face!/ “I /have/ been seemin’ to be a trouble magnet, lately. Though I also magically attracted a couple of lovely lady superheroes who pulled my bacon out of the fire. So I guess it balances out?” "Superheroes?" Hive says this with a snort. "You for real?" He reaches for his orange juice, taking a large swig, and if he notices the blushing he's not commenting on it. "S'not you. S'this city. It's like a melting pot for alllll the trouble. Bound to happen when you shove this many freaks into a small space." Micah chuckles softly, and thankfully his face seems to be cooling off. “Hand to God.” He raises a hand up as if preparing to give testimony. “Two /complete strangers/ materialised out of the night, fended this guy off, and then /shamed/ him into runnin’ away. Does /everybody/ around here have superpowers?” "Just most of us," Hive answers, grinning brighter. "Don't you? This /is/ New York." That comment earns a snort of laughter in reply. “No, not me. Just a perfectly normal human worm-baby. Though a lot of the kids I work with are convinced I’m a robot. Or a cyborg. Which ain’t too far from accurate, on the latter.” Grinning to himself, he’s picturing a hand-made get well card from a kid named Daekwon. ‘Get wel soon, Mr. Mika! Nex time, kick the bad guy with yur robot foot!’ Too bad he /did/ try to kick him with his ‘robot foot’, and it didn’t work because… Oh, God, Nox. I kicked the superhero. Great. He pales slightly with this realisation. "/Are/ you a robot? Or a cyborg? Cuz that's sort of superhero material already right there. You need a proper outfit. And a codename. I mean, comics are usually pretty fucking obvious about theirs, you could probably just go with 'Cyborg' and fit in just fine." Hive's lips twitch at the paling. "Do you have, like, a fighting foot? Cuz that could come in handy." He leans forward, extending a hand towards the other man. "I'm Hive. By the way." There goes Micah’s big, goofy grin again. “Just the prosthetic leg. It has a microprocessor, though, which could get me cyborg status on a technicality, maybe. And it’s mostly metal and carbon fibre and such, so it /hurts/ if I bop somebody with it.” A flash of foot connecting with soft-squishiness that almost certainly was shadow-lady-body. I really need to apologise to her. Where do shadow-ladies live? He pushes the thought back and offers Hive a hand instead. “Micah. Nice to meet ya. You a superhero, too?” "I'm pretty sure the prosthetic leg could get you cyborg status alone. Meshing technology with your meatsack. Hell, /glasses/ could probably get you in on a technicality," Hive muses, shaking Micah's hand firmly. "But you need to work on getting it properly ready for combat." He snorts at the question, his head shaking. "Superhero requires some kinda /hero/ shit, right? I don't think I fit either half of that." “Yeah, let me write the guys at Ottobock about the combat capabilities on this thing next time I give them a status update. I’m sure they’ll get a laugh out of it.” Micah /giggles/ and shakes his head at the thought. “Ah-well. I guess not /everyone/ I run into gets to be Genetically Enhanced. I was really bucking the statistics on that for a minute, though.” "I didn't say I wasn't a freak," Hive answers, his smile a little crooked. "I just said I wasn't super. Or a hero." Micah's food is arriving, and he looks at it with a trace of envy. And then looks at his computer like maybe he'll try eating that instead? But he doesn't, he just takes a sip of orange juice. "Bucking the statistics? You met a /lot/ of superheroes?" “Thank you, hon,” Micah offers to the waitress, along with a smile, as she sets his plate on the table. He leaves the food untouched out of politeness as he turns back to Hive. “You wanna share a table? Promise I don’t have Plague.” He gestures to the open seat across from him. “Yep, been an awful lot of really interesting folk lately.” Images of rainbow snowballs, bullet-blocking forcefields, sharky-people, shadow-people, and a few others zip through his mind montage-style. “Ah, so I’m continuing to tell statistics to go to hell meetin’ you, then. Promise you’re not a face meltin’ type?” His hazel eyes are dancing a bit at that last part…it /is/ just a joke. There's a moment when it seems like Hive might forgo this offer, but the conjunction of sharky-people and forcefields draws his interest sharply. "Wait, you met Jax? And the kids?" Now he's closing his laptop, slipping it into the backpack that sits beside his chair, and moving the backpack and his orange juice over to Micah's table. "When was that? I don't melt faces," he assures, with a quick shake of his head. "Just brains." His eyes... aren't dancing. Hopefully it's a joke, too. Micah nods in reply to Hive’s question about Jax. “Snow War in the park. It was a good time until the cops decided to rain on the parade.” He rolls his eyes at the mention of the cops. “We had to hide half the /City/ at his place for a minute there.” Micah’s glass of OJ reaches his lips, promptly stops at the ‘brains’ comment, and gets set back on the table. “Seriously, you can /do/ that?” His tone has grown more conspiratorial. "Aw, shit, yeah, I heard about that. He and his kids have been getting so much shit since this dumbass new ordinance --" Hive's eyes roll, his weight slumping forward onto his elbows, braced against the table. "Though the rest of it just seems pretty normal. Parties got a way of spontaneously just breaking out, around Jax. 'least it was fun. Minus the cops." He swigs at his orange juice, and shrugs a shoulder. "I could, sorta. Don't like to. I mean I could also just go around punching people in the face, but what the fuck, you know?" Another shrug. "Mostly I just read them. Not melt them." “Read… Oh, you’re like a telepath?” Hey, I never /said/ anything about Jax! Micah is /so/ quick on the uptake. “Do you just do that /all the time/?” /Don’t think anything inappropriate. Polite brain! Polite brain!/ Just…eat waffles. Micah forgets he was waiting for Hive’s food to arrive, using spearing and chewing waffles as a stalling technique. "Not on purpose," Hive assures Micah wryly. "Just kinda happens. I like nights, with half the city asleep they're quieter. And don't worry, you couldn't possibly think anything worse than I hear on the subway every day. You got /no/ idea how much brainporn people get up to when they're bored." Micah almost chokes a little at the ‘brainporn’ comment and takes a gulp of OJ to keep from coughing. “Uh…wow… How do you not go completely insane? I have enough trouble with my own ADD brain-pan spittin’ randomness at me. I can’t imagine filterin’ /everyone else’s/, too.” This question makes Hive smile, too, but it's thinner, wryer, something a little distant in his gaze. He manages a smile for the waitress when she brings his food, but pushes his potatoes around his plate without touching them. "Who says I don't?" he jokes, looking down at his plate. "S'not even just the chaos. There's just shit about people I don't want to know, you know?" “Eh, you managed to dress yourself—nice shirt, by the way--get food, and have a conversation that makes sense,” /sort of/, “so you must have a few synapses firing in the right direction.” Micah offers a reassuring smile. “Yeah, I can get that. You’re stuck holdin’ secrets without agreein’ to keep ‘em first. Not really a fair bargain.” Spear, chew…mmm, strawberries. "Thanks," Hive says, with a quick grin and a quick glance down at his shirt. "Yeah, I -- got a lot of people's secrets. Don't usually want them. It's kind of murder on friendships, too. Only so many people willing to put up with, you know, someone in their head all the time. I can't really blame them. /I/ get annoyed when anyone's in /mine/." His hand lifts, fingers scrubbing absently along the side of his head. "You seem to take it pretty in stride, though. How long you been in New York? Are you /too/ used to freaks by now, or is it new enough it's just cool and not freakish? Cuz I feel like there's a curve and somewhere in between /awesome/ and /jaded/ everyone just freaks the fuck out." Micah does some quick mental math. “’Bout seven months now, give or take? I have to say it has been /some kinda/ different up here compared to back home. But I came here for different, so why fret over it?” He shrugs, then grimaces at the jolt of pain the movement brings from his shoulder. “I don’t know… I guess it’s mostly cool? I mean, I know I appreciate it when people think the leg is cool and not disturbing or a reason to treat me like I’m gonna /break/ if they breathe on me too hard. And it seems like most of the people I’ve met fit into the ‘superhero’ category. Only one on team ‘Blargh, I melt your face!’ so far.” He wiggles his fingers kind of ridiculously to illustrate the latter person. “Also, I can still say that I’ve been whupped by /way/ more ‘normal folk’ than ‘special folk’ in my life.” Another grin. "Jegus. It's kind of terrible that we even /have/ a team blargh-I-melt-your-face." Hive takes a forkful of his food, finally, shoveling potatoes into his mouth before cutting off a slice of ham-and-eggs-and-muffin-and-hollandaise. "Hey, nothing wrong with being a cyborg. I tried it once but it wasn't for me. The cyborg thing. But pretty cool all the same." He winces at the mention of whupping, though it does draw a snort of laughter. "I've been whupped by my share of both. Maybe I need a combat leg. Mine are pretty much just useless and skinny." Micah laughs at Hive’s repetition of the new Bad Guy label. God help us if this has a reason to catch on! “Hold up, how do you /try/ being a cyborg and then /not/?” Another laugh at the idea of shopping for combat legs. “I’m sure your legs are fine, even if they are just inferior meat-legs.” He’s adopted a faux-pretentious tone for this last statement. "They're pretty inferior. I /thought/ about working out, once," Hive confides. "Just thinking about it was pretty exhausting so I played EVE instead. Uhh. I --" Now its his turn to blush, the tips of his ears pinkening as he scrubs a hand through his hair. He shoves more food into his mouth, washing it down with some orange juice. "You know how it is. Some people thought it'd be cool to have a cyborg army so they borg'd me but then it didn't work out quite like they'd hoped so I left. Cyborgs are notoriously hard to control, they clearly hadn't seen much sci-fi." He says this casual-light; it's hard to tell how much is serious and how much is three am. Aw, self-deprecating gamer boys that blush are so--ARGH, he can /hear you/! WAFFLES! Now Micah is blushing, too. Chewing. And then talking reallyreallyfast. “Wow, I really had never heard of people trying to ‘borg other people outside of sci-fi and even that is pretty much all ‘you will be assimilated’ or ‘you will be upgraded’ and that’s really mad scientist for someone to try to do to you that’s pretty awful I hope they aren’t trying to find you anymore was it the government?” Hive's blush fades, at least, at Micah's thoughts, replaced instead by a crooked slant of smile that only grows with Micah's reallyfasttalking. "Well, yeah, okay, there's that kind of Borg and I've seen my share of that, too. But this was more like turn-people-into-weapons kind? It was mad scientist as shit. Like I said, though, I got, uh, over it." Like it was a /phase/. "How're those waffles?" He's mowing through his eggs, now, hungrily. And then, "You game?" Micah decides not to push on the “people-weapons” thing, as Hive’s response was a bit dismissive. Could be a sore spot. Probably /should be/ from the sound of it. Safe subject! “Yes, gaming! Used to do mostly computer-based, but now mostly tabletop since my gaming peeps are available in body-form up here. It’s part of what made me pick New York.” Hive smirks at Micah's train of thought. He pushes some potatoes around through leftover Hollandaise, popping them into his mouth after. "Sweet. What're you into? You do much board gaming? I have a thing." He gulps at his orange juice. "Game -- thing. Tuesday nights. Well, Tuesday nights are board games. Thursday nights are RPG time. But ongoing campaigns are harder to just jump into." Micah pops the last remaining strawberry into his mouth. Okay…can’t think or say anything else /stupid/, because there’s no food left to fiddle with… “/All the things/!” he replies excitedly. “My group is mostly doing tabletop RPG’s. Board games are rougher for a few of them because of all the little manipulables.” He mimes placing cards and moving pieces. The two clearest images in his head are of a man and a woman, both seated in power wheelchairs, with visibly apparent movement disorders. "Be doable, though," Hive muses, considering this as he idly toys with the last few potatoes on his plate. "I mean, there's a kid who plays with us sometimes who doesn't /have/ arms. But, yeah, it means some finagling." His fingers drum against the table, his expression thoughtful. "Where d'you live? When do you tabletop? You should come by some time." Micah giggles. “Totally do-able…and done-able.” That’s a word, shut up. “You just end up with pieces everywhere more often than not when you set off someone else’s dystonia by making them laugh. Which is hilarious, but less gaming-fun in the long run. So, computers and RPG’s are where we tend to lean. We don’t have a real set /day/ because Sam’s a Big Shot Artist and has /showings/ and, like…muse-stuff to worry about. Janine and I are much more flexible, so we just /whatever/ around his schedule.” He perks at the invitation, grinning widely. “I’m totally up for more gaming. Will cheat on current gaming group with impunity.” "Artists, man. They can be kinda a pain to work with," Hive says, and this sounds more amused than anything else. "Sweet. I'll totally be your gaming mistress. Or mistresses I guess cuz there's a bunch of us. You said you went to Jax's place, right? I live directly over him. Tuesdays, round seven. It'll be fun." He sets his fork down, draining the rest of his orange juice. “Hawt,” Micah replies to the group-mistressing offer. “There is /no/ turning that down… You guys have to have the most interesting building. I mean, at least on that block. Considering this city.” He pulls a business card out of his pocket and scribbles on it for a second before sliding it over to Hive. The card has a blue background with white writing on it: ‘Gorilla AT. Micah Zedner, MSOP, CPO, ATP, PYT’ (the last acronym is added in pen). A P.O. Box address. Two phone numbers, the second of which is circled in the same pen. “In case you need to get hold of me. That number is the best way. I’m a little hard to track down otherwise.” "It's a pretty great place to live. /Definitely/ the most interesting place, uh, on that block." Hive grins as he takes the card, looking it over. "Gorilla AT? What's that? Or, uh, that frakking laundry list of acronyms, shit, boy, you don't mess around." He looks up, his smile widening as he glances over Micah. "The only one I recognize is that last." “Yeah, I throw that,” obviously referring to the ‘PYT’ bit, “in there because the alphabet soup gets /really/ ridiculous after awhile. Medical and affiliated professions /love/ their certifications. ‘Gorilla Assistive Tech’ is my company. Mobile assistive technology provider. It was gonna be ‘Guerilla’ at first, because /descending upon your patients like Batman/ is just an awesome image. But I thought it might sound a little too violent since I deal with a lot of military vets and kids…” Rambling, Micah, stop it! “Um…yeah. So the MSOP is the university degree, CPO is the certification for fitting and crafting prostheses and orthoses, ATP is the certification for assistive technology professionals.” Micah musses his hair up worse than it was already. “Sorry…I never mean for that to turn into a /lecture/, but it always seems to.” "No, that's cool," Hive says, when all this explanation has been proffered, and he sounds like he means it. "See, at least /one/ of us here's a superhero." He's sliding his wallet out of his pocket, a ragged beaten old canvas thing, fraying badly at its edges, to take out bills enough to cover his meal and a tip. "So, prosthetics and shit, neat. Uh. You got things could help a kid with no arms?" He's looking abruptly thoughtful, his brow creasing. Micah is likewise fishing around in a wallet, which is made entirely of duct tape. He pulls out pretty much all of the cash that is in it and slides it onto the table. “Oh, absolutely! Upper extremity prostheses historically lag quite a ways behind the lower extremity ones, but they have been making advances by /leaps and bounds/ recently! Especially with government funding increases since all our military guys have been gettin’ blown to hell for years now.” A slow headshake punctuates the last statement. “Just what you go for depends on individual needs. Level of amputation. Level of cognition. And age, a lot, too. You get stuck with a lot less high-tech stuff when you’re younger, because insurance is not gonna pay for a new one each time a kid breaks it or gets bigger…so they just won’t start until you qualify as an ‘adult’, usually.” Voice of experience, yo. “If you’re paying out of pocket and the pocket’s deep, sky’s the limit.” "S'an adult. Near enough. Eighteen, anyway. And he'd be paying out of pocket, people don't like insuring mutants so much," Hive says this with a frown, "but he's broke as shit. I think we'd all need to work together to help him afford --" He shrugs. "He's bright but nobody believes it cuz he can't talk and that means dumb, /right/?" His eyes roll at this. "There's not much left of his arms. Someone cut 'em off to see what it'd do to him. Turns out, what it did was make his life even more annoying. Sweet guy, though. I should introduce you. He games with us sometimes." He's getting up, now, stretching slowly as he picks up his backpack, zipping it closed over his laptop. “People are /fucked up/,” is Micah’s summary of Hive’s story. “Yeah, we can see what we can do by way of communication devices, too, if he hasn’t got a set-up on that yet. I have some connections with groups that do equipment donations and grants and such for uninsured folks. I thought genetic discrimination was supposed to be mostly illegal? I mean, that counts as genetic discrimination in my book. Ugh. But, yeah, intros are good.” Micah scoops his Jayne hat from the seat next to him and plops it on his head. He wriggles his right arm into the sleeve of his puffy coat, leaving the left arm empty because /sling/. "People are fucked up. Lots of discrimination's illegal but we're not a protected class." Hive shrugs, a grimace crossing his face. "Be cool if you could do something. Most people just treat him kinda shitty. He sorta looks more birdy than human. Freaks people out. But he's as human as anyone else. Just kinda -- beak. Talons. Feathers. Hey, it was nice meeting you." Hive says this with a smile, shouldering his backpack. "I'll call you soon, yeah? Might be you'll swing by this Tuesday? Think we're doing Shadow Hunters. Not sure. Sometimes it changes as soon as everyone shows up." “Huh…yeah. Never worked around feathers before. We’ll totally do this thing.” Micah nods at the Tuesday invite. “Sure thing. Doesn’t much matter what the game is. Good to keep plans /fluid/. Nice to meet you, too.” He glances at his watch, which he’s been wearing on the right wrist for convenience. “Man, I guess it’s morning and that sleeping thing should theoretically happen for a few hours.” A single-handed zipper pull is fetched from a coat pocket to get the zipper up. Having a stock of things in your van is /really/ handy for injuries! “You have a good night, now. See ya soon.” "Theoretically." Hive says this a little wryly, but he's smiling. "See ya." His hand thumps down lightly on the back of Micah's chair in passing, and then continues on out to the rest of the night.