Logs:Sword and SHIELD

Sword and SHIELD
Dramatis Personae Fury, Jax, Shane
In Absentia	2023-05-13 "I'mma go pour myself a drink or five and count my blessings it wasn't a gun for you to keep under your pillow." (Followed by preparing for a quest.)
Location <NYC> Detention Facility - S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ - Times Square
It's late -- late enough that probably, much of the non-essential personnel have gone home. Probably, the prisoners here are largely asleep. Probably, visiting hours are supposed to be over. Probably, there shouldn't be a small black and silver hoverbike gliding its quiet way down to alight on SHIELD's rooftop. Probably it shouldn't be dispensing one tiny blue rider bearing one even tinier robotic cicada and one long sword. Probably. Unfortunately for one Nicholas J. Fury, it is just going to be That Kind Of A Night. Shane -- crisply pressed dress shirt, pale vest and slacks, tie in an impeccable trinity knot -- only stops briefly at the door, the little robot cicada skittering over it shortly before he actually enters. He has to wrangle the sword in its scabbard into a slightly more ergonomic position for his small size before trotting down the stairs, toward the detention floor, casting only a brief glance to the security cameras as he goes. He pushes the next door open with a shoulder and a small hngh, resettling his sword Again as he heads off towards Jax's room. Knock? Knock, knock? "Special delivery!" No alarms are going off, no sign at all SHIELD's highly sophisticated electronic security system has noticed Shane's trespassing. All the same, when he gets down to the detainment level, Fury is sitting right smack in the middle of the common room couch in all his black-on-black dustered solemnity. When Shane just continues past him to Jax's door his eye narrows, ever so slightly. He clears his throat pointedly and rises to follow him. "Mister Holland," he rumbles, low and impatient and like a man who badly needs a good night's sleep, "you just won Leo Fitz some money in the 'next unauthortized visitor' pool." He crosses his arms and looks suitably unimpressed, though he does not raise his voice. "It is the middle of the goddamn night. You got some news so urgent you couldn't text or email or video chat him about?" "Shane, sugar, I was just on with your sister." Jax, on the other hand, looks wide awake when he opens the door. Kind of like a man who may as well be here, letting in his son in The Middle Of The Goddamn Night, where else does he have to be, what else does he have to be doing in the morning. In bright counterpoint to Fury he's in a vivid green tee with neon pink lettering splashed across the chest ("NOT GAY AS IN HAPPY, QUEER AS IN FUCK THE POLICE"), iridescent purple-blue-green colorshift makeup, his kilt black with rainbow paneling between each pleat, mismatched vividly colorful knee-high socks. His eyepatch has been pink to match the lettering on his shirt, a peacock feather embroidered in it, but it shifts now -- sprouting instead one wide googly eye which turns to regard Fury. Unsteadily. Kind of wobbly, as is its nature. "Aw," he says with a (... mildly) apologetic crinkle of his nose, dip of his head (the eye remains, bobbling, but pointed still at Fury as his head tips down), "ain't like he's troublin' none of your folks to have to let him in, right? We're gettin' halfway to June, I won't even be sleeping at all before long. Middle on the night don't mean much. If you're feeling run down," he suggests, earnestly, "you could try photosynthesizing, some." Shane doesn't startle at Fury's pointed throat-clearing; doesn't seem surprised in the least at his appearance. He bonks his head lightly up against his father's arm with a soft flutter of gills, only then turning. Rising up slightly on his toes, lifting the ridge of his brows and baring many -- many -- many of his teeth in a sunny smile that splits much of his face disconcertingly wide open. "Tell him he should share, then. Was almost B but she got busy. -- Calling you, apparently, she's supposed to be working." Kind of half-turning back to Jax, here, before he glances back to Fury. He hefts the scabbard off his shoulder, explaining to the Director with a tone of great patience: "You can't deliver a sword over video chat." But then, with a suspicious curiosity: "Unless y'all have invented that here? If he has I'll take that over my cut of his bet." Fury's resting scowl does not recede at Jax's suggestion, nor advance at Shane's disturbingly toothy smile. "You should worry less about troubling me or my folks and more about DHS finding out and pitching an almighty fit. You think I give a rat's ass when you get visitors? It'd look bad for me but go a lot worse for you." He must be even more tired than he looks because it takes him a moment and a slow blink to catch up to Shane's explanation. "What the -- did you say a sword?" He narrows his eye at the scabbard. "You cannot have a motherfucking sword in here!" "You 'bout to rat yourself out to DHS?" Jax asks Fury, wide-eyed (albeit, not so wide as the other, wider, bobblier eye.) "I sure weren't planning to tell 'em. I admit I don't ask none of my folks to come 'round this hour -- been asking 'em to try an' keep proper hours as fits y'all's schedules -- but this past week things been getting a little hectic on account of Spence's -- well." His lips compress, and he doesn't finish this. He does peer around at Shane's back, now, and the googly eye vanishes. Replaces itself with just one single wide cartoon eye, which makes a very startled blink-blink-blink. "...I think he quite clearly do got a sword, sir." His brows are creasing. Head tipping just a little to the side. "Sweetie pie, why do you got a sword? That ain't even one of your fencing things." "You've been at SHIELD all this time." Shane still has the very patient tone of someone who doesn't think he should have to be explaining all this, really, but, out of sheer magnanimity, will help out. This time he's aiming it at Jax rather than Fury, at least. "I think it's bordering on criminal that nobody's had a sword yet. I'd give it to him --" He's tipping a hand out toward Fury, "but he already runs SHIELD so that really seems unbalanced. Like, if you ever have to save his life again this will be picture-perfect, and if you ever have to have a dramatic nemesis show down, it'll be -- picture-perfect." Dropped in like a trivial postscript: "Besides, if I gave it to him, Magneto would kill me." "You think I'm an idiot? Of course not, but sooner or later some two-bit reporter with a drone will." Some of Fury's more visible vexation bleeds away. "Look, I am sorry your kid's missing, honest, just... Try to let security know, at least. And park somewhere discreet for God's sake, we got a whole garage down there." He runs a hand over his smooth pate, not evidently too impressed or put off by Shane's sword-and-shield talk, but then he comes up short. "I don't need a sword," he says mildly, not entirely successful in his attempt to contain his sudden keenness, "but why the hell would he kill you for giving me one? He the mutant sword distribution police?" "If the news was gonna they probably woulda already 'roundable the tenth time Dusk Batmanned himself over, Luci's probably --" Jax starts, but then stops, mouth quirking slightly to the side, and reconsiders whatever he was about to say with a faint blush that flutters more in the tinge of rose around him than in his cheeks. It shimmers, fades away -- in it's place now a puzzled frown, a quick-darted glance to Fury. Then back to Sword, which is starting to take on a faintly luminous glow. "Oh, I reckon he wouldn't touch you none if that sword got --" He clears his throat, tries a new sentence once more. "What is the sword for?" "Idiot?" Shane blinks, first one clear set of inner eyelids, sideways, and then the blue pair. "He thinks you're a cop." Finally, he is wresting the scabbard -- pretty awkwardly, still, even carrying it slantways the large sword has been tricky to carry this whole time -- off of his back to hold it out to Jax. "I told you. It's for you. I mean, not for fighting Fury that was total bullshit." His forehead creases, heavy ridge pulling downward as he looks to Fury. "Why would he be a sword cop? It's a present, he made it for Pa. -- Is he really," he's directing this slightly quizzical question to Fury, by all appearances in earnest, "not allowed to have a sword? It's just, you know he's like -- full of lasers, right? This is like --" The razor-sharp claws on one webbed hand are extending -- just long enough to be demonstrative before retracting again, "-- when they only let us have plastic knives in Prometheus." Fury's eye narrows again, but he does not dispute Shane's evaluation. "Magneto, the Master of Magnetism, made him a sword," he says all of this with an air of only mild incredulity. "You know, I didn't buy Malthus saying y'all was in cahoots and I'm still not sure I buy it now, but that'll raise some eyebrows for sure." He rubs the bridge of his nose. "I wasn't born yesterday, I know damn well he could walk out of here completely unarmed if he wanted. I also know he ain't supposed to have no motherfucking sword in here on account of all this --" He gestures around, at the common room, the hallway, at Jax's suite. "-- is theoretically us standing in for federal detainment. Just --" He shakes his head. "You know what, I never saw it. This never happened. If someone at some point broke in here to bestow a Magneto-forged blade upon Jackson Holland, it's news to me." He checks his (analogue!) (also black) watch. "I'mma go pour myself a drink or five and count my blessings it wasn't a gun for you to keep under your pillow." "I don't go cahootin'," Jax answers, only slightly indignantly, as he takes the sword from Shane. "My hootin's been real open, s'why I'm here to begin with. That's part of the problem, you know. You done seen my room --" He's gesturing -- with the pommel of the sword -- back towards the room behind him, "I'm running out of space for the things folks been sending me now from far an' wide after they heard 'bout all this. Guess it was only matter of time before Erik Lensherr himself seen fit to send a thank-you-for-freeing-them-folks trinket." He's hefting said 'trinket' thoughtfully, now. Giving the scabbard a curious look -- it's a simple thing, a wooden sheath wrapped in brown cactus leather by someone who clearly doesn't actually know how to work with the material and topped with a steel bracket where it meets the hilt of the sword inside. Gleaming strands of wire are inlayed -- no, woven, into the leather, in patterns of Celtic knots up through the center. He's slow to draw it, slow to heft it, the soft wash of glimmer-glow that plays along its length definitely not coming from the hallway lights overhead. The sword itself gleams -- finely polished steel blade, both sides sharp, solid and long at five feet from hilt to point. The blade is fairly thin for a longsword, and tapers consistently to the point at the end -- clearly a blade for running someone through. The hilt (wrapped in scraps of cactus leather again, sewn to itself by more steel wire) is a further six and a half inches including the pommel, which bears a dragonfly with wings spread in flight etched on each side. The crossguard slopes forward, a V shape pointing away from the wielder, lacking the quatrefoils that might otherwise evoke a number of swords hanging on the walls of Xavier's School. "Huh." From the pommel another dragonfly is unfurling itself from the finely smithed one, polished steel as well, taking wing to flutter through the hall; it grows bigger as it flies until it flits back around and settles down, wings folding and reshaping themselves -- wrapped now into a dragonfly-motifed helmet, burnished bright and fitted to Jax's head. He turns the sword in his grip, the glow now brightening just shy of painful to look at. "Think I might call it Sunbeam."