Logs:Circus Peanuts

Circus Peanuts
Dramatis Personae Kitty, Scott
In Absentia Destiny, Shane, Amo	2024-08-31 "Tell me I'm wrong."
Location <MOJ> X-Men House - Mojoverse
This is a largish house that has been very unevenly appointed, its decorator gone somewhat heavy-handed with yellow and blue color theming in all the decor. The ground floor has a cramped kitchen that is nearly empty of any equipment or food. The adjacent sitting room is crowded with a baffling range of chairs and tables and cabinets all jockeying for space together with numerous televisions of varying sizes that all only receive Mojo's own baffling network all day. There is a sunroom beside this, seemingly devoted entirely to hammocks of varying sizes and styles. The upstairs has quite comfortably appointed bedrooms across the top two levels, enough for everyone to pair up. Ornately gilt-framed oil paintings of Scrat from Ice Age have been hung up prominently in each bedroom. The basement level has an extremely well furnished gym and leads out into an extensive yard where someone has halfheartedly begun working on a garden and then given up. There is quite a nice patio to sit on, though. The whole place seems to have just one tiny bathroom tucked up on the top level like some kind of afterthought, crammed in there with the shower under the slope of the roof so it's impossible to stand up straight if you are over 5'7" and even sitting on the toilet feels claustrophobic. At least there is a toilet. There's nothing in this kitchen but airline peanuts and the remnants of their Day One feast, and all of it is now meticulously lined up on the counter and accounted for, as if there is some kind of fair and reasonable rationing plan that will stretch their pile of airline peanuts into feasible meals. Scott is standing over the pile now, hands braced on the counter staring down at their supply; he's left barely enough room to scootch around him but it's not like there's anything to do in here, anyway. After a long pause he fussily tilts one crinkled peanut packet a little more perpendicular in its array. "Is that going to help?" Kitty isn't even bothering with the courtesy of using the closed door to enter the kitchen. Or the stairs. Look up, Scott -- there is Wraith. She's somewhat less glittery than when she left the arena, somewhat less covered in mysterious alien goop. Kitty peers down from the floor above like a child watching a particularly fascinating -- or aggravating -- fish off the edge of a dock. Most of Kitty, anyway. Well, maybe a quarter of her body -- her face, the edge of the towel wrapped around her hair, and one knee are currently visible through the ceiling. "It kind of still looks like the same number of peanuts. Sorry." Though Scott's gaze swings vaguely up in Kitty's direction, with a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth, it doesn't linger there for long before pointing back down at the peanuts. "Hey, Kitty," he says, and though he just leaves it there at first, like he's going to totally ignore the point she's making, after a moment he gives his head a short little shake. "I know," he says, and slowly swivels to lean back against the counter instead, arms folding over his chest. If there is an accompanying sigh that goes with this troubled expression it's not actually getting voiced; Scott just clears his throat. "You doing okay?" "Hi, Punch-Eyes." To his question, Kitty lets out one shrill, sharp, immediate hah! She disappears from view quick after, but not fast enough to hide the frustrated scowl twisting across her face. When Kitty descends again -- walking, this time, down a set of stairs that exists only in the dreams of mimes everywhere -- she's... still scowling. Maybe a little less. "This is so stupid. Stupidest abduction ever." A tiny flash of chagrin flickers over Scott's face; it has been schooled away by the time Kitty re-enters the kitchen, replaced with -- maybe it's not really a scowl if it's his default expression, but it isn't not a scowl. His arms pull just slightly tighter over his chest. "I know this is frustrating," sounds like it should have a lengthy, peppy 'but' after it, but maybe Scott doesn't have it in him right now. This time he does sigh, a little huffily. "Stupid is a far shot better than it could be." "Ugh. Why would you say that." Kitty drops one hand to the countertop, taps her knuckles so lightly against it that it makes no sound. Her eyes lower to the peanuts. "We did our best," comes out just a touch defensive but mostly just quiet. "I don't know how that blind lady beat us there." Her eyes flit to the sitting room beyond. "I guess the after show will go over that." Back to the peanuts. "Has anyone heard how long the first version of this went?" "I know you did," Scott says, a little too swiftly, like he has been waiting for a reason to swoop in reassuringly. It's still not very reassuring. His head tilts to one side, pointing his gaze slightly off to the distance. "Maybe. People running this thing don't seem all that savvy. They're going to say she has a specialized egg-locating mutation and nickname her 'Egg-locator' or something." His gaze shifts ever-so-slightly back onto Kitty -- "We -- the team has been looking into this for a couple weeks. Madripooreans had been disappearing for a few weeks before that. I'd put it at a month or so, at the most." He pauses, his jaw working silently, before adding, "Or shorter. It was on hiatus for a bit." Kitty arches one eyebrow up at Scott at his reassurance. Then back down at the peanuts. Her eyes narrow. "A few weeks." Scott, probably, has done the math already, but it doesn't take Kitty long to catch up. There are only so many ways to divide what's here into so many portions. "-- Add my ration to Shane's." Her fingertips drum silently against -- mm, no, drum into the countertop. "Does Amo have any metabolic issues? Have you asked?" She looks up, then answers her own question in a tone very familiar from her mission report paperwork -- "Oh, you were totally doing this equally." Scott flexes his arms a little tighter over his chest. "You can give your ration to Shane if you want," he says. "I'm not telling people to go hungry." "All of you are going to starve until we win a game or get home," Kitty cuts back, sharp. "Dividing by relative metabolic need from the beginning might keep people from trying to go heroically more hungry than they absolutely have to. More hungry people are, more likely we lose whatever Mario Party challenge is next, more likely you all starve." She stares at Scott, now, eyebrows raised. "Tell me I'm wrong." "Now you want this kind of decision to be up to me?" says Scott, a little testily. "I don't know how to calculate exactly how much everyone absolutely has to goddamn starve themselves. I would like to think I can trust you all to use your judgments, but I can get Hank to do this if you'd rather." "I don't want any of this to be up to you." Kitty's face is twisting up again. She swipes at the peanuts. Her hand slides through. "I am reminding you, dear team leader," there is some sort of lean on leader, hurt and frustrated and angry, "that I literally do not need to eat. When our side has folks who have to eat more than most people, that's tactically relevant, isn't it. Don't make me the jerk, here." Scott tilts his head back a little, but his voice returns without fuss to its usual flat, monotonous affect. "Your point is taken, Kitty. Did you need something?" Kitty doesn't answer -- just walks through the counter. Through Scott, too, leaving a haunting chill in the space where their bodies momentarily intertwine, and straight out the wall behind him.