ArchivedLogs:Always Complicated

Always Complicated
Dramatis Personae Kai, Peter
In Absentia	2013-12-29 '
Location <XS> Kitchen
The kitchen staff at Xavier's tends well to the needs of its residents. Always cognizant of its students and faculty's dietary needs alike, the menu has a wide variety of choices, and the longtime cook works wonders in the kitchen. The pantry, too, is kept well stocked for those who want to come prepare themselves their own snacks. The shelf, fridge, and freezer space is ample, though if anyone wants to keep their own food there, they'd better make sure it's labeled clearly, and even that is no guarantee it'll last. The cold and dreary Saturday has morphed into a cold and potentially wet Sunday, keeping those few students who remained at Xavier's pretty well confined to the building. Somewhere upstairs, there's a spirited game of Mario Kart taking place, the shouts of the participants even drifting down to the kitchen, which is decidedly /less/ exuberant. Indeed, Kai is as silent as he ever is, perched on a stool at the island. Dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt under a green sweater that matches the stripes in his socks, the Korean boy has a mug of cocoa that he's sipping at gently as he looks over the sketchpad in front of him. There just seems to be a series of unconnected lines on the paper right now, but they seem to be of great interest to Kai. Peter is being a sneaky-face, today, it seems. Or at least that what it looks like -- the boy is clad in a navy-blue hoodie and matching sweatpants with socks, the hood pulled up to *mostly* hide his chitin clad face -- a box in one of his hands. It's a relatively large box; the sort you might put a bulky sweater in -- he's also got on his nylon backpack, hanging off of his shoulders and thwapping against his spine with every step. Shortly after he emerges into the kitchen, Peter pauses, catching sight of Kai -- eyebrows zooming up, box held in hand, briefly looking like he's just been caught trying to pilfer a cookie jar. But then, he produces a wary smile, his grip (which has notably tightened on the box) growing looser as he steps forward. "Oh, hey, Kai." Kai looks up at the sound of someone entering the kitchen, and his eyes mark Peter even before the other boy smiles. He stares for a moment, skimming his gaze over Peter and his cargo. He looks down at the box, then back up at the older boy with a mildly curious sort of expression that's mostly in the tilt of his head. "Hello, Peter," he says, shifting his weight around to face his friend. "What are you doing here? I thought you went to your home for the break." "I did, I just -- forgot some stuff. Stuff that I wanted to work on over the break," Peter explains, shaking the box with a slight rattle; it sounds a bit like clothes, along with something possibly electronic. His eyes drift toward the paper that Kai's working on -- eyebrows pinched together like two cogs in some massive processing machine. "--what are you working on?" "Is it a thing for your work?" Kai looks down at the box, tipping his head to the other side at the rattling noise. "For Tony Stark?" At the question, Kai follows Peter's gaze, and looks at the paper. "Oh, it is not a thing, just yet," he says, reaching out to twiddle the edge of the paper with a finger. "It is an exercise that I read about that is supposed to help a person to be creative. You make random lines on a paper, and then you attempt to see the picture they contain, and draw that." He wrinkles his nose. "I do not see the picture, yet, though." "--yeah, it's... one of the suits I was working on. My parents took the other one. Uh. Don't tell anyone, I'm not supposed to have a *second* one," Peter says, mumbling down to his feet. At the mention of just drawing lines until you see the picture they contain, Peter's eyebrows *zoom* up; he seems a little incredulous. "--that seems..." He thinks. "...random," he decides, before giving a firm nod of his head. Yes. *Random*. That's the word that best describes it. "Suits?" Kai furrows his brow as he searches his memory for the image. "Oh. The thing that helps you to be comfortable with your chitin?" He nods, then frowns. "I do not understand why they would take it away from you, if it helps you." This is apparently /very/ confusing, as he falls into silence, nodding distractedly at Peter's comment about the drawing exercise. "I think that is supposed to be the point," he offers quietly. "To help one to be more creative in how they think. It is actually very fun." He frowns deeply. "Why are you not allowed to be comfortable?" "Well, if it's fun, that's good, I just -- art was never my thing." Peter plops the box down on the countertop; he opens it up, suddenly. Inside is something -- black. And padded. Black padding on top of black woven fabric; the fabric itself has a honeycomb texture to it, and is stretchy and flexible but not quite as flexible as you would expect fabric to be. "--not for keeping me cool. I mean, it does *that*, too, but this was..." Peter prods at the suit, frowning; he swings his backpack around, dropping it on a nearby stool -- opening it. Beginning to heft up the contents of the box and slide them, piece by piece, into his backpack. "--not for staying cool. For doing dangerous things. It's --" Softer, now; just above a whisper: "Battle-armor." Kai leans forward to look at the suit when it's revealed, taking in each piece as it's held up and tilting his head at the explanation. "Battle armor," he repeats, chewing at his lower lip. "Like the kind that soldiers wear?" He shifts forward on his stool, to look more closely at it. Then he offers a small smile that doesn't quite make it to his eyes. "I suppose you do need a thing that will keep you safer," he says, rolling a thin shoulder. "I still do not understand why you would not be allowed to have it." He frowns, and leans closer, furrowing his brow seriously at Peter. "It /is/ to keep you safe, yes?" "--well, I think the idea is--" Peter continues, still shoving pieces inside of his backpack -- some of it requires flexing, pushing, shoving, /grunting/ -- "that if I need it, then I'm doing something wrong -- that I'm going around /looking/ for trouble, y'know? So I shouldn't need it because I'm keeping my head down, and--" Shove, shove, GRUNT. Shoveshove -- there we go. "--staying safe. But the thing is, trouble keeps finding /us/. Like -- /zombies/. So..." Peter pauses, looking up, frowning. There's more in the box; small, six inch wide plates -- he plucks them up, sliding them in his sweater pocket, being a little more careful with them. "...so, I want to keep a suit around. In case there's..." He trails off again, and shrugs. The last bit inside of the box are a set of webshooters, designed to fit into the suit itself -- as Peter plucks these up, he pauses -- looking to the webshooters he's currently wearing. They just resemble fancy wrist-watches; he looks back up to Kai, eyebrows scrunched together. "--do you have a set of these?" "You had this suit here, and you ran away when there were zombies," Kai notes dispassionately, eyes focused on the metal plates as they're extracted. "Everyone did. I could not find anyone for days." The question on his face is about the plates, and he actually reaches out as if he might take one back out of Peter's pocket. Then he's distracted by the webshooters, and he leans /that/ direction. "Oh, those are like your glue-watch," he says, eyebrows lifting. Shaking his head, he eases back, and colors. "No, I do not have a thing like that," he says, his expression clearly stating that he wishes this were not the case. "Those are nicer than the one you let me try. Did you make them?" Peter's already snapping off his /own/ webshooters -- not the ones that set into the suit -- with a click and snap, slipping them off his wrists and setting them on the table. At the mention of running away, he turns violet, glancing toward the nearest window. "I -- when Daiki -- I went with Shane to..." Pause. Frown. "--I had to help save people. I left a lot of people here, though. I couldn't get back. They cut off transportation in the city, and I didn't know if I could..." The frown deepens. "I'm sorry. That I left you. Rasa, too, and Ivan, and... I had another suit, I wore, then. This was my spare one." He nudges the webshooters toward Kai. "...be careful with these. I'm just -- in case there's trouble again. /Don't/ try to swing with them," Peter adds, a slight edge to his voice as he mentions this. "But if you use the double-tap, they fire glueballs; triple-tap, they shoot out vinegar spritzers, to melt the glue. Be careful, they're not just -- toys. You could suffocate someone if you hit them in the mouth and nose. But... there are still zombies, sometimes, wandering around -- and you might need to..." His voice trails off; his nose wrinkles. Kai frowns at Peter's reaction, and the smile he offers is small but encouraging. "Peter," he says. "It is all right. You were worried about your family, and about Shane. This is a thing that is right, because they are important to you." His shrug this time is not dismissive; just an underscoring of his statement. "We were safe enough, here. I just kept to my room, and no zombies got me." This might be intended as a joke, but any evidence is lost in the sudden rise of Kai's eyebrows as the webshooters are nudged in his direction. It's with a certain amount of weighty reverence that he reaches for them, picking them up to turn them in his hands as he examines them. "These are for me to use?" he verifies, uncertainty painting his voice. "To protect people, like you and Mister Jackson?" His eyes shine, for a moment, and then his grin is wide and has actual /teeth/ in it. "Not just my family -- we had to -- it's complicated," Peter finishes, with just a *bit* of rubbing at his brows, fingertips fleeing to his temples to squeeze and apply pressure, as if he's trying to massage away some extraneous bit of information. As Kai takes the webshooters, Peter's fingers descend -- he fiddles with the webshooters from the suit -- sleeker in design, created to fit inside grooves, but able to be worn outside the suit -- they just look stranger, out of place. He slips them both on to replace the two he just took off. "Yes -- well, also, protect yourself. Like, you shouldn't go out -- looking for trouble. But, like, if you're in danger -- oh, wait--" And suddenly Peter's reaching out to take the webshooters back -- presuming Kai lets him, he quickly begins tugging and twisting at a small tab, pulling something out with a click -- snapping off... it looks like a small battery? Before closing the cartridge again. *CLK*. "--uh, I'm taking out the explodey bits," he tells Kai, with just a *slight* apologetic smile. "--cuz that would probably be... dangerous. To leave in." At which point, he'd hand back the webshooters. "It is /always/ complicated," is in a darker tone than is usual for Kai, and the words slip out before he can stop them. At least to judge by the way he colors, and studies the webshooters more closely in studied, clamped-down silence. He nods at the caution, and his mouth pulls into a line. "I would rather avoid trouble," he says, his voice a bit quieter and shy-sounding. "But it is good to know that I could help, if it became necessary." He hands over the webshooters when they're reached for, and watches the munitions extraction with a small widening of his eyes. "Yes," he says. "I do not want exploding things on my body. That would not be very good." When they're handed back, he's smiling again, snapping them into place on his wrists after a bit of fumbling. Then he pushes his sleeves over them in a mimic of Peter's camoflage. "Thank you." "They're not, /big/ explosions, but -- they're meant to cause a rupture in the capsule, kind of like a webnade? And you could suffocate someone if you weren't careful, so..." The munitions slip into Peter's pocket; he frowns a little bit at the mention of it being complicated -- a glance thrown down to his own webshooters, fiddling with them self-consciously. "--just, be careful with them. You should practice with them, aiming -- they're kind of tricky. Make sure you always have vinegar on hand in case you miss or stick something you don't want to stick." Kai wrinkles his nose at the explanation of the webnades, his brow furrowing as he considers what it does. "Still. If it explodes, I would rather not have it attached to me. It is not a very pleasant sensation." His hand twitches to his throat, pinching the fabric of the sweater and plucking at it nervously. Peter's advice gets a slow nod, and Kai draws his finger over his chest in a big X. "I will be very careful with them," he says solemnly. "And I will practice with them often." His hand raised already, he shifts his wrist to reveal the webshooter there, staring at it with a small, fascinated smile. Then he looks at the older boy, regarding him for a moment before he hops off the stool to throw his arms around him in a brief, tight hug. Peter seems surprised by the suddenness of the hug, but responds quite promptly in return, arms curling around Kai to squeeze back -- perhaps a bit harder than he should! -- almost lifting the boy off of the ground! -- though not enough to *bruise*, at least. "--good," Peter responds, a little weakly, only adding: "Because you might need them."