ArchivedLogs:Power Creep

Power Creep
Dramatis Personae Bobby, Peter	2013-05-30 Peter and Bobby discuss POWERS. And Mario Kart.
Location <XS> Rec Room - FL2
School this may be, but life for Xavier's students certainly isn't all studying. Outside classes, this is a popular spot to find students in their downtime. An enormous tribute to slacking off, this room is a wealth of fun and relaxation. Comfortable armchairs, couches, and beanbags offer plentiful seating scattered throughout the room, and the cushioned windowseats by the high windows offer a cozy nook to curl up and look out on the grounds. The room is often filled with the noises of gaming -- whether it comes from the big-screen television (tall racks of DVDs beside it, if nothing can be found on the multitude of cable channels), tricked out with consoles from retro to the latest releases, or the less electronic clatter and thump of the pool table, air hockey, or foosball. For those a little more subdued in their gaming, the cabinets hold stacks and stacks of board and card games, ranging as classic as chess and go to as esoteric as Dixit, Catan, and Gloom. Okay so Bobby has escaped the dark maw of the medbay and has set up shop in the rec room, which is actually at this point in the year the least likely place to look for him. Normally he's out by the lake getting up to god knows what trouble and generally having fun on his own or with buddies from around the school, the kind that are not too worried about pranks or pranking someone else, the kind that like to rough-house, tease and laugh and aren't walking on eggshells everywhere they go. Not so here. Here it's reality television and keeping a low profile. Bobby is lying upside down on the couch with his arms flopped out on the ground, watching the fucking news of all things, remote in one hand. His legs dangle on the couch and generally he looks like a lump. A lump free of wounds, hooray! Cargo shorts, sandals and a tight sleeveless tee because who cares its summer. Creep. Creep. Creep. Looks like Bobby's got a /new friend/. That friend would be Peter Parker, who is currently in the process of creeping /over/ Bobby, on the ceiling. Peter's clad in loose dress slacks and a short-sleeved white t-shirt; he's also got funny looking two-toed socks on. On top of /that/, his skin is -- a dark, chitin-like /black/, with just a hint of a metallic blue hue to it. He's also wearing... funny looking wrist-watches. "Hey. /Hey/," a voice rings out from above Bobby's head. "You're watching the news." This is Peter, peering down at Bobby from above. Like he's about to drop on top of him and wrestle him to the floor. "News is boring," Peter announces, followed by: "You know what's /not/ boring? Mario Kart." Bobby is so used to this kind of shit you have no idea. The jaded senioritis on this kid. It's gross. He tilts his chin into his neck with his arms still splayed out on the floor over his head - he gives Peter a bored-o look and grunts. No movey. "Yeah. Let's play Mario Kart or something. Fuck this noise." Click. The T.V. goes off and Bobby rolllllls over sloppily, starting to drag himself to his feet to go find the game console. It appears he's in the habit of taking advice from people hanging from the ceiling. Average parents would warn against it. WHUMP. Peter just drops off the ceiling like an anvil; when he hits the couch, it's in Bobby's previous spot that he just vacated -- and actually, very similar to his /position/. Upside down, head dangling off the cushion, feet hanging off the back end of the couch. As Bobby gets the console out and starts assembling it, he might hear a sudden -- THWP. A gray strand lancing out from one of those curious looking wrist-watches, landing with a very gentle *SPLT* on one of the controllers -- and promptly /snapping/ it toward Peter. Who catches it. THUMP. First player. SCORE. "M'Peter," Peter announces to El Senior. "I'm Bobby." This rolls off Bobby's tongue pretty quickly, too, and sadly since his powers are water based he doesn't get to do any fancy handling of controllers. He loads in the game and changes the input and there's the Nintendo logo. Bwa bwa bwa bwa bwabawbawbwa. Bobby drags himself back to the couch and flumps on the other side of it, kind of sloppy-lopsided, clutching the controller with one hand. "Nice moves back there at the disaster site," he says, after they get deep into the menus, his face sort of dull right now. "Oh /hey/ yeah," Peter says, /peering/ at Bobby now. "You were the one who -- oh dude you were like /surfing/ on ice that was so cool--" Peter stops here, nose scrunching, as if he just realizes what he said. "...uh, that was so /badass/," Peter corrects, before immediately adding: "Until y'know, the part where that ant kind of. Bit you. That wasn't cool. But then I hear Professor Wagner totally teleported the ant's head off." Eyes sling back to the video game. "So, you do. Uh. Ice? S'nice." Peter immediately /grimaces/ after saying that. GODDAMMIT. Bobby seems pretty amused by Peter stumbling all over the words. He pats the guy on the shoulder and takes them through the next menu. Character selection. The all important character selection. "I swear, if he hadn't poofed me, I'd have found a way out. That sort of teleportation garbage knocks me out cold, man. Not cool. Not chill. Not ice." Bobby lolls back, floppylike. "They think we're like, made of paper. I guess. I shouldn't be saying that about giant ants, but seriously, I don't know what they've spent years helping me develop my power for if not to use it when the chips are down. The easiest way to avoid something bizarre like that is to not take a bunch of kids out to a disaster area you don't fully understand." It all makes sense to good ol' Bobby. "I kind of wish I could just sling concrete slabs over my shoulder like it wasn't a thing. That super strength and wall skedaddling must come in handy, huh?" "Oh," Peter responds as he gets shoulder-patted. Peter... looks like a puppy-dog that just got petted. He's also selecting Dry Bones. DRY BONES?! Yes. The undead turtle skeleton... thing. "Yeeeah they, don't like us to -- I guess -- be in harm's way? But then we end up in harm's way /anyway/. Oh, yeah, the -- I'm, uh, pretty strong," Peter says, a /little/ sheepishly, along with a faint hint of violet interrupting the metallic blue tint of his face. "And I can wall-crawl and, uh, sense danger too. Plus I can play this game with my toes," he offers, as if this was, perhaps, among the most /spectacular/ of his abilities. Peter's eyes drift back toward the screen. "That ice bridge thing you did -- man, cryokinesis, that's /nuts/ you know, I mean -- I don't know how good you are at it? But it's basically -- a pretty awesome thing to do. I mean I love the stuff I do but it's not like, open-ended, like, do you even know the /limits/ of your power? Could you freeze a whole lake?" Peter's picking... the Bullet. Tiny motorcycle. VROOM VROOM. Very 'putter-y'. He might also be angling for the ice level to MAXIMIZE the potential for terrible ice puns. "Uh..." Bobby says, his face drooping a little as they start to get into a more technical discussion about the length and breadth of their abilities (a discussion he didn't foresee nor was he prepared for!). He picks Wario, because patricians pick Wario. Wa! Look at that grin. Look at that fat gut. You know he's a boss's boss. Bobbo scratches the back of his neck and looks at the ceiling as he puzzles out how to answer all them questions. "I mean, I might could do a whole lake. I don't know why I would. I could try. Depends on the size of the lake, really....I mean, I guess. There's a lot of stuff I can do. But testing the limits gets kind of tricky when it's water, man. You start, like, killing plant life, drying up the air, drying out people's /skin/ and stuff, drying your /own/ body out - that stuff's such a drag, dude. No need to test the limit when creativity's the only thing that matters, right?" "Oh man you picked Wario," Peter states, as if this was not WHOLLY OBVIOUS from the fact that Bobby just did pick Wario. Also, unfortunately for Bobby, Peter is totally a POWER-NERD; nothing is more fascinating to him than the nature and extent of other people's mutations. "Oh /dude/, you suck moisture out of the air, like /duh/ I didn't even think of th--oh /man/ you could do some serious damage. I mean, uh," he adds, a little more hesitant, "if you, um, /wanted/ to but you probably wouldn't that would be terrible." And... yep, Peter's picking an ice stage. With penguins. Glacier. Apparently he's going with a whole /theme/ here. Maybe he presume, Ice Stage, should be Bobby's thing. "Yeah I guess, I mean. I dunno I've been thinking of -- working out?" Peter admits this with a rush of violet to his face. "...to see if I can, like. Get even /stronger/. And catch knives. I caught a knife once. Dude threw a knife at me and I was like, 'NOPE'." LEVEL STARTING. There's some silence as the stoplight starts to go to green and they take off. Bobby is sneaking a glance sideways at the kid beside him. As if the skin wasn't weird enough, now he's talking about like. Catching knives. And working out. Click click, clack. Turn. Bobby is surprisingly not that good at drifting on the ice track. "Yeah, most people work out to stay in shape or get stronger, dude," Bobby says finally, maybe with a little bit of humor in there. And now he just hit a penguin. For fucks SAKE. "Oh yeah I mean, I just don't know it works, like -- if I work out, will I get stronger? 'Cuz it's part of my mutation; I'm really strong. So, like. Can I build it up?" Peter times his start up just right with the green light; VROOM. Boost ahead. He's skirting penguins and /sliding/ like some sort of crazy mad-pro; he just, turn -- jump -- SPARKS -- whoosh. Zooming and zig-zagging around penguins like they're not even there. And all the while? He's still talking; like he's not even paying /attention/ to the video game. "Really though dude with ice bridges? You can basically /fly/ I mean, do you -- like, ice-skate? I bet you'd be frigging /awesome/ at ice-skating you just make your own ice and do grinds on railings and stuff. Like they're rollerblades." "I have to be careful because the ice can't always support itself, but there's like. Ways around that, too. I can't fuck up when it gets to that point because terminal velocity is a bitch," Bobby remarks, his lips screwing up in his face. "Plus it falls on people if I'm not careful. Plus, it's ice, so it gets kind of annoying sometimes. For people who aren't me." Okay and now Bobby uses the lightning. And then, he gets the lightning again, and he uses the lightning again. While everybody is still small. Why would you. Do that. Maybe he is not so good at this game. At the double lightning, Peter scrunches his nose; he looks like he's about to say /something/, but -- he ends up not saying anything at all. Just, spinning out and getting back to SWERVIN' and TURNIN'. "I can cling to just about /anything/," Peter announces, as he continues to drive post-LIGHTNING APOCALYPSE. "So maybe I could -- no," Peter announces, thinking again. "I wouldn't be able to -- ice /melts/ I probably can't -- huh. Maybe I should try." GREEN SHELL for Peter. Oh, yay! Just what he needed. He FARTS IT OUT behind him. "...do you use the danger room?" There's an edge of /hope/ there. "No way!" Bobby says - oh boy, he JUST dodges that backwards shell, it almost got him. Good thing he hopped up! Whew. He tilts a little as he driiiiifts that corner c'mon there we go. Bonk. On the wall. And there is the blue shell. He fires it off. Sadly Peter is too good at this game for his own good. "The Danger Room is...well, I'm super skeptical of it. I don't really want it anyway, when I can do just as well in real life, y'know? VR's for chumps. Anyway, I'll make ice blocks if you want to try climbing on them, if that's what you're getting at." There he goes into another penguin. 5th in the race. Poor Wario. "You can fight pirates," Peter announces. "Or zombies. Zombie pirates. Zirates. And -- ohcrap not the blue -- aw, /man/," Peter grumbles as his screen EXPLODES into a giant swelling blue explosion, hurtling him back to fourth place. "Mostly I just wanted someone to fight zirates with me," Peter says, a little grumbly. "'Cuz, I need to, uh. Practice. I guess. Learn how to be more /awesome/ and stuff." AND SO THE GAME GOES, /probably/ with Peter winning. Or, at least, not losing terribly.