ArchivedLogs:Pragmatic

Pragmatic
Dramatis Personae Dusk, Kay, Regan
In Absentia	2013-10-22 '
Location <BOM> Training Center - Main Lodge - Ascension Island
Down a short flight of stairs off of the common room, this room is a departure from the homier stone and wood upstairs. Its bare concrete walls are clearly basementy in feel, though its floor has been refurbished in gleaming synthetic flooring marked out like a basketball court. This spacious gymnasium includes a variety of punching bags -- of several compositions (for normal strength mutants or mutants on the high end of the spectrum) -- a boxing ring, a wall for climbing, several lengths of rope, and many, many training dummies for people to practice their powers on. Someone's dressed up one of the training dummies as a police officer, and scrawled a dopey smiley face on it; the sign on his chest declares him to be 'OFFICER SHITS-HIS-PANTS'. Officer Shits-His-Pants has seen better days; by the look of him, he's been set on fire and lost at least one of his limbs. In the back room is more training equipment -- everything from boxing gloves, medical tape, sports equipment, and even some unusual customized equipment for the more 'physical' mutants. The infirmary door stands near the stairway leading back up. It's growing late, Tuesday night, but around the compound things are still -- not really lively. It's not much of a /party/ out here today although it has been known to be now and then in the past. But the common house is lit up, a pair of people on the couch upstairs watching The Walking Dead, a laptop hooked up to the common room's TV. Downstairs in the basement there is activity, too, the solid heavy thump of gloved fists against punching bag. Regan is down here, in black shorts and a black sports bra, blonde hair tied back in a ponytail though a few stray wisps cling to her sweaty forehead. Thud! Thud! Thudthud! While to another side - PWOOOF. Kay stands upright, head turned to look down the length of his long extended arm. His palm is facing outward, at the empty space a dummy had once been standing, now smoldering against the far wall. He's tossed off his shirt, wearing just a sleeveless black binder, a pair of jeans sagging a little around his boxers, black bandana tied around a forearm. He's tied the longer lank of blond hair that hangs around his face back in a topknot. Panting heavy, he crosses his arms over his chest, pulls in a breath, then throws them out again at a second dummy. His corner of the room is heated like a camp fire. You can feel it when you get close. It's not impossible that he's dragged down some old 90's CD player to roar out some gritty grunge rock. To HEADBANG to at intervals, air-guitaring while MARCHING backwards with his tongue out. There are footsteps on the stairs, quiet, accompanied by a soft scratching sound that trails Dusk down into the basement. Vans sneakers, green-and-white t-shirt, jacket held in his arms and the lower claws on his wings rattling scratchy against the wall on his way down. He stops at the bottom of the stairs, arms folding against his chest. His eyes skip to Kay for a long thoughtful moment, and then to Regan. He waits. Quiet. Thud. Thud, thud, thud. Regan looks towards the doorway, pausing for a moment to wipe her forehead against a sweatband around her wrist. Then back to punching, jab-cross, jab-cross, feet moving in a constant back-and-forth bounce-step. "You're not dressed for exercise," she notes, a little heavy, a little breathless in between punches. "Are you looking for something?" Mouth-breathing, kind of to catch his breath but also to make a kind of absentminded FUCK/YEAH/ face through his teeth while his fingers ghost over air-guitar frets, Kay locks eyes with Dusk. ROCKS out while... walking backwards towards the CD player. He turns the music off with a toe, hoisting an arm around the back of a smocking dummy to lean heavily on with his ankles crossed. "Fsst." He says, jerking a chin at a towel near Dusk, GRABBY hand extended. Yoo hoo. "You." Dusk steps down off the stairs, stretching out a wing to hook the towel on one claw, bringing it back to his hands so that he can ball it up and toss it over towards Kay. "Do you know who HAMMER is? Or the man who leads it, Malthus?" This draws Regan's mouth into a thin line, though her blows do not stop. "He was at the church." It's a flat tone, bland and level against the repetitive thud of her fists. "And in the sewers? Some new brand of law enforcement, I gather. Anti-mutant task force." Kay doesn't speak; he drags the towel down his sooty red face until his lower lip is dragged away from the bottom line of his teeth. Then he swings it around the back of his neck and approaches Dusk sideways, edging towards him on bouncing toes and crouched legs, fists curled and slightly raised. Not hard, he shadowboxes the side of Dusk's bicep. He's not smiling. It makes the deep pouches under his eyes haggard, side of his mouth twitching as Regan answers. "In," he contributes. Flat. "He got /in/ the church." "Yeah. They hunt us down. Call him in, I guess, when they want mutants dead. He was there at the lab this past week." Dusk answers the shadowboxing with an absent wrestling back, not with his arm but with one wing, long bone pushing to jostle at Kay's arm. Whap-whap, light as well. "They have some way of /stealing/ powers. He had the abilities of someone we knew. Killed her. Took them. Don't know how. Nearly killed Jax, down there. /Keeps/ trying to kill Jax." Now Regan's punching does stop. She loops a hand against the bag, steadying it, steadying herself against it. Her other arm lifts, rubbing sweatband against her forehead again. She exhales long and harsh, brows knitting as she looks at Dusk. Kay. Dusk. "Stealing powers. To use against us." Her fingers drum slowly against the side of the bag. "Holland?" This sounds at first surprised, but then she nods in acceptance. "Mmm. I suppose he would." More drumming of fingers, and then simply: "And he /heads/ this HAMMER group? Taking him out might be something of a blow to them, then." Kay throws up an arm to just take the gentle wing-battering, quietly muttering 'fwah fwah' each time his palm brushes past the soft membrane of Dusk's wing with only the faintest breath of heat. The deep furrow between his brows hardens for Dusk's news, and eventually his own arms drop as well. Turning to watch Regan with an almost electric expectation. "Stealing powers," Dusk agrees. "He wants to kill Jax bad, but I think it's only because he -- wants to kill all of us. With as much /positive/ press as Jax's gotten -- I don't think it's Jax he cares about so much as what he represents. He'll take us all out. But he'll start with the ones of us people look up to." Dusk's whapping of Kay continues, a languid sort of battering of wing against hand, hand against wing. One wingtip curls up to jostle at Kay's shoulders. "Heads them, yeah. I mean, it's an organization. Government thing? Take him out and there'll be more behind him. But he's dangerous. And he'll keep coming at us, I think." He looks from Kay to Regan, adding quietly, "Jax's partner wants to kill him." "There'll always be more," Regan agrees, still leaning against her punching bag. "But cutting off this head would certainly be a strong warning to whichever one grows in next." The mention of killing Malthus doesn't change her expression at all, just another drumroll of fingers against punching bag. "Kill him, yes. It's a good first step. Do they have a headquarters?" "Shit, man. I'd wanna kill him too." Kay adds bluntly, grinning again but only with unhappy flat aggression - ducking down to lower his balance when jostled, weaving forward and back as he edges nearer to thrust a semi slowmotion upper cut to Dusk's kidney. "Just line 'em up. They'll be so many greasy black smears on the concrete." Bap-bap-bap, soft-barrage of punches. So playful, but the heat around him is increasing; his bare arms twisting into harder cords. "Micah asked me about it because he wanted to do it quietly. After this past summer --" Dusk lowers his eyes for a moment. "He wanted to know how I got away with it so quietly. Without causing the kind of backlash that's otherwise happened when mutant killings get found out. Thought that if he did it at least -- even if someone did find out, there wouldn't be the same kind of backlash against /him/." His lips press together for a moment. "Though I'm not sure how much is pragmatism and how much he just really wants the man dead who killed his friend and tries to kill his family. It's a good reason, either way." Dusk's wing presses in and down, slow-mo blocking the heated punches to his midsection. "I don't know about headquarters. We can find out." "Wanting to kill someone who is trying to kill your people /is/ pragmatism," Regan answers with a soft huff of breath. "If there's still pressing danger we could take him out quietly. The /group/, though?" Her eyes shift to Kay, a very faint smile curling at her mouth. "That needs to go up in flames." "It'd be nice," Kay murmurs, long legs carrying him back when the wing swoops in to block him and then rapping down light punches along the outside joints of the wing bones themselves. Like he's playing the xylophone on them, "If we could firebomb the lot of them in a way they wouldn't /want/ other people knowing about it. Just our little - uff!" He swings his hips to hipcheck against Dusk's side, "-dirty secret." Dusk's wing bat-bat-bats upwards at Kay's light punches, answering them with short upward /knuckle-raps/ of long bones. "Fffah." He rocks to the side at the hipcheck and then bumps Kay back, a solid thump of impact. "They have had a /share/ of embarrassment lately. I'd imagine /more/ bad press is not high on their Christmas list." "We'll need to know a good deal more about them before we can plan anything effectively." Regan releases her punching bag, rolling one shoulder slowly and then the other. "Your human friend. Micah. Can he be trusted?" There's a tearing sound as she unstraps the velcro on one of her gloves, tightening it again. "Work with him, if so. With yourselves, if not. Find out everything we can about Malthus and his organization." "Mm-mh-MM," Kay breaks free of his idle Dusktussling. to circle around behind Regan, swatting the end of her hair as he goes, "I love it when she gets authoritative like that." He swats again, bouncing on the balls of his feet all, flexed to dart. The topic may as well be planning for an upcoming barbecue. "He can be." Dusk gives this answer unhesitatingly. "I'll see what we can find out." His lips quirk at Kay, and he takes a step baaack. Away from Regan. "Is kind of hot." He's already turning to the stairs, wings tucking in at his back. "Pfff." The floor around Kay's feet is very suddenly softer, a squelching sucking gloop of wet cement that seals itself around Kay's ankles. Just long enough that there's nowhere to /run/ when she aims a quick jab at his ribs, not a particularly devastating blow but certainly not /soft/ either. The floor releases Kay, settling back to normal as Regan jabs at the bag next. "Go on, then." "Ouf." Kay takes the blow gleefully, even with an ominous sizzle of fire that licks up around the binding of his feet - a fire that does nothing against that which isn't really there. For all of it, he's hardly seemed invested in the conversation - but there's a difference here on the floor; a focusing of energy, a brightness in his eyes. As Dusk takes his leave to a distracted bark of farewell that Kay manages - before he's sliding off to the side to hang behind the punching bag. Mostly holding it for Regan. When he's not darting around to swat at her from behind it. And yes - hot hot hot indeed.