ArchivedLogs:Professional Opinions

Professional Opinions
Dramatis Personae Elizabeth, Hive, Flicker	2014-04-01 '
Location <NYC> The Mendel Clinic - Lower East Side
With its sharp crystalline edges and sleek lines knifing up into the sky, this building is one of the most /distinctive/ new additions to the neighborhood. An angular structure in glass and steel, the tall tower has a deceptively slender look to it that is belied by the heavy security as soon as you enter the doors. The front doors are frosted with the Clinic's logo -- a rising sun over a rod of Asclepius -- a motif echoed in many places throughout the building. Visitors to the clinic must first pass through a small mantrap, guarded by some of the Clinic's security guards; once they make it through the metal detector and airlock's double doors they emerge into the much more hospitable lobby. With dark wood floors underneath and comfortable black and red couches at its edges, the high windows give the room an airy feel. A bank of elevators to one side carry visitors to the many destination floors, while the wide welcome desk at the other side is manned by a security guard ready to help point visitors in the right direction. Spring has actually come to New York today -- brightly sunny and nearing 60 outside and the respite from cold rainy weather seems to have drawn a lot of people out-of-doors. Which, admittedly, doesn't always mean /good/ things for the Clinic -- today it means that the crowd of protestors outside has swelled, their anti-mutant signs and intermittent heckling making things /interesting/ for any patients trying to get in. Hive -- could probably be using the employee's back entrance down by the garage but, coming here on his lunch break off /his/ actual work, he isn't. He is, instead, making his surly way through the crowd. He is accompanied, at least, by one of the Clinic /guards/, a pair of them stationed outside to safeguard the passage of those coming to and from appointments -- the guard in question at the moment a skinny pale youth with enormous solid-black eyes and a skittish-timid expression that doesn't /seem/ like he'd be particularly imposing. Hive /definitely/ doesn't seem imposing, rail-thin form immediately screaming ill-health even to those /without/ any medical training, naturally tan skin managing a pallor, sunken cheeks, sunken raccoon-shadowed eyes; he's leaning against the accompanying guard perhaps for support as they make their way inside the clinic. Unhealthy-thinness aside, he's anachronistically /dressed/ for manual labor -- heavy-sturdy steeltoed workboots, heavy-sturdy jeans, a blue denim shirt worn open over white undershirt, a canvas jacket tossed on over top. He has a paper takeout bag in one hand (that he passes off to the guard as he heads through the metal detectors at the security check), the smells of Korean takeout coming from it. His expression once inside slips back into a half-lidded half-/asleep/ state that belies the keen alertness of the telepath's /mind/, mental senses habitually picking up on the chaotic mess of surface-thoughts coming from around him. Loud, today, with the crowd outside. Elizabeth is in reception, the ID clipped to her suit lapel identifying her as staff along with other things like her name, but currently filling in paperwork. She is perched sideways across an armless chair with her wings partially spread and extended out behind her to ensure they keep clear of the ground, a clipboard resting upon a knee as she fills in a form of some kind seeming somewhat aggravated with the process. Finally finishing whatever it was she is doing she then pushes off to stand, glances to each side to ensure nobody is in the way, then stretched out her flight feathers before pacing to the desk. Partially extended pinions shift slightly to adjust her balance as she walks lending a glassy smooth and almost weightless quality to her steps but this is followed by an abrupt snap inward as she sets the clipboard down. "Here, sorry for my mood but I thought everything had been sorted out two weeks ago. I was not expecting to spend half of my lunch break filling in an application form for a job I have already started just so that it can be on the record." A glance toward the doorway then, frowning at the crowd outside for several seconds before she flicks her focus across to Hive. "Half of life is fucking bureaucracy." Hive doesn't have any identifying ID on him, just a crusting of dirt on his boots and an overall dusty look to his attire. His voice is oddly-accented, very clearly Not New York but past that /not/ very /clearly/ anything in particular, a bastardized mongrel-sound accumulated from too many moves. He slumps agains the reception desk nearby Elizabeth, with a chin-jerk of greeting to the man staffing it but no actual introduction or request for help. "You met Rachel yet? Nievas. Commands the squadron of nurses here." His lazily half-lidded eyes are not actually directed towards Elizabeth but fixed at some indeterminate point across the lobby, fingers tightening their grip on the handles of his takeout bag. Elizabeth does rather deliberately furl in her wings as she takes in the general dustyness in question, keeping the white feathers folded in close each side of her back as she considers the man. "Squadron? That is not a term I have heard used to describe nurses in plural before. I have not met her yet though, are you a patient?" Her own accident is mild but implies Florida. "Or are you working here as a contractor or something?" "What's better, then? A swarm? A brace, maybe. A parliament. An," Hive finally decides, distant-unfocused gaze still setled across the room though his /mind/ is focused in on Elizabeth through this exchange, "/ambush/. -- She's hard to miss. You'll meet her soon, I don't doubt." There's a very faint twitch-tug at the corner of his mouth that might almost be a smile but doesn't fully resolve into one. He scuffs a dirty toe against the floor, slumping more heavily against the desk. "Contractor. Something like that, I guess. /Was/ around here a lot more when this place was under construction. I guess today I'm --" He hefts the takeout bag -- the motion seems like a bit of a /struggle/ though the bag couldn't possibly be that heavy, his hand noticeably shaky. "Food delivery. What about you?" Elizabeth raises an eyebrow, just one of them, coupled with an incremental angling of her head that is mirrored on a far larger scale by the wings furled against her back. "I am curious now given that you have gone out of your want to mention her in particular. I suppose I will need to wait and see." Considering the bag for a moment she then offers a shrug, again amplified by the presence of wings, they flick out a little to each side though the motion seems deliberately stilted to avoid hitting anything. "I am Doctor Elizabeth Bowen and I have just started work here. Hence the HR forms." She motions to the clipboard she deposited with reception. "Also forgive me for intruding but you do not look terribly well." "Doctor." Hive echoes this with a faint note of surprise flicking across his expression, eyes briefly wider before returning to their half-closed state. "/That's/ novel. You know, it's funny, they don't /actually/ have that many mutants working on staff here? I mean. The /entire/ guard staff is mutants and there's a fair number of people in --" He glances down at his dusty clothes. "Fff. /Maintenance/ and shit, because, fuck, not that many places that'll /hire/ mutants so you take what you can /get/. But on the actual medical staff?" He shakes his head. "Hardly-fucking-any. Not surprising, I suppose. Hard as shit for a mutant to get a medical education." With this last acknowledgment he sounds /impressed/, though he still doesn't look back at Elizabeth. He /does/ exhale a sharp breath of laughter, though; it kind of hisses out through his teeth at her last observation. "Shit. We've only just met and you're already calling me ugly." Across the lobby there is sudden motion -- no doors open but there's a shimmer-blur of silhouette, streaking almost ghostlike down from the ceiling before it resolves more /solidly/ into a young man -- dark hair, vivid green eyes, bright smile on his boyish face; he's dressed in the red-and-black uniform of the guard staff, too, and he vanishes from the middle of the lobby to reappear a little bit closer and then reappear again at Hive's side. "Afternoon, ma'am," the guard says to Elizabeth, and then to Hive (already reaching for the bag), "/Tell/ me you brought --" "Tofu bibimbap," Hive answers, relinquishing the bag to the guard. "And ginger salad. Eat up." "Hard as hell to get a job even if you do get a medical education." Confirms Elizabeth to that with a scowl, a flick of her wing not facing the reception desk that sends a tangible gust through the air. "Though at least these are less threatening than the kind of thing many people got landed with and I did manage to get a job working up in Alaska. People can apparently make compromises when it saves them the cost of a helicopter but... Well." The arrival of the guard is outright stared at as a visible fluffing out of feathers takes place, then he is nodded to. "Good afternoon." Then back to Hive. "Well I would say you looked like you were starving but given you are fetching takeaways for people I doubt you are not eating." The guard takes the bag /and/ a hug, curling arm around Hive's shoulders with a thump-thump of backpat before he steps back. "Never," he tells Hive -- and perhaps Elizabeth by extension, "-- start a new job the day after getting out of the hospital I don't even know which way my head is screwed on. But, thank /goodness/. Food." And with another shimmer-blur he is vanishing again, leaving a trail of ghostly afterimage-guards behind him that fade away in another moment. Hive settles heavily back against the desk now that his hands are freed, shoulders slumping back downwards and his attention returning to Elizabeth -- mentally, anyway, a refocus of psionic senses paying attention once more to her mind now that his brief interruption-company has left. A faint tremble shivers through him at the gust that Elizabeth's wing stirs up. "I don't eat," he answers with a very faint frown, and then, "Alaska. Jesus. You just move here from /there/? You like it out there?" Elizabeth moves a step back out of the way as hugging takes place, folding in her wings against her back once more, stilling them, one hand reaching back to smooth the feathers while she definitely stares once more at the ghostly afterimages thing. Then a slight shake of her head before she blinks and peers more intently at Hive, a little analytic as well, her attention obviously caught. "What do you do, or not do given your current state, for sustenance if you do not eat?" Then she scowls. "I did not like it at all and leapt at the chance to move. I grew up near Miami and have you any idea how -cold- it gets there when you are flying to add an eighty mile an hour windchill? That is not even starting on what happens if you arrive to do medical checkups at some pumping station full of technicians who have not seen a woman in a month. Even if I did not have these." Undoing the previous feather smoothing she flares out her wings once again, not spreading them, but definitely framing herself. "Like I said," Hive's eyes track absently after the disappearing guard, "Whole fucking guard staff. /All/ freaks. Flicker is so not the strangest thing you're gonna see around here." His brows lift at the mention of the technicians, and he sucks in a breath between teeth and lower lip. "Can only imagine. Been flying around /here/ a couple times and that was already fucking cold as balls. And New York's no Alaska. -- What'd you do, just smack anyone who got fresh? Wings like that, /I/ wouldn't want to tussle with them." He turns a hand upward at the question of sustenance. "Pretty much subsist on caffeine and spite, at this point. Build up enough hate you can keep going a /while/." "Which does not seem to be working out too well for you really, in all honesty you look like you are turning into a walking skeleton." Elizabeth seems to have gone for the frank option there though she then winces, hugging said wings in closer to her back. "It is not anything I have not had to deal with for a long long time given I can hardly hide what I am, but I would hesitate to go and shatter anyone's bones with a wing buffet. I am sure you can imagine how that would play even if I did claim self defence? Punching somebody or making it known you are carrying a gun tends to be more practical and the latter was nicely painless in Alaska at least." "I want your opinion, doctor, I'll make a goddamn appointment." Hive's tone is not sharp so much as kind of bland, perhaps a little bit tired. He tongue swipes absently against his top row of teeth with a small sucking noise. "Wonder if that'd still work out. Half of fucking /everyone/ here is armed every since the dead started -- rising. I mean, carrying a gun's still not /legal/ here but. Fucking zombies, what're you gonna do? A New Yorker still alive these days is /probably/ one who knows how to kick some ass." Elizabeth offers another shrug to that, again her wings flaring out before she listens... And shakes her head. "I am not going to start illegally carrying a pistol. I might not be as badly off as a lot of people are but no prizes for guessing who the police are likely to stop and that is definitely the kind of thing which would destroy my career. For that matter I am not too worried about getting mugged given how I tend to commute." She does grin at the last part. Hive's eyes narrow just a little bit further at the mention of the police. "Around here, you'll be lucky if all they do is stop you. Bastards." There's a faint bristling to his posture, bony shoulders tensing. A thin smile flits across his face a moment later. "I dunno. You're sharing the skies with a pretty unusual crowd in this neighborhood. My roommate's got huge-ass wings and --" He hesitates, a thin sliver of teeth showing in a wider smile. "-- /Okay/, he's not really likely to attempt any mid-air muggings. But he'd probably hit on you." "Precisely, I wear a suit and can afford a lawyer but that only goes so far and these." Another shift of her wings behind her. "Are strong enough they could probably decide to claim they felt they were under deadly threat whenever they wanted an excuse to indulge in police brutality." Then a chuckle. "That is the other side of it. Whenever I try dating there are a lot of people who are freaked and horrified then most of the rest are trying to satisfy some fetish for angels as best I can tell." "They barely even need an excuse. Some shit happens to a mutant, nobody much looks into it." Hive's scowl deepens, but it vanishes in a quick breath of laughter at the dating conundrum. "No shit, I can only imagine. My roomate's got -- not feathers. /Fangs/. And big-ass --" He waves a hand behind himself. "Bat. Wings. After fucking /Twilight/ came out his dating prospects both soared /and/ got a fuckton creepier. So many goddamn -- vampire fetishists. I guess," his eyes finally do shift over to Elizabeth, skimming over her with quick amusement, "doesn't matter who you are there's /someone/ who's gonna be creepy as fuck about it." "As I said, I can afford a lawyer, wearing a suit and being comfortable with it sends that sort of message visibly and gets you mentally classified outside normal harassment range. Or it would if I was not obviously a freak. As a student though? It was worse than kids throwing dye on me though probably not as bad as when I got held down before somebody went to town with a pair of scissors." Elizabeth's wings shiver at this, the rustle of feathers audible before her head shakes. "Twilight? Wow, he has it worse than I do then. Are they terribly disapointed when he fails to sparkle?" Hive winces at the mention of dye and scissors, shaking his head in mild disgust. "Fuck people," is his blunt assessment of this. "Wish I could say it was better here but --" He shrugs a shoulder slowly, looking down at the floor. "You found a place to stay alright? Landlords can be just as fucking obnoxious. Half my building got eviction notices when management decided they didn't want mutants around anymore." Though for some reason /this/ thought puts a small /smile/ on his face. He snorts at the question of sparkling. "Might be. Though we have made him sparkle before. Just for fun. Took for-fucking-/ever/ to get the glitter out of our living room though." "The worse part about the scissors? It takes me a year to grow my feathers back in so while when my parents took them to court it was viewed as no word than assault and cutting a person's hair, I got to look like an ugly freak instead of just a freak for most of a year along with not being able to fly." Elizabeth's wings remain tightly furled in though she sounds more aggravated than traumatised, relaxing some afterwards. "I had to put down triple the normal deposit. I am not sure what she was worried about, that I would clog the air conditioning with moulted feathers perhaps?" "Ugh. Fuck people," Hive says again, pushing himself slowly upright -- and then immediately sinking back against the desk with an unsteady tremble. "Who the hell knows. People have all kinds of fucked up -- stupid ideas about --" He seems to lose his train of thought, lifting a hand to rub his palm against his eyes tiredly. "Leaving /that/ aggravation behind for good, though, soon. Getting around the landlord crap by just building our /own/ damn place. Can't boot us from somewhere we own." Elizabeth watches with obvious concern but does not step forward, frowning a moment, then blinking in surprise. "Wait, in New York? That sounds remarkably expensive. I mean I did look at buying an apartment but it is something I am going to hold off on given the difficulty getting a mortgage and not knowing the place at all." "Funnily enough," Hive says with a quick smile that seems more /grim/ than humored, "property prices around here /crashed/ after a tenth of the city got killed by zombies." Though he amends this a moment later to add: "... or starvation when we got quarantined. That didn't help either." His head shakes quickly. "Going back up now that the place is recovering though. But we nabbed a big lot while things were still in the shitter. Putting up a housing development on it. One that won't be full of shitbags. Past the property costs," he adds this with a small trace of amusement, "it helps that the dumbass architect designed the entire thing for free like a chump." Elizabeth winces at that, considers, then nods. "Still hardly cheap but if you have the land, and got permission for construction before people got wind it was for mutant housing? Well I can see being targeted as being a problem but you also would not need to worry about neighbours claiming they are worried that you are going to hover outside their window at night and watch them for some stupid reason." "It's not," Hive clarifies absently, "mutant housing, it's just housing where a crapton of mutants will /happen/ to live. But anyone /can/ live there if they're not a douchebag. Going to vet strictly against douchebags. So that we don't /have/ asshole neighbors." "Who is funding it though?" Asks Elizabeth curiously at that. "Building an entirely apartment block or whatever it is would cost probably millions given that I suspect a lot of suppliers or building firms would refuse to do business or charge more. Even assuming no disruption from assholes." This question just earns a quick smile from Hive, amused and soon fading. "Costs a crapton," he agrees easily. "But we're not having any problem finding people to /work/ with. Like I said. It's not /mutant/ housing. It's just a housing development. Half the city's getting reconstructed lately, nobody gives a fuck about one more housing development." Elizabeth offers a nod in understanding, glances to the time, then behind her before she straightens a little and stretches her wings out directly behind her. Flexing the feathers in the air she then half furls the things again before offering a nod of her head. "I should get back to work in any case, it has been an interesting conversation, though I did not catch your name?" "Hive." He offers a bony shaking hand out with this introduction, rough and calloused in the manner of someone used to plenty of manual labor. "I'll see you around here, I'm sure." Elizabeth looks surprised at the name but extends out her own hand to offer a firm shake, her wings starting to extend as well until she stops that, one along with the hand and the other flaring to balance. "Well good luck with this project then Hive. Do try to ensure I do not have any reason to encounter you professionally though." A faint grin, then she turns and heads for the lifts, again mostly almost weightlessly as her wings instinctively adjust with each step.