Logs:Balanced Adventuring Party
| Balanced Adventuring Party | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-09-12 "I have little doubt that if nothing of import were at stake your side would rise adequately to the challenge." |
| Location
<MOJ> Champion's Circle - Mojoverse | |
Originally this was intended as a place for the games participants to relax and hang out in between events, but that idea quickly fell by the wayside when their initial participants were all too dead and/or traumatized to do any hanging out. Still. in preparation for hosting a bunch of Earthlings they've taken their best stab at what Earthers might enjoy for a little R&R, which has led to this... place. It's looks like it was kind of a bar, once. There are tables to sit at, though half of them come pre-knocked-over; there are several broken bottles and broken pool cues lying around (no pool tables in evidence.) There are numerous guns. Several of the bottles behind the bar are filled with bullets, a couple more with gasoline; some do have alcohol but none of it is drinking grade. There is also a game of darts. If there ever were any employees there are not anymore, but a very large number of cats are in residence here. The building doesn't end so much as just truncate like it's some kind of movie set. The open back of the "bar" opens up onto, a road that for some reason has a large ramp leading to nowhere. There are a variety of vehicles out there with keys in the ignition and though it's usually hard to tell this from a look, they have the indefinable air of cars that will explode at the slightest provocation. Maybe it's the unnecessary racing stripes. It is quiet, late into the night in this bar, save for the hopeful mewls of the several cats that have clustered around the lone occupied stool at the counter. Mystique is perched against the backdrop of the Booze Mountain that has been accumulating beside the bizarre stash of food. She cuts a striking figure in bold blue scales and fiery red hair and unsullied flowing white dress belted with skulls, a glass of rum cupped in one upturned hand. Her head is tipped down, faintly glowing eyes narrowed at a rotund orange cat who is rubbing up against her ankle. Very deliberately, her foot rubs back at its cheek. "They may feed you," she tells the cat, sternly, "but a comfortable prison is still a prison. Do not forget yourself." The door to the bar thumps open, Mystique's bonding time with the cats interrupted by a pair of sworn enemies. Or, at least, a pair of the opposing team -- Jax is in a kind of ragged and filthy Mojo-issued blue and yellow X-Men uniform, eyepatch missing, none too steady on his feet as he stumbles to the nearest table and collapses promptly into a chair. He's extraordinarily pale, his breathing audibly ragged, sickly grey shadows clinging to him in shifting wisps that seem somewhat like a fluctuating void of the nearby light. He glances over towards Mystique -- possibly about to speak, but instead he presses the heel of his hand quick to his mouth to stifle a sudden heave. Trailing behind Jax kind of fretfully, Blink looks significantly farther from death than her teammate, though she's definitely seen better days herself. Her hair, which she almost always wears braided, has come loose in glossy curls of black and magenta that would actually be kind of fetching if she didn't look so pale and hollow-eyed with exhaustion. She doesn't immediately collapse. She goes and brings two glasses of water back to the table, then collapses. "I would rock at Mojoworld," she declares after a long, slow gulp of water, "if it were a video game." Mystique takes a sip of her rum, silent as she watches the X-Men's arrival. Her brows arch when Blink speaks. She lowers her glass to her knee, pivoting on her stool to face the others and leaning a little bit further back against the bar. "Yes, I have little doubt that if nothing of import were at stake your side would rise adequately to the challenge." Her wrist flexes, glass waving in the vague general direction of their strange new doorway. "Stomach it out there long enough to learn anything?" Jax dips his head in a small nod of thanks, pulling the water closer so that he can take a sip. He's drawn himself up a little straighter -- maybe in some small defensiveness at Mystique's snark. Maybe he's going to give some accounting of what paltry bits of nothing they managed to learn in their brief foray today, but he does not get that far before devolving into a small fit of coughing. He breaks this up with another small sip of water, and takes a steadying breath before just admitting, halting and thin: "... not much. Kinda just. Feelin' out. How to. Move and. Not die." Blink narrows her eyes at Mystique. Then looks down consideringly at the legs of the stool Mystique is sitting on. Then sighs when she sees the cats surrounding it. "You should ask Sunspot to go with you next time," she tells Jax. "His power wouldn't be very useful out there, but he's like a portable solar battery." She looks back at Mystique, less riled now. "Did you find out much?" The corner of Mystique's mouth pulls up into a thin smirk, her yellow eyes meeting Blink's narrowed ones steadily. Her head cocks, just slightly, to the side, and she takes a slow pull of her rum. "Well, I've no skill at video games, but I am getting a decent feel for their -- fiendishly complicated navigational system." There's a small pause, here, and she looks back down to one of the cats twining itself around her stool. Her lips press together. Her wrist rolls, swirling at the drink in her glass. "Somewhere beyond that door is the technology they use to get off this hellpit. I expect we will find it faster if we learn to optimize our --" There is, here, the slightest curl to her lip. "Disparate strengths." Jax's tired eye has come quite suddenly more alert, snapping sharp to Blink and easing off again only at that sigh. He slouches back in his seat and takes another gulp of water, another few slow breaths. "He also soaks in light, it's kinda..." He starts to say, a little abstracted, but then just shakes his head and refocuses. He doesn't smirk -- there's a very intense earnestness in his wider-eyed look, in his slight forward lean, and his drawl is just a little syrupy-thicker than even its usual. "Oh, gosh, I sure wouldn't want us to hold y'all back none or nothin', but if you sure you can stomach it out there with us --?" Blink shrugs and braces her elbows on the table, cupping her glass between her hands. "I think the technology they use to get out -- or into -- this hellpit is probably just a scaled up version of what's behind their fiendishly complicated navigational system." Her expression doesn't really change much, it's just tired. She looks down into her glass, and the water glowing faintly purple between her hands. "I can't feel their portals the same way I do mine, but the underlying logic is pretty familiar. I should compare notes with Joshua." She turns toward Mystique again. "And any of your people who have a knack for space." Her face scrunches up a little. "And space-related...stuff. Ugh, I knew I should have gone into physics." Mystique's brow raises again. She downs the rest of her rum in a gulp, and maybe this gives her the fortitude to conquer her distaste at this predicament, or, at least, to bite back whatever snark might have threatened to rise in answer. "People who have a knack for languages or diplomacy or torture or espionage would even more useful as well, I imagine. We don't need to scour an entire planet for some piece of alien technology we might not even recognize or know how to use if we find the many people here who likely already know where it is." Jax scrunches his eye closed, rubs his knuckles hard against it, but decides that tonight is not the night to be arguing in an alien bar with Mystique about torture. He drops his hand to the table with a thump. "Maybe we should get all our folk together. Figure out some kinda --" His head shakes, heavy and more than a little tired. "Best practices. I don't know. What to expect. What you need to get around. What you need to avoid trouble. Start plotting out some kinda map that -- makes sense when that place don't got nothing my brain wants to call a geography." Even through his tired slump, the smile he summons up is kind of fond. "Oh, I bet Scott'll find some kinda way to sort this into somethin' orderly we can fill out." | |
