Logs:Joust Friends

Joust Friends
Dramatis Personae Storm, Punch-Eyes
In Absentia	2024-09-10 "You want a good time, Sparky, come and get it."
Location <MOJ> Arena - Mojoverse
The cheering crowds can still be heard down here, even over the cawing-braying-roaring-cackling of the alien mounts hired imported for today's jousting tournament, an assortment of beasts hoary or feathered or tentacled or scaly or covered in sharp protruding spines that, alas, spear right through the ill-fitted horse saddles and colorful woven blankets that were probably intended to give the competing Earthlings something familiar to latch onto when the lances provided are decidedly more alien and hi-tech than any jousting match any of these people may have participated in back home. Despite himself, at this late-ish hour of the game Scott seems to be growing kind of fond of his mount, a garishly coloured six-legged boar-rhinocerous-dinosaur thing with several massive, broken-off tusks in its perpetually sneezing and slobbering face and tiny, vestigial-looking wings -- as the leaderboard is updated, as the latest of many matchups flashes bright on the sky, PUNCH-EYES is ignoring his own face and Mojosona blinking above the field with his next opponent in favor of trying to cajole it to eat the last few bites of a weird fried tentacle kabob he scored by flirting with what had turned out to be a robot vendor working the crowds. Jean is still performatively not speaking to him (verbally) from her perch in the X-team box; maybe this is why he's decided that the boarocerousaurus is man's best friend now. Performatively not speaking to him, maybe, but his opponent has been delayed in his swooping entry into the lists by dallying somewhat conspicuously to chat with a certain redhead. It's hard to say what, exactly, STORM is riding on, some serpentine undulating thing that doesn't seem at all times entirely substantial, but in the moments that it is gives the vague impression that someone had a bad acid trip and then attempted to paint a large snake with wings poorly fashioned out of razor wire and lace. What is he saying to Jean, it's anyone's guess, but she seems to find it very entertaining. When Ion comes away to -- land? He's not really landed, his uncomfortable mount is twining itself in disconcerting knots that hover off the ground, but he is settled beside Scott's creature -- there's a scrap of yellow and blue torn from her uniform sleeve and fastened around his lance-tip. He waggles the lance just enough to flutter the ends of the fabric. His smile is broad, his voice booming. He is still sporting a fair number of bandages, but he's looking fresh and well-rested and in no particular danger of falling off his steed. "All this fancy tech and we still going real old school, huh, Sir Boy Scout? Don't worry, I be a gentleman with your lady-fair." As Ion pulls up beside them Scott is drawing himself up, gripping his own lance -- two-pronged pointy side pulsing with odd, intangible energy where it's dug into the soft earth at his feet, making the artificial grass of the field grow long but silk-fine and wiggly -- for balance. His expression is as inscrutable as ever when he looks over at his lady-fair -- for a moment this has a vague air of needing reassurance before he forces his face into a somewhat unconvincing sneer. "We'll see which gentleman the lady prefers after Gary and I," this is with a pat on the haunch of the hunking beast at his side, "have left you and your, uh," there was definitely a blink here as Scott recalculates the efficacy of this boast, but he goes on determinedly, "measly ...dragon-thing wallowing in the mud. Your wicked Brotherhood tricks are no match for --" Gary interrupts him with a wet, phlegmy sneeze and Scott's fake sneer gives way to a badly-smothered chuckle. "You aiite, Gary, I'on got no beef with you," Ion is reassuring the sneezy boarocerousaurus. He's clicking his cheek against his teeth, though, shaking his head at Scott. "Damn right, Punch-Eye, I wicked as they come. Spent my whole life in the mud and still I the one got this scrap tied on here. Means you in luck though." In a blink he's down off his snakey mount and in front of Scott instead. His own lance hums, quiet and vibrating where it shivers up against his hook. Ion himself seems cheerfully, brazenly unbothered by the considerable size difference between him and Scott where he has imposed himself very much in the larger man's space, his smile a sharp-bright crackle of a thing where his face is tipped up to Scott. "I give you a real good time, maybe enough dirt rub off your lady take you back, huh?" Scott has, perhaps, just enough experience with teleporters not to flinch at the sudden intrusion into his personal bubble, though he does give an involuntary twitch of his nose at the whiff of ozone that accompanies it, or maybe this too is a suppressed laugh. His response comes at a Jean-helped-compose-this-in-his-head delay, light and amused, his fingers flexing around the chrome surface of his lance. "What can I say, the lady could never resist a bad boy," he says. "You want a good time, Sparky, come and get it." "Cuídate, X-Man, I take you up on that you might get yourself a taste for my side." The hum gets just a little more present, a faint static crackle in the air that sets Scott's hair slightly on end. Probably under most circumstances this would not be quite so noticeable but in hugely blown up ultra-high-def -- well. Ion is still wearing a definite smirk as he pulls himself away, plants his own lance firmly in the ground so that he can vault himself back to the back of his treacherous-looking mount. His steed is uncoiling again, snaking back up into the air. "Let's get dirty, then." Scott manages to stay still and unfazed through the buzz of electricity, and he's still wearing a faintly pleased smile as he pulls himself up into his own saddle, hoisting his own lance at his side -- "It's on," he says, and when he pats Gary's neck a little apologetically his mount lets out a loud snorting, lowing roar as it charges after Ion to the fields. STORM (the brutal tormentor) is at his end of the lists in a flash, his somewhat incomprehensible steed undulating bafflingly beneath him. And then they're in the air -- is Ion howling or is that the noise his steed makes when it charges, a rushing-roaring kind of sound. Somewhere behind the blurred flex of its improbable wings, the razorwire glitter of its claws, his smile is still alive with its own bright sparks. The sparks are spreading -- quite lively if not, actually, particularly harmful in their ostentatious crackle -- to his lance as he braces it in his hook, levelling it at Scott incongruously steadily, given the somewhat dizzying descending flight path of his mount. PUNCH-EYES (the stoic leader) is slower to approach, Gary's six legs and uselessly flapping little wings managing a much more sluggish (though thunderously ground-shaking) pace over the fields. In the saddle Scott has leaned forward for the absolutely miniscule aerodynamic effect, his own lance charging up with energy, invisible but for the distortions in the air around it, emitting a strange warbling whine. Scott is holding his lance less steady, trying to follow Ion's path through the air, brow furrowing over his visor. For all the absurdly tortuous flexing motion, inefficient though it appears, Ion's skyborne creature is closing its gap with alacrity. There's something about the strange patterning of its lacelike wings, or maybe the pace of odd ducking and weaving in and out of space, that leaves it feeling oddly disjointed in the visual space it occupies. Right up until they're upon Scott and Gary, and here Scott's considerably longer reach definitely give him an advantage, but despite Ion's far more agile mount, he isn't even trying to avoid the blow. Just grinning, that much broader. It's possible one eye closes in a quick and teasing wink just before Scott's lance hits him, but Scott will probably have to check the camera on replay, because the moment it connects, the world goes -- very, very briefly -- black. Or maybe very alive; the intense electric kick that accompanies is just a fraction of an instant and when the world reappears in color once more he's looking up at Ion and his mystifying mount from the dirt. There's still a shiver of energy rippling down one of Ion's arms as his beast sinks lower to the ground. He leans down from his precarious saddle, offering his hand and a bright grin to Scott. "Admit it, huh. Little dirt, just the thing sometimes." Who can say if Scott is blinking dazedly up at Ion, flat on his back, his lance slowly losing its charge. He certainly wouldn't admit it if he was caught off guard. He's admitting nothing, actually, returning Ion's grin sheepishly but offering nothing else up as he takes the other man's hand and lets himself be pulled back to his feet, reaching with one hand to brush the odd, too-stringy grass out of his hair. "Mmgh," he says. "Hold on, you got some on your --" he's reaching with one muddy hand to smudge Ion's unsmudged nose.