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evilbeejI have no idea.
Pryde and Wisdom's House - School House Road(#1720RAFJ)
The front door opens into a large pale-green living room, in which there is quite possibly more furniture than there was in Pryde and Wisdom's entire last apartment. On the left-hand wall from the door, a couch covered with a plain white sheet is grouped with an armchair and a low table and a bookcase, all by a stone fireplace. Off to the right, more bookcases flank a computer table that looks slightly forlorn with just Kitty's laptop and a printer set up on it. The bookcases are mostly empty, though a scattering of paperbacks and an entire shelf of battered textbooks occupy one, and a few videotapes and a brass sextant keep another from looking entirely abandoned. The pirate flag from their last place is missing from the walls. Neither has the usual state of mild chaos quite reasserted itself - the stack of newspapers on the low table is orderly, and the ashtray at the far end of it is kept, if not empty, not overflowing either.
Directly opposite the door, a staircase spirals up to the second floor; by it are a small hallway and the doorway into the brightly-lit kitchen.
"Now /behave/ yourself, MacConnell," grumps Pete over his shoulder, knocking on the door to the Schoolhouse Road house and then unlocking it, "and if anyone's in, DO NOT fucking spill what we're up to, all right? *Last* thing I need is spandex monkeys mocking me for being /completely/ daft instead'v just *mostly*." He opens the door, still glaring over his shoulder.
"Right, right - c'mon Wisdom - of *course* I'm going to behave myself." That's said with a lopsided grin as Ria follows Pete inside. If he honestly expects her to behave - he deserves whatever he ends up getting. Besides whose fault is it that he hangs around with spandex monkeys anyhow?
The two of them are met by one skunk-striped Southern mutant with her gloved hands propped against her hips and an amused expression of challenge on her face. "An' just who are you callin' a spandex monkey, Mister Wisdom?"
"/You/, you undercover exhibitionist," Pete retorts nonsensically, waving a noncommittal two-finger salute at the sometime X-Man, eyebrows up briefly. "You two. Gossip like a couple of church-ladies whilst I avail myself of the paint thinner and beat up some spraypaint." This is said with a dismissively airy wave at both Ria and Rogue as Wisdom thunks his way into the kitchen.
Gossip. Ria stares over at Rogue, actually managing speechless - for a good couple of seconds at least. "He didn't tell me you'd be here," she finally manages, wanting to give Rogue a wide berth on her way to following Wisdom, just resisting the confessional urge to blurt out that she's not sleeping with him either. Just in case. Besides, even if Wisdom was her type - which he ain't - not nearly crazy enough - Kitty'd kill her. And she's more scared of Kitty than Rogue.
"Yeah, well," Rogue drawls, not much discomfited by Ria's presence, "Ah kinda been livin' here." For the past year plus. But she's not as interested in gossipping with Ria as she is in harassing Pete. "Do Ah even wanna *know* what you mean t'do with paint thinner an' spraypaint, Wisdom?" she calls after him in a voice that carries all the way across the house.
Therein lies the entertainment: neither woman is particularly prone to gossip, and they both love harassing Wisdom. He's apparently looking to get his ass kicked. "Drinking the paint-thinner. Then painting the town red," he calls back from underneath the sink - 'cause that's where he is, once the girls join him. Kneeling on the floor, head, shoulders, and arms digging deeeeep within secret recesses beneath the sink, behind the regular cabinets. The voice is, therefore, terribly muffled.
"Pete - if I find out you dragged my ass all the way across town so I could watch you excavate your kitchen, I'm gonna be a bit pissed off at you." Ria knows that isn't *all* the reason she's here, but she's trying to behave at least a little in front of Rogue. Aiming a kick for Pete's buttocks, though, is irresistable. He's right *there*, after all.
Rogue props herself up against the frame of the kitchen door, the better to watch the spectacle. "Well," she says cheerfully, dragging the word out into about two too many syllables, "*this* oughta be fun t'watch. But if y'mean t'paint th'*whole* town, Ah think you're gonna need more than you got stashed under th'sink."
"Shows what /you/ know, you d......" comes Pete's voice from even further under the sink, and then a very loud, very well-articulated "well SHIT!"; the Englishman, who has (thanks to Ria) no excuse to act as creaky as he usually does, climbs even further under the sink -- lucky he's so skinny. "Claire if you HID IT, you'll get a kicking--" he yells, then completely disappears into the apparently cavernous space hidden cleverly behind utterly normal-looking cabinet doors.
There's nothing but silence for half a second after Wisdom does his dive into the cabinets. Ria peers at the open doors, then looks up at Rogue, before peering back at the doors once more. "*I'm* not going in after him."
Blink. Blink. Rogue looks at Ria, and then at the cabinet which has just swallowed Pete. "Well, shit," she says presently. "Ah had no idea that was there."
There're a couple of thumps, a clattering, the instantly recognisable sound of a glass container filled with liquid crashing to a cement floor, Pete doing what's obviously cussing (though the words can't be made out), and a clank -- all somewhere in the wall. Somehow. Then a crow of triumph!
Ria nods, all too solemnly. "That's okay," she tells Rogue, staring down at the cupboards as Pete - apparently - finds what it was he was looking for. "It's just.. you know, I read a book once, about this castle where - every door lead to a different room. And they *moved*."
Rogue looks over to Ria, brows lifting only a little dubiously. "Okay, see, this means tonight Ah'm gonna have t'do some explorin' 'round here. 'Cause Ah'm not gonna be able t'sleep in here any more 'til Ah know there ain't alien eggs or somethin' stashed in some li'l crawlspace between th'closets." Her voice rises about five notches in volume. "Wisdom! You get ate in there, Ah'm not comin' in after you!"
Thump. Clatter. Thump. The sound of someone crawling gruntingly, and then Pete - rather dirtier than before - falls unceremoniously out from under the sink; he's carefully carrying a bottle of very old, very nice rum and a couple of new-ish cans of red spraypaint. And he's grinning like an idiot. "Well. Got to say, this is better than paint-thinner. Perfectly willing to share before we get to work - d'you fancy rum, Dixie?"
"You should see my place." Ria scoots backwards, until she can hop up onto the table, her legs swinging. "I don't *think* we've got entire other rooms stashed beneath the kitchen cupboards - but we've got padded walls in a few of the rooms - and there's one that has *handcuffs* on the wall." Pete gets a look as he emerges, a lazy grin lighting her face. "And not even offering a drop to me, you mangy English git? I should kick your ass again, send you back down there."
"Twit. I /know/ you like it; variable's this one," Pete disparages in answer to Ria, cocking a thumb at Rogue in indication.
The question prompts a big, big grin from Rogue, and a broad, cheerful, "Aw, hell yeah. That *is* better than paint thinner - count me in, sugah."
"So we're decided - we'll drink the rum first, then make Pete go back down there and find something suitably awful to use as paint thinner." Ria even manages a grin for Rogue at that. "You ought to be ashamed, Wisdom, abusing perfectly good alcohol like that."
"Right--" starts Pete, pausing to haul himself (and his carefully cradled cargo) upright; once he's sitting on the floor, he reaches up to put the swag on the counter, then laboriously gets to his feet. Ria gets a deathglare. "I /told/ you, I was going to /drink/ the paint-thinner."
Rogue just laughs, and pushes herself away from the doorframe and into the kitchen. "Should Ah be gettin' some glasses or somethin' for that, or are we just gonna be passin' th'bottle around?" She doesn't wait for an answer before she starts rummaging around in cabinets for glasses."
"You /told/ me a whole bunch of things, Wisdom," Ria retorts, still swinging her legs. "I'm still trying to puzzle out whether I want to drink with you - or call the men with the little white coats. Hell, maybe I'll just call Kitty, and tell her she can toss you into one of my back rooms until you come out of it."
"Don't," says Pete flatly, looking directly at Ria. He uncorks the bottle - because, by god, it's old enough to have a cork - and takes a swig from it, regardless of Rogue's glass-hunt. /Then/ he answers the Southerner: "Don't need 'em. Ain't got mono."
Rogue leaves off fetching glasses when Pete speaks, letting the cabinet thump closed and turning around to hold a hand out for the bottle. "Then hand it over already. Ah ain't got cooties or anything."
And for once.. Ria subsides without argument, shutting her mouth and offering a faint, apologetic smile in Wisdom's direction. Apparently - somewhere - there are snowballs in hell, and the bubblehead *is* occasionally capable of knowing when to keep her mouth shut.
Pete Wisdom, with the handing of the bottle over to the river-rat -- and then a barely perceptible acknowledgement of the apology, in the form of a slow blink and a half-nod. "Now Ria," he says, leaning against the counter and crossing his arms loosely; his eyebrows are up and his head down, like a continually drily amused professor. "We can't get completely shitfaced, here. We've got some vandalism to commit. So just enough to make you blissfully pleased with your omnipotence, and then we go, all right?"
Kitty has the sudden image of, on that line, Pete's cellphone ringing. And Kitty saying the single word "BEHAVE!" and hanging up again. ;)
Ria dies.
Pete Wisdom indignants! "I am! Badly!"
Rogue accepts the bottle of rum with an amiable nod and knocks back a hearty swallow, which she follows by dragging the back of her glove across her mouth. Then she holds the bottle out to Ria. "You heard th'man," she announces, and then looks toward Pete. "So do Ah get t'hear what this is all about, or am Ah just in it for th'booze?"
Pete Wisdom shrugs and grins, and tells Rogue a boldfaced lie with amazing skill: no polygraph could ever pwn this evil man. "Lost a bet. 'Least I ain't shaving my head or something."
"Pete Wisdom," Ria says in a tone of long-suffering tolerance. "I am *always* feeling blissfully pleased with my omnipotence. Except when I'm not." She leans forward to accept the bottle from Rogue, before tilting it to her lips. Yes. This is the good stuff. Rogue's question gets her a long, sly smile - that only brightens at Wisdom's words. "I warned you 'bout bettin' against me, didn't I?"
That's when there's a godawful thumping and scrabbling from the roof - a thud, followed by what can only be the scrape of claws down the shingling, the protesting creak of a gutter momentarily supporting far more weight than it was ever intended to, the muted sound of a body impacting the ground, and a muffled, "Oh, bother."
"What the fuck," is Pete's completely unimpressed 'oh what now' reaction. He looks up, then traces the probable path across the ceiling and down the wall, like he's got x-ray vision. "Last time this happened, we-- who the fuck /was/ it last time this happened? I don't even remember. I know she disappeared right after," he's muttering, half to himself, pushing himself off the counter and going to see what the hell just hit his roof.
Some of Rogue's amusement dies off at the thump on the roof, which has her looking quickly upwards. "Hang onto that, wouldja, honey?" she says distractedly sidelong to Ria, and then she's headed out of the kitchen herself after Pete, and towards the front door. It's easy to check weird noises on the roof when you can fly, and stuff.
"Certainly." Ria says to a suddenly empty room. Glancing about it briefly, she shrugs and tilts the bottle to her lips once again. Pete *did* say he wanted her nice and relaxed, after all. Besides - she's not a hero. That's what the folks in spandex are for. She'll just mend them when they get back.
The thumping has been followed by rustling in the shrubbery...and then there are footsteps at the door, and a polite knock.
Pryde and Wisdom's House - School House Road(#1720RAFJ)
The front door opens into a large pale-green living room, in which there is quite possibly more furniture than there was in Pryde and Wisdom's entire last apartment. On the left-hand wall from the door, a couch covered with a plain white sheet is grouped with an armchair and a low table and a bookcase, all by a stone fireplace. Off to the right, more bookcases flank a computer table that looks slightly forlorn with just Kitty's laptop and a printer set up on it. The bookcases are mostly empty, though a scattering of paperbacks and an entire shelf of battered textbooks occupy one, and a few videotapes and a brass sextant keep another from looking entirely abandoned. The pirate flag from their last place is missing from the walls. Neither has the usual state of mild chaos quite reasserted itself - the stack of newspapers on the low table is orderly, and the ashtray at the far end of it is kept, if not empty, not overflowing either.
Directly opposite the door, a staircase spirals up to the second floor; by it are a small hallway and the doorway into the brightly-lit kitchen.
"Now /behave/ yourself, MacConnell," grumps Pete over his shoulder, knocking on the door to the Schoolhouse Road house and then unlocking it, "and if anyone's in, DO NOT fucking spill what we're up to, all right? *Last* thing I need is spandex monkeys mocking me for being /completely/ daft instead'v just *mostly*." He opens the door, still glaring over his shoulder.
"Right, right - c'mon Wisdom - of *course* I'm going to behave myself." That's said with a lopsided grin as Ria follows Pete inside. If he honestly expects her to behave - he deserves whatever he ends up getting. Besides whose fault is it that he hangs around with spandex monkeys anyhow?
The two of them are met by one skunk-striped Southern mutant with her gloved hands propped against her hips and an amused expression of challenge on her face. "An' just who are you callin' a spandex monkey, Mister Wisdom?"
"/You/, you undercover exhibitionist," Pete retorts nonsensically, waving a noncommittal two-finger salute at the sometime X-Man, eyebrows up briefly. "You two. Gossip like a couple of church-ladies whilst I avail myself of the paint thinner and beat up some spraypaint." This is said with a dismissively airy wave at both Ria and Rogue as Wisdom thunks his way into the kitchen.
Gossip. Ria stares over at Rogue, actually managing speechless - for a good couple of seconds at least. "He didn't tell me you'd be here," she finally manages, wanting to give Rogue a wide berth on her way to following Wisdom, just resisting the confessional urge to blurt out that she's not sleeping with him either. Just in case. Besides, even if Wisdom was her type - which he ain't - not nearly crazy enough - Kitty'd kill her. And she's more scared of Kitty than Rogue.
"Yeah, well," Rogue drawls, not much discomfited by Ria's presence, "Ah kinda been livin' here." For the past year plus. But she's not as interested in gossipping with Ria as she is in harassing Pete. "Do Ah even wanna *know* what you mean t'do with paint thinner an' spraypaint, Wisdom?" she calls after him in a voice that carries all the way across the house.
Therein lies the entertainment: neither woman is particularly prone to gossip, and they both love harassing Wisdom. He's apparently looking to get his ass kicked. "Drinking the paint-thinner. Then painting the town red," he calls back from underneath the sink - 'cause that's where he is, once the girls join him. Kneeling on the floor, head, shoulders, and arms digging deeeeep within secret recesses beneath the sink, behind the regular cabinets. The voice is, therefore, terribly muffled.
"Pete - if I find out you dragged my ass all the way across town so I could watch you excavate your kitchen, I'm gonna be a bit pissed off at you." Ria knows that isn't *all* the reason she's here, but she's trying to behave at least a little in front of Rogue. Aiming a kick for Pete's buttocks, though, is irresistable. He's right *there*, after all.
Rogue props herself up against the frame of the kitchen door, the better to watch the spectacle. "Well," she says cheerfully, dragging the word out into about two too many syllables, "*this* oughta be fun t'watch. But if y'mean t'paint th'*whole* town, Ah think you're gonna need more than you got stashed under th'sink."
"Shows what /you/ know, you d...
There's nothing but silence for half a second after Wisdom does his dive into the cabinets. Ria peers at the open doors, then looks up at Rogue, before peering back at the doors once more. "*I'm* not going in after him."
Blink. Blink. Rogue looks at Ria, and then at the cabinet which has just swallowed Pete. "Well, shit," she says presently. "Ah had no idea that was there."
There're a couple of thumps, a clattering, the instantly recognisable sound of a glass container filled with liquid crashing to a cement floor, Pete doing what's obviously cussing (though the words can't be made out), and a clank -- all somewhere in the wall. Somehow. Then a crow of triumph!
Ria nods, all too solemnly. "That's okay," she tells Rogue, staring down at the cupboards as Pete - apparently - finds what it was he was looking for. "It's just.. you know, I read a book once, about this castle where - every door lead to a different room. And they *moved*."
Rogue looks over to Ria, brows lifting only a little dubiously. "Okay, see, this means tonight Ah'm gonna have t'do some explorin' 'round here. 'Cause Ah'm not gonna be able t'sleep in here any more 'til Ah know there ain't alien eggs or somethin' stashed in some li'l crawlspace between th'closets." Her voice rises about five notches in volume. "Wisdom! You get ate in there, Ah'm not comin' in after you!"
Thump. Clatter. Thump. The sound of someone crawling gruntingly, and then Pete - rather dirtier than before - falls unceremoniously out from under the sink; he's carefully carrying a bottle of very old, very nice rum and a couple of new-ish cans of red spraypaint. And he's grinning like an idiot. "Well. Got to say, this is better than paint-thinner. Perfectly willing to share before we get to work - d'you fancy rum, Dixie?"
"You should see my place." Ria scoots backwards, until she can hop up onto the table, her legs swinging. "I don't *think* we've got entire other rooms stashed beneath the kitchen cupboards - but we've got padded walls in a few of the rooms - and there's one that has *handcuffs* on the wall." Pete gets a look as he emerges, a lazy grin lighting her face. "And not even offering a drop to me, you mangy English git? I should kick your ass again, send you back down there."
"Twit. I /know/ you like it; variable's this one," Pete disparages in answer to Ria, cocking a thumb at Rogue in indication.
The question prompts a big, big grin from Rogue, and a broad, cheerful, "Aw, hell yeah. That *is* better than paint thinner - count me in, sugah."
"So we're decided - we'll drink the rum first, then make Pete go back down there and find something suitably awful to use as paint thinner." Ria even manages a grin for Rogue at that. "You ought to be ashamed, Wisdom, abusing perfectly good alcohol like that."
"Right--" starts Pete, pausing to haul himself (and his carefully cradled cargo) upright; once he's sitting on the floor, he reaches up to put the swag on the counter, then laboriously gets to his feet. Ria gets a deathglare. "I /told/ you, I was going to /drink/ the paint-thinner."
Rogue just laughs, and pushes herself away from the doorframe and into the kitchen. "Should Ah be gettin' some glasses or somethin' for that, or are we just gonna be passin' th'bottle around?" She doesn't wait for an answer before she starts rummaging around in cabinets for glasses."
"You /told/ me a whole bunch of things, Wisdom," Ria retorts, still swinging her legs. "I'm still trying to puzzle out whether I want to drink with you - or call the men with the little white coats. Hell, maybe I'll just call Kitty, and tell her she can toss you into one of my back rooms until you come out of it."
"Don't," says Pete flatly, looking directly at Ria. He uncorks the bottle - because, by god, it's old enough to have a cork - and takes a swig from it, regardless of Rogue's glass-hunt. /Then/ he answers the Southerner: "Don't need 'em. Ain't got mono."
Rogue leaves off fetching glasses when Pete speaks, letting the cabinet thump closed and turning around to hold a hand out for the bottle. "Then hand it over already. Ah ain't got cooties or anything."
And for once.. Ria subsides without argument, shutting her mouth and offering a faint, apologetic smile in Wisdom's direction. Apparently - somewhere - there are snowballs in hell, and the bubblehead *is* occasionally capable of knowing when to keep her mouth shut.
Pete Wisdom, with the handing of the bottle over to the river-rat -- and then a barely perceptible acknowledgement of the apology, in the form of a slow blink and a half-nod. "Now Ria," he says, leaning against the counter and crossing his arms loosely; his eyebrows are up and his head down, like a continually drily amused professor. "We can't get completely shitfaced, here. We've got some vandalism to commit. So just enough to make you blissfully pleased with your omnipotence, and then we go, all right?"
Rogue accepts the bottle of rum with an amiable nod and knocks back a hearty swallow, which she follows by dragging the back of her glove across her mouth. Then she holds the bottle out to Ria. "You heard th'man," she announces, and then looks toward Pete. "So do Ah get t'hear what this is all about, or am Ah just in it for th'booze?"
Pete Wisdom shrugs and grins, and tells Rogue a boldfaced lie with amazing skill: no polygraph could ever pwn this evil man. "Lost a bet. 'Least I ain't shaving my head or something."
"Pete Wisdom," Ria says in a tone of long-suffering tolerance. "I am *always* feeling blissfully pleased with my omnipotence. Except when I'm not." She leans forward to accept the bottle from Rogue, before tilting it to her lips. Yes. This is the good stuff. Rogue's question gets her a long, sly smile - that only brightens at Wisdom's words. "I warned you 'bout bettin' against me, didn't I?"
That's when there's a godawful thumping and scrabbling from the roof - a thud, followed by what can only be the scrape of claws down the shingling, the protesting creak of a gutter momentarily supporting far more weight than it was ever intended to, the muted sound of a body impacting the ground, and a muffled, "Oh, bother."
"What the fuck," is Pete's completely unimpressed 'oh what now' reaction. He looks up, then traces the probable path across the ceiling and down the wall, like he's got x-ray vision. "Last time this happened, we-- who the fuck /was/ it last time this happened? I don't even remember. I know she disappeared right after," he's muttering, half to himself, pushing himself off the counter and going to see what the hell just hit his roof.
Some of Rogue's amusement dies off at the thump on the roof, which has her looking quickly upwards. "Hang onto that, wouldja, honey?" she says distractedly sidelong to Ria, and then she's headed out of the kitchen herself after Pete, and towards the front door. It's easy to check weird noises on the roof when you can fly, and stuff.
"Certainly." Ria says to a suddenly empty room. Glancing about it briefly, she shrugs and tilts the bottle to her lips once again. Pete *did* say he wanted her nice and relaxed, after all. Besides - she's not a hero. That's what the folks in spandex are for. She'll just mend them when they get back.
The thumping has been followed by rustling in the shrubbery...and then there are footsteps at the door, and a polite knock.
