milliways_bar | (no subject)

[OOM: A...not that long time ago, relatively speaking, in a boarding school near Westchester, NY...]

So, see, here's the thing: when you travel via a trip to a demonic hell dimension, fondly known as Limbo, you sooometimes have a little bit of problems with things like "time" and "space" when you exit said demonic hell dimension. (There may be non-demonic ones. After you see enough, you learn to not count anything out.)

Even if one is travelling with one's best friend, who happens to be the current Sorceress Supreme and ruler of said hell dimension.

Possibly especially when you're both 14.

"--Excuse me, Miss, 'I let my critters do the dishes for me, even if they set the table with everything covered in pentagrams'? You do not get to tell me that I don't have a sense of style," Kitty Pryde says haughtily, and then blinks once.

And twice.

"...Dammit, Yana! You don't get to drive any more, either, and you can explain to Stevie why we're God knows where instead of ballet practice. ...And to Xavier."

Despite that, the girl is looking about with true curiosity in between glaring at her blonde companion.

...Admittedly, most of the attention is on curiosity, if not that much surprise. You share a house with a woman who throws lightning bolts when pissed and a guy with claws in his hands, you learn to roll with the punches.

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"Which acquaintances?"

And then she makes a face.

"I am not that thin," she mutters, in a manner that implies she has heard this from someone (probably parental) more than once before and has, more than once before, responded with the same argument. "You try having a--a fast," fast, dummy, not mutant, "metabolism and being active and see if you're so heavy."

Still.

She's waiting to hear who he might know, and she's not drinking a thing before that, but she eyes him for a moment before asking, "Do they have milkshakes?"

Buy the girl a milkshake and you have a friend for life.

Besides. If he poisons her, Yana can have the pet rock she's now longing for and teach him to do tricks until Kitty convinces her to turn the nice rock back into a human or Piotr finds out. Hopefully the former.

"They do indeed have milkshakes."

Because it's a better topic of conversations than 'Which acquaintances?', Mal leads the way over to the bar, asking for a root beer float before turning to the teenage girl.

"Just ask the bar. Simple as anythin'."

And here's hoping she doesn't notice any tab Kate may have left on the tally board above their heads.

Someday, maybe, but not today.

"...Oh, like the Shi'ar ship," she says after a moment's consideration, her face clearing a bit from the frown it had acquired as she studied the bar.

And noticed the lack of an answer.

The smart thing, she is very sure, would be to thank him, walk across the room, grab Yana, and say, "Bye-bye!"

Except one fact is true at all times, space, and names, when it comes to Katherine Pryde: she may be a genius, but she's awfully inclined towards doing the thing that isn't the smart one.

"Chocolate, please," Kitty says to the bar, and smiles when she reaches for it. "Thank you."

Doesn't mean she's going to do more than make it appear to sip it--well, if it smells okay, maybe sip it a little.

But for the moment, she'll stick with holding it. It is a good thing to hold. All...cold, and natural-looking. Yes.

"So you're not new here, then, Mr. Reynolds?" she asks, still going with polite as can be. (Somewhere and when, when Kate Pryde gets certain memories back, this interaction will be one that will make her facepalm all over again at the lunacy her life seems determined to be.)

"What do you do?" There. Pretend it's one of Dad's business partners, or someone the Professor is meeting with and she's just accompanying one of them. Except with them not being here.

(When she regains several memories, among this one, Kate Pryde will also hope, desperately, that she's learned to ramble less, at least in her own mind, than she did as a teen.)

"I captain a spaceship," Mal's more than willing to explain. "Freelance trade and the like. I'll carry anything you need in the black from planet A to planet B.

"Been comin' here close on four years now," Mal adds with a groan. "Whenever I see another young lady such as yourself walk in here I feel just that much older."

Her eyes light up a little when he mentions his career; in Kitty's opinion, there is nothing so fantastic as when they get to go into space.

Even if some of the things she's found there, like the Brood that left her a nasty scar on her stomach, she could live without. But that is one of man things filed in her memory under the heading, "Will Not Think About If At All Avoidable".

The file grows both regularly and exponentially.

"Really? What kind of spaceship? And you don't look that old," she says kindly, which possibly does not sound as helpful as she means it to sound.

Kitty considers and leans back a little, head tilted to the side, before asking, "Do you know an Andrew Wells?"

"Only by reputation, and barely that," Mal starts curiously. "Folk who have been around more than a certain amount o' time inevitably know each other. Why do you ask about Andrew?"

She shrugs a little. "Cause he's the only other person I've met here, I guess. I was just curious." No cat jokes, please.

Kitty's thinking, and more than a little, in the back of her mind. But mostly just wanting to hear more.

"So now you have to tell me what kind of ship you have," she says, tone a bit more cheerful as she switches to the affectionately dubbed "Cute Pleading Look" that she uses on Wolverine. And Xavier. And Kurt. And...let's move on. "I don't get to meet space ship captains all that often."

Because in her world, there are very, very few who come from Earth. But that's a thought to be considered later.

...Mal would get along very, very well with Corsair, it should be mentioned.

"Firefly-class transport," Mal's admitting freely. "Midbulk; built in 2503."

Smiling at his own memory, his own story repeating itself, "You know what a firefly is?"

Her eyes don't widen as much as most's would at hearing the year, on a first visit, but they do a little. "I haven't met anyone from that far in the future before," she comments, and adds, "here" just barely belatedly.

And then Kitty smiles. "Course. Tiny bugs. My grandma kept a jar with holes in the lid so I could catch 'em when I was little and went to visit her, so they'd still be okay. She'd let me keep them by my bed until I fell asleep and after she finished the story and I conked out she'd take 'em outside again. They're pretty."

"So's my ship."

Maybe you'll never see it, now.

"The radion accelerator core lights up in the black. I think the engineers were getting bored with your standard ship layouts."

Worry not, Mal, says the unheard narration, for lo, you are dealing with an X-Man, and this is really quite normal given that.

"It sounds beautiful," she says earnestly. "Maddie said she'd teach me to fly her plane, but it's awfully hard to find the time with--with classes," she finishes with the slightest pause.

"Do you meet a lot of aliens with your job?" It's a serious, if polite, question.

"Any 'aliens' I've ever met have been in Milliways," Mal explains. It's a decent enough question to ask, and easy enough to answer.

"Talking horses, wizards, demon bunnies -- that's what the bar at the end o' the 'verse is for."

No mutants?

But then, she thinks, maybe it's something he's so used to it's not worth mentioning.

She'd like a future like that. It beats the one she has memories of from another older version of herself. Memories of apocalyptic futures that you're trying to prevent and never actually experienced make for a lot of nightmares.

"--Wait. Demon bunnies?"

"You need to get outside, miss," Mal smiles. "Maybe they'll make good target practice.

"If you're a fighter."

And that earns a 14-year old snort/laugh combo, though she looks vaguely bemused. "Oh wow. No. Really no. I mean, not really. I'm a dancer. I don't even know what I'd use. And I'd probably take someone's eye out. Our--our school has martial arts classes," she says with a little too much care, "and it's required, but it's not like a demon bunny can spar with me." There's a brief pause. "...Can a demon bunny spar with me? Because that's a really disturbing image, though I'm not sure I'm picturing a demon bunny accurately. I'm also not sure I want to be able to."

And then she smiles, a little, very crookedly. "I'm...better at defense, anyway." Phasing: ultimate defensive tool!

Also not a bad offensive one, but every way it can be used is very nasty and involves death or loss of body parts. And she doesn't think that way yet.