trans_9 | Meet'n Greet Part Deux

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Meet'n Greet Part Deux

Obs Deck usually had the most people at any given time. It was a large comfortable room, and it had places to sit.

This was where Leela led Kurt.

"Looks like we got some new people other'n you," she said, gesturing with her thumb towards a floating boy with a leather jacket that was mingling with other people nearby. Looked like there were a few others, too.

"You wanna meet the bosslady first or just everybody?"

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"Girl-with-a-Cool-Weapon. I like. Name's Leela, by the way, but I still like," Leela mused. Then when Kurt got nervous, she explained, "There's a guy's got some kinda blue bug armor. Hence: Bugface. Not that he's got a bugface while wearing it, but it's good nickname for him anyway. Only thing you two have in common is the blue, so apparently, this guy is blind."

A pause. "You're not actually part-blind, are you?" she asked Paco. "'Cause then I'd feel bad."

"Nope, perfect vision," Paco said. "I was just too stunned by your ravishing beauty to pay attention to the other people in the room." He followed up with a playful wink.

"Well, here's what we've got so far -- probably alien-abduction, tons of alternate universes, no one has any idea how or why, and most people have super powers, special training, or a stick that they've already used for smacking aliens. Also, the ship is freaking huge, and there are things on it that want to screw with our heads and/or possibly eat us. Fortunately, they seem to be mostly locked away, except for that bug we haven't seen since Jaime nearly got himself shot at for scaring the crap out of everyone else. Did I miss anything?"

"Oh." Though, by now, it was obvious that Kurt was curious about that, too. At least the guy wasn't an actual bug. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. What was with him? Dinosaurs were fine, but toss in giant bugs and he wasn't sure he wanted to play this game anymore.

Kurt though his attempts at flirting were bad. Not so much, now. He decided pretending he didn't hear that was the best course of action.

"So this is supposed to be some unstoppable, alien-crushing army?" Then why have potentially harmful things on board? "This had better count as a very good training session."

People getting shot at didn't exactly calm him, either.

"You. Wink at me again like someone's creepy drunken uncle at a family reunion and I'll poke you in the eye," she threatened Paco, but her tone was a joking one.

"And I don't know about unstoppable." She tilted her head at Paco. "He looked pretty stoppable."

"Brenda goes into outer space and she gets evil squirrels, guys in loin-clothes, and the opportunity to break a planet," Paco said with mock-exasperation, throwing his hands in the air. "I get tentacle ships and girls who threaten me with violence when I pay them a compliment. Life's just not fair.

"And technically, Jaime's an unstoppable alien-crushing army all by himself," he said more seriously. "He's just too nice to do it very often."

"Alright, maybe it is not an army, unless it is an army of bad comedians and we are supposed to get the bad guys to laugh themselves into defeat." Maybe Kurt was wrong. It wasn't like he was the 'always right' sort of guy.

"Hum." None of it really made any sense to him. Then he just seemed to shrug it off. "Well, then, I suppose it is something we can handle." If they had that kind of firepower, anyway.

"I threaten lots of people with violence, so don't think you're special for a minute," Leela quipped to Paco.

Then she turned to Kurt, "And we can probably handle it, yeah. S'just a matter of figuring out what there is to handle."

"We figure it out, we beat it with sticks, and then we all go home with some awesome stories," Paco said with a shrug. "By the way, I'm Paco, since I think we skipped over introductions earlier."

Well. That was one way to look at it. Maybe Kurt was trying to think too hard. He would try to keep a firm handle on his anxiety; confidence was key. Or something like that.

"Just like that, hm? I just hope someone will believe said stories." Now that would be a real bummer, if someone decided he was faking it. Then again, where else would he vanish off to for.. well, he hoped it wouldn't be weeks. Just days.

"I'm Kurt Wagner, also known as Nightcrawler." The accent was heavy on the name, and then he grinned. "You are into all this costume stuff too, I take it?"

"My best friend has alien tech making sweet buggy love to his spine," Paco said with a grin. "If I wasn't into all the costume stuff before, that would have changed my mind. Someone's gotta watch his back."

"That sounds.. special." What else was Kurt supposed to offer? It sounded like his buddy had one hell of a parasite. He rubbed the back of his neck, absently.

"I bet he is glad to have you." They did sound close, despite Paco's crude explanation of it.

"'Sweet buggy love'?"

"The love that dare not chitter its name," Paco explained, grinning. "Khaji's pretty awesome. He and Jaime are partners in the super hero business, I'm the sidekick. It's my job to drive the Beetlemobile and make sure that Jaime doesn't fry his brain with too many responsibilities."

"So is his super-weakness a can of pesticide?" Kurt already felt sorry for Paco's friend, and he hadn't even met the kid. He was possibly imagining the completely wrong thing; despite Leela saying the guy didn't have a bug-face, he was starting to imagine something pretty grotesque. His imagination was running away with him.

"Huh. The car is a Volkswagen, ja?" Kurt had always felt pretty privileged to be behind the wheel (or stick) of any of the gadgets the X-men got to play with, but if it came down to ferrying a bug-person around, it might not be that much fun. A grin, then. "You have to relax after a long day of saving the world."

"If you have an actual VW Beetle as the superhero car, I'ma laugh my ass off, I promise you. I'm imagining a little jet on the back like the Batmobile..."

"Nahh, the Blue Beetle's super-weakness is that Jaime and Khaji disagree on whether or not they should kill the other guy," Paco said. What, it was true. Jaime freely admitted it. Also, it wasn't dangerous to Jaime to spread around.

"And no, no, and no," he said, waggling a finger. "The Beetlemobile is a very sexy cherry-red T-bird convertible that Jaime and me fixed up. Yeah it doesn't go with the 'blue beetle' theme, but we were working on that before he got his special bug-hug, and the paint-job was fantastic -- hell, it only needed a few touch-ups after the big fire-fight with the Reach."

Quick, stop him before he never shuts up about his car.

"Huh?" Well, an insect mind was probably very survivalistabout the whole thing; a big bad couldn't kill you if he was dead. It made sense, as far as horrible bug symbiotes made sense. As in, it made Kurt's head sort of hurt. "Well, there is always another way." Though that was perhaps preaching to the choir.

"Really?" Alright, it was a teenaged-boy thing, but shiny red cars generally made the eyes light up, and despite all the fuzz, well, Kurt was pretty typical. "There is no need to constantly advertise a theme, so why not?" He sagged for a moment. "I never did get my own car, though Scott would let me drive his once in a while." Then again, Scott had a freakin' Cobra. It was ridiculous, really.

Leela probably wanted to strangle them both by then.

Yes she did.

"Where I came from didn't even have any goddamn cars," she grumbled.

"Jaime's teaching him that," Paco said, before returning to the far more interesting topic of cars. "Get a job in a garage, seriously. Best job ever, especially for getting your hands on awesome cars that are just too broken-down for most people to want to bother with."

Sorry Leela, male-bonding car-talk time. At least Kurt had a new friend?

"Well, that is good. That this Khaji listens, at any rate." Maybe Kurt wouldn't have to go around, cramming his ideals in everyone's face.

Him? At a garage? For a moment, Kurt entertained the idea in his mind's eye. "Unfortunately, I am not, uh, very handy. That does sound like fun, though." Then again, he was an acrobat, for Pete's sake. Most kids daydreamed about running away to the circus at least once.

Kurt then grinned sheepishly at Leela. "Ah, sorry." He did look contrite, though. "What a real pity. Did you at least get a chariot or.. something?"

"Wasn't ancient Rome or nothing. I had a donkey, a horse at one point, and this weird thingy that's like some sort of mix between a bat and a camel. And my feet. Mostly my feet. I ain't even seen a car in years."

"You had a bat-camel?" Paco asked, trying to imagine what that might look like. "I'm not sure if that's awesome or just creepy. How did you go from cars to bat-camels?"

"Interdimensional portal doohickey. Came from a normal world with McDonald's and monster trucks, wound up in a place like out of a cheap fantasy paperback."

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Meet'n Greet Part Deux

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