trans_9 | Cooling Off [Open] [R for profanity]

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Cooling Off [Open] [R for profanity]

She's wandered through a few others' creations by now so at this point Rose is ready to try something of her own in the Sensoriums. She goes for the familiar, albeit with a few tweaks. She'd always thought the Titan's Tower would have been better without that pesky roof over the top-floor pool.

It's nighttime because that's what makes the most sense. The idea of her former teammates wandering the place as AI's is creepy, but the Tower dead-quiet in daytime is even creepier and makes her feel twice as alone.

There's a bottle of rum (take that Tim!) and her pack of cigs on the pool edge, the San Francisco skyline lit up across the bay, just enough breeze, and a clear dark sky with a smattering of stars that seem close enough to touch.

She's also naked, because what's a pool all to yourself if you have to be dressed?

Rose dives down and just lays still at the bottom for a few moments, looking up at the starry sky distorted through the water for as long as she can before she needs to surface for air. She's missed swimming more than she thought.

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Rose pops up to the surface of the water, slicking her wet hair back from her face with both hands and taking in a deep breath. It takes her about three seconds to them notice her guest hanging from the ceiling.

"Gah! Shit, I didn't even see you up there!"

She tilts her head at him then, a faint smile on her face.

"You coming in or something?"

Oh dear, Peter certainly wasn't expecting an extremely naked, extremely intimidating woman to emerge from the pool. He hurriedly covers his eyes with his free hand.

"Excuse me, lady," Pete, when shielding your gaze there aren't supposed to be gaps between the fingers, "I didn't realize this was, uh, occupied."

Rose smirks. Aww, trying to pretend he's not peeking. That's cute. She turns and floats partly on her back to look up at him.

"Well yeah it's occupied but I learned to share in junior kindergarten."

His fingers snap shut at the sign of movement. He's not looking he's not looking oh dead God he's not looking.

"Is that where you picked up your concept of modesty, too?"

She rolls her eyes and let's herself sink into the water again, paddling to the edge of the pool and hooking her arms over the side.

"I was here first, sweetie. You don't have to stay if you don't like the dress code."

She reaches for her rum and takes a quick drink from the bottle.

He drops from his webline and crouches poolside.

"I'm just saying that if we happened to get ambushed by space gribblies, that'd be a pretty unfortunate state to be caught in."

She raises a brow at him.

"Space gribblies? What are those?"

If they're something she can kill barehanded she won't worry about it.

"Y' ever see Alien?" he'd gesticulate to the surroundings if they looked more like the usual green and pulsing and not like the inside of Don Henley's brain, "For all we know this could be the freaking mothership."

She laughs a little.

"Well lucky for us I could take Sigourney Weaver in a fight with both hands tied behind my back. If SHE can handle aliens I'll be FINE."

"Well that's reassuring. If the Stay Puft marshmallow man turns up, I'll know who to call."

He holds out his hand, "Spider-Man."

She takes his hand and shakes it. Good hard grip but not hand crushing.

"Ravager. I assume your name is self-explanatory on your powers?"

"If we're playing the 'assume everybody has powers' game I'd dread to guess at what yours might be."

This might've been more believable if he didn't tailend it by whistling his own theme tune.

She raises an eyebrow at this whistling, but just shrugs and picks up her cigarette pack now that her hands are partly dry, tapping one out and lighting it, though she at least does her best not to breathe the smoke into his face or anything.

"Actually if you just wanna go look up 'ravage' in the dictionary I'll wait. It's pretty accurate." It all just boils down to 'ruinous damage' in verb and noun formations. She likes it.

Edited 2009-04-16 02:19 (UTC)

"Actually, mine's a rhyming dictionary, so I'm betting all I'll find is savage, cabbage, bofabbage."

He watches her take a drag, "You know, those things'll kill ya."

She laughs a little at that first part. Bofabbage? What the hell? But it's just weird enough to be really funny.

When he makes that second comment she taps some ash off the cig and tilts her head back to breathe out the smoke.

"I'll worry about cigarettes killing me when people stop trying. Everybody needs a bad habit."

"I'm just saying, my nailbiting fixation isn't going to cause others to break out in melanomas." he scritches the back of his head, "Unless, you know, the nail clippings run off and develop their own nicotine addictions. And I have spotted some of them hanging around outside the Marlboro factory."

"What the hell drugs are in the food in your universe?"

But she's snickering anyway. She takes a final drag off the cig then stubs it out half finished. Maybe she's feeling a little courteous.

"Is that wit all practice or all experience?"

"As far as I know, high levels of caffeination are consistent with all dimensional variations of New York." Strange, most women would have stopped laughing and started pulverizing by now. She must be from another universe, "Even the unpopulated ones."

If he'd caught her in a worse mood she would have probably pulverized him but good, but he was funny and she was bored. And he was right about New York.

"Always knew there was something in the water in that city."

She points across the bay at the glittering skyline of her mindscape San Francisco. She's not sure if it seems so pretty now because she misses it, or because the sensorium built it from her kind remembrances, or both.

"Have you ever been?"

"Nah," he finally gets off his haunches and sits on the edge of the pool. The suit retracts as his feet dangle in the water, proving there really is something pink and boyish underneath the goop, "The West Coast climate doesn't agree with me. Nevermind how terrible I look with my shirt off."

He's already had his own reacquaintance with home courtesy of the Sensoriums. It had not exactly gone too well.

"So, where exactly are we? What building are we supposed to be in?"

"This is Titans Tower. It's the headquarters for a hero team in my universe called the Teen Titans."

She eyes his bare feet in the water and wonders if he's got a plant-suit under that second skin at all. The way it moves reminds her of Toxin.

"I was on the roster for a while, then I left. Bunch of the other 'podlings' or whatever we are came from my universe and were on various incarnations of the team, though most of them don't remember the version that I was on. I'm ahead of them in time or something."

"What was your shtick in New York? You worked solo?"

"Teen... Titans?" He's fighting not to snigger, "Any relation to the equally alliterative Fantastic Four?"

It would, as it very likely might have fathered the other hero's threads. And he never did get to the plant-suit stage; after all, it was because his last suit was so easily torn that he bonded with the symbiote in the first place.

"Yeah, I'm too street for the teams where I come from," Pete is of course still bitter that neither the F4 or the Avengers would let him have a job, "I just kick it old school, you know?"

"Don't look at me, they picked the name before I was BORN. And no, no never heard of any Fantastic Four. Not a fan of teams with numbers in their names. Makes it super inconvenient whenever someone quits or gets offed." And then she had to laugh at him again because really... "Who the hell says 'kick it old-school' anymore?"

She sighs a little then and floats away from the wall, sinking back up to her ears in the water.

"You got a real name to go with the hero name?"

"Yeah, like S Club 7. Was that a disaster in the making." Something tells him the F4 aren't going to have to worry about rebranding any time soon. "I say kick it old school! It's my way of kickin' it old school."

He paddles idly.

"Sure I do."

She laughs just a little again.

"I'm sure you will have no competition for the use of the phrase."

And not forthcoming with the name. Alright, fair enough, she can meet him halfway on that.

"You have a name but you don't use it or you have a name and you just don't feel like sharing?" She puts on her best sweet smile and swims over close enough to touch his feet, a light touch on the ankles that's just enough to keep him from kicking.

"Mine's Rose."

No last names if he's so cautious, but he's not even from the same reality as her so as if she's going to look up his home address or something.

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