BFFs are Purple

Participants:

gillian2_icon.gif magnes_icon.gif

Scene Title BFFs are Purple
Synopsis There are many topics brought up when Magnes calls Gillian over, but they unknowingly begin their Badass Future Friendship in the Present day.
Date August 26, 2009

Magnes's Apartment

Geek Heaven


Just waking up around noon, after his first shift that ended at 5am, Magnes invited Gillian over to his place for a talk. The room is likely what she'd expect, geeky comic and sci-fi posters all over the room, especially the comic women. Book shelves of graphic novels, containers with lots of single comic collections, a modest entertainment center with plenty of games and DVDs, and two bean bag (Batman and Superman) chairs in front of it. He's sitting on the bed only in his jeans again, applying cream to his four stitches up gunshot wounds. One on his left side just under his chest, and the other on his right side, directly over his lung. On both the front and back are an entry and exit wound, meaning each shot is from a different angle.

One other mark she'll notice are the nail punctures, five faded nail punctures on his face, where someone squeezed very hard, and five deeper punctures on his right arm, which also have electrical burns.

A key was hidden outside the back door, and she of course was told where to find it, just to lock behind herself. The entrance to his room is up a flight of stairs, leading to another door, luckily the last one, where she'll find him sitting.

He also appears to have a few hickies on his neck, go him!

"You look like shit, Mags," Gillian comments once she gets all the way in side, wary, possibly even suspicious, but the sight of him sitting there seems to have settled her nerves. Her hand slides out of her bag, even, but he couldn't possibly know she has a weapon in there, could he? "When you ask your girlfriend to nail you, you're not supposed to mean your face," she teases him, though the eyes drift down to his neck a moment later. "Looks like she got the sucking part right, though."

In some ways, the sight of punctures on arms, wounds on chest… it reminds her a lot of when she got Gabriel's shirt off and saw that he'd gotten himself shot more times than a rapper.

A few steps bring her in further and she settles odwn on one of the beanbag chairs (Batman) at an angle she can face him. She used to love beanbags.

"Nail marks are from when I told a girl I was dating that we should just be friends, my neck is from my girlfriend, Claire, the girl I left the other girl for, not sure if you know her. Wait, how'd you know about my neck?" Magnes, done with his cream, reaches up to start touching his neck, wincing a few times. "Is there something on me?" he asks, slightly alarmed.

"You have hickies, you moron," Gillian says, sinking into the bean bags and letting her carrier bag fall to her side. There's a tribal marking on it instead of some kind of geek logo. Looks much like her tattoos used to, before they got mangled by a nuclear explosion at point blank range followed by rapid regeneration. "I know Claire. She seems like a nice kid. Certainly better than that other one you were dating." The one that almost killed her! "Why'd you ask me to come over?"

"I have hickies… You know the girl I was dating before? Alright, uh, if you know, don't tell me alright? I'm not supposed to know." Magnes requests, then pulls on his faded Batman shirt, the one he said Claire got him before and couldn't shut up about. "I wanted to talk about Gabriel, and I was wondering if I could have his number, I forgot to ask him. And I also wanna ask that we keep this between us. My curiousity about Gabriel is just a me and him thing really, and I already know how to avoid tempting him to take my ability."

There's confusion painted on Gillian's face for a few moments after his first request, a look like she might be about to ask questions. But it may be fortunate for him that he immediately brings up her ex instead. There's a tightening of her shoulders, and she shifts and sits up as much as she can in a beanbag chair. It makes her teeth grit mildly, too. This is not the best topic to bring up, it would seem. "I don't have his number and I can't even tell you where he's staying anymore. I don't— you don't want to talk about you ex for whatever fucked up reason, and I don't really want to talk about mine either."

"I don't wanna talk about mine because I can't remember her, and I wrote a note to myself basically saying I shouldn't try to remember anything. But I won't talk about him with you, don't worry." Magnes smiles, then leans against the wall behind him. "So, let's talk about you. You might be able to help me with something I'm doing, but I need to know if you're already in some organization."

"I'm sorry. It's just— Gabriel isn't an easy topic right now," Gillian says, settling back into the bean bags again and closing her eyes for a moment. A painful topic, if anything. "I'd probably tell you to shoot him in the foot if you asked too many questions. It wasn't a fun break up, but I doubt he deserves any of that." It's just too fresh. It's hard to talk about it without wanting to throw something. He can't remember his ex? That sounds vaguely familiar, from what she'd heard in the past, what she assumes happens. Brian's memory was fucked with by the Company, and now Magnes'… "I'm involved in some things, yeah…" There's a pause, she looks around, suspcious, "Are you sure your place isn't bugged?"

"If it was, I'm sure Cardinal or Claire or any of the other people afraid of being spied on have taken care of that by now." Magnes, almost getting ready to continue his organization pitch, just takes a deep breath and says, "It's been a while since we just, well, talked, hasn't it? I guess you being unbelievably hot makes it harder to say every dirty secret I have."

"Cardinal? Fuck, kid, you're getting around everywhere," Gillian says with a hint of a laugh, but the mention of him makes her settle. His slinking around in the shadows and references to his criminal career gives her enough mind to stop being worried about the place being bugged. "You know about Phoenix, and that's pretty much who I'm with still, though I'm not very good at what I do for them, honestly." She shrugs. Could just be modest, but it isn't. She knows she's not doing what she's supposed to. Life hasn't stopped sucking lately to settle in. "But I know Cardinal, and apparently you do too."

"We're not on the best terms, mostly personal reasons, nothing else really, but I know he's a professional at whatever it is he does. And he did save me and Abby." Magnes reaches under the blanket and grabs the remote, tossing it over to her in case she wants to channel surf. "Oh man, this girl asked me to join a band yesterday, can you believe that?"

Catching the remote, Gillian just sets it on her leg and doesn't start channel surfing just yet, watching him instead. "Do you actually play an instrument?" she asks, a hint of a smile starting to come to her face, making dimples show up for a minute. "Cardinal's a reliable guy. A lot more than most people are these days. He'll show up and save your ass when you need it, that's for sure."

"Yeah, maybe, I guess I'm just kind of a bitter guy. And yeah, I play an instrument." Magnes holds up his fingers, making piano key hitting motions. "Piano. I met her in a music store yesterday, I was testing a keyboard, mostly because I was curious. So she grabbed a guitar and we started playing Baba O'Riley, it was amazing."

"A cop who could be playing the piano in a band in a few weeks time," Gillian says with that smile still on her face. "I wouldn't mind seeing that. It's better than playing those card games, for sure. If you don't have anywhere to play, there's a couple places I know of. Actually I'm pretty sure you were in there the other night, shitheaded with alcohol. The Rock Cellar?"

"Yeah, I was there, still ashamed of that. Delilah gave me a drink I'm sure she knew I couldn't handle, but, she's still cute." Magnes smiles and shakes his head, dismissing Delilah's mischief. "The girl said she saw what I did at the Rock Cellar, and if I do end up playing in the band, I guess we'd play there."

"The woman who owns the place is pretty nice, bit of a know-it-all, and if she trusts you and you let her get talking she'll tell you about twenty-eight different things that you didn't really need to know," Gillian says with a smile, grinning a bit. "I actually lived in one of the apartments above the Rock Cellar for a while, back when I was having… power switching issues." Of which she's not having anymore. There's a frown at the mention of Delilah, though, as if she's wondering about something.

"Who's the owner? I don't think I've ever met her." Magnes asks, watching Gillian's reaction to the mention of Delilah. he frowns himself, mostly out of concern, then just asks, "What's wrong?"

"I think she owns it, at least. I know she manages the place. Cat Chesterfield. She's this eccentric rich woman. Lawyer and a muscian, which I guess is right up there with cop-pianist." Gillian doesn't quite lose her serious expression, but she shakes her head, "It's nothing. A lot's been happening the last few months. I keep expecting to wake up and find the whole world's destroyed, there's a bunch of books laying everywhere and all the time in the world to read them— and then of course I'd go blind, cause that's what happens." Twilight Zone.

"World's not gonna end, unless we sleep together and collapse the planet in on itself or something. We're all doing what we can. I'm trying to investigate Refrain, Phoenix is taking care of Humanis First, god knows what Eileen is doing, but she's doing something." Magnes raises his shirt again, rubbing his fresh stitches with a wince, suddenly bothered by it. "Just don't stress. If all else fails, we'll do some crazy Doctor Manhattan stuff and terraform Mars and move everyone we know there."

"Having sex with me would end the world," Gillian says with a laugh, but one she doesn't find entirely funny. It could be true, for a couple people. At least one person she knows of would kill her before ending the world. Probably in less than a minute. It wouldn't be so bad if—

Her hand moves and suddenly the television is on and flipping though channels. "You even know Eileen. Hell, Mags. You know just about everyone. I think Phoenix needs all the help they can get with Humanis, whether they ask for it or not. Humanis is everyone like us' problem, not just Phoenix."

"I met Eileen months ago, when she was called Munin. I used to be terrified of her, that was before I knew about all this stuff going on, and before I could, uh, fight." Magnes stares at his stomach, shaking his head. His first gunshot wound may be gone, but, damn. "Christ, Gillian. I've been shot three times, had every bone in my body crushed, tased more times than I care to remember, smacked down the street with a piece of the street, and I keep having this feeling that I've lost an arm before, but it's just a feeling, don't know why. I keep thinking I'm gonna die soon."

"I've died four times," Gillian says quietly, flipping channels as if this is the most normal topic on the planet. "My head was cut off, my body frozen solid until it shattered, my body imploded in a sonic attack and I was nuked at point blank range. They were clones, though— all except the nuking. That was me." She raises her arm up and shows off the strange look to her tattoos, like whole chunks came out of it. "I had an ability that let me come back from it, but it didn't fix my tattoos. I lost my whole leg it seems, cause all my tattoos on my left leg are gone. I don't remember much of it until I was back up."

There's a small pause. "Even before that I saw a hundred some ways that I could die— like one of those choose your own adventure books, only I saw all the 'well shit, you died, start over' endings. That was just seeing it. I didn't feel it. Still threw up over the poor guy's floor, though, and all he did was shake my hand." Augmentation sucks sometimes. "I go into almost everything with Phoenix convinced I'm going to die. And yet, here I am."

"That's… really really horrible. How do you do it? You've been through so much, you really don't deserve it. Have you ever thought about finding a way to control your ability so you can use it tactically instead of worrying about… all of that?" Magnes raises his hands, then looks over at her, asking, "And how do you know you're not a clone and the real you didn't die?"

"You've been through a lot too," Gillian says, looking back over at him and letting the channel sit. It's on a commerical. Her eyes stay on him. "I learned to control my ability to keep it wrapped in most of the time. Gabriel is the one who taught me, actually," she explains, a softer sound to her voice for a moment. When she looks away she adds on, "And I know I'm the real one because I still my clones didn't have all the powers that I absorbed, each one only had one. Right before I lost my ability I was fighting with a lot more than one power."

"Oh, well, that makes sense." Magnes slides from the bed, walking over to her and offering a hand. "I know I might regret saying this, and you might regret agreeing, but what if we fly to a place no one can get hurt, and you try to get used to using your ability? You know, learn some fine control…"

"I have some fine control, a lot more than I did," Gillian says, letting the remote get sat down next to the bean bag on the floor so she can take his hand and get up onto her feet. "I'm doing a lot of training these days. I honestly would rather just not use this stupid ability if I have a choice. I mean I don't even know if there's anything left to learn. I can close it off, and I can augment one or two people instead of a whole group— I can hold in enough energy to keep from passing out. It's mostly everyone else who needs to learn how to handle the extra power. That's how one of my clones got killed. The person used the full extent of their power and pretty much exploded me."

"What if there's a way for you to give someone intuitive control over their augmented ability? Or maybe for you to control it?" Magnes wonders, raising her hand to just stare at it. "And can you slowly slide the scale of augmentation? Like just raise the power a little, but still enough for the person to control?"

"I'm not sure if my ability can do that," Gillian says quietly, but there's something about her voice that seems to be thinking about it, about how it might be possible. "Like increase someone's control as well as their power? I can only give small boosts, and most people can control that much. It's when they don't expect it or I'm just… not being careful and they're touching me that it becomes a problem." Or when she over-boosts them on purpose to try and fuck them up. But she's only done that a few times.

"So why don't we try that? Give me a tiny boost and see what happens, then try and see if you can… I don't know, feel anything. Discovering a new aspect of your ability is tough, trust me." Magnes suggests, still holding her hand, waiting for it. "I'm ready. Actually, do we have to touch? It'll probably be better if we're not touching."

"As far as I can tell, when I'm just letting it out, the person touching me gets the most," Gillian says, trying to think of the best way to explain it. "I also glow where I'm touching them, and they glow too. It's purple, but I won't glow just doing a little bit," she explains, before she mentally loosens the knot in the back of her head and lets it open up piece by piece. A single thread, like a stream of water flows out, toward him. A small boost of power. "What I can feel is the energy going somewhere— towards you since I'm focusing it… I think you have to actually use the power I'm sending out for it to… drain me. I'm not giving you very much, though…" But who knows how it converts. It isn't an exact science.

"But my ability's always—" Magnes stares down at himself, holding his hands out as a purple smokey energy like something one would see in a space photo begins to rise from his entire body. "Is this your purple thing?" he asks, though it's not, it's something from his ability. His clothing is also swaying in the smokey purple energy, his hair as well. "Um…"

"That doesn't really— my purple glow looks different," Gillian says, looking down at her hands as if looking for herself glowing. She's not. It's not her. Or maybe it's a new aspect to her ability she's not aware of? "That— you're not about to blow up or something, are you?" she asks, feeling the tug of energy. It is something in his power. "Should I turn it off?"

"No, I… feel something. Can you turn it up just a little bit more?" Magnes is moving his hand around in the air, the smokey purple energy appearing to follow him, attached. "I think this stuff is my gravity, I can feel it."

"If you explode on me and kill me, I'll kick your ass," Gillian says, though a month ago she could follow up on the threat, now she couldn't… So instead she loosens the knot a bit more to allow more energy out. Not quite doubling the amount she's giving now, but giving more. "You'll be the second purple person I've met, if that's really all you."

The smokey energy instantaneously expands before they even have a chance to blink, stretching out around five feet from him, making it appear as if he's in the midst of a heatwave-like energy and purple swirls mixing into the flow, moving in random directions. If one pays very close attention, they might notice tiny black dots appearing and vanishing at an incredibly rapid pace, like in an old movie. "Crap, this is weird. I mean, it's like I'm outside myself. I can keep it from doing anything, but I'm afraid to try anything. I… don't know how to control this other than keeping it stable, I think it became an external ability. Maybe you should shut it off and we can try this when we're somewhere safer?"

The more it expands, the more concerned Gillian gets. Almost as soon as he mentions shutting it off, she smashes down the energy and knots it all back up in her head. That should take care of the situation pretty fast. "Do you even have any idea what that would have done? If we'd touched or something?" she asks, noticeably concerned. "You know I helped level a whole block of Staten Island's suburbs when a forcefield expanded… and you don't even want to know what happened when I lost control in New Mexico."

"You had control, I trusted you. And I trusted my own control. I just kept myself in check. It was so weird, I felt like I could affect everything the purple stuff was touching." Magnes backs up and sits down once the purple has vanished completely, opening and closing his hand. "But I couldn't, it was like, if I tried to do it I would have been blind. It felt like having phantom limbs or something. I can't even begin to explain it… We have to do that again, but not here, and probably not tonight."

"Can you only use your ability on things you're touching, normally?" Gillian asks, watching him quietly. "Maybe what it was is— I was extending your range. Far as I can tell augmentation can increase a lot of things, range, and power both. Like— weather manipulation. Someone who could control the weather in the state, maybe suddenly could feel the entire eastern seaboard."

"I don't think learning how to control extended range would be very easy, I'm pretty sure I'd have to destroy a few things first. I mean, I don't know if I can move that purple stuff or if I'm just moving what the purple stuff is touching or what…" Magnes moves his hands to her hair, intending to brush through them and lower the gravity so it simply flows very easily with even the slightest movement, even with his hands taken away. "I can control gravity for things I touch, and I can make it stick for a while. That should only last for a minute or two."

"Yeah, we'll have to be careful if we do that, and we may find out you need me to do anything at range," Gillian says quietly, watching him a bit before she thinks of something. "That actually reminds me of— Gabriel. One of the abilities he had was freezing power, ice right? I think he needed to touch things to do it, but he had me augment him. Took almost all my energy but he managed to freeze the pond at Central Park, the one that's supposed to be an ice rink anyway— and he didn't even touch it. Kind of like a freeze ray."

"I think that gives me a great idea." Magnes plops back down on the bed, starting to peel his shirt off again. "What if we go to the Hudson or something, and practice our abilities over the water? You can stay on land where it's safe, but if I'm practicing on the water… what could I hurt?"

"You'll just have to stay within my range, but yeah— that might help things," Gillian says quietly, then reaches up and smacks his shoulder. "I can't promise I'll be able to do this often. I have people I need to take care of, and a shit load of stuff I need to do. I'm trying to learn how to handle a gun. I want to learn how to keep shitpot telepaths out of my head. And I got a handful of kids who I need to read stories to every few nights. But we'll try to do this sometime."

"There's a way to keep telepaths out of your head?" Magnes asks, having heard of such a thing in comics, but… "Wait! You have kids? Who's the father? It's not, uh… you know, is it?"

Gillian had been about to answer on the fact that, of course there's a way to keep telepaths out, or so she was told, but the questions that follow make her lips part and her eyes widen. For a moment she looks rather confused. Then… she smacks his shoulder again, lightly. "I'm helping out at an orphanage on Staten Island. It's called the Lighthouse."

"Ow!" Magnes rubs his shoulder, then smiles. "Alright, sorry. You'll call me, right? And you can stop in whenever, just call first, don't want Claire to think I'm up to no good with another girl."

"You can invite her along," Gillian says with a shrug. "She's probably the safest person on the planet for you to practice with anyway," she says, giving him a smile. "No need to do this shit behind her back, especially when it is just power lessons."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Then Magnes finds himself rubbing his hickies again, cheeks going red. "Alright, let's get together soon. And hey, maybe you can come to band practice and see how I do."

"If I got time, I will stop by to see your band practice," Gillian assures, before she reaches to get her bag so she can head out. "Try not to get shot this week, okay?"

"I'll try, I don't wanna die when I'm finally learning how awesome it is to make out." Magnes raises a hand to see her off, then lays back with a relaxed groan. "See you later, Gillian."


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