ax_main | Brotherhood: Pyro and Phantazia

Pyro joins Eileen for breakfast the morning after the mission. He is obnoxious about it, at first, but she manages not to fold him up like origami--and even makes him pancakes.

Pyro was a morning person. He might have wondered whether it would have been the case if he'd never lived on the street, but the thing was, Pyro was also not big on what-ifs. Life was what it was.

And, these days, life was pretty sweet.

After a shower, he hit the common room and dug out an open bag of Doritos - breakfast of champions, or something. He sat up on the pool table, set the open bag down beside him so he could just use the one hand to eat, and flicked his zippo open with the other one.

He grew the small flame into a line of fire that moved across the room, zigging and zagging however he fancied. It was in the backdrop of his mind, something he did mindlessly, while he thought back on the kids they'd run into the day before - including Minimoff there. But that was the twins' mystery. He was more curious about the group in general, and who had put them together. There had to be someone. Mutant teenagers wouldn't just decide to band together and go investigate shady-as-fuck facilities without a leading force behind them.

Case in point, they had Magneto to thank for all this.

Where the fuck was everyone anyway? It wasn't that early, was it? Done with the chips, he killed the fire and hopped off the table, determined to go find somebody to spend time with. Hopefully somebody he liked, rather than tolerated.

Eileen, in contrast, was definitely not a morning person. Or an afternoon person. Or even an evening person, really; her personality retained its characteristic prickliness throughout pretty much all her conscious hours. Not that she considered it much of a fault, since it kept the dumbasses at arm's length, and let the people who were worth talking to know what they were getting into right up front. Kind of like warning coloration, but in the form of blistering sarcasm and profanity.

After rolling out of bed and hauling on her rattiest but most comfortable pair of jeans, she drifted through the refurbished halls of Asteroid M with no particular destination in mind. Sometimes, she just like to follow the flow of electricity through the building, listening to it sing through the aged paneling. It occurred to her that maybe this was the reason she was so impatient with the usual empty chatter people used to fill up their time: concentrating on a conversation forced her attention away from the music that constantly surrounded her, and how could that not be irritating?

Or, possibly, she was just bitchy. Maybe a fifty-fifty split. Analyzing her own behavior was not particularly a thing Eileen did.

Eventually, her circuit brought her to the rec room, where the Brotherhood tended to congregate when they weren't training or receiving instruction from Magneto. She wasn't surprised to find Pyro there. Very little surprised Eileen, these days. Even teleporters created electromagnetic disturbances that gave notice of their arrival. She offered the firebug a wave which probably betrayed her half-awake state, but her glowing eyes widened immediately when they fell upon his breakfast. "Are those Cool Ranch?" she asked. Followed immediately with, "Gimme."

Pyro tilted his head to the side, looking about as sorry as he didn't feel. "Shoulda gotten here earlier, blabbermouth. They're gone." He crumpled up the empty bag and threw it into the trash... or that had been the plan, anyway, but it bounced off the edge and fell to the floor. "Ugh."

That prompted her to flip him the bird, though she did lower her altitude so she could scoop the wrapper off the floor and drop it in the trash properly; Magneto was pretty hands-off about most things not related to training or missions or crap like that, but there were few things guaranteed to piss him off faster than food-garbage just laying around. "Go fuck a house fire, Pyro," she told him irritably. "I already got read the riot act by M. I don't need your shit on top of it."

She drifted further into the room, grumbling, "It's not like I'm the only one who's ever fucked up in the field. You guys make it sound like we traded email addresses and favorite boy-bands and fuck-all. I didn't tell 'em anything they wouldn't have figured out on their own, eventually. But, no. Everybody's gotta jump all over my case ..." Eileen trailed off grouchily, floating over in the direction of one of the old arcade games. They had a song that was unique, very different from modern electronics, and maybe just the thing to calm her down.

Pyro would've asked who'd crapped in her cereal this morning, but this wasn't even a particularly bad mood for her. And she'd picked up after him, which was oddly - considerate - of her. Maybe she wasn't bouncing back from fucking up as well as he'd expected? It wasn't like her to be nice, after all.

He watched her for a second, arms crossed over his chest, then frowned. "Wait. You have a favorite boy band?"

"Fuck no," she replied vehemently, in a voice that brooked no argument. But the faint color that had risen to her cheeks suggested that, just possibly, her temper had caused her to say more than she meant to again. "That was just sarcasm. You know, to underscore my point. Which is that you guys are being fucking dicks, by the way. I mean, it's not like we didn't win, either way."

"We didn't fight," Pyro pointed out. For a second there, he had thought that it might get to that - again, thank you, Eileen - but then Pietro had recovered enough to speak up. No, there hadn't been anything to win. Well, he hoped he'd scored some points with the blonde, but that was about it. "No thanks to you."

As far as he was concerned, this wasn't him being a dick. He was just pointing shit out to her, as long as she was going to be, well, herself, aka a dick, about all of this.

But he really wanted to know about her favorite boy band now.

"We got what we went there for, and they got fuck-all," Eileen snapped back. "That's a win. And why would we fight? They're mutants, too--we have more in common with them than we do any of the assholes in the Right, or any of the flatscans out there," she gestured irritably in the direction of the town beyond the walls of Asteroid M. "Once I knew the speedster wasn't there looking for trouble with us, in particular, I was a regular Miss Fucking Congeniality. Though the girl that was with him--Magik--she was a lot more reasonable about the whole thing."

"That was the blonde, right?" Pyro asked, foregoing any further arguing for the sake of getting more intel on a hot girl. She'd certainly seemed reasonable. Checking his fire out like it was the most amazing thing ever was a definite sign of reason. And taste.

Eileen blinked, a fact made obvious by the sudden disappearance of the violet glow of her eyes, then her look grew sly. "Yeah. The blond. She's a teleporter, looks like. No qualms about busting up flatscan laboratories for mutant torture, either, from the looks of it. Shame we didn't find her first." Before ... whoever was behind this other group had.

"Hey, maybe she could be persuaded over, if she's all that qualms-free," Pyro replied with a bit of his usual smirk. What? It was a nice thought, and the more the merrier.

"Maybe," Eileen agreed with a nod. "She seemed pretty cool. And, hey, maybe she thought there was only one option before. It's practically our duty to Homo superior to introduce her to the other choices available."

"The better choices," Pyro echoed in confirmation. Beyond the fact that Blondie - Magik - was hot, he actually believed that Magneto had it right, that this was the way through. Every mutant with half a lick of sense ought to join him. The more they were, the stronger they would be.

"The better choices," she agreed emphatically with a nod. In Eileen's mind, there really was no question of that: Magneto was the leader they needed to guide their emergent species into the future. The flatscans did nothing but prove time and again that they couldn't be trusted--couldn't even be left alone, really. They had to be dealt with, somehow, and, even if it was unfortunate, the harsh approach seemed to be the only thing they respected. Though, in all honesty, when it came to assholes like the Right, she was only too happy to exercise the most painful applications of her powers.

"I was gonna push on to the kitchen to make some breakfast," she said, by way of a peace offering. "Wanna come with?"

"Sure," Pyro agreed after a beat. She always surprised him when she was nice; each time, it felt like she was setting him up. Maybe that was why she did it, to kick his paranoid tendencies into gear. Still, he was hungry, and he headed for the kitchen. "Yeah, those Doritos were not enough."

She snorted. "Well, stop the fucking presses. But I'm feelin' adventurous, and I think we've got some pancake mix in the pantry somewhere--assuming Freddy didn't make a late-night snack out of it."

"Shit, you actually want to make breakfast?" Pyro echoed, very pleasantly surprised. He'd assumed she'd meant 'taking shit out of cupboards, maybe making some coffee'. "I'll handle the coffee."

"Damn right you will," she agreed as they entered the kitchen area. Eileen drifted toward the pantry, rummaged around for a few moments, then emerged with a "Score!" She collected a mixing bowl and skillet from the modest cupboards, then moved over to the fridge to collect the other stuff she'd need to cause pancakes to happen. "And what the fuck is wrong with making breakfast, once in a while? Maybe I'm just hungry. It's not a big deal. Christ."

Pyro gave her an amused look. He'd never met anyone as prickly as she was, and given the population of their little movement, it was pretty saying. But he didn't mind, most of the time. It was part of her charm, or something. "Hey, I'm all for pancakes. Chill, Taze."

Telling her to chill usually had the opposite effect, but whatever.

"'Taze'?" she demanded, incredulous, poking her head up over the top of the refrigerator door where it stood hanging open. "You didn't really just call me 'Taze'. You couldn't have, because it would be the last thing you did before finding out how much like a tazer I can be. I must have just hallucinated that, since I'm still half-asleep. So hop-to on that coffee." She nudged the refrigerator door shut with one levitating foot, and then moved toward the mixing bowl with her armload of supplies. Humming to herself almost cheerfully, she began combining the ingredients and beating them together with a spoon, and greasing the skillet before letting it heat.

Pyro rolled his eyes when she decided to take issue not with the suggestion to chill, but the shortening of her mutant name. "Whatever," he said as he turned to grab a can of coffee. "Why did you pick Phantazia, anyway? It sounds like that stupid movie." With the broomsticks and the dancing... hippos? Or something? He had very vague memories of it.

She glanced back over her shoulder at him, her smirk taking on a somewhat ... dangerous quality. "Why did I pick Phantazia? Good question." She began playing with the local light waves, contracting and stretching them in pulses, until the whole kitchen was a thrumming mass of shifting, vibrant colors. The toaster and any unattended cutlery rose into the air, their electromagnetic repulsion with nearby objects suddenly sufficient to send them floating through empty space. And, very carefully, Eileen began distorting the equilibrium centers of Pyro's brain--not enough to actually hurt him, but it would make her little show that much more disorienting.

All the while, she continued whipping the batter into an acceptable consistency. "Question answered?"

"Whoa," Pyro let out, having set the coffee pot down a little abruptly. He was holding on to the counters with one of his hands, and torn between amazed and nauseated. "Feels like Acid would've been more appropriate." From the tone of his voice, it sounded like the amazement had won out - for now, anyway.

Eileen chuckled. "It was toss up between 'Phantazia' and 'Iron Butterfly'," she joked, releasing her hold on all the nearby harmonies and letting them return to normal, even as she spooned batter onto the skillet. "But that's just beginner mode. When I really want to fuck with somebody, they usually end up a lot worse off."

"I don't often say this, but I like beginner mode," Pyro stated emphatically, and took a moment longer to get his bearings again, before shaking his head and getting back to the coffee. "Why Iron Butterfly?" He had a feeling she was going to introduce him to the advanced user mode if he started calling her Butterfly, which made her telling him this cruel and unusual punishment. It was like giving him a working zippo that he was not supposed to light.

"Psychedelic rock band from times past," she told him, flipping the first of the pancakes onto the waiting plate at her elbow. "Have a similar effect, you know. With the usual chemical enhancements. Fortunately, my show is chemical-free."

The coffee finally set to drip, he began to pull several bottles and pots out of the cupboards - maple syrup, sugar, jam, chocolate sauce, whatever he could find. "Organic trip. You could make a killing with hippies."

She snorted, pouring another dollop of batter into the skillet and watching it bubble from beneath. "I would, but probably not in the sense you mean. I fucking hate hippies. Peace, love, and understanding? What a crock."

"Do you even know any hippies?" Pyro had to ask. "I thought they all died out in the eighties."

"There are enough left to annoy me," she said, flipping the pancake. "And if they all died out, there wouldn't be anyone left for me to make a killing with, anyway."

"There's always hipsters," Pyro replied, since they were all about that organic shit, weren't they? And they were definitely fucking annoying, so if she wanted to make a literal killing with them, that would be just fine.

Eileen appeared to think about that for a moment, spatula still working, and eventually gave a sour grunt. "As far as 'shit guaranteed to send Phantazia on a psychotic killing spree' goes, hipsters definitely beat out hippies. In fact, anything with 'hip' anywhere in its name is probably on that list, somewhere. But maybe a could murder some hipsters as therapy before peddling organic acid trips to aging Flower Children--you know, take the edge off."

"Sounds like a sound business plan right there," Pyro nodded, and grabbed two mugs out of a cupboard. Or a business model, or whatever you were supposed to call those things. Fuck if he knew.

She gave a dismissive, "Meh." Floating over to the table, she deposited a plate with four pancakes on Pyro's side, then returned to the stove. "We've got more important stuff to worry about, right? Like, for example, who the fuck were those kids who showed up at the lab last night? And, more important, who gives 'em their marching orders?"

"The boss probably has his reasons for not telling us," Pyro answered with a shrug. He'd prefer it if Magneto told them what he knew, sure. But Pyro also trusted the old man. "Not that that makes it suck any less that we don't know shit." And they had it easy; they didn't have to worry about a younger clone of themselves on top of it.

"I know, I know. It still kind of irritating as fuck, though," Eileen griped, leaving the half-cooked batter alone for a moment to float toward the fridge. After retrieving butter, honey, and syrup and depositing them on the table, she returned to the range. "I mean, are they friends? Enemies? Is it fucking complicated? I just kinda need a baseline, so we know how to approach 'em in the future. Though I kinda hope they're friends. Or, at least, complicated-non-enemies. There aren't exactly enough of us running around that we can afford to fight among ourselves." At least, not for keeps. That was just suicidal.

"Complicated non-enemies," Pyro echoed doubtfully, and poured coffee into their mugs. If she wanted it anything but black, she'd have to tell him. "That sounds like a load of bullshit." They should all be on the same side - the right side - Magneto's side.

"Yeah, well," she grunted, returning to her batter and her skillet, and the creating of breakfast carbs, "I'm trying to accentuate the positive. That usually comes off sounding like bullshit. But they're mutants, and they're not with us. This is one of those times I prefer bullshit to the alternative." Which was that they'd end up in a situation where they had no choice but to fight each other. And that would fucking suck.

"For real," Pyro agreed, and left his coffee alone to cool down a little, lathering the pancake on top of the small pile with chocolate sauce. But yeah, he was hoping they'd never have to fight the other kids. They should all be fighting the real enemies - fucking flatscans. He swallowed a bite, then added, "You're good at pancakes."

"Part of me thinks I'd have to be brain-dead to be bad at 'em," Eileen returned, as she worked on finishing up her own breakfast. "But that's the hyper-defensive, bitchy part. So, thanks. Glad I have a future as a short-order cook if this whole war for mutant liberation thing goes south." Not that she really thought it would. They wouldn't let it. And ... if it did. Well, there wasn't much point thinking about the future, at that point.

Pyro was smiling with genuine amusement by the end of her little tirade. "Never change, man," he told her, then shoved another piece of pancake into his mouth.

"No chance of that," she told him, hovering to join him at the table with her own plate in hand. Eileen sat cross legged in the air, set her plate down, and took a deep pull of the black, unsweetened coffee. She set the mug down with a contented sigh. "Good stuff," said the blond, by way of thanks.

That reminded Pyro to take a drink from his own, and he smiled, satisfied. "Coffee's the best." He finished his first pancake and added, his tone very fucking conversational, he could just as easily have been talking about the weather, "So, who is your favorite boy band?"

She glared at him fiercely, the expression somewhat diluted by the fact she was vigorously chewing at that moment. Once she had swallowed (and those were some good pancakes, if she did say so herself), Eileen snapped, "Jesus Christ. You are not gonna let that go, are you?" Sighing, she turned her glare in the direction of her plate and grumbled. "I might once have had a thing for One Direction, maybe."

Pyro smirked at the answer, grabbing more chocolate sauce for his next pancake. "I shoulda bet something on that. I'd ask you which of them you had most of a thing for, but I don't even know their fucking names."

Eileen gave an irritable grunt. "You're not missing much. I was, like, ten fucking years old, for Chrissake. Besides, I'd hate to have to tie your upper digestive tract into a goddamn Halyard knot right after feeding you. Would be a fucking waste."

"Should I know what a Halyard knot even is?" Pyro asked curiously, and got started on his second pancake. He should catch Eileen in a pancake-making mood more often.

"When I do it to your intestines? Fucking painful, is what it is," Eileen returned, though there was no genuine threat in her tone. Pyro wasn't being that obnoxious, by Brotherhood standards, and she was still kind of less generally irritable than usual. They'd done what they'd set out to do, and found some other mutants who weren't total douchebags. They just needed to figure out how to get them on the right side, was all.

Pyro smirked at her answer, expected as it had been. "Boy bands and now knots. You're full of surprises." He sounded like he approved, although he was sure she wouldn't approve of his words.

A blond brow arched over one luminous purple eye. "I'm so happy I have convinced you I'm not the grouchy caricature you always thought I was, fuckstick. Now eat your goddamn pancakes before they get cold."

"Wait a second, I love that grouchy caricature," Pyro protested with a growing smile. It kept shining in his eyes even as he very pointedly did as he was told, and kept eating his pancakes.

"Swell," she returned flatly. "And I hope you one day find the 2-D girl of your dreams. Just keep in mind that this one is as good at turning you inside-out as she is at breakfast." She swirled a bit of pancake in maple syrup, and thrust it into her mouth. "This is pretty okay, though," she admitted. "Not much that can't be improved with a good short-stack."

Brotherhood: Pyro and Phantazia | Backdated 8/17