ax_main | Tommy and Shen

Shen decides to stop being an idiot and go talk to Tommy, in the wake of their mission.

As long as school hadn't started, Shen tried to cook her own meals as much as possible. It was something she loved doing, after all, and today, she'd prepared some crispy tofu and a spice red chile sauce to go with her bowl of quinoa and vegetables. Still, she headed to the cafeteria to eat, social creature that she was. She looked around at who was there, hesitated a second when she saw Tommy on his own, then headed over to his table. They hadn't really talked since she'd nearly freaking killed him, and that was mostly on her, and only minorly on him being a jerk. She might as well check in on him, since Kitty had said he was on the mission with her.

"Hey. Mind if I join you?" she asked as she stopped across from him, dressed in her usual shorts and tank. The answer might totally be a 'yes, fuck off', after all.

Tommy'd been focused on lunch and hadn't noticed her come in. His brain spinning and darting from memory to memory, trying to figure out exactly how he felt about the events of the previous couple of days. Relieved? Maybe mostly relieved. Also dirty, somehow, in a way he couldn't manage to shower off.

He glanced up as Shen stopped in front of him, and nodded in response to her question. "Sure, if you can find room." He mouthed off purely out of habit - see? everything's fine - even though he was smiling as he gestured at the five empty seats around him.

"Guess everybody's had lunch already?" she offered, looking around the mostly empty cafeteria. She set her bowl and cutlery down across from him and turned the chair around, because she still hated chair backs with her wings. She straddled it and picked up her fork. "How're you doing? Kitty told me a bit about the mission." Enough that she knew he had been on it, and they'd come back empty-handed after meeting those other mutant teens.

That hadn't taken very long at all. Tommy wondered for a moment exactly how much of anything Kitty had told her, but then... Kitty wasn't a jerk. She liked following rules, and Xavier had been pretty specific about not spreading some of his shit around the gossip network. So maybe she hadn't.

He shrugged. "It'll take a couple more days to get the smoke smell out of everything, but I guess that's the price you pay for being on a strike team." And he grinned, giving her a shrewd look.

Shen didn't seem fazed by the look he was giving her, even as she got started on her bowl. She swallowed, then remarked, "So you were totally right. About our first conversation." If he didn't want to talk about his feelings - and she hadn't expected him to want to, he wasn't that sort - she would skip right past them. "Xavier is mounting a strike team. Or several strike teams."

"What can I say?" he shrugged. "It fit the evidence." He took a minute to plow through more of the block of lasagna on his plate. "How much did Kitty tell you about what went down?"

"You went in, but those other mutant teens had already wiped everything, so you came back empty-handed?" she offered. Which Kitty was really bummed about, which Shen hated. It wasn't her fault they'd gotten there too late.

Tommy nodded. "So you won't need me to give you background when I say Xavier's obviously not the only one getting a band together."

"Not really a surprise," Shen remarked. "Do you think those kids were government, or private?" Of course the government would get in on this. It was what governments did.

He didn't need to consider it at all before shaking his head. "Definitely not feds. They were bitchier at each other than we were, and making it up as they went along same as us. I got hit with some kind of blast - Kitty said it was an electromagnetic pulse - and the girl that did it took out their own team's speedster as well. I wasn't there to see him go down, but I got the strong feeling from what the others said that it wasn't exactly tactical genius on display."

Shen's eyebrows raised at the tale. "Yeah. Huh." She blinked out of it and focused back on him. "But you're okay? From that blast. What did it do?"

That she was asking was... cool. Unexpected, but cool. "Yeah, I'm tougher than I look," he grinned, making a show of cracking his neck. "It was like the mother of all charlie-horses, but like, everywhere. And all at once. It sucked, I don't recommend it."

Shen's sympathetic grimace confirmed her agreement. "Good thing they weren't hostile in the end, huh?" Hopefully they wouldn't become hostile, either, but it would help, knowing what they were. "I'm glad you're okay. The Prof didn't know anything about them?"

Tommy stabbed at his meal with his fork. "Not that he'd tell us. You know Xavier - all platitudes, but as for actual useful details, it's 'leave that to the grownups.'

Shen rolled her eyes. "But send kids out on potentially dangerous missions." Not that she was opposed to that. If there were assholes out there experimenting on mutants, she wouldn't want to sit on her hands. But transparency would make her feel less like Xavier was using them.

"Why not?" Tommy replied, his voice dry and bitter, even for him. One thing he'd lost during the mission was that ability to detach that he liked so much. "The way things are going it looks like there are going to be a lot more good little soldiers where we came from."

Except... that wasn't exactly fair either. Xavier'd pulled a lot of the students out of bad places (except him. That is, he had, but when Tommy had been on his way to not needing help anymore.) Tommy raked his hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead, and he slumped back in his seat. "Okay, that was cynical even for me. Xavier's all right. Could be a lot worse. At least the food's good and there's enough of it."

Shen opened her mouth to make a joke about them having really different standards, but then closed it immediately. It was the truth, not a joke, and joking about it would be a crass display of privilege. Her uncle had made sure she never wanted for anything. "Yeah, I still think he gives a shit," she simply confirmed instead. "Way to pull a Dumbledore, though."

Tommy smirked, the ridiculousness of it all settling in. "Do you figure the Danger Room counts as Defense Against the Dark Arts?" Not that he'd actually read all the books, but you couldn't exactly exist in the English-speaking world and not absorb it all without even trying.

"Room of Requirements," Shen replied instinctively, and grimaced. "Oh my god, this is way too weird. At least we don't get sorted into houses." Not enough of them for that, she was pretty sure.

"Give it time." Tommy locked his hands behind his head, rocking back on two chair legs until he was balanced on just those. "Anything exciting happen around here while we were off raiding Doctor Frankenstein's lair?"

"If it did, I missed it," Shen replied, still working on her bowl of food. Either up in the sky or logging time in the Danger Room, depending on whether it was free.

"Ah well," Tommy shrugged and dropped the chair back to the floor, the front legs landing with a scrape-thump. "It's probably for the best. The last thing we want is that other 'strike group' - or whatever - making this place exciting."

"You think they're trouble?" Shen checked. It wasn't a given, but Kitty had sounded like she thought so as well.

Tommy gave the question real consideration. "Some of them are definitely trouble -- and this is me saying that. The others I didn't see for long enough to get a read on."

She made a frustrated noise. "It really sucks that we don't know anything about them." What did they stand for? What was their endgame? Trouble could come in so many forms.

"We're working on that," Tommy replied, then worried for a moment about shooting his mouth off. But it wasn't like Shen was going to broadcast it all over school or rat them out to the teachers, or whatever would get Kitty in trouble. Tommy was expendable; her not so much. He waffled over it, then decided to stay on the discretion side. For now. At least until after it was done.

"They've got a boss - someone they answer to. And the ones we met can't be all of them -- one of the girls made a phone call, and then they teleported out. So there's at least one more out there, probably more, and I'd be willing to bet they've got a base of operations, like we do."

"Which can be anywhere, depending on their teleporter's range," Shen stated with a nose wrinkle. "How are you working on it?" Of course she'd ask, after a set-up like that.

Ah, fuck. He'd said too much - a regular hazard when his mouth ran faster than his brain. Still, Shen was on their side. "Kitty's working on a tracking device, something we can tag one of them with next time we have a run-in."

"Good idea," Shen noted with a nod. Of course it was; Kitty was involved. "Well, as long as you don't pick the EMP girl, anyway." Obviously.

"Oh man," Tommy groaned aloud. "You know, I hadn't even thought of that. Not in terms of planting it on her, because I'm not actually suicidal, but if she's where-ever they are. Is ambient emp a thing?"

"Um, ask Kitty?" Shen offered. "I'm not the genius here."

"Fair enough." Tommy sucked back his drink and slurped the straw around the bottom because life was stupid sometimes, and rude noises helped.

"Did you have comms on you?" Shen asked, still thinking about it despite her words. She had no idea how much like a movie this had actually been - or not.

Tommy cocked an eyebrow. "What, like earwigs?" he made a little spinny motion behind his ear like the cords on the earpieces high-end security guys wore. "Nah. Nothing so excitingly high-tech. It was us in hoodies with a van. Why?"

"You would've known if she'd shorted them out, right?" Shen shrugged. "Phones?"

"See, this is why I ask you these kinds of questions too," Tommy nodded appreciatively. "You know shit. Mine got fried, but it was on me, and I got fried. So That's not exactly a fair point. I'm pretty sure Yana's didn't, though."

"So her EMP is probably not on all the time, at least?" Shen offered hopefully. She wasn't sure she deserved that compliment about knowing shit, but there was warm satisfaction at the thought of having helped. "Not in a way that would damage your tracker." Or maybe it was on all the time at short range, whatever. As long as they didn't plant it on that girl, they were good.

Tommy nodded. "Fingers crossed. I gotta mention it to Kitty, though. Maybe she can build something in that'll protect it."

"If anyone can..." Shen didn't bother finishing the sentence; it was too obvious. Much better to finish her bowl of food, instead.

"Pretty much. If only she were dishonest enough to let me pay her to do my math homework, I might actually finish the stupid modules before they're due," he griped, still grinning.

Shen huffed out a laugh, unsurprised. She smiled at him for a beat, and then told him, "Hey, I'm sorry about. That day I nearly killed you." She'd almost phrased it another way, but she ought to own it. "I was freaked out."

He paused, surprised, fork halfway to his mouth. "That was like, years ago," he objected, waving off her apology. "And you didn't almost kill me, I was just giving you shit. I'm an ass. It's kind of my thing."

"I did so almost kill you," Shen retorted. "If I'd come in from a different angle - well. I'm just glad I didn't."

"It's ancient news, already forgotten. But if it's been bugging you," Tommy offered, "we can go to the Danger Room and I can blow up something behind you and call it even."

"Not sure how a concussion ranks as far as closure goes." Shen smiled. "But we could always hit the Danger Room and not give me one." She'd been spending too much time there on her own; it would be good to check out some of the programs that being with someone else would unlock.

Tommy nodded. "Sure. I'd be down for that. It'd be cool to see those claws of yours in action."

"They're talons," she answered mechanically, more than a little used to correcting people on that front by now.

"Talons, sorry. Either way. I can check and see when there's an open slot, let you know," Tommy offered.

"Sounds like a plan," Shen confirmed with a nod, and put her cutlery inside her empty bowl before standing. "Thanks for the company."

Tommy nodded in return, watching for a moment as she stood to head on her way. Once she was gone he let some of the exhaustion take over again, his shoulders sagging. There might be Danger Room spaces open that afternoon but he wasn't going to take one. Tomorrow, maybe, when his head wasn't hurting, or his thoughts drifting back to the moment the walls had begun to crumble into dust. He'd be better by tomorrow.