2009-03-01: Not So Alien Invasion?

Players:

OldCandy_icon.jpg Kitty_icon.jpg Kevin_icon.jpg

Summary: Candy, Kitty and Kevin shouldn't be in Grand Central Station. They meet up and discuss the possible people behind the invasion.

Date: 2-1-2009

Log Title Not So Alien Invasion?

Rating: PG13 (Language.)


Grand Central Station

Grand Central Station is one of the main hubs to get in and out of Manhattan. The main concourse is vast with marble covering the floor and walls. Looking up at the ceiling is looking at a piece of art, mapped out is all the constellations in gold on a blue background. In the center of the main concourse is a circular information booth displaying departure and arrival times of the various trains. Once you leave the Main Concourse there are many expensive shops to be found. There is also a major food court within the Station, where visitors can feast and chat before their train arrives.


This is definitely not where Kevin wants to be, and it's never taken him this long to get to Greenwich Village before. But these are different circumstances! And when he said he was hungry to that random super hero, he meant he was hungry. So he's stopped by Grand Central Station's food court to see what he can take. The whole station is empty and should have been locked down tight, but when you can change your size and shapes, locks are only a formality. The smell of melted cheese and seasoned beef comes from the kitchen of the station, where the lanky, bald man patiently stirs in a pot. A dish of nacho chips sits on a counter close to him, and a chef's hat leans lazily on his head.

'Should have been' is definitely the operative phrase here; the ways people always manage to find to get into large buildings are in, as usual, abundance. There are windows, there are badly-locked doors, there are doors with locks that it only takes a swift kick to remove, there are entrances from the tunnels, and there are only a few cops patrolling the entire building— after all, it's a *boring* building for potentially panicking mobs.

On the other hand, some people just don't pay attention to things like walls.

"Are you reeeeally supposed to be in here?" comes a voice from behind Kevin. It belongs to a girl who's leaning halfway out of the wall next to the industrial-size fridge. Nevermind she shouldn't be in here either.

There are a lot of people lurking in Grand Central Station that shouldn't be there, and Candy is certainly one of them. But it's not her fault! Her latest bounty decided to try and duck away from her within the locked up station, feeling that even if he couldn't get away, there'd be plenty of places to hide. And damn was he right. Skulking through the halls, Candy's sneakers are silent, eyes shifting to the sound of voices coming from near by. She ducks low, clicking the safety off of her guns as she slinks towards the two.

Kevin spins around at the sound of the voice and screams, "DON'T TAKE MY DNA! IT'S ALL I HAVE!!!" The spoon he was stirring cheese with is dropped, and an oversized mallet extends itself from his palms. He swings wildly with it, eyes closed, which seems to be his standard strategy for dealing with the alien threat he hasn't seen yet.

Kitty steps out of the wall and into the furious assault, ignoring the mallet whizzing through her person in favor of brushing some dust off her jeans. "Hey-" she starts helpfully, "-you might want to stop before you smash up some franchise-owner's livelihood."

Candy peeks around the side of a nearby pole, blinking for a second as she spots the goings on from the voice. "What the crap.." she asks dumbly as she stares at the mallet handed guy swing right through the girl. Her arms fall down to her sides, fingers slipping away from the triggers as she keeps most of her body tucked safely behind the post. "Um." What could she /possibly/ say right now?

Kevin holds his mallet high, opening one eye, and then the other to look at Kitty. "…." He eyes her, then the racks that have had their contents rattled by his wild flailing. "…. What the heck are you doing here? There's aliens everywhere out there! Shouldn't you be off cowering someplace like a sane person?" The mallet shrinks and disappears into his palms before he turns to pick up his stirring spoon. His chef's hat stays firmly on his head despite him bending in half to grab the utensil.

"I'm looking for a spy. And they're just aliens!" retorts Kitty, crossing her arms and leaning against the inside of the counter. Solid /now/, apparently. "And besides, they're not even aliens. They're just from another Earth down the line. And /besides/ besides, who ever said I was sane?" She's silent for a second. "Can I have some of your nachos?"

Candy watches the two interact for a second, brows knitting in confusion. Alright, just stick this in the back of your mind for later, right now there's a job to do. With a deep breath, Candy steps out from the post, guns tucked safely away but within easy grabbing distance. "I don't mean to interrupt but did either of you see a large, bald man with a tattoo over his left eye run by here?”

Kevin listens to Kitty throughout her justification, eyeing her in between tending to the food on the stove. The nacho cheese has come to delicate simmer, and the seasoned beef in a skillet is waiting to be served. "How do you know I'm not making Alien Baby Nachos to impregnant hapless suckers with," he asks, then spins once again when Candy speaks. "DON'T TAKE MY DNA!! IT'S ALL I—Oh. Another chick." He sighs deeply and takes off his chef's hat, using it to wipe his face. It becomes a white hand towel as soon as he starts wiping, then when he shakes it out, it's a hat again and goes right back on his head. "Well, if you two are aliens, can I at least eat before you take me to your leader? I've been sneaking around the streets all day and I am runnin' low on fun fuel right now."

Kitty's hand is over her face; she drops it when she turns to look at Candy. "No, I just got here, sorry. What'd the tattoo look like, though?" And then it's obvious she's given up -her- quest, at least for now, because she boosts herself up onto the counter she'd been leaning against, and leans against the wall next to it. "And cut it out with the aliens. I've met the kind of aliens that put baby alien eggs inside people, and you're not it." This she says as she's surveying the nachos. Because she's -going- to steal some.

Candy watches the two of them with curiosity, a million questions fluttering around in her mind, shoved back so that she can avoid making an ass of herself. "What? Oh, um, it's like a tiger resting over his eyebrow and down along his face towards the temple." Candy draws a line along her brow as she describes it. "He skipped bail, now he's trying to duck in here and hide." Not that she can blame him, probably safer in here than on the streets anyway. She glances between them a couple times before just blurting out, "So you think it's really aliens?"

No need for theft! Kevin may be rightfully paranoid right now, but he's always in a giving mood. While the stove is turned off, he wanders over to a stack of plastic bowls and slides two of them onto the counter. Chips are heaped out from a larger bowl that was sitting on the counter, before he turns and reaches for the skillet. Beef is added first, a little to each of the small bowls and the rest to the larger bowl. Then comes the cheese, drizzled neatly over the smaller bowls but heaped onto the larger one. Both the skillet and the nacho pot are set aside in a sink, before Kevin reaches for the bigger bowl and motions to the smaller ones. "Well, dig in, could be our last meal," he says, forming a large fork in his hand and using it to shovel nachos into his own mouth. As he listens to Candy, a tattoo similar to the one she describes appears on his own face. "You mean like this," he asks out loud, pointing with the fork. "Heck yeah it's aliens! What else could be doing it?"

"Ohhh my GOD, it's NOT ALIENS!" Kitty bursts out, unfolding her arms to wave them around in protest. "BELIEVE me. I KNOW from ALIENS. They're not Kree, they're not Skrull, they're not Shi'ar, or Brood or Phalanx or Technarchy or even the stupid Celestials! What they *are*, though, is people that look like people from here- which is NOT to say they're Skrulls because they're NOT- but they're *not* from here. They're from another Earth. Parallel dimension kind of thing." She does, in fact, as she's performing this little rant, scoop up one of the little bowls and give Kevin a really quick big grin (eee, nachos!) before carrying on with it. "And I'm not even kidding. It's *true*." Obviously she -is- crazy.

Candy's eyes narrow at the sight of the tattoo appearing over Kevin's eye, wondering if perhaps her bounty had been him all along. But it doesn't look quite right,and the colors are wrong, telling her it was just a good guess on the mutant's part. "Yeah, kinda like that," she murmurs thoughtfully, eyes sliding to the hand-fork with mild concern. She doesn't eat any of the nachos despite how tasty they may look, going slightly wide eyed at Kitty's outburst. "You certainly seem to know a LOT about aliens.." her tone is laced with skepticism as she studies Kitty.

Kevin stares, mouth gaped open and full of nachos while Kitty goes on a rant. His gaze slides to Candy when she makes her skeptical statement, then back to Kitty, squint and full of suspicion. "You sure do," he mumbles and shovels more nachos into his mouth.

Here's the part where Kitty catches the skepticism and then the suspicion on top of that, and rolls her eyes. She holds up a finger while she finishes chewing her first (awesome) mouthful of nachos, then says distinctly, "Hi, I'm Shadowcat, I spent my fourteenth birthday kidnapped into space. I really, really, really wish I *didn't* know so much about aliens. But don't worry about it, these guys don't want to hurt anyone who's minding their own business." And another bite! Yum.

Candy arches a brow, her expression shifting to reveal nothing. "Right." Plenty of people have been 'kidnapped by aliens', it's a story she's heard plenty of times. "So, Shadowcat? Is that like your hero name? Or the name your parents actually gave you?" She gives Kevin a look as he picks up on her skepticism, returning an unreadable glance to Kitty. "But yeah, I'm Candy. Nice to meet you."

Kevin eats slowly and noisily, chewing with his mouth open while he focuses a deadpan look on Kitty. He's not buying it, either, but then after a few of those handfuls of nachos start giving him the food fuel he needs, the little mouse in his mental wheel starts running.
Starting up, please wait….

Loading….
Insert Disk into slot A:….
Start Disc Found, Loading…
Loading….
Welcome to Kevin Vista 2009!

"Waitaminute." He points a nacho-covered finger at Kitty. "You were with those guys outside the dome! The… What you callit? Hexx-Men? X-MEN!!!" Suspicion drops from his face, replaced by surprise.

"Um," says Kitty, the personification of dubiousness, eying Candy. "Did I phase into the wrong universe myself…?" she starts, and then Kevin has his EPIPHANY. When Kitty's /positive/ he's not going to have an aneurysm, she *beams* at him. "You did it! I'm proud of you." She takes another bite of the nachos and chews-and-swallows hurriedly, then waves a hand vaguely in the air with the obvious intent of communicating something unknowable to Candy. "It's my codename. I figured you had a better shot at recognizing it than my real name, and therefore *believing* me. About the stupid aliens." She (somewhat delicately) brushes her hand off on her jeans, get excess salt off it, then sticks it out. "Hullo Candy. I'm Kitty Pryde, beleaguered mutant superhero and all-around bad-at-finding-crabby-English-spies girl."

X-Men? Wait, Candy's heard of THEM before. "Oooooh. Okay, you're one of them. Sorry, I tend to focus more on the bad guy side of things. But like, the human bad guys. You know? Find them and bring them back sort of thing." Some detective she was in this situation. "I'm still not sure about the alien thing, but hey, you'd know better than me." Candy shrugs and glances to Kevin with a look of expectation.

Kevin looks at Candy, pointy a cheese-covered thumb to Kitty. "Didn't you hear her warble earlier? They're not aliens." His brow knits. "So what are they if they're not aliens? And what do they want with us? And how the heck do I get out of here? Turns out, the way I came in isn't open anymore."

Quick, bright grin at Candy; Kitty finishes off her nachos while Candy and Kevin are talking. Sliding off the counter to toss the empty paper bowl in the trash, she goes to wash her hands off properly. "They're from a parallel universe. I don't know what they want with us, but it looks like they're only fighting with people who fight them first. If you need out, I can get you out, but then you'll be stuck on the outside."

Candy stares at Kitty for a second. "…" Life just got a whole lot more interesting. "Wait. So the heroes we've seen around that have been acting weird aren't actually the heroes we've come to know and.. well, know?" Candy looks mildly relieved at the news, though still mildly concern. "But still, what could they possibly want here? Even if they aren't fighting first, they've stopped people from getting in or out. That's not exactly 'We come in peace."

Kevin nods a few times at Candy's words. "I gotta agree with the Still-Might-Be-An-Alien, over here." He points that cheesy thumb at her. "I mean, just because you come from another dimension doesn't mean you make plans to take over! Which it looks like they're doing." His brow wrinkles at Kitty's offer. "Hmm. Would you be able to tote me and a friend? I came here to get my boss out. Came through the sewer, but it's closed off now."

The relief is mirrored in Kitty's expression. "No! Not at all. I mean, yes. They're -not- the heroes you know, they're duplicates from another world a lot like ours. And I seriously… I don't know what they want. Obviously they want -something-, but none of them have explained themselves to -me- yet." She dries her hands off, then gestures at the nachos. "Finish up. I can take you and a friend, yeah. One at a time, because I don't want the forcefield strengthening randomly while we're in the middle of it, and me with no concentration left to spare." Then the first thing Kevin said there processes, and her eyebrows go up. "I know people from other dimensions aren't always gonna try and take over. I know they're not all bad, too. 'Earth very much like ours' generally tends to mean 'same variety of goobers and good guys'. It's just that these guys definitely *do* want something, and they *aren't* afraid to try and force it."

"Yeah, but see, that whole 'forcing it' thing makes them not so good in my opinion. Maybe other alternate dimensions you've been to have people that aren't going to try and take over. But like you said, you have NO idea what these people want. Just because they haven't attacked yet doesn't mean that they aren't preparing for it. Maybe these people are out testing the waters, checking our strengths against theirs. Maybe they know who'll attack first and seek them out as a part of that test." Candy takes a deep breath and shrugs. "Yeah, they could just be experimenting and stuff. But I prepare for the worst, that's how I roll."

Kevin laughs loud and airily, like it's forced and trying to be funny when it's not really. "Yeah, not everyone from other dimensions…." He trails off, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. Then he blinks and holds his hand forward, eying the nacho fingerprints. Nacho cheese has been rubbed onto the back of his bald head. "Well, all I wanna know is when the army's gonna come in, because we can't stay like this."

"The army, except for the guys who were already stationed here, can't get in," says Kitty patiently. "They - but probably SHIELD first - can deal with it once we've taken out the rest of the forcefield generators." Starting to go through the counter to get out of the little kiosk-thingy, she nods to Candy, "They *do* sound not so good. And I'm not assuming they -are- good guys. I mean, yeah, hello, giant dome over Manhattan. And that's a good theory, the testing." Then she eyes Kevin. "Wash your hands!"

Candy nods slowly. "Well, I'm not a mutant or anything. But I've got some power if you need any help. Not being able to leave the island is really putting a cramp in my business." Candy glances at Kevin and wrinkles her nose as he leaves cheese on the back of his head. Ew. "Testing is the best idea I can come up with. Seclusion first, then starting to pick fights. I feel like I'm in an ant farm just waiting for some duchebag to shake the hell out of it."

Kevin blinks at Kitty. "… Yes, mom," he states in a snide tone, but does head over to the sink. His big bowl of nachos is empty and ready to be washed, along with the rest of the dishes he used. "Well this ant's not waiting to be attacked," he calls over the sound of rushing water. If the two are looking, they'll see that his bottom half has extended into the latter sections of an ant, and a pair of ant-like antennae are jutting from his chef's hat. The top half still looks human and works on the dishes. "I'm gonna find Hilary and I'm gonna get out of here!" He turns off the water and rotates, wiping his hands on a real towel this time. "You can tag along if you want, but I'm not slowing down and I am gonna take a few shortcuts you might not fit into."

Kevin says, "Well, I can get you out too," Kitty offers Candy, and then she's zipping up her jacket. "But this should really be over soon. I mean, how many superheroes are there in this city? Sometimes it seems like half the population…" She's shaking her head, then, and making cheerful shooing gestures. "Go on. I'll meet you and whoever else at the Third Avenue Bridge in East Harlem at-" Checks her watch. "-ten tonight. That should give me plenty of time to find my spy, and you plenty of time to find Hilary, and -you- plenty of time to find your tattoo guy. I figure nobody's watching the crossings to the Bronx."

Candy shakes her head. "Thanks for the offer, but it's better that I'm in here, just in case. Besides, I can catch up with some of the closer to home work I've been putting off. Like the tattoo guy." Speaking of which, Candy pulls a gun out and checks it, holding it loose at her side as she gives the other two a nod. "Be careful though?" With that she gives a little wave and heads off deeper into Grand Central.

Kevin waves to Candy as she leaves. "Bye… What a weirdo," says the man who's half-ant right now. "All right, I'll get there and back as fast as possible. I swear it!" He shrinks down into a rat wearing a chef's hat, then as an afterthought, pulls the hat off his head and stuffs it behind himself. "Just don't leave without us!" He scampers off, squeezing behind the fridge and disappearing in a small hole the station probably doesn't know is there.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License