6/14/08 - Norah
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=NYC= Mutant Affairs - New York Police Department - Upper East Side
Next door to the larger Homicide squad office is Mutant Affairs, labeled in brass letters on the door's smoked glass. Painted in the same dingy, puke-green shade of the hallway, the squad room is a small and busy office, with walls covered by pictures of wanted mutants and clippings of those who still lack a name. Detective desks claim the linoleum floor, islands of order in the ebb and tide of traffic. At the far end of the room, a door leads to a conference room, cluttered with file drawers and the detritus of a responsibility that covers the entire city.
It's a gorgeous Saturday afternoon outside, breezy and warm, the sort that create lines outside of ice cream stores and send droves of people to Central Park. It is a day when Norah would really not be patiently haranguing a receptionist, and yet that is exactly what she is doing. "But I work during those times," she says, exasperated, her folded arms pulling the fabric of her jacket tight across her back.
The receptionist looks equally exasperated. "There's not much else I can do for you. You can e-mail if you have any specific transcripts, and we can put you on the list to receive the transcripts of our press briefings," she explains. "Unless..."
"Unless?" Norah perks up, leaning in with interested gaze.
"Well, if one of our detectives isn't doing anything..." The receptionist does her best this-is-a-huge-favor sigh and picks up the phone, pounding on the appropriate numbers to summon the nearest, idlist detective she can get.
'Nearest' is not available; 'idlist' avows the importance of his current occupation, playing wastebasket ball with crumbled pages of poorly written witness statements. 'Off-duty,' on the other hand, soon ambles out of the back corridors of a neighboring squad room. Det. Rossi is casual in attire today, a pale blue, long-sleeved shirt rolled up over his elbow, its hem tucked into khaki slacks. The explanation for such informality is obvious in the bruises splayed in rapidly darkening tattoo up the side of his head and stretching into his hairline. "Yo," he greets the receptionist, his baritone amiable. "Twinker said you needed me. What's up?"
"She wants to talk to PR, but PR's in Monday, nine-to five. She says -- " the receptionist begins to say, eyes flicking to Norah, before the girl cheerfully interrupts. "I said that most people work those hours, and I wanted to talk to PR now. They said they were blogger friendly. But apparently, you're the next best thing." She grins, and then only then notices the stitches, and her grin fades to concern. She points at the analogous place on her own (unscarred) head. "What happened there?"
"Accident," Rossi says, turning a smoky, green-eyed gaze towards Norah that contains only the smallest hint of puzzled not-quite-recognition. "Sort of thing that could happen to anybody. You'd probably have better luck if you scheduled through One PP," he adds, with a grimace for his own knowledge of the proper channels. "I'm not PR. You want what? Frogger friendly? What the hell's that?"
"We've met before," Norah says, quite a bit familiar with the look Rossi sends her, patiently nudging. "Come on. Met in the bookstore one day? Friend of Ms. Munroe? And blogger." She over-pronounces. "You know, one who blogs."
Rossi says, "Oh," and his brows crimp together as he runs a hand through his hair -- cautiously, with a care for the battered side of his head. "Bookstore. Right." There is no obvious epiphany in his Brooklyn-tinctured baritone. "Munroe. Cadbury. You're a ... friend of hers or something, right? What the fu-- blogging some kind of -- what is that, like tagging? Sounds familiar." A remarkably unconvinced disclaimer, that. Unthinking, he offers Norah his free hand: shake? The knuckles are raw and red, still a little swollen. "Det. Rossi."
"You're clearly not the person I should talk to about this stuff," Norah says, her tone amused. She takes the offered hand with a brief grip, noting the injuries with a quick glance. "I can come back and pick somebody else's brain sometime. It's no trouble. Especially since your brain seems to have put up with enough lately. Was this accident located near a certain school in Westchester?"
"Central Park," Rossi says more cheerfully, a small flicker betraying that he has made the connection at last: slow going, if not unreasonable given his apparent injuries. "There was a thing. You used to be one of Munroe's students. I remember now. Into -- John Adams or something, wasn't it?" His grip tightens briefly, then releases him to shove back into his pocket. "She broke her arm."
"Hey, it's a nice day out. Why don't we walk and talk?" Norah asks, gesturing to the windows, where the sun streams in, beguiling. "And you can tell me how Ms. Munroe broke her arm and /nobody/ told me." She sticks out her lower lip in a pout. "And, yeah, I'm a history person. John Adams is definitely one of my favorite presidents of all time."
Rossi's glance over his shoulder at the hall behind him is a stiff thing, half-finished before he changes his mind and carefully realigns himself to face forward. "Sure," he says, agreeable for all the evident pain that makes his shift of weight a temperate thing. "Only happened yesterday, though. Haven't talked to her since. Haven't had a chance to call--" He jerks his thumb back at the corridors that produced him, a cryptic little gesture that conveys nothing beyond a reminder of their existence. "I think that Canadian asshole smashed into her."
"I just hate the color of the walls here," Norah says by way of explanation as she pushes her way out the door, holding it open for Rossi to follow. Once safely out the door, she adds, "Also, all the cops listening in give me the jeebies. And I guess if this all just happened yesterday, I can forgive not getting the news. Who's the Canadian asshole? And why was there smashing?"
The detective, following Norah with a slightly limping stride that speaks of other, more hidden injury, makes a deprecating gesture with the hand not currently trapped by his pants. "The guy with the hair," he says vaguely, by way of clarification. "You know. The one with the good beer that's boffing Grey. Logan. Magneto threw him at us. He have pins in his bones or something? Didn't occur to me to ask." By the slightly dreamy disinterest in his face, at odds with the sharper curiosity of his earlier, first encounter with Norah, it is a matter of relative unconcern to him, still.
"There's a bus stop bench there, let's just sit down," Norah says, a stitch of concern between her eyebrows at the limping stride. Fortunately, it's a Saturday, so the bench is abandoned. "Oh, yeah, you could say he has pins in his bones," she says, chuckling a little. "A lot of them. He could tear anybody else to pieces, but Magneto --" she shakes her head, pressing her lips together unhappily. "Okay. Are you alright? Why were you even at the station after getting a Canadian thrown at you? Shouldn't you be taking it easy?"
The hand waves again, then finds its way to Rossi's head to rake through the thick shock of hair. Sunlight picks out the grey amongst the black, highlighting it in thin streaks of silver. The detective grins crookedly. "Paperwork," he says, made cheerful again. "Never ends. Like death and taxes, except it comes around daily instead of once a year. Had to file my report while it was fresh in my memory. Don't worry about me," he adds, squinting towards the bench. "I've been worse. What the fuck's a blogger, anyway?"
"So I'm rescuing you from paperwork! I'm a hero!" Norah declares, triumphantly. "Sort of." She clambers onto the bench, pulling her feet up beneath her to sit cross-legged on it. "And a blogger is... I can't believe I have to explain this to you. Like a reporter, but less so. I have a website. Mostly I'm an aggregator. I gather all the mutant-related news and link to it so people can go to my blog for a handy one-stop shop for mutant-related things. Sometimes I comment on them, add my thoughts, ask for discussion in the comments, whatever. Sort of like a reporter, only less so."
There is a moment while the detective's muzzy brain picks its way through the explanation. At the far end, it hesitates over a selection of questions, then picks on one, critical word. "Reporter." Rossi eyes Norah askance, not noticeably motivated to join her in the seat. "Oh." And, "Mutant reporting?" Worse and worse. Chagrin begins to stomp through his expression, followed by heavy-footed suspicion.
"Not like /that/," Norah says, catching onto his expression. "I'm just an interested person and news-gatherer. I'm not trying to get scoops or make waves or... whatever. I just provide a forum for opinions that are a little bit hard to find in newspapers or on TV or whatever, you know? I'm very normal." She pauses, revises. "Okay, I'm not /normal/, but I'm not scary, either. If you want to talk without me sticking stuff on the blog, I can totally keep everything under the lid. May Ms. Munroe zap me if I don't." It's like the Mutant equivalent of cross your heart and hope to die.
Except a lot more exciting in the implementation. The detective's tightening shoulders relax by increments, brought down from around his ears to a more settled slouch that curves his spine. "Normal's relative," he says, his baritone flat, but rounding slowly towards the Brooklyn cadence again. Perhaps he will sit, after all. It is an awkward process, a matter of long limbs and uncooperative joints. "You just collect stuff? So other people do all the writing? Don't know how private the thing yesterday was. It wasn't quiet, anyway."
"Sometimes I write, but it's not, like, investigative journalism," Norah explains, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. "It's just me and what I think about whatever issue. I don't think I have the journalism credentials to break a story. If I find whatever happened in some other paper, I'll write about it. If not, /I/ don't want to be the one telling people Magneto's running around throwing Canadians at cops." She can't help but laugh a little bit at the way that sentance fits together, before remembering that this is Very Serious Stuff. "I'll have to search around in my newsfeeds to see if the incident went reported anywhere. Haven't been online much today."
Online. Rossi says wisely, "Internet." He, too, has his finger on the pulse of Today. Speaking of credible. "What did you want from PR? They got some pretty standard bullshit that they give out. Think they have pamphlets and printouts and a stamp that they use. Jesus, my head's foggy. I don't think he was throwing the guy at me," he adds, thoughtfully giving credit where credit is due. "Think it was more Cadbury. Except I punched him, so maybe not." --and, man-like, he brightens at the recollection.
"You /punched/ Magneto?" Norah asks, eyes and grin wide in suitable admiration and glee. "That's awesome." She even lifts a hand to offer a congratulatory high five. "Really awesome. And actually, I was just kind of hoping to get the pamphlets and maybe talk to the standard bullshitter about the Sentinel suit. I'm kind of curious about it, for obvious reasons."
"Sentinel?" Rossi echoes, obligingly meeting Norah's high-five with a palm. Slap. Ow. He lowers his arm with a stiffness that absolutely does not pass for dignity. "It's pretty cool shit. Stuff. Suit," he amends hastily, haphazardly careful with his language. "They got some kind of press package about that, too. It's mostly under wraps. Security, for the--" A handwave makes an inconsequential gesture that might or might not include Norah in the general public. Quizzical, he asks, "You for or against?"
"I haven't really decided yet," Norah says, thoughtfully, leaning her elbows back on the back of the bench, tilting her face up towards the sun. "On the one hand, I am very much for new and better ways to capture or kill terrorist bastards, like that guy in Times Square. I mean, if that suit hadn't been ready for the guy at Times Square, it would've been a lot worse than it was. It saved a lot of lives that day." She frowns tightly at the thought.
Rossi sets his back against the bench's frame and attempts to slouch into the cradle of the seat, sliding bit by bit like a melting candy across the slats. "On the other hand," he invites, and tips his head back as well to squint up at the skyline. There is still repair work to be done on some of the buildings near the station. It is not safe real estate.
"On the other hand, that's /way/ above and beyond normal police gear," Norah says, unhappily. "That's soldier gear. The police are getting more and more like the military all the time. And on one level, yeah, this is basically a part of the global war on terror, and you need to be able to fight that. I just... it worries me. If you've already got the /gear/ for a war and the police force recruited as soldiers, it's that much easier to just go ahead and declare it. Does that make sense?"
The detective's eyelids have slid shut, his lashes a black, fuzzy line across the high cheeks. "Mmfn," he offers, intellectual discourse at its height. The line of his throat, bared to the sunlight, works over a swallow. And. "SWAT gear was already the same as military gear, even before the armor. Kevlar, bullet proof vests, helmets-- firepower's close to the same, if you're talking about what soldiers carry. Difference is, most army won't ever have to deal with mutant powers gone nuts."
"Yeah," Norah says, slowly. "I mean, you guys really /do/ need a way to deal with all that, like I said. I guess I just hope whoever gets to drive the suit has to go through a /lot/ of training about telling the difference between mutant combatants and mutants who are maybe just idiots trying to help fight the bad guys, because they can."
"SWAT," Rossi says a bit sleepily, and cracks open his eyes just enough to allow him to turn his head on its stalk and peer at Norah. The faint grin couched behind the glance twists his mouth aslant. "They go through a shit-ton of training. The bigger the firepower, the worse the publicity can get. You can count on that, anyway. 'Just idiots,' huh?"
Norah considers. "Well, sometimes they're spectacular idiots, sometimes they're first responders helping keep other civilians alive until SWAT shows up," she says, smiling a little. "But to me, where my priorities are, like, food, things that are funny, staying alive, avoiding conversations with cops, and /then/ defeating terrorists," her hands scribe out descending steps in the air, indicating food at number one, things that are funny at number two, et cetera, "I think even the heroic first responders are maybe a little idiotic."
There is a small burr to the deep, answering baritone that suggests Rossi is amused. "Just a little? Dumb as a box of rocks, thanks." He attempts to stretch, aborts the attempt before it gets very far, and lifts his head to scratch the bridge of his nose. "You sound like you're not a complete moron, which is a nice change considering you graduated from Kojak's nuthouse. Thought most of you kids had delusions of immortality, or whatever it was. Hero complex."
"So, are you saying Ms. Munroe's a box of rocks for getting her arm broken last night?" Norah asks, eyebrows lifted. "Are you planning on telling her she ought to run away if she ever sees dangerous terrorist activity in the area and wait for the cops to show up? I'd be interested to see what she thought of that." She smiles wryly, and adds, "Oh, yeah, I'm very breakable. No Hero Complex here. I only use my abilities for..." She stops, and visibly checks herself. COP. "Nothing interesting at all."
"Oh. You were talking about mutants. 'First responders,' you said," Rossi accuses, folding his arm behind his head to let it rest once more against the back of the bench. His profile, unbruised, has a Roman flair to it, all strong lines and hard, ruthless angles. "I thought you were talking about--" He gestures a deprecating wave. Never mind. "--Blame Logan for that one. If he knew Magneto could throw him," says pot about kettle, "he shouldn't have gotten involved. Asshole."
"Well, given that he really good tear /anybody/ else to pieces, I'd tend to excuse him for having the reflex to intervene," Norah says, her confidence in Logan firm. "Although yeah, he should probably work on refining the reflexes. But besides, if it hadn't been Professor Logan, it would've probalby been a lamppost or something. And at least Logan has cushioning around his metal. Lampposts are unpleasantly /all/ metal."
"Asshole," Rossi repeats firmly, lest Norah somehow miss the operative word. He grins sightlessly up at the roof of the building across the street, his eyes once more hooded against the daylight. "Lamppost. Bastard. He was using benches. Lensherr's murder on the city parks budget. You ever met him?"
"I'm sure Professor Logan loves you just as much as you love him," Norah says just as sweetly and innocently as can be. Her smile might even be described as beatific. "And no, I haven't. I'm hoping to keep it going, maybe get in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest time without having ever met a terrorist. It's me against a bunch of little old ladies in the Midwest. Tough competition."
Rossi tells the fuzzy greyness behind his eyelids, "I drink his beer," and grins despite himself at Norah's answer, drawing his other hand across his eyes to blot out the creep of light against the thin skin. A tad muffled, he adds, "Think my parents haven't ever met a terrorist yet. Figure that's got to count for something. They got a head start, though, seeing as how they're, what. A hundred years old, each. Easy. This goddamn city -- you're a fan?"
"Of your parents? Never met them," Norah quips with a smile. "The city -- eh, it's okay. It's a city. You have to pay for the museums, which bugs me, and whenever you get this many people together there's bound to be some oddballs, but it's not bad." She reaches across to flick him lightly in the shoulder. "This slurring, sleepy thing has got me worried. You sure your head's okay?"
One eye cracks open, the tiny red capillaries in the whites showing darker red against the bleed of green color. "Mmf'n," he produces again, and prompt on cue, yawns. Hugely. His head rises. "I had a concussion yesterday, and they wouldn't let me sleep, so I'm wiped today. I'm fine. Nothing a good night's sleep won't cure. You're a teacher," he remembers, plucking the information out of some shrouded well of knowledge in the recesses of memory. "You like jazz?"
"I teach history," Norah says, eyeing the detective skeptically. "History has very little to say about the subject of concussions. But I guess I'll trust your doctors." The question of jazz gives her a confused pause, her head tipping to the side. "Jazz? Um... I guess so?"
"You just remind me of someone I know," Rossi supplies, threading the non sequitur back to -- nothing in particular, as it happens. He grimaces, scrapes his fingers through his hair again, and lets his arm drop to the back of the bench. He slouches further. "Lark. She's a cellist who likes jazz. I don't know." His inspection of Norah is thoughtful under the spiky lattice of his lashes. "I should introduce you two. You'd probably get on like a house on fire. Or hate each other's guts," he supposes more skeptically. "You're a lot alike in some ways."
"Well, I'm pretty awesome, so it stands to reason that I'd have to like somebody as awesome as myself," Norah says, laughing a little. "I hate very few people's guts. I mean, disliking somebody's guts takes a lot of /energy/, so I got to make sure somebody's worth it first, you know?" She puts her feet down on the ground, straightening up and leaning forward a little in contrast to Rossi's melting slouch. "Okay. I'm officially putting myself in charge of seeing you home before you fall asleep on the bus stop and get arrested for vagrancy. Do you drive to work or take public transportation?"
Rossi's fingertips flick back towards the building, amusement creeping back into his face at Norah's question. "Christ. You Xavier monkeys and your maternal instincts. I get driven." Again the fingertips twitch, this time in a more direct gesture towards the glass and brass doors behind them. "I got a ride in, and I'm getting a ride home. My partner's schlepping me home as soon as he finishes his calls. No worries. We take care of our own. Even if they're dumb as a box of rocks."
"That is the second time this week I have been called a monkey," Norah notes, her brow furrowing in concern at this worrying trend. She glances down at her forearms, perhaps in search of any excessive hairiness that might lead towards that conclusion. They are just normal women's forewarms, though. "And I wouldn't call it a maternal instinct. It's more like I'm a Boy Scout and you're the little old lady who I don't think can cross the street on her own. Call it being a responsible citizen, instead -- you know, doing my duty to God and my country. Xavier's big on civics."
"/Little old/--" Rossi echoes with a note of injured pride that does not last beyond the first, sharp retort. He drags himself out of the comfort of his seat with a shove of an arm, unfolding piece by piece into a slouched tower on the sidewalk. "Thanks for the ego boost. /Old lady/, Jesus. Screw you. I got plenty of years left in me. Ten, at least. Maybe even eleven if I eat my vegetables. Kojak and me gotta have a word about what the fuck they're teaching you in that henhouse."
"Yeah, he doesn't have a class on cops and their egos," Norah teases, laughing. "C'mon, it's a joke. You're probably too tired to appreciate jokes, though. And I was at Xavier's for all of one year, and I've been away for five. He gets neither the credit nor the blame. It's all me, for whatever it's worth."
Rossi rubs a knuckle against the side of his nose, and around the gesture, grins crookedly. "That maybe explains why you're not a complete moron," he says. It is not unkind. His arm drops; he shoves his hand in his pocket and begins to turn away, back towards the high-slung edifice that houses his kind. "Most of you kids could do with a bit of airing."
"Thanks, I guess," Norah says, a quizzical expression crossing her face before she smiles. "Anyway. You go find your partner and see if he's off the phone yet; I've got to get on my way, too. I'll probably bump into you again sometime, here or there. Catch you around!"
The man's free hand lifts in a backhanded wave. He is already hiking up the stairs towards the doors, head lowered to the patient labor of climbing, step by step. "Later, frogger," Rossi bids, his baritone mellow. "Stay out of trouble."
[Log ends]
Norah comes by the police precinct looking for some PR, and gets dippy Chris instead. Lucky girl.
=NYC= Mutant Affairs - New York Police Department - Upper East Side
Next door to the larger Homicide squad office is Mutant Affairs, labeled in brass letters on the door's smoked glass. Painted in the same dingy, puke-green shade of the hallway, the squad room is a small and busy office, with walls covered by pictures of wanted mutants and clippings of those who still lack a name. Detective desks claim the linoleum floor, islands of order in the ebb and tide of traffic. At the far end of the room, a door leads to a conference room, cluttered with file drawers and the detritus of a responsibility that covers the entire city.
It's a gorgeous Saturday afternoon outside, breezy and warm, the sort that create lines outside of ice cream stores and send droves of people to Central Park. It is a day when Norah would really not be patiently haranguing a receptionist, and yet that is exactly what she is doing. "But I work during those times," she says, exasperated, her folded arms pulling the fabric of her jacket tight across her back.
The receptionist looks equally exasperated. "There's not much else I can do for you. You can e-mail if you have any specific transcripts, and we can put you on the list to receive the transcripts of our press briefings," she explains. "Unless..."
"Unless?" Norah perks up, leaning in with interested gaze.
"Well, if one of our detectives isn't doing anything..." The receptionist does her best this-is-a-huge-favor sigh and picks up the phone, pounding on the appropriate numbers to summon the nearest, idlist detective she can get.
'Nearest' is not available; 'idlist' avows the importance of his current occupation, playing wastebasket ball with crumbled pages of poorly written witness statements. 'Off-duty,' on the other hand, soon ambles out of the back corridors of a neighboring squad room. Det. Rossi is casual in attire today, a pale blue, long-sleeved shirt rolled up over his elbow, its hem tucked into khaki slacks. The explanation for such informality is obvious in the bruises splayed in rapidly darkening tattoo up the side of his head and stretching into his hairline. "Yo," he greets the receptionist, his baritone amiable. "Twinker said you needed me. What's up?"
"She wants to talk to PR, but PR's in Monday, nine-to five. She says -- " the receptionist begins to say, eyes flicking to Norah, before the girl cheerfully interrupts. "I said that most people work those hours, and I wanted to talk to PR now. They said they were blogger friendly. But apparently, you're the next best thing." She grins, and then only then notices the stitches, and her grin fades to concern. She points at the analogous place on her own (unscarred) head. "What happened there?"
"Accident," Rossi says, turning a smoky, green-eyed gaze towards Norah that contains only the smallest hint of puzzled not-quite-recognition. "Sort of thing that could happen to anybody. You'd probably have better luck if you scheduled through One PP," he adds, with a grimace for his own knowledge of the proper channels. "I'm not PR. You want what? Frogger friendly? What the hell's that?"
"We've met before," Norah says, quite a bit familiar with the look Rossi sends her, patiently nudging. "Come on. Met in the bookstore one day? Friend of Ms. Munroe? And blogger." She over-pronounces. "You know, one who blogs."
Rossi says, "Oh," and his brows crimp together as he runs a hand through his hair -- cautiously, with a care for the battered side of his head. "Bookstore. Right." There is no obvious epiphany in his Brooklyn-tinctured baritone. "Munroe. Cadbury. You're a ... friend of hers or something, right? What the fu-- blogging some kind of -- what is that, like tagging? Sounds familiar." A remarkably unconvinced disclaimer, that. Unthinking, he offers Norah his free hand: shake? The knuckles are raw and red, still a little swollen. "Det. Rossi."
"You're clearly not the person I should talk to about this stuff," Norah says, her tone amused. She takes the offered hand with a brief grip, noting the injuries with a quick glance. "I can come back and pick somebody else's brain sometime. It's no trouble. Especially since your brain seems to have put up with enough lately. Was this accident located near a certain school in Westchester?"
"Central Park," Rossi says more cheerfully, a small flicker betraying that he has made the connection at last: slow going, if not unreasonable given his apparent injuries. "There was a thing. You used to be one of Munroe's students. I remember now. Into -- John Adams or something, wasn't it?" His grip tightens briefly, then releases him to shove back into his pocket. "She broke her arm."
"Hey, it's a nice day out. Why don't we walk and talk?" Norah asks, gesturing to the windows, where the sun streams in, beguiling. "And you can tell me how Ms. Munroe broke her arm and /nobody/ told me." She sticks out her lower lip in a pout. "And, yeah, I'm a history person. John Adams is definitely one of my favorite presidents of all time."
Rossi's glance over his shoulder at the hall behind him is a stiff thing, half-finished before he changes his mind and carefully realigns himself to face forward. "Sure," he says, agreeable for all the evident pain that makes his shift of weight a temperate thing. "Only happened yesterday, though. Haven't talked to her since. Haven't had a chance to call--" He jerks his thumb back at the corridors that produced him, a cryptic little gesture that conveys nothing beyond a reminder of their existence. "I think that Canadian asshole smashed into her."
"I just hate the color of the walls here," Norah says by way of explanation as she pushes her way out the door, holding it open for Rossi to follow. Once safely out the door, she adds, "Also, all the cops listening in give me the jeebies. And I guess if this all just happened yesterday, I can forgive not getting the news. Who's the Canadian asshole? And why was there smashing?"
The detective, following Norah with a slightly limping stride that speaks of other, more hidden injury, makes a deprecating gesture with the hand not currently trapped by his pants. "The guy with the hair," he says vaguely, by way of clarification. "You know. The one with the good beer that's boffing Grey. Logan. Magneto threw him at us. He have pins in his bones or something? Didn't occur to me to ask." By the slightly dreamy disinterest in his face, at odds with the sharper curiosity of his earlier, first encounter with Norah, it is a matter of relative unconcern to him, still.
"There's a bus stop bench there, let's just sit down," Norah says, a stitch of concern between her eyebrows at the limping stride. Fortunately, it's a Saturday, so the bench is abandoned. "Oh, yeah, you could say he has pins in his bones," she says, chuckling a little. "A lot of them. He could tear anybody else to pieces, but Magneto --" she shakes her head, pressing her lips together unhappily. "Okay. Are you alright? Why were you even at the station after getting a Canadian thrown at you? Shouldn't you be taking it easy?"
The hand waves again, then finds its way to Rossi's head to rake through the thick shock of hair. Sunlight picks out the grey amongst the black, highlighting it in thin streaks of silver. The detective grins crookedly. "Paperwork," he says, made cheerful again. "Never ends. Like death and taxes, except it comes around daily instead of once a year. Had to file my report while it was fresh in my memory. Don't worry about me," he adds, squinting towards the bench. "I've been worse. What the fuck's a blogger, anyway?"
"So I'm rescuing you from paperwork! I'm a hero!" Norah declares, triumphantly. "Sort of." She clambers onto the bench, pulling her feet up beneath her to sit cross-legged on it. "And a blogger is... I can't believe I have to explain this to you. Like a reporter, but less so. I have a website. Mostly I'm an aggregator. I gather all the mutant-related news and link to it so people can go to my blog for a handy one-stop shop for mutant-related things. Sometimes I comment on them, add my thoughts, ask for discussion in the comments, whatever. Sort of like a reporter, only less so."
There is a moment while the detective's muzzy brain picks its way through the explanation. At the far end, it hesitates over a selection of questions, then picks on one, critical word. "Reporter." Rossi eyes Norah askance, not noticeably motivated to join her in the seat. "Oh." And, "Mutant reporting?" Worse and worse. Chagrin begins to stomp through his expression, followed by heavy-footed suspicion.
"Not like /that/," Norah says, catching onto his expression. "I'm just an interested person and news-gatherer. I'm not trying to get scoops or make waves or... whatever. I just provide a forum for opinions that are a little bit hard to find in newspapers or on TV or whatever, you know? I'm very normal." She pauses, revises. "Okay, I'm not /normal/, but I'm not scary, either. If you want to talk without me sticking stuff on the blog, I can totally keep everything under the lid. May Ms. Munroe zap me if I don't." It's like the Mutant equivalent of cross your heart and hope to die.
Except a lot more exciting in the implementation. The detective's tightening shoulders relax by increments, brought down from around his ears to a more settled slouch that curves his spine. "Normal's relative," he says, his baritone flat, but rounding slowly towards the Brooklyn cadence again. Perhaps he will sit, after all. It is an awkward process, a matter of long limbs and uncooperative joints. "You just collect stuff? So other people do all the writing? Don't know how private the thing yesterday was. It wasn't quiet, anyway."
"Sometimes I write, but it's not, like, investigative journalism," Norah explains, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. "It's just me and what I think about whatever issue. I don't think I have the journalism credentials to break a story. If I find whatever happened in some other paper, I'll write about it. If not, /I/ don't want to be the one telling people Magneto's running around throwing Canadians at cops." She can't help but laugh a little bit at the way that sentance fits together, before remembering that this is Very Serious Stuff. "I'll have to search around in my newsfeeds to see if the incident went reported anywhere. Haven't been online much today."
Online. Rossi says wisely, "Internet." He, too, has his finger on the pulse of Today. Speaking of credible. "What did you want from PR? They got some pretty standard bullshit that they give out. Think they have pamphlets and printouts and a stamp that they use. Jesus, my head's foggy. I don't think he was throwing the guy at me," he adds, thoughtfully giving credit where credit is due. "Think it was more Cadbury. Except I punched him, so maybe not." --and, man-like, he brightens at the recollection.
"You /punched/ Magneto?" Norah asks, eyes and grin wide in suitable admiration and glee. "That's awesome." She even lifts a hand to offer a congratulatory high five. "Really awesome. And actually, I was just kind of hoping to get the pamphlets and maybe talk to the standard bullshitter about the Sentinel suit. I'm kind of curious about it, for obvious reasons."
"Sentinel?" Rossi echoes, obligingly meeting Norah's high-five with a palm. Slap. Ow. He lowers his arm with a stiffness that absolutely does not pass for dignity. "It's pretty cool shit. Stuff. Suit," he amends hastily, haphazardly careful with his language. "They got some kind of press package about that, too. It's mostly under wraps. Security, for the--" A handwave makes an inconsequential gesture that might or might not include Norah in the general public. Quizzical, he asks, "You for or against?"
"I haven't really decided yet," Norah says, thoughtfully, leaning her elbows back on the back of the bench, tilting her face up towards the sun. "On the one hand, I am very much for new and better ways to capture or kill terrorist bastards, like that guy in Times Square. I mean, if that suit hadn't been ready for the guy at Times Square, it would've been a lot worse than it was. It saved a lot of lives that day." She frowns tightly at the thought.
Rossi sets his back against the bench's frame and attempts to slouch into the cradle of the seat, sliding bit by bit like a melting candy across the slats. "On the other hand," he invites, and tips his head back as well to squint up at the skyline. There is still repair work to be done on some of the buildings near the station. It is not safe real estate.
"On the other hand, that's /way/ above and beyond normal police gear," Norah says, unhappily. "That's soldier gear. The police are getting more and more like the military all the time. And on one level, yeah, this is basically a part of the global war on terror, and you need to be able to fight that. I just... it worries me. If you've already got the /gear/ for a war and the police force recruited as soldiers, it's that much easier to just go ahead and declare it. Does that make sense?"
The detective's eyelids have slid shut, his lashes a black, fuzzy line across the high cheeks. "Mmfn," he offers, intellectual discourse at its height. The line of his throat, bared to the sunlight, works over a swallow. And. "SWAT gear was already the same as military gear, even before the armor. Kevlar, bullet proof vests, helmets-- firepower's close to the same, if you're talking about what soldiers carry. Difference is, most army won't ever have to deal with mutant powers gone nuts."
"Yeah," Norah says, slowly. "I mean, you guys really /do/ need a way to deal with all that, like I said. I guess I just hope whoever gets to drive the suit has to go through a /lot/ of training about telling the difference between mutant combatants and mutants who are maybe just idiots trying to help fight the bad guys, because they can."
"SWAT," Rossi says a bit sleepily, and cracks open his eyes just enough to allow him to turn his head on its stalk and peer at Norah. The faint grin couched behind the glance twists his mouth aslant. "They go through a shit-ton of training. The bigger the firepower, the worse the publicity can get. You can count on that, anyway. 'Just idiots,' huh?"
Norah considers. "Well, sometimes they're spectacular idiots, sometimes they're first responders helping keep other civilians alive until SWAT shows up," she says, smiling a little. "But to me, where my priorities are, like, food, things that are funny, staying alive, avoiding conversations with cops, and /then/ defeating terrorists," her hands scribe out descending steps in the air, indicating food at number one, things that are funny at number two, et cetera, "I think even the heroic first responders are maybe a little idiotic."
There is a small burr to the deep, answering baritone that suggests Rossi is amused. "Just a little? Dumb as a box of rocks, thanks." He attempts to stretch, aborts the attempt before it gets very far, and lifts his head to scratch the bridge of his nose. "You sound like you're not a complete moron, which is a nice change considering you graduated from Kojak's nuthouse. Thought most of you kids had delusions of immortality, or whatever it was. Hero complex."
"So, are you saying Ms. Munroe's a box of rocks for getting her arm broken last night?" Norah asks, eyebrows lifted. "Are you planning on telling her she ought to run away if she ever sees dangerous terrorist activity in the area and wait for the cops to show up? I'd be interested to see what she thought of that." She smiles wryly, and adds, "Oh, yeah, I'm very breakable. No Hero Complex here. I only use my abilities for..." She stops, and visibly checks herself. COP. "Nothing interesting at all."
"Oh. You were talking about mutants. 'First responders,' you said," Rossi accuses, folding his arm behind his head to let it rest once more against the back of the bench. His profile, unbruised, has a Roman flair to it, all strong lines and hard, ruthless angles. "I thought you were talking about--" He gestures a deprecating wave. Never mind. "--Blame Logan for that one. If he knew Magneto could throw him," says pot about kettle, "he shouldn't have gotten involved. Asshole."
"Well, given that he really good tear /anybody/ else to pieces, I'd tend to excuse him for having the reflex to intervene," Norah says, her confidence in Logan firm. "Although yeah, he should probably work on refining the reflexes. But besides, if it hadn't been Professor Logan, it would've probalby been a lamppost or something. And at least Logan has cushioning around his metal. Lampposts are unpleasantly /all/ metal."
"Asshole," Rossi repeats firmly, lest Norah somehow miss the operative word. He grins sightlessly up at the roof of the building across the street, his eyes once more hooded against the daylight. "Lamppost. Bastard. He was using benches. Lensherr's murder on the city parks budget. You ever met him?"
"I'm sure Professor Logan loves you just as much as you love him," Norah says just as sweetly and innocently as can be. Her smile might even be described as beatific. "And no, I haven't. I'm hoping to keep it going, maybe get in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest time without having ever met a terrorist. It's me against a bunch of little old ladies in the Midwest. Tough competition."
Rossi tells the fuzzy greyness behind his eyelids, "I drink his beer," and grins despite himself at Norah's answer, drawing his other hand across his eyes to blot out the creep of light against the thin skin. A tad muffled, he adds, "Think my parents haven't ever met a terrorist yet. Figure that's got to count for something. They got a head start, though, seeing as how they're, what. A hundred years old, each. Easy. This goddamn city -- you're a fan?"
"Of your parents? Never met them," Norah quips with a smile. "The city -- eh, it's okay. It's a city. You have to pay for the museums, which bugs me, and whenever you get this many people together there's bound to be some oddballs, but it's not bad." She reaches across to flick him lightly in the shoulder. "This slurring, sleepy thing has got me worried. You sure your head's okay?"
One eye cracks open, the tiny red capillaries in the whites showing darker red against the bleed of green color. "Mmf'n," he produces again, and prompt on cue, yawns. Hugely. His head rises. "I had a concussion yesterday, and they wouldn't let me sleep, so I'm wiped today. I'm fine. Nothing a good night's sleep won't cure. You're a teacher," he remembers, plucking the information out of some shrouded well of knowledge in the recesses of memory. "You like jazz?"
"I teach history," Norah says, eyeing the detective skeptically. "History has very little to say about the subject of concussions. But I guess I'll trust your doctors." The question of jazz gives her a confused pause, her head tipping to the side. "Jazz? Um... I guess so?"
"You just remind me of someone I know," Rossi supplies, threading the non sequitur back to -- nothing in particular, as it happens. He grimaces, scrapes his fingers through his hair again, and lets his arm drop to the back of the bench. He slouches further. "Lark. She's a cellist who likes jazz. I don't know." His inspection of Norah is thoughtful under the spiky lattice of his lashes. "I should introduce you two. You'd probably get on like a house on fire. Or hate each other's guts," he supposes more skeptically. "You're a lot alike in some ways."
"Well, I'm pretty awesome, so it stands to reason that I'd have to like somebody as awesome as myself," Norah says, laughing a little. "I hate very few people's guts. I mean, disliking somebody's guts takes a lot of /energy/, so I got to make sure somebody's worth it first, you know?" She puts her feet down on the ground, straightening up and leaning forward a little in contrast to Rossi's melting slouch. "Okay. I'm officially putting myself in charge of seeing you home before you fall asleep on the bus stop and get arrested for vagrancy. Do you drive to work or take public transportation?"
Rossi's fingertips flick back towards the building, amusement creeping back into his face at Norah's question. "Christ. You Xavier monkeys and your maternal instincts. I get driven." Again the fingertips twitch, this time in a more direct gesture towards the glass and brass doors behind them. "I got a ride in, and I'm getting a ride home. My partner's schlepping me home as soon as he finishes his calls. No worries. We take care of our own. Even if they're dumb as a box of rocks."
"That is the second time this week I have been called a monkey," Norah notes, her brow furrowing in concern at this worrying trend. She glances down at her forearms, perhaps in search of any excessive hairiness that might lead towards that conclusion. They are just normal women's forewarms, though. "And I wouldn't call it a maternal instinct. It's more like I'm a Boy Scout and you're the little old lady who I don't think can cross the street on her own. Call it being a responsible citizen, instead -- you know, doing my duty to God and my country. Xavier's big on civics."
"/Little old/--" Rossi echoes with a note of injured pride that does not last beyond the first, sharp retort. He drags himself out of the comfort of his seat with a shove of an arm, unfolding piece by piece into a slouched tower on the sidewalk. "Thanks for the ego boost. /Old lady/, Jesus. Screw you. I got plenty of years left in me. Ten, at least. Maybe even eleven if I eat my vegetables. Kojak and me gotta have a word about what the fuck they're teaching you in that henhouse."
"Yeah, he doesn't have a class on cops and their egos," Norah teases, laughing. "C'mon, it's a joke. You're probably too tired to appreciate jokes, though. And I was at Xavier's for all of one year, and I've been away for five. He gets neither the credit nor the blame. It's all me, for whatever it's worth."
Rossi rubs a knuckle against the side of his nose, and around the gesture, grins crookedly. "That maybe explains why you're not a complete moron," he says. It is not unkind. His arm drops; he shoves his hand in his pocket and begins to turn away, back towards the high-slung edifice that houses his kind. "Most of you kids could do with a bit of airing."
"Thanks, I guess," Norah says, a quizzical expression crossing her face before she smiles. "Anyway. You go find your partner and see if he's off the phone yet; I've got to get on my way, too. I'll probably bump into you again sometime, here or there. Catch you around!"
The man's free hand lifts in a backhanded wave. He is already hiking up the stairs towards the doors, head lowered to the patient labor of climbing, step by step. "Later, frogger," Rossi bids, his baritone mellow. "Stay out of trouble."
[Log ends]
Norah comes by the police precinct looking for some PR, and gets dippy Chris instead. Lucky girl.