A few messages
Phone message left on Leah Canto's machine.
"Leah. Hey, it's Chris. I'm sorry I didn't call you yesterday, but my damn phone ran out of juice. I'm fine. Got some stitches, hit my head, nothing serious. Don't worry about me. Stop telling people to call me Kitten, dammit. Man, people have no respect. Next time I see your brother, I'm strapping a muzzle on his big mouth. Hang in there. I'll see you soon."
Phone message left on Sabitha Melcross's machine.
"Hey, Sabby. Rossi, here. Battery ran down on my phone, and I just got your message. I'm fine. No worries. I've got to -- hold on, John -- right. I'll talk to you later."
Phone message left on Ashleigh Donner's machine
"Hi Ashleigh, Chris Rossi here. I just got your message. I'm sorry about taking so long to get back to you. I forgot to recharge my phone, and ... that sounds lamer than it really should. It's a long story. Anyway, thanks for calling to check up on me. I appreciate it. I'm fine. I might have to postpone our date a little, if that's okay, since things are a little hectic at work because of the -- okay. I've got to run. Er. I'll talk to you later."
---
Log from Rossi at X-Men MUCK
Dawn's first blush. Too early still for students to fill the great mansion with the pitter-patter of little feet -- or, more accurately, the rolling thunder of stampeding mastadons. In the Library, couched in a long sofa and framed by leather and a kitten's confiding warmth, Chris Rossi stirs. Yawns. Stretches limb and sinew, telescoping limbs across the bite of pain and discovers, belatedly, that he is sharing his makeshift bed with a dark little head and a curled little body. (Not so little. Not so young.) "...what the..."
Hank is rather used to late nights and early mornings. Plus Hank often spends a few hours when he gets a chance amongst the archives of lierature housed in the library. Of course, the fact that there's a rather crude police man with a kitten on him in the same room, hasn't darkened his mood. That is of course until the man stirs, and Henry crouches down more atop one of the rows of oak shelves. He looks like a giant blue-furred gargoyle, looking down at Rossi. "I see you're awake, wonderful. Feeling better, Detective?"
Not so much 'kitten' as 'Alyssa,' and not so much 'better' as 'bewildered.' "/Christ/," says Rossi to that disembodied voice, beginning his day with validation for Hank's opinion, and compounds insult to injury by flinching at the discovery of the speaker. "Jesus," he finishes for completion's sake, levering himself up by an arm. "There's a picture to wake up to."
Hank offers a playful grin, bounding down from atop the shelf of books. Hank lands almost without sound, in a perfect gymnastic dismount. "Don't make me get the bar of soap, Detective. But it's good to see that everything is back in it's proper place." Hank walks over, moving to check your pulse. "Sorry about scaring you, I'm certainly less monstrous than my appearance."
Groggy fascination watches the athletic drop, and Rossi pushes himself up further, untangling his arm from under Alyssa to offer it for checking. "Schoolteachers," he says dryly, quietly, a wary glance pitched down for the slumbering girl. The blanket falls, creasing to the detective's rise, and he unravels it to tuck more firmly around his companion. "Less monstrous than-- yeah. My life is getting so weird."
Hank grins just a bit and laughs. "I don't consider myself much of a school teacher, maybe more of a school nurse. Teaching is a secondary task for me around these parts." Hank hmms softly, and nods. "You seem to have a steady rythem, and your X-Ray scans of your thick skull seemed fine. You should live a long time, if you're more careful. Join the club, my dear Detective. My life has been weird since birth.
"Who wants to live forever?" demands Rossi, demonstrating an early-morning lack of creativity. He struggles out of the sofa's enticing warmth, stretching long-limbed and awkward across Alyssa -- no gymnastics from him, through the hiss and bite of roused pain -- to struggle to his feet. "Crap. When did she-- I should get back to work. Any news?" Xavier sweats serve as both pajamas and daywear, rumpled from the night past; he lifts a cloaking hand to his eyes, the other arm bracing the first moments of dizziness.
"It would seem not you, my dear man." Hank offers, stepping back and stretching some. "Easy now, you're still recovering from your injuries. And I want you to get checked out by you regular doctor next week about all this." Hank grins some, rolling his massive shoulders just a bit. "As for the news, all bad I'm afraid. Death toll was 32 last time I checked, and Anti-Mutant hysteria is reaching a fever pitch. I expect to see retribution, and an ever larger growing circle of violence. Sigh, rather sickening I'm afraid."
"Surprise surprise," drawls Rossi on a sudden rough note of bitterness. He settles his hips against the couch's arm, his own arms folding into a loose knot. "Bastard was counting on it."
Hank frowns just a bit. "I should have been there, I should have been able to stop that lunatic." Hank growled under his breath, clearly showing that his playful demenor masked his upset nature over the incident. "He won't be happy until he has his species war, the madman."
Green eyes regard Hank blankly, puzzled behind the swift hood of lashes, then hide altogether behind the scrub of a broad, scarred hand. "/I/ should've been there," Rossi says wearily, baritone muffled behind the barrier of fingers. "Fat lot of good it would've done. You might've gotten shot on sight, after it all started going down."
Hank laughed softly at that. "You really think I'm not capable of blending into a crowd?" Hank wandered over to his gym bag that was sitting on a table. Unzipping it, Hank pulled out a human face. No, not a real one. Hank puts it up against his furry face, and grins playfully. "I'm a bit of a hand at make-up appliances. Thin latex appliences, wig, dentures, and I look pretty normal in most respects. So don't think I'm at a disadvantage."
"I'll take that under advisement," says the other man, dropping his hand to regard the false face with mild bemusement. "Suppose that explains why you're one of the poodles. What else can you do?"
Hank perks a brow at that, replacing the face in his gym bag. "Poodle?" Hank asks, never having heard the term before. "You mean powers wise? Nothing too special, enhanced abilities that run the gamut of the physical. Prehensile feet, claws, fangs, a hell of a nose, and a minor healing factor. And a genius level intellect to boot, though not tied as far as I can tell to my mutation. Nothing special."
Detective Rossi gestures with a hand, sketching an abortive explanation. "Poodle," he begins. "Summers and his merry men ... never mind." He glances down at the sleeping Alyssa, and brushes hair out of that quiet face with gentle fingers. "Poor kid. --Sorry about earlier."
Hank perks a brow at that, and hmms softly. "I still don't get what poodle means in refrence to that. And I wasn't briefed on the fact that you even knew about that." Hank needs to bust some heads for not filling him in. "It's ok. Though you did manage to bring out the worst in me. I'm sorry as well."
The doctor receives a fleeting grin for that, slanted crooked from the distraction of the girl. "I bring out the worst in everyone," Rossi notes. "You got your special talents, I got mine. Never trust a guy you can't piss off. Thought you were one of Magneto's guys," he adds apologetically.
Hank hops up to sit on the table, considering Rossi for a few moments. "Understandable. I guess appearance wise I fit more with his group, considering he has a number of the 'strange looking' mutants in his direct employee. But no, I'm the guy wanting to cram 355 lbs. of blue fur down his throat."
And Rossi, simple human that he is, merely makes a noise in the back of his throat that speaks of like sentiment: more gutteral, more animal. Atavistic eloquence. "He was the last thing I saw," Chris amends, folding his arms again under the slight crease of a frown. "Figured it was -- I don't get why he didn't kill me."
Hank (OOC) says, "err, Mad."
Hank strokes his chin and hmms, shrugging just a bit. "Maybe you're a mutant and you just arn't aware. Or he just wanted to send a message to you, or to us. That is if he's aware of your relationship with this school and the mutants who work here." Hank shrugs just a bit. "Who knows what goes through his head, I certainly don't care to consider."
The green-eyed glance slants up; the lean jaw hardens. "I'm not a mutant. And if I were, I'd damn well know it before fucking /Magneto/. The man obviously doesn't give a damn about killing cops. What's his relationship to your school?"
Beast rolled his massive shoulders. "It was a joke, but you never know. I've seen mutations so subtle that they almost don't count. As for Magneto's relationship to this school, that's a story that's not my place to say. Let's just say we've crossed path a number of times. And that there's some bad blood between us."
"I've lost my sense of humor when it comes to that dickhead," says Rossi, baritone spinning hard across the slant of his native accent. It trails off into silence while the pale gaze drifts, mining the spines of neatly ordered books for distraction (inspiration) and the quicksilver hint of yearning. "I remember. What's her name -- Munroe -- and that thing in Albertsons."
"All I have left some days is my humor, Detective. Frustration at being unable to save every life or stop that madman at every turn leaves me requiring I save my sanity with it." Hank chuckled, glancing over the books you're searching through for a moment. "Yes, but I wasn't here at the time to be a party to that mess. My return happened much later, thanks to my own hubris."
Frustration. Detective Rossi knows it intimately. For an unguarded moment it shows, etching stark, sharp lines on the face's lineaments before being swept away by neutrality. "Nice library. --Where's my gun?"
"It was put with your belongings, so it's ready for you whenever you want to leave. I can fetch them for you, if you like." Hank grins some, hopping up from the table. "Just no shooting anyone, especially me."
"I should head back to work," Rossi says, once more sliding his hand across his face with the barest pause for scratches and scrapes. Loathing -- reluctance -- surfaces in the quiet voice, twining with residual fatigue. "Got reports to do, all that crap. Make some calls. --You poodles. How do you decide when to get involved? /When/ do you get involved?"
Hank wandered over to a large manilla envelop stuck out of the way, wandering back to Rossi to offer it to him. "Your gun, and other personal effects. Don't worry, I'll send you the bill for doctoring." Hank playfully teased the fine Detective, rocking on his large furry feet. "It's the bosses call, but usually we respond to reports that we're needed. But we can't be everywhere."
"Bosses," echoes Rossi, accepting the envelope with a faintly incredulous glance for its erstwhile location. "What. Summers, Grey...?" The gun slides out with its holder, a hefty, deadly tangle of leather and metal; the bloody and destroyed rags of his clothes prompt a grimace, and a deprecating glance down at his own borrowed apparel. "Crap. I might need to borrow these a little longer."
Hank grins to Rossi. "Enough information collecting for you, my dear Detective. And you're welcome to keep the clothes, it's just a basic sweats suit. I'd offer you something to wear, but I rather doubt we're the same size."
An appraising eye regards Hank with a small glint of humor. "Yeah, I'm thinking not. Thanks," Rossi adds belatedly, stuffing his clothes back in the envelope before unholstering the gun for an automatic check: safety and rounds, both accounted for. "For patching me up, I mean."
"Anytime, just don't make it a habit." Hank offered, reaching out to clap you on the back. "Good luck and good fortune, my friend. If you need me, you know where to find me."
The detective winces at the slap, but manages not to swear: big, bad cop. Shoes and socks. He fishes them out of the envelope and struggles into them, interested less in dignity than in efficiency. "Pucker my lips and blow?" he asks wryly through his slouch. "Yeah, I know. You see Cassidy or Summers, tell them thanks."
Hank nods to Rossi, yawning softly to himself. "I will be sure to do that, my friend. And you be careful, if Mags did intend to kill you and failed, there's reason to suggest he'll want that little mistake cleaned up."
"I'll look forward to it. Next time I'll have something I can actually /use/ on him," says Rossi grimly, slapping the gun back into the envelope. The backs of fingers stroke lightly across Alyssa's hair, smoothing it in a mute, tender caress; the harsh face softens, just for a moment, then turns for a crooked grimace at Hank. "What kind of a terrorist doesn't like to hear himself talk? World's going to pot. --Later, Doc." With a last glance for the sleeping girl, the detective ambles out. Back to the grind.
[Log ends]
"Leah. Hey, it's Chris. I'm sorry I didn't call you yesterday, but my damn phone ran out of juice. I'm fine. Got some stitches, hit my head, nothing serious. Don't worry about me. Stop telling people to call me Kitten, dammit. Man, people have no respect. Next time I see your brother, I'm strapping a muzzle on his big mouth. Hang in there. I'll see you soon."
Phone message left on Sabitha Melcross's machine.
"Hey, Sabby. Rossi, here. Battery ran down on my phone, and I just got your message. I'm fine. No worries. I've got to -- hold on, John -- right. I'll talk to you later."
Phone message left on Ashleigh Donner's machine
"Hi Ashleigh, Chris Rossi here. I just got your message. I'm sorry about taking so long to get back to you. I forgot to recharge my phone, and ... that sounds lamer than it really should. It's a long story. Anyway, thanks for calling to check up on me. I appreciate it. I'm fine. I might have to postpone our date a little, if that's okay, since things are a little hectic at work because of the -- okay. I've got to run. Er. I'll talk to you later."
---
Log from Rossi at X-Men MUCK
Dawn's first blush. Too early still for students to fill the great mansion with the pitter-patter of little feet -- or, more accurately, the rolling thunder of stampeding mastadons. In the Library, couched in a long sofa and framed by leather and a kitten's confiding warmth, Chris Rossi stirs. Yawns. Stretches limb and sinew, telescoping limbs across the bite of pain and discovers, belatedly, that he is sharing his makeshift bed with a dark little head and a curled little body. (Not so little. Not so young.) "...what the..."
Hank is rather used to late nights and early mornings. Plus Hank often spends a few hours when he gets a chance amongst the archives of lierature housed in the library. Of course, the fact that there's a rather crude police man with a kitten on him in the same room, hasn't darkened his mood. That is of course until the man stirs, and Henry crouches down more atop one of the rows of oak shelves. He looks like a giant blue-furred gargoyle, looking down at Rossi. "I see you're awake, wonderful. Feeling better, Detective?"
Not so much 'kitten' as 'Alyssa,' and not so much 'better' as 'bewildered.' "/Christ/," says Rossi to that disembodied voice, beginning his day with validation for Hank's opinion, and compounds insult to injury by flinching at the discovery of the speaker. "Jesus," he finishes for completion's sake, levering himself up by an arm. "There's a picture to wake up to."
Hank offers a playful grin, bounding down from atop the shelf of books. Hank lands almost without sound, in a perfect gymnastic dismount. "Don't make me get the bar of soap, Detective. But it's good to see that everything is back in it's proper place." Hank walks over, moving to check your pulse. "Sorry about scaring you, I'm certainly less monstrous than my appearance."
Groggy fascination watches the athletic drop, and Rossi pushes himself up further, untangling his arm from under Alyssa to offer it for checking. "Schoolteachers," he says dryly, quietly, a wary glance pitched down for the slumbering girl. The blanket falls, creasing to the detective's rise, and he unravels it to tuck more firmly around his companion. "Less monstrous than-- yeah. My life is getting so weird."
Hank grins just a bit and laughs. "I don't consider myself much of a school teacher, maybe more of a school nurse. Teaching is a secondary task for me around these parts." Hank hmms softly, and nods. "You seem to have a steady rythem, and your X-Ray scans of your thick skull seemed fine. You should live a long time, if you're more careful. Join the club, my dear Detective. My life has been weird since birth.
"Who wants to live forever?" demands Rossi, demonstrating an early-morning lack of creativity. He struggles out of the sofa's enticing warmth, stretching long-limbed and awkward across Alyssa -- no gymnastics from him, through the hiss and bite of roused pain -- to struggle to his feet. "Crap. When did she-- I should get back to work. Any news?" Xavier sweats serve as both pajamas and daywear, rumpled from the night past; he lifts a cloaking hand to his eyes, the other arm bracing the first moments of dizziness.
"It would seem not you, my dear man." Hank offers, stepping back and stretching some. "Easy now, you're still recovering from your injuries. And I want you to get checked out by you regular doctor next week about all this." Hank grins some, rolling his massive shoulders just a bit. "As for the news, all bad I'm afraid. Death toll was 32 last time I checked, and Anti-Mutant hysteria is reaching a fever pitch. I expect to see retribution, and an ever larger growing circle of violence. Sigh, rather sickening I'm afraid."
"Surprise surprise," drawls Rossi on a sudden rough note of bitterness. He settles his hips against the couch's arm, his own arms folding into a loose knot. "Bastard was counting on it."
Hank frowns just a bit. "I should have been there, I should have been able to stop that lunatic." Hank growled under his breath, clearly showing that his playful demenor masked his upset nature over the incident. "He won't be happy until he has his species war, the madman."
Green eyes regard Hank blankly, puzzled behind the swift hood of lashes, then hide altogether behind the scrub of a broad, scarred hand. "/I/ should've been there," Rossi says wearily, baritone muffled behind the barrier of fingers. "Fat lot of good it would've done. You might've gotten shot on sight, after it all started going down."
Hank laughed softly at that. "You really think I'm not capable of blending into a crowd?" Hank wandered over to his gym bag that was sitting on a table. Unzipping it, Hank pulled out a human face. No, not a real one. Hank puts it up against his furry face, and grins playfully. "I'm a bit of a hand at make-up appliances. Thin latex appliences, wig, dentures, and I look pretty normal in most respects. So don't think I'm at a disadvantage."
"I'll take that under advisement," says the other man, dropping his hand to regard the false face with mild bemusement. "Suppose that explains why you're one of the poodles. What else can you do?"
Hank perks a brow at that, replacing the face in his gym bag. "Poodle?" Hank asks, never having heard the term before. "You mean powers wise? Nothing too special, enhanced abilities that run the gamut of the physical. Prehensile feet, claws, fangs, a hell of a nose, and a minor healing factor. And a genius level intellect to boot, though not tied as far as I can tell to my mutation. Nothing special."
Detective Rossi gestures with a hand, sketching an abortive explanation. "Poodle," he begins. "Summers and his merry men ... never mind." He glances down at the sleeping Alyssa, and brushes hair out of that quiet face with gentle fingers. "Poor kid. --Sorry about earlier."
Hank perks a brow at that, and hmms softly. "I still don't get what poodle means in refrence to that. And I wasn't briefed on the fact that you even knew about that." Hank needs to bust some heads for not filling him in. "It's ok. Though you did manage to bring out the worst in me. I'm sorry as well."
The doctor receives a fleeting grin for that, slanted crooked from the distraction of the girl. "I bring out the worst in everyone," Rossi notes. "You got your special talents, I got mine. Never trust a guy you can't piss off. Thought you were one of Magneto's guys," he adds apologetically.
Hank hops up to sit on the table, considering Rossi for a few moments. "Understandable. I guess appearance wise I fit more with his group, considering he has a number of the 'strange looking' mutants in his direct employee. But no, I'm the guy wanting to cram 355 lbs. of blue fur down his throat."
And Rossi, simple human that he is, merely makes a noise in the back of his throat that speaks of like sentiment: more gutteral, more animal. Atavistic eloquence. "He was the last thing I saw," Chris amends, folding his arms again under the slight crease of a frown. "Figured it was -- I don't get why he didn't kill me."
Hank (OOC) says, "err, Mad."
Hank strokes his chin and hmms, shrugging just a bit. "Maybe you're a mutant and you just arn't aware. Or he just wanted to send a message to you, or to us. That is if he's aware of your relationship with this school and the mutants who work here." Hank shrugs just a bit. "Who knows what goes through his head, I certainly don't care to consider."
The green-eyed glance slants up; the lean jaw hardens. "I'm not a mutant. And if I were, I'd damn well know it before fucking /Magneto/. The man obviously doesn't give a damn about killing cops. What's his relationship to your school?"
Beast rolled his massive shoulders. "It was a joke, but you never know. I've seen mutations so subtle that they almost don't count. As for Magneto's relationship to this school, that's a story that's not my place to say. Let's just say we've crossed path a number of times. And that there's some bad blood between us."
"I've lost my sense of humor when it comes to that dickhead," says Rossi, baritone spinning hard across the slant of his native accent. It trails off into silence while the pale gaze drifts, mining the spines of neatly ordered books for distraction (inspiration) and the quicksilver hint of yearning. "I remember. What's her name -- Munroe -- and that thing in Albertsons."
"All I have left some days is my humor, Detective. Frustration at being unable to save every life or stop that madman at every turn leaves me requiring I save my sanity with it." Hank chuckled, glancing over the books you're searching through for a moment. "Yes, but I wasn't here at the time to be a party to that mess. My return happened much later, thanks to my own hubris."
Frustration. Detective Rossi knows it intimately. For an unguarded moment it shows, etching stark, sharp lines on the face's lineaments before being swept away by neutrality. "Nice library. --Where's my gun?"
"It was put with your belongings, so it's ready for you whenever you want to leave. I can fetch them for you, if you like." Hank grins some, hopping up from the table. "Just no shooting anyone, especially me."
"I should head back to work," Rossi says, once more sliding his hand across his face with the barest pause for scratches and scrapes. Loathing -- reluctance -- surfaces in the quiet voice, twining with residual fatigue. "Got reports to do, all that crap. Make some calls. --You poodles. How do you decide when to get involved? /When/ do you get involved?"
Hank wandered over to a large manilla envelop stuck out of the way, wandering back to Rossi to offer it to him. "Your gun, and other personal effects. Don't worry, I'll send you the bill for doctoring." Hank playfully teased the fine Detective, rocking on his large furry feet. "It's the bosses call, but usually we respond to reports that we're needed. But we can't be everywhere."
"Bosses," echoes Rossi, accepting the envelope with a faintly incredulous glance for its erstwhile location. "What. Summers, Grey...?" The gun slides out with its holder, a hefty, deadly tangle of leather and metal; the bloody and destroyed rags of his clothes prompt a grimace, and a deprecating glance down at his own borrowed apparel. "Crap. I might need to borrow these a little longer."
Hank grins to Rossi. "Enough information collecting for you, my dear Detective. And you're welcome to keep the clothes, it's just a basic sweats suit. I'd offer you something to wear, but I rather doubt we're the same size."
An appraising eye regards Hank with a small glint of humor. "Yeah, I'm thinking not. Thanks," Rossi adds belatedly, stuffing his clothes back in the envelope before unholstering the gun for an automatic check: safety and rounds, both accounted for. "For patching me up, I mean."
"Anytime, just don't make it a habit." Hank offered, reaching out to clap you on the back. "Good luck and good fortune, my friend. If you need me, you know where to find me."
The detective winces at the slap, but manages not to swear: big, bad cop. Shoes and socks. He fishes them out of the envelope and struggles into them, interested less in dignity than in efficiency. "Pucker my lips and blow?" he asks wryly through his slouch. "Yeah, I know. You see Cassidy or Summers, tell them thanks."
Hank nods to Rossi, yawning softly to himself. "I will be sure to do that, my friend. And you be careful, if Mags did intend to kill you and failed, there's reason to suggest he'll want that little mistake cleaned up."
"I'll look forward to it. Next time I'll have something I can actually /use/ on him," says Rossi grimly, slapping the gun back into the envelope. The backs of fingers stroke lightly across Alyssa's hair, smoothing it in a mute, tender caress; the harsh face softens, just for a moment, then turns for a crooked grimace at Hank. "What kind of a terrorist doesn't like to hear himself talk? World's going to pot. --Later, Doc." With a last glance for the sleeping girl, the detective ambles out. Back to the grind.
[Log ends]