(no subject)
OOC: Other people have the parts of this log that I was not there for!
Jason is not a fish. Jason has to breathe. Unfortunately, Jason refuses to breathe without underwear -- so instead of breathing, he pulls himself back in a slow below-surface stroke from wence he came. He keeps his face half tilted up toward the moonlight (whilst blowing slightly frantic bubbles) in case his singular article of clothing might've floated all upward.
Toad holds up his hands, as if proving it was her through the first stone. Or skipped it, in this case. "Naw, wasn't me. Gonna ask th' same o'you." He calls back, eyes turning to the bubbling surface. "Somethin' in th' water. Want me t'check it out, Sah?" Toad offers quickly, jabbing an index finger towards the activity.
The soft thunk of heavy boots over dirt heralds Valkyrie's approach, the eyes pallid grey in the moonlight, their expression inward and thoughtful. Somehow, she has caught a rat; she is carrying it toward the lake with every evidence of purpose. It might be trying to fight, but this is impossible to tell, since its mouth has been neatly welded shut, and its claws rendered inoperable since its feet have been fused into broad, flat, imitation flippers. Sound draws her attention to the fact that the lake is not abandoned this evening before sight does, drawing her out of her reverie; Ellen stops and goes quite still. Perhaps she is pondering how to explain the rat.
Erik's head jerks back in the direction of the bubbles, irritation and bafflement keeping the look on his face weighted towards the more unpleasant end of the spectrum. "No." he decides after a wary second or two, arms dropping slowly back to his sides well within the occasional screech of protest from the metal biting through the night air around him. "Perhaps...it is a turtle." And then, of course, there is Ellen past and behind Toad, and Erik lifts his brows. He is trying to brood, here. Honestly.
And against the jutting flail of Jason's elbow -- is movement. Clothly movement. Jason draws his arm sharply back and his fingers close over it. Victory. Only, he really does have to breathe. His toes scrabble for ground, don't find it, so Jason splays his hand out and uses it to thrust himself toward the surface. Just enough to break it and start gasping and all.
Toad teeters on his feet, waiting for further instruction. The bubbling keeps his attention until Magneto calls him down. "Right, a turtle." Toad grunts with a nod. Ellen is not noticed, mostly for a fact that the turtle lunges at the surface gasping for air. "Tha's no more a turtle than I am, Sah!" the warty figure is quick to exclaim. His knees bend on the double, hands reaching to the ground in a desire to launch himself forward. But Toad stays himself, waiting for word from Magneto.
Frowning, Ellen curls her fingers just a little tighter around her rat. It manages a terrified peep even without a mouth, strangled in the depths of a throat still functional. After a thoughtful pause, she grows gills for it, completing its amphibious transformation. She does not actually say anything, but she does take a few paces closer to the water, peering at the moonlit spot where the Jason turtle has breached.
At the rather noisy resurfacing of Jason, Erik jolts. Again. Only this time, he comes around very quickly, teeth bared briefly into the darkness once the source of all these adrenaline bursts is located. "Get him out. Now." And then, to Ellen...a somewhat exhasperated glance.
Jason is totally unaware he's causing so much trouble. Obviously, he is causing himself enough trouble, what with his hand all latched around this very damp underwear and his legs trying to keep him kicked up. But he has a breath. It is time to put underwear back on. Which involves dipping back under and trying to shove his leg through one of the appropriate holes. Jason sure is glad not too much underwear starts /out/ at all tight on him.
Toad doesn't have to be told twice. The hands make contact with the sandy ground just a split second before powerful legs are snapped straight and Toad is flying through the air. He readies himself for impact with the surface of the water. It comes, gracefully enough, and Toad is spinning through the cold liquid before righting himself. Pale yellow eyes blink in the murky water and Toad immediately aims himself towards the movement. Legs bow up and out in quick fluid movements as he opens his arms to clamp Jason firmly around the waist and propel both of themselves towards the shore.
Ellen meets exasperation with an expression of mild, worried puzzlement; her head jerks, gaze drawn back to the water more by auditory stimulus than for any other reason.
Metal continues to revolve around its master, who is, for all intensive purposes, standing still and saying little, now that his orders are being carried out. It's humid near the lake, but not particularly windy at the moment, and the heavy black hang of his overcoat is still as he waits for the pair to resurface. He will deal with Ellen in a moment.
Jason blats out his breath in surprise, but, being of a practical or, at least, a modest turn of mind at the very moment, Jason decides to leave the mystery of what arms are wrapped around his waist, and what force is propelling him away from his submerged solitude. To the best of his breathless, awkward ability, he keeps trying to draw his underwear at /least/ to his knees.
Toad flushes them both out and up onto the bank, shifting the load beneath one arm as he uses the other to clamber up a few half-crouched hops before dumping him without a thought to the ground. Without recognizing the figure, Toad is quick to rise a foot and let it down like a tense metal trap, attempting to pin the unfortunate Jason to the ground. "Some kid, Sah! Boy by th' looks o' it..." Toad adds with a disgusted snort.
Ellen has surreptitiously healed the rat of its strange alterations and put it down. It tears off into the forest at a speed faster than most rats usually attain. She wipes her hands on her black trousers. "Jason," she observes, with a bland blink.
Erik is still a good twenty feet from all of this commotion and observation, curled fingers bracing into tired fists before they flex open again. He steps slightly aside, and the dock creaks below him. "Jason?"
Jason is initially busy again -- trying to breath and all. Which means his underwear efforts must cease around his knees. (But, oh, what effort to get that far.) Hack. Cough. Pinned, at that. This must subconsciously make breathing more difficult. But, finally, he manages to lift his arm and kinda vaguely wave it in naked acknowledgement.
Toad keeps the combat boot pinned to his chest, his torso leaning down to allow him to study the face of his captive despite the steady waterfall pouring down from his brow. "Huh," he grunts with a sneer of suspicion. "Shall I kill 'im, Sah?" Toad inquires back to Magneto, a wickedly delighted look flooding on his face.
Ellen cants her head slightly, her pale gaze slanting over Jason and then back up to Toad again. She lifts an eyebrow, but remains silent.
"Er," says Erik, anger sort've evaporating once he's more fully exposed to the nature of the situation and it has a moment to sink in, "not tonight." The angle of his shoulders slumps slightly askew of stiff and level. "Allow him to...cover himself, if you would, Toad. My apologies, Ms. Dramstadt."
"Frigging," Jason is able to shove out between gasps. It sounds more frustrated than strictly threatening. Well, being as he's on the ground and all and can't see much more than this be-goggled happy face. Bother.
Toad narrows his eyes, looking a bit disappointed at the denying of so much fun. "Righto," he agrees despite obvious desires otherwise. With another grimy smirk, the foot is lift and Toad makes a hasty retreat from the naked kid. He lifts his gaze to Ellen and swipes a hand across his now-plastered down hair.
"None needed, sir." Ellen still seems mildly puzzled. She frowns down and across at Jason. When she looks up, her expression has smoothed to a blank mask.
Erik half-lifts a hand - not quite dismissive, but nearly, at...what, it's not entirely clear. He's been disrupted, and now that his temper has burned itself out, he's a little off balance again, scowling at all of them with something akin to indifference. "Was there some sort of party planned here that I was not invited to?"
"Just," and Jason just scowls at the spot Toad occupied a beat before, then pulls himself half sitting. "Just fell in the water, sir." Now pulling underwear into roughly proper area. But oh, it bunches on the way up.
Toad takes his attention back to Jason before finally turning away to Magneto. "Oh, ah. Bit o'news, Sah." He announces dully, straightening himself up and fighting off the annoying feeling of water in his shoes. "More like playin' messenger toad, but um, 'tis 'bout that Karen girl."
Ellen only shakes her head, in answer to this query. Ellen does not do parties. If she did, Erik would inevitably be first on the guest list. She slants a look at Toad, extremely bland, but neither mouth nor brow twitches re 'that Karen girl'.
Quickly enough, that scowl of indifference curves further down into a scowl of displeasure, and the metal whirling quickly enough around Erik to ruffle his hair slows to a deliberate crawl, spinning like a nightmare mobile in the dark, with a grumpy Magneto at its heart. He glances back to Ellen before settling his glare back on Toad. Waiting.
Jason secures his scant allotted modesty and crawl-wander-hitches away.
The glare. Right. Toad is smart enough to know what that means. He scratches at the wet nape of his neck as her rolls his eyes up to the inky black sky. "She left. Into th' city, Sah. New York." Mortimer says in an obvious statement. "Just a few hours back. Said I should tell you."
Ellen has gone quite still. Blank of gaze, she regards Toad with her hands seeking a neat clasp behind her back.
The shadows around Erik's face shift with a slight turn, and with the clamp and flex of his jaw as one of the larger pieces in his asteroid belt tears itself into neat halves, grating and groaning ineffectual protest until it's entirely in two, and allowed to continue on along its path. Frustration, among other things, is evident in his profile when he directs his glare elsewhere, but he's clearly making an effort to restrain his temper. "Did she say anything else?"
Toad opens his mouth to mention that she admitted himself to be quite a flatterer, but the sudden change in gravity around his leader shuts the Toad up fairly quickly. "No, Sah. Just that she was gone. To th' city." He repeats with a nervous look to the motion of metal, relying on the moonlight to betray the flicking flecks of material.
Ellen looks away, letting her lips thin into a faint grimace only when her face is turned out towards the lake rather than towards either of the men.
"Well," says Erik, the break between his words increasingly slow and deliberate, much like the rending of a second piece of metal somewhere over his shoulder, "to begin, her name is not actually 'Karen'."
Toad doesn't pay much attention to Ellen, save maybe a side glance or two. "Eh?" he says with a confused look to Magneto. "'Ell if remember it. Wot, Kristin? Katherine? Blimey." Toad starts babbling to himself.
Ellen looks back at Erik, the widening of her eyes barely perceptible. She shifts, posture losing some of its rod-straight intensity as she braces into a backward lean on one heel.
"It's 'Mystique'." Erik very nearly growls by necessity, as he's speaking through his teeth. "She's lost control of her mutation." Now he's looking at Ellen as he speaks, daring her to say something.
Toad takes the news with a jerk of surprise. "Mystique? Oy..." is all the man can mutter as his mind quickly flashes over how he has been acting towards her. The puddle forming on the ground around him is given a swipe from his boot. "Right... so, um, shall I go af'er 'er?"
Ellen's silence holds, stony. Her gaze is intent upon Erik; she does not move or speak. She does breathe.
"Not unless you intend to--" Further suggestion bitten back forcibly, Erik, who has not been breathing, exhales frustration, and shakes his head. "No. No, just - return to whatever it was you were doing. You are dismissed. Ellen." Ellen is not dismissed, and though the shift of metal around him appears to be thoughtless now, it persists, not quite as threatening as before as he paces in down the length of the dock.
Toad's brow knits in utter confusing, his waterlogged mind trying to process all the new information at once. Whatever Magneto is about to say, he is rather glad it goes unfinished. "'Course, Sah." And once again, Toad needs not be told twice. With an almost (/almost/) sympathetic look to Ellen, Toad turns on heel and bounds off into the forest to do whatever it is toads do.
Ellen's feet slide a little further apart in a scrape of boot against dock. Her chin lifts, ever-so-slightly. She answers, "Sir?"
"You had a rat." Erik observes eventually, heavy bootfalls drawing to a halt when he's still a good three or four feet away.
"I did," Ellen concurs. She tilts her head slightly to one side. "I released it. There seemed to be something of a commotion, not ideal conditions for the experiment."
"Ah. Yes." Still scowling, although more to himself, now, Erik glances her over, shifts his weight uneasily, and then steps as if to continue on. "Jason, wandering through the forest in his underwear. I don't suppose you have any idea what he might have been doing."
"I hesitate to speculate where that boy is concerned, sir." Dry humor ghosts over Ellen's voice as she shakes her head. "Though perhaps," she suggests, so charitably, "he sought a private moment." Hands clasped behind her, she starts at an even pace in from the dock towards ground proper, incidentally towards Erik.
A paced step or two later, the thump of the dock becomes the sink and scuffle of boots into and over dirt and leaf litter. It takes a moment for her answer to sink in. A moment. And /then/ his brows knit slightly, and he manages somewhat unconvincing chuckle. "I should hope the forest is not so full of desparate recruits that he had to travel this far."
"In all likelihood not." Ellen's answer is mild. She glances at him, her gaze lingering for a moment, and then it slips onward and away.
Erik is difficult to read in general and in the darkness, both for the distracted and private nature of his expression and the limitation of his responses. He is not, however, particularly happy, though his posture is kept carefully rigid and upright as the metal around him begins to work itself into a singular mass. "He hasn't had the best of luck, lately."
"It would not seem so." Ellen frowns faintly as her gaze lowers to the ground, watching the tread of her boots over it in the dark. "I never entirely know what to make of him."
Initially, Erik pauses to allow for the worst of the noise associated with crushing the scrap in his possession into an increasingly dense ball - heat and friction eventually taking over into more of a melt than anything, which is more conducive to converation. He sighs faintly. "Nor do I. I suspect his life has been thoroughly miserable however, and rather wish he would stop doing things that make me inclined to make his situation worse than it already is."
Ellen nods quietly, her silence resigned and lengthening for a few paces until she echoes his sigh and says, "He is something of a chaos-maker. To his own detriment. It puzzles me. I have always favored order." She looks at Erik again, sidelong; about to say something else, she lapses back into wordlessness instead.
"To a degree, I'm sure some of it is merely that he is young and male, and lacking in certain...qualities...that the people he associates himself with generall possess." There is a much shorter way to say that, but it's not something Erik is entirely interested in saying at the moment, Ellen's sidelong look met with a glance that's blandly curious, but not pressing. He walks on. "But I am not a psychologist."
"Nor I." Ellen almost smiles, the expression aimed largely for the path taken by her feet as she walks along; almost, but not quite. "Never very good at /people/."
"I used to be better." Erik remarks in return, still scowling, though his brows have lifted. It's darker, under the trees, anyway, so it may not be possible to tell. "I could avoid these sorts of things."
With delicate wryness, Ellen observes: "You /do/ have some very /difficult/ people to deal with, sir."
"Yes, well. I have had few friends in the past who were not difficult, in some manner or another. And I am not particularly easy, myself, as Charles and Mystique would undoubtedly attest." What was earlier a junk yard mobile is now a near-perfect sphere of metal, polished only in isolated patches. It drops heavy and warm into Erik's waiting palm, and he draws it into himself to examine it more closely in the darkness.
Ellen pads along for a quiet moment, her frown fixed as she listens to the sound of boots on the forest floor, of her own breathing, his. "I'm sorry, sir," she says finally. "I would aid you if I knew how."
Erik's head tilts slightly aside, uneasy once more in consideration of her reply, and of his creation, as his thumb begins to work its way over the rough seams that remain to smooth them out one by one. "It is...merely one of those things. Not an issue of any real consequence, and certainly not one I should be brooding about." He pauses, brows at an awkward tilt. "Essentially, I asked for sex."
Ellen's brow knits. "And this was -- bad?"
"I do not," Erik explains, brows slightly knit, "ask for sex."
Ellen says, "Oh. I see. No, you don't." Her chin lifts slightly as she walks, although the frown lingers over her mouth; her eyes slip sideways to study him for a moment. "But in this instance you did," she notes. The words would not even dream of becoming a query. This would be disrespectful.
Erik is having a difficult time with sharing what he is sharing. This is not particularly difficult to see in the shadows of his face. But Ellen is crazy and worshipful of him, and is not going to tell anyone. Or laugh. Probably. "Jean's diagnosis included speculation that high emotion may trigger fluxuations in the current status of her psionic centers."
Ellen does not laugh. She blinks. She says, "Ah." Then she tilts a look up at him, expression gone extremely blank. "Orgasm."
Erik does not say, 'Ellen!' He does, however, look at her in a slightly startled way that suggests that he might like to, if he were more prone to that sort of outburst. Instead, he pulls in a deep breath, arches a brow, and manfully says, "Yes."
Ellen hmms softly and, if it is possible, straightens -- although her spine is quite straight anyway and it is difficult to tell. "I cannot actually conceive of a way that conversation could have gone well."
Erik expells that drawn in breath, long and slow. A little tired and exasperated, as well. This in itself is effective confirmation. The conversation did not go well.
"I /am/ sorry, sir. That is frustrating." Ellen seems to be aware that this is not exactly a great deal of help; her lips twist into a grimace, rue etching the corners of her mouth, though the expression is obscure in the dark. "It is not as though you weren't trying to help."
"Mmm. That was my standpoint, really, but I think what made her really angry was that I did not admit to what I was attempting to do. Even if I did have positive intentions." Sort of, says the incline of his brows, which settle down low again after a few second's pause. His right hand drops back to his side, taking the ball of iron and steel with it. "I became distracted."
"Yes. That is probably what--" Ellen breaks off, raising her eyebrows. "Distracted."
Uneasy again, Erik looks as though he intends to offer some sort of explanation, and, in the end, only manages to mutter, "Distracted." back at her. Ahead, the forest is thinning, and Erik is scowling at it reproachfully for doing so.
"I see." Ellen doesn't, but that is neither here nor there; she pads along beside him in silence for a moment, becoming increasingly aware of the dwindling trees herself, and then observes, "She has left before."
"I would rather that she didn't." Voice still quiet at a near-mutter, Erik glances back aside to Ellen for the first time in a little while, cool gaze starkly direct in the course of honesty before it flickers away again. "I should not be bothering you with this."
"I do not mind," Ellen says, her voice quite soft.
"I know. And I do appreciate that you listen. But I have sulked for long enough, and I have a few augmentations I need to make to the mechanism I've installed into the roof of Warehouse Alpha. So if you would be so kind as to excuse me--" uncessarily polite, perhaps, Erik tips a lazy pair of fingers to his temples and adjusts the angle of his pace once he hits the clearing, towards the warehouse in question.
"Very well, sir." Ellen inclines her head and, momentarily, halts; she stands there watching him head for the warehouse, and then resumes walking, her apparent aim the dryhouse.
Jason is not a fish. Jason has to breathe. Unfortunately, Jason refuses to breathe without underwear -- so instead of breathing, he pulls himself back in a slow below-surface stroke from wence he came. He keeps his face half tilted up toward the moonlight (whilst blowing slightly frantic bubbles) in case his singular article of clothing might've floated all upward.
Toad holds up his hands, as if proving it was her through the first stone. Or skipped it, in this case. "Naw, wasn't me. Gonna ask th' same o'you." He calls back, eyes turning to the bubbling surface. "Somethin' in th' water. Want me t'check it out, Sah?" Toad offers quickly, jabbing an index finger towards the activity.
The soft thunk of heavy boots over dirt heralds Valkyrie's approach, the eyes pallid grey in the moonlight, their expression inward and thoughtful. Somehow, she has caught a rat; she is carrying it toward the lake with every evidence of purpose. It might be trying to fight, but this is impossible to tell, since its mouth has been neatly welded shut, and its claws rendered inoperable since its feet have been fused into broad, flat, imitation flippers. Sound draws her attention to the fact that the lake is not abandoned this evening before sight does, drawing her out of her reverie; Ellen stops and goes quite still. Perhaps she is pondering how to explain the rat.
Erik's head jerks back in the direction of the bubbles, irritation and bafflement keeping the look on his face weighted towards the more unpleasant end of the spectrum. "No." he decides after a wary second or two, arms dropping slowly back to his sides well within the occasional screech of protest from the metal biting through the night air around him. "Perhaps...it is a turtle." And then, of course, there is Ellen past and behind Toad, and Erik lifts his brows. He is trying to brood, here. Honestly.
And against the jutting flail of Jason's elbow -- is movement. Clothly movement. Jason draws his arm sharply back and his fingers close over it. Victory. Only, he really does have to breathe. His toes scrabble for ground, don't find it, so Jason splays his hand out and uses it to thrust himself toward the surface. Just enough to break it and start gasping and all.
Toad teeters on his feet, waiting for further instruction. The bubbling keeps his attention until Magneto calls him down. "Right, a turtle." Toad grunts with a nod. Ellen is not noticed, mostly for a fact that the turtle lunges at the surface gasping for air. "Tha's no more a turtle than I am, Sah!" the warty figure is quick to exclaim. His knees bend on the double, hands reaching to the ground in a desire to launch himself forward. But Toad stays himself, waiting for word from Magneto.
Frowning, Ellen curls her fingers just a little tighter around her rat. It manages a terrified peep even without a mouth, strangled in the depths of a throat still functional. After a thoughtful pause, she grows gills for it, completing its amphibious transformation. She does not actually say anything, but she does take a few paces closer to the water, peering at the moonlit spot where the Jason turtle has breached.
At the rather noisy resurfacing of Jason, Erik jolts. Again. Only this time, he comes around very quickly, teeth bared briefly into the darkness once the source of all these adrenaline bursts is located. "Get him out. Now." And then, to Ellen...a somewhat exhasperated glance.
Jason is totally unaware he's causing so much trouble. Obviously, he is causing himself enough trouble, what with his hand all latched around this very damp underwear and his legs trying to keep him kicked up. But he has a breath. It is time to put underwear back on. Which involves dipping back under and trying to shove his leg through one of the appropriate holes. Jason sure is glad not too much underwear starts /out/ at all tight on him.
Toad doesn't have to be told twice. The hands make contact with the sandy ground just a split second before powerful legs are snapped straight and Toad is flying through the air. He readies himself for impact with the surface of the water. It comes, gracefully enough, and Toad is spinning through the cold liquid before righting himself. Pale yellow eyes blink in the murky water and Toad immediately aims himself towards the movement. Legs bow up and out in quick fluid movements as he opens his arms to clamp Jason firmly around the waist and propel both of themselves towards the shore.
Ellen meets exasperation with an expression of mild, worried puzzlement; her head jerks, gaze drawn back to the water more by auditory stimulus than for any other reason.
Metal continues to revolve around its master, who is, for all intensive purposes, standing still and saying little, now that his orders are being carried out. It's humid near the lake, but not particularly windy at the moment, and the heavy black hang of his overcoat is still as he waits for the pair to resurface. He will deal with Ellen in a moment.
Jason blats out his breath in surprise, but, being of a practical or, at least, a modest turn of mind at the very moment, Jason decides to leave the mystery of what arms are wrapped around his waist, and what force is propelling him away from his submerged solitude. To the best of his breathless, awkward ability, he keeps trying to draw his underwear at /least/ to his knees.
Toad flushes them both out and up onto the bank, shifting the load beneath one arm as he uses the other to clamber up a few half-crouched hops before dumping him without a thought to the ground. Without recognizing the figure, Toad is quick to rise a foot and let it down like a tense metal trap, attempting to pin the unfortunate Jason to the ground. "Some kid, Sah! Boy by th' looks o' it..." Toad adds with a disgusted snort.
Ellen has surreptitiously healed the rat of its strange alterations and put it down. It tears off into the forest at a speed faster than most rats usually attain. She wipes her hands on her black trousers. "Jason," she observes, with a bland blink.
Erik is still a good twenty feet from all of this commotion and observation, curled fingers bracing into tired fists before they flex open again. He steps slightly aside, and the dock creaks below him. "Jason?"
Jason is initially busy again -- trying to breath and all. Which means his underwear efforts must cease around his knees. (But, oh, what effort to get that far.) Hack. Cough. Pinned, at that. This must subconsciously make breathing more difficult. But, finally, he manages to lift his arm and kinda vaguely wave it in naked acknowledgement.
Toad keeps the combat boot pinned to his chest, his torso leaning down to allow him to study the face of his captive despite the steady waterfall pouring down from his brow. "Huh," he grunts with a sneer of suspicion. "Shall I kill 'im, Sah?" Toad inquires back to Magneto, a wickedly delighted look flooding on his face.
Ellen cants her head slightly, her pale gaze slanting over Jason and then back up to Toad again. She lifts an eyebrow, but remains silent.
"Er," says Erik, anger sort've evaporating once he's more fully exposed to the nature of the situation and it has a moment to sink in, "not tonight." The angle of his shoulders slumps slightly askew of stiff and level. "Allow him to...cover himself, if you would, Toad. My apologies, Ms. Dramstadt."
"Frigging," Jason is able to shove out between gasps. It sounds more frustrated than strictly threatening. Well, being as he's on the ground and all and can't see much more than this be-goggled happy face. Bother.
Toad narrows his eyes, looking a bit disappointed at the denying of so much fun. "Righto," he agrees despite obvious desires otherwise. With another grimy smirk, the foot is lift and Toad makes a hasty retreat from the naked kid. He lifts his gaze to Ellen and swipes a hand across his now-plastered down hair.
"None needed, sir." Ellen still seems mildly puzzled. She frowns down and across at Jason. When she looks up, her expression has smoothed to a blank mask.
Erik half-lifts a hand - not quite dismissive, but nearly, at...what, it's not entirely clear. He's been disrupted, and now that his temper has burned itself out, he's a little off balance again, scowling at all of them with something akin to indifference. "Was there some sort of party planned here that I was not invited to?"
"Just," and Jason just scowls at the spot Toad occupied a beat before, then pulls himself half sitting. "Just fell in the water, sir." Now pulling underwear into roughly proper area. But oh, it bunches on the way up.
Toad takes his attention back to Jason before finally turning away to Magneto. "Oh, ah. Bit o'news, Sah." He announces dully, straightening himself up and fighting off the annoying feeling of water in his shoes. "More like playin' messenger toad, but um, 'tis 'bout that Karen girl."
Ellen only shakes her head, in answer to this query. Ellen does not do parties. If she did, Erik would inevitably be first on the guest list. She slants a look at Toad, extremely bland, but neither mouth nor brow twitches re 'that Karen girl'.
Quickly enough, that scowl of indifference curves further down into a scowl of displeasure, and the metal whirling quickly enough around Erik to ruffle his hair slows to a deliberate crawl, spinning like a nightmare mobile in the dark, with a grumpy Magneto at its heart. He glances back to Ellen before settling his glare back on Toad. Waiting.
Jason secures his scant allotted modesty and crawl-wander-hitches away.
The glare. Right. Toad is smart enough to know what that means. He scratches at the wet nape of his neck as her rolls his eyes up to the inky black sky. "She left. Into th' city, Sah. New York." Mortimer says in an obvious statement. "Just a few hours back. Said I should tell you."
Ellen has gone quite still. Blank of gaze, she regards Toad with her hands seeking a neat clasp behind her back.
The shadows around Erik's face shift with a slight turn, and with the clamp and flex of his jaw as one of the larger pieces in his asteroid belt tears itself into neat halves, grating and groaning ineffectual protest until it's entirely in two, and allowed to continue on along its path. Frustration, among other things, is evident in his profile when he directs his glare elsewhere, but he's clearly making an effort to restrain his temper. "Did she say anything else?"
Toad opens his mouth to mention that she admitted himself to be quite a flatterer, but the sudden change in gravity around his leader shuts the Toad up fairly quickly. "No, Sah. Just that she was gone. To th' city." He repeats with a nervous look to the motion of metal, relying on the moonlight to betray the flicking flecks of material.
Ellen looks away, letting her lips thin into a faint grimace only when her face is turned out towards the lake rather than towards either of the men.
"Well," says Erik, the break between his words increasingly slow and deliberate, much like the rending of a second piece of metal somewhere over his shoulder, "to begin, her name is not actually 'Karen'."
Toad doesn't pay much attention to Ellen, save maybe a side glance or two. "Eh?" he says with a confused look to Magneto. "'Ell if remember it. Wot, Kristin? Katherine? Blimey." Toad starts babbling to himself.
Ellen looks back at Erik, the widening of her eyes barely perceptible. She shifts, posture losing some of its rod-straight intensity as she braces into a backward lean on one heel.
"It's 'Mystique'." Erik very nearly growls by necessity, as he's speaking through his teeth. "She's lost control of her mutation." Now he's looking at Ellen as he speaks, daring her to say something.
Toad takes the news with a jerk of surprise. "Mystique? Oy..." is all the man can mutter as his mind quickly flashes over how he has been acting towards her. The puddle forming on the ground around him is given a swipe from his boot. "Right... so, um, shall I go af'er 'er?"
Ellen's silence holds, stony. Her gaze is intent upon Erik; she does not move or speak. She does breathe.
"Not unless you intend to--" Further suggestion bitten back forcibly, Erik, who has not been breathing, exhales frustration, and shakes his head. "No. No, just - return to whatever it was you were doing. You are dismissed. Ellen." Ellen is not dismissed, and though the shift of metal around him appears to be thoughtless now, it persists, not quite as threatening as before as he paces in down the length of the dock.
Toad's brow knits in utter confusing, his waterlogged mind trying to process all the new information at once. Whatever Magneto is about to say, he is rather glad it goes unfinished. "'Course, Sah." And once again, Toad needs not be told twice. With an almost (/almost/) sympathetic look to Ellen, Toad turns on heel and bounds off into the forest to do whatever it is toads do.
Ellen's feet slide a little further apart in a scrape of boot against dock. Her chin lifts, ever-so-slightly. She answers, "Sir?"
"You had a rat." Erik observes eventually, heavy bootfalls drawing to a halt when he's still a good three or four feet away.
"I did," Ellen concurs. She tilts her head slightly to one side. "I released it. There seemed to be something of a commotion, not ideal conditions for the experiment."
"Ah. Yes." Still scowling, although more to himself, now, Erik glances her over, shifts his weight uneasily, and then steps as if to continue on. "Jason, wandering through the forest in his underwear. I don't suppose you have any idea what he might have been doing."
"I hesitate to speculate where that boy is concerned, sir." Dry humor ghosts over Ellen's voice as she shakes her head. "Though perhaps," she suggests, so charitably, "he sought a private moment." Hands clasped behind her, she starts at an even pace in from the dock towards ground proper, incidentally towards Erik.
A paced step or two later, the thump of the dock becomes the sink and scuffle of boots into and over dirt and leaf litter. It takes a moment for her answer to sink in. A moment. And /then/ his brows knit slightly, and he manages somewhat unconvincing chuckle. "I should hope the forest is not so full of desparate recruits that he had to travel this far."
"In all likelihood not." Ellen's answer is mild. She glances at him, her gaze lingering for a moment, and then it slips onward and away.
Erik is difficult to read in general and in the darkness, both for the distracted and private nature of his expression and the limitation of his responses. He is not, however, particularly happy, though his posture is kept carefully rigid and upright as the metal around him begins to work itself into a singular mass. "He hasn't had the best of luck, lately."
"It would not seem so." Ellen frowns faintly as her gaze lowers to the ground, watching the tread of her boots over it in the dark. "I never entirely know what to make of him."
Initially, Erik pauses to allow for the worst of the noise associated with crushing the scrap in his possession into an increasingly dense ball - heat and friction eventually taking over into more of a melt than anything, which is more conducive to converation. He sighs faintly. "Nor do I. I suspect his life has been thoroughly miserable however, and rather wish he would stop doing things that make me inclined to make his situation worse than it already is."
Ellen nods quietly, her silence resigned and lengthening for a few paces until she echoes his sigh and says, "He is something of a chaos-maker. To his own detriment. It puzzles me. I have always favored order." She looks at Erik again, sidelong; about to say something else, she lapses back into wordlessness instead.
"To a degree, I'm sure some of it is merely that he is young and male, and lacking in certain...qualities...that the people he associates himself with generall possess." There is a much shorter way to say that, but it's not something Erik is entirely interested in saying at the moment, Ellen's sidelong look met with a glance that's blandly curious, but not pressing. He walks on. "But I am not a psychologist."
"Nor I." Ellen almost smiles, the expression aimed largely for the path taken by her feet as she walks along; almost, but not quite. "Never very good at /people/."
"I used to be better." Erik remarks in return, still scowling, though his brows have lifted. It's darker, under the trees, anyway, so it may not be possible to tell. "I could avoid these sorts of things."
With delicate wryness, Ellen observes: "You /do/ have some very /difficult/ people to deal with, sir."
"Yes, well. I have had few friends in the past who were not difficult, in some manner or another. And I am not particularly easy, myself, as Charles and Mystique would undoubtedly attest." What was earlier a junk yard mobile is now a near-perfect sphere of metal, polished only in isolated patches. It drops heavy and warm into Erik's waiting palm, and he draws it into himself to examine it more closely in the darkness.
Ellen pads along for a quiet moment, her frown fixed as she listens to the sound of boots on the forest floor, of her own breathing, his. "I'm sorry, sir," she says finally. "I would aid you if I knew how."
Erik's head tilts slightly aside, uneasy once more in consideration of her reply, and of his creation, as his thumb begins to work its way over the rough seams that remain to smooth them out one by one. "It is...merely one of those things. Not an issue of any real consequence, and certainly not one I should be brooding about." He pauses, brows at an awkward tilt. "Essentially, I asked for sex."
Ellen's brow knits. "And this was -- bad?"
"I do not," Erik explains, brows slightly knit, "ask for sex."
Ellen says, "Oh. I see. No, you don't." Her chin lifts slightly as she walks, although the frown lingers over her mouth; her eyes slip sideways to study him for a moment. "But in this instance you did," she notes. The words would not even dream of becoming a query. This would be disrespectful.
Erik is having a difficult time with sharing what he is sharing. This is not particularly difficult to see in the shadows of his face. But Ellen is crazy and worshipful of him, and is not going to tell anyone. Or laugh. Probably. "Jean's diagnosis included speculation that high emotion may trigger fluxuations in the current status of her psionic centers."
Ellen does not laugh. She blinks. She says, "Ah." Then she tilts a look up at him, expression gone extremely blank. "Orgasm."
Erik does not say, 'Ellen!' He does, however, look at her in a slightly startled way that suggests that he might like to, if he were more prone to that sort of outburst. Instead, he pulls in a deep breath, arches a brow, and manfully says, "Yes."
Ellen hmms softly and, if it is possible, straightens -- although her spine is quite straight anyway and it is difficult to tell. "I cannot actually conceive of a way that conversation could have gone well."
Erik expells that drawn in breath, long and slow. A little tired and exasperated, as well. This in itself is effective confirmation. The conversation did not go well.
"I /am/ sorry, sir. That is frustrating." Ellen seems to be aware that this is not exactly a great deal of help; her lips twist into a grimace, rue etching the corners of her mouth, though the expression is obscure in the dark. "It is not as though you weren't trying to help."
"Mmm. That was my standpoint, really, but I think what made her really angry was that I did not admit to what I was attempting to do. Even if I did have positive intentions." Sort of, says the incline of his brows, which settle down low again after a few second's pause. His right hand drops back to his side, taking the ball of iron and steel with it. "I became distracted."
"Yes. That is probably what--" Ellen breaks off, raising her eyebrows. "Distracted."
Uneasy again, Erik looks as though he intends to offer some sort of explanation, and, in the end, only manages to mutter, "Distracted." back at her. Ahead, the forest is thinning, and Erik is scowling at it reproachfully for doing so.
"I see." Ellen doesn't, but that is neither here nor there; she pads along beside him in silence for a moment, becoming increasingly aware of the dwindling trees herself, and then observes, "She has left before."
"I would rather that she didn't." Voice still quiet at a near-mutter, Erik glances back aside to Ellen for the first time in a little while, cool gaze starkly direct in the course of honesty before it flickers away again. "I should not be bothering you with this."
"I do not mind," Ellen says, her voice quite soft.
"I know. And I do appreciate that you listen. But I have sulked for long enough, and I have a few augmentations I need to make to the mechanism I've installed into the roof of Warehouse Alpha. So if you would be so kind as to excuse me--" uncessarily polite, perhaps, Erik tips a lazy pair of fingers to his temples and adjusts the angle of his pace once he hits the clearing, towards the warehouse in question.
"Very well, sir." Ellen inclines her head and, momentarily, halts; she stands there watching him head for the warehouse, and then resumes walking, her apparent aim the dryhouse.