September 17, 2017:
Lorna is cooking, Darcy has beers and several X-People gets drawn to the food.
Xavier's
Characters
![class="image1"](http://cmbeta.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images//class="image1"/medium.jpg)
NPCs: None.
Mentions: Boomerang, Blizzard, Griffin
Plot:
Mood Music: None.
Fade In…
Mid-afternoon. Some Saturday. Darcy has come to the Mansion to hang out. it's part work, part not.
Today, it's part not. After all, she brought a couple of 18 packs of Sex on a Boat (IE: Bud Light). Food is up to the people that live here. Also, people who can do that… cook. Darcy can, but really shouldn't. She's Iron Chef Ramen, not a Grill Master.
Nate can't cook to save his life. Which does not means he won't occasionally try to the detriment of kitchens everywhere and the glee of nearby takeout restaurants staff. Since most of the X-Men know about his magical ability to set the kitchens on fire, he is not allowed to try anything besides the coffee.
A bit early for coffee, so he brought chip and peanuts. It counts as food, right? If ramen counts, this does too.
Lorna was a cook-ing person. Not on par with a chef, but she was a whiz in the kitchen. Cookie trays flew out of the oven, a whisks and spoons floated around and went to work under her direction. It all seemed to float by, knives, and other flatware dancing around her like a Disney's princess as she sat there on the edge of the counter, reading something out of a magazine and nibbling one of the fresh cookies.
The sink ran hot water and a bit of metal wrapped scrubby saw to the dishes that she created.
She wasn't even cooking for any particular reason other than she enjoyed it. The green haired mutant figured that, between the students and staff, whatever she made would be consumed. Of course, then there had been Nate and she knew him pretty well. So out came the tray hot chocolate chip cookies on offer. A strange contrast to her punk-rocker looking outfit of black skinny jeans and a band T-shirt from the 80s. "Soo, batch number one is edible."
Darcy makes her way into the Mansion, beers in hand. She walks into Wall of Cookie Smell, and it draws her into the kitchen.
"Holy fuck, that smells sofa king good. Can I trade beer?"
Fortunately mid-afternoon a Saturday the kitchen area is mostly safe from the students. But yes, there is little doubt none of Lorna’s cookies will survive to breakfast tomorrow. In fact, Nate may be the main culprit.
“Darcy, my favorite SHIELD agent,” he greets the beer-bearer. “This reminds me I need to tell you about Thursday. We met a bunch of genuine costumed non-mutant super-villains being dumbasses in Mutant Town.”
Lorna glanced toward Darcy as she directed a cookie sheet out toward the woman. "I'll take a beer for a cookie, help yourself." She smirked, popping the rest of the cookie into her mouth.
"Nice to meet you, Darcy. Nate was telling me a bit about your organization before those dumb-nuts started threatening people."
One other finally joins the group; Dani Moonstar. While she could have used in the indoor grill facilities, she went outside. There's just something about charcoal and the outdoors that make the burgers and hotdogs better.
Either way, the black-haired woman finally makes her way into the kitchen with a few foil wrapped trays. "Hey." She calls out to the small group assembled within. "Made some burgers and hot dogs if anyone is hungry." And with those words said, Dani puts the trays of food down upon a counter. One tray holds a variety of burgers, while the other holds a host of hot dogs. Everything is still piping hot to the touch.
And while she gives Lorna a curious look (the only one she doesn't yet know), Dani will hold off from further interrupting the conversation that's already flowing about.
"Nate! My favorite motherfuckers did what in Mutieville?" Darcy says, turning her greeting of Nate into immediate concern for what happened. Lorna accepting a beer, has Darcy setting the packs on the counter, tearing into the cardstock, and offering over a bottle.
"Hi to you. I wanna know about the cock sucks," she says, hand fishing for another beet. But then, there is meat.
"Oooh, Fuck Dani. Mind-reader! I skipped lunch. Please, put your meat in mah mouth!"
When is Nate not hungry? Still, he is not so hungry to notice Dani’s look at Lorna. Those girls should have been students at the same time, strange. “Dani, Lorna. Lorna, Dani,” he offers.
As for Darcy. “Well, we were in Mutant Town for business and meeting people when we found some robbers in Mutatoo, which is a tattoo parlor there.” Where he got his tattoo, actually. “Four guys with guns. Norms. And there were two costumed clowns with them. A guy called Boomerang with trick boomerangs and a guy called Blizzard with Iceman-like powers. They also had a monster outside called Griffin. Rogue took care of it. Looks like there has been some kind of gangster territory disputes and the shop owners of Mutant Town are getting asked protection money by many groups. Some are not paying, and some gang boss sent those idiots to rob and thrash the place.”
He found out all that by talking to the owner and the cops.
Lorna nodded as she set the tray of cookies down and took up one of the beers. "I'll leave it to him to fill you all in then. Thanks for the beer." Underaged? Sure. But no one in the mansion had thus far told her to stop, not that she was going to listen anyways. She offered a two fingered salute toward the two, only partially sarcastic in nature.
And then she was off, wandering down the hall and leaving the group.
Darcy and her language.
That's enough to earn an amused look from Dani, as the Cheyenne pulls out the burger and hot dog buns. In fact, it goes so far as to pull a laugh from the woman as well, with that last line of her's. "Here Darcy, before you die of hunger." Both the burger and hot dog buns will be passed over to the other woman.
At the introduction to Lorna, Dani nods and offers a quick smile as the woman takes her leave as well. "Take care."
Then it's back to Nate and Darcy, as the Cheyenne asks with a thread of sardonic humor to her voice, "So, what trouble are you two up to?"
Darcy's not the Alcohol & Beverage Commission. She doesn't need to card the kid, and she hasn't been made faculty here (this is a bad idea, no one do this!) so preventing the girl from taking a beer is not her problem. She gives the girl a salute back before turning to Nate and Dani.
"Well, fuck. Didja givum hell?" she asks Nate whilst making burger to shove into maw.
"Me? Oh, the usual. You?"
Nate picks up a fork and stabs the closest hamburger. Hot is good, although he gives pause after the first bite almost burns his tongue. “Hmm,” he considers while munching the meat. “They escaped. Well, we go the normal thugs. But the rest escaped. So the cops don’t know who sent them. It is rare for gangs to be so blatant in Mutant Town, though. New York costumed crowd avoids the area. They are not special snowflakes there.”
Like the others Dani is quick to make her own plate, which resolves into one burger and one hot dog.
Ketchup and mustard will be added to each, before the woman takes a bite of her burger. A small bite, so she doesn't go down the road that Nate is currently feeling.
Their conversation is listened to for a minute and then Dani asks, "Not sure if this was asked, but what did the gang want? Just to cause havoc? Destruction? Or were they stealing something, or attacking specific people?"
Nate's comment about special snowflakes earns a faint snort from the dark-haired woman, but nothing else for the moment.
"Fuck," Darcy quips, frown on her face as she gets her burger assembled (Burger, ASSEMBLE!) before a healthy bite is taken. With the fixings the temperature is mitigated and she manages to avoid scalded mouth though does have to chew with an open mouth and slow exhales to cool it down a bit more. She glances at Dani and then looks at Nate, lifting her chin: Ditto. She took my question the mind-reader!
Oh, mustard and ketchup. Of course. An a beer at hand, to solve the problem with the too hot meat. Now Nate can happily chomp on the burger. So the answer is a bit delayed: “It was retaliation for ignoring the protection racket’s demands. Those guys were nothing but high-power thugs. They would have robbed the place and then destroyed it.”
"Protection against what? Other gangs and threats within Mutant Town? Or threats outside of M-Town?" Asks Dani, expression somewhat serious, even if the immediate problem has been solved. "I'm going to assume while you took care of the would-be thugs that day, that the gang is still around? What's the name of this gang?"
Dani's burger, for the moment, is set aside, as she considers all of what Nate has said. While not necessarily on the 'job' as it were, she can't quite stop sliding into that particular mindset.
Darcy's the same way, even if she's not the one for this sort of thing. She could maybe talk to a few people around the office about it, so that's something. Again, she notions at Dani, though this time she gets a few words out.
"What she said." Because Darcy doesn't know protection racket from extortion? Wait. What are we talking about again?
“Pff, protection?” Nate shakes his head. “It is just extortion. They have to pay or their business will be harassed or destroyed. It is just blackmail. But if several gangs do it all at once, they will ruin the business anyway. So the gangs divide the territories and defend them from other gangs. Usually. But something has been going on. I don’t know. We might need to patrol Mutant Town and help the cops. Well, I at least will be around more now.”
"You'll have to tell us the name of the gang." Dani states, "We could potentially see what's going on with them. Or if we have any intel." By 'we' Dani likely means SHIELD, though there's always the unspoken caveat of 'if it's not classified'.
"But before we do that let's finish our food. Food before business."
And just like that Dani will pick her burger back up, but before she takes another bite she'll add, "When I'm off the clock I'll help patrol as well. You shouldn't go alone."
"I don't patrol, but I can check about hte office," Darcy looks over at Dani, head tilting. "Meet up for lunch someday? Compare notes?"
"You ladies should go to District X precinct," points out Nate. "Talk to the detectives. I think local crime is waaay under SHIELD's radar. But the cops there might be impressed by the UN badges and tell you stuff they won't tell me." He really can't give much in the way of names. Organized crime in New York is complicated. Besides, the burgers and the cookies won't eat themselves.