capeandcowl | 18 ➴ [voice]

Entry tags:

† kate bishop | hawkeye

18 ➴ [voice]

Sooooo. Bad news, guys. Max Gibson ported out this morning. I'm optimistic that she'll be back soon, but you know how it goes around here. I won't be holding my breath.

Anyways, in less depressing news — or more, depending on your perspective — Valentine's Day is just one week away. What're your plans, Network? Anyone up for an anti-date night?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, wow. Much as I'm glad for anyone to get out of here, that doesn't make it any easier on the people who're left. Had she been here a long time?

She was here a little over a year. Long enough to get settled in, make friends, hold a job. She had a whole life built here.

[ Jason's quiet for a moment, taking that in. Even though he's been here a couple of months, he's still mostly fixated on home. Now he's trying to imagine what it would be like to feel that his life was here. ]

What about you, Kate? You've been here a long time, too. It must be hard to see someone else disappear, knowing the same thing could happen to you.

It's been two and a half years for me. [She sighs, thinking back on all the people who've come and gone since then.] And I've been home twice since then.

I don't know if this place will ever be home, but it feels just as real as home does. Like, I could be here forever, even if I'm not. I don't know if that makes any sense.

It kind of does. It tells me you don't expect to leave.

[ He frowns to himself, thinking over her words. He can identify, though he doesn't attach those feelings to the City. ]

When you find a new place, there's always two ways it can go. You can hate it and reject it, or...you can get attached, because there's people or just because time makes things different. Do you think Max would've wanted to go?

Hating and rejecting this world seems counterproductive. We're here until Lachesis decides she's done with us. If we waste time wallowing, we can't get anything done.

I think Max understood that. She talked about her home sometimes, but I think she knew she was doing good being here. But I'm not a mind-reader, so I'm not sure what was really going on in her head.

Hopefully for her, she'll only have to worry about one home now.

You aren't by yourself now, right? You said Max was one of your housemates, not the only one.

I'm not alone. I've still got April, and her raccoons.

[ A pause, though he's trying to keep the tone lighter now. ]

Raccoons? Interesting pet.

It's one of April's powers to communicate with them, so they sort of flock around our yard and do her bidding. It's kind of disgusting sometimes because they get into our garbage and eat dirty socks and stuff, but she's housetraining them, so I'm trying to be optimistic that they're not completely horrible.

Wow, that’s…kind of crazy. [ And gross. ] I guess anything can be tamed. Uh, is it just racoons she can speak to?

I think so. I was hoping it would work on dogs or cats, but they don't respond to her the same way the raccoons do.

That's one of the strangest powers I've ever heard of. I guess the City really takes all kinds.

It really can be the luck of the draw.

What powers did you get, Jason?

[ Easily. ] I already had powers. [ It’s not like it’s really a secret anymore, and even if it were, he likes Kate. If he’s going to work with her, he should tell her. ] I’m a demigod. I have power over air and electricity. Storms are my thing, but…I swear those recent ones were not my fault.

The Porter didn’t change me. Did it give something to you?

Gods, gods everywhere. One of my best friends here was a demigod here. Alex... his dad is Ares. It's a shame you two didn't get the chance to meet. [She pauses, suddenly missing the little twerp more than ever.]

I've always had an excellent memory, but the Porter's enhanced it to the point that I basically can't forget anything here. It's both a blessing and a curse. I also got superhuman eyesight. I can see people in the cockpits of planes. It used to hurt a lot, I'd have major headaches all the time, but I'm used to it now.

Ares, huh. [ Jason smiles. ] One of my friends, my team members back home, is a son of Mars. That's Ares' Roman form. I'd have liked to meet your friend. We'd probably have had a lot to talk about. I haven't met any other demigods here.

[ Though, he likes that Kate can take that all in stride and doesn't think he's lying. Or crazy. Or any number of other things that a mortal could think. She takes him as seriously now as she had when they went to see Mitch, and he appreciates that more than he can say. ]

So enhanced eyesight. You must have pretty good aim. I'll go ahead and envy you the perfect memory, though...I guess it must have been hard to get used to if it all came new from the Porter. I've actually never met anyone who could do either of those things.

Alex is great. I mean, he's annoying a lot of the time, but I think that has to do more with being thirteen and knowing how to push my buttons. But he's one of the people I trusted most here. It's rough without him, just like it's going to suck now without Max.

My aim's only gotten better since I arrived here, and it was pretty amazing already, so that's saying something. The memory and eyesight combined make it really easy for me to pick up new skills. I'm a better fighter now than I was back home. And a better dancer.

[ Jason smiles at that. The improvements those powers could make in terms of fighting were really all he'd been thinking about, and he's surprised to find that it's useful in other ways too. ]

Yeah, I guess you could memorize any steps you needed to? What kind of a dancer are you?

I used to take ballet lessons when I was little. But now I stick mostly to moves you can do in a club.

I've never actually been to one of those things. Ballet sounds cool, though. Why did you give it up?

My heart was never really in it. I like to dance, but at a certain point, you have to want to pursue it, you know? I'd rather be shooting than dancing en pointe.

I can understand that. I never had much of a hobby outside of weapons training, there wasn't a lot of time outside of training at Camp. I guess it was like that for you too, once you started shooting.

I was an overachiever. I took all sorts of lessons, tried a little bit of everything. But shooting... it's what I love to do. And it's opened so many doors in my life.

What's your specialty, Jason? What do you like doing best?

[ See, this kind of thing is why he likes her. She may not have lived in Camp, but he thinks she'd understand that life better than most. She has the training for it. ]

The sword, I guess. I'm trained in a lot of different weapons. Actually, pretty much anything except the bow, since we left that to the Apollo kids.

You'd probably like them. They talk about shooting like you do. The closest I'd come to that would be a spear, but even at that, I like hand to hand better. That's what I'm used to.