10098/He Looks Kind Of Familiar

From United Heroes MUSH
Jump to navigation Jump to search
He Looks Kind Of Familiar
Date of Scene: 19 November 2019
Location: Backyard - Xavier's School
Synopsis: Vi, and a whole lot of Jamie's clean up after a battle in the Xavier's School back yard.
Cast of Characters: Multiple Man, Vi




Multiple Man has posed:
"You know, they don't have to put up witb this in the Avengers." Jamie muses to... Jamie. And Jamie. And Jamie. A small gathering of identically dressed and equally distraught Dupes glare and fume over the latest eruption of violence on the school grounds.

~"Dude, we're not getting in the Avengers."~

~"Your mom got in the Avengers."~

~"The Avengers got in yo-"~

"Alright! Alright! That's enough of that." Madrox sighs heavily with a hard huff of acceptance and defeat. He's used to it by now. The craters. The scorched sod. The damaged sprinkler system. Debris scattered. The sun setting, he could have finished this all an hour ago. Instead he opted to complain for a good half hour with himselves. Like you do.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut, Jamie shakes his head slowly. "Just... just get to work, guys. The sooner we're done, the sooner we can go home." A distant Dupe on the other side of the lawn shouts back at them all. "Hey guys! Is Cyclops still alive?!"

"YES!" They all shout in unison. One starts crying. Jamie Prime, if that is infact the real Jamie, just lights a cigarette as his many selves start the laborious task of debris round up. Jamie OG left to supervise in the dying light. "Pretty sure Alpha Flight doesn't have to deal with this either." He bemoans to no one as flood lights start to click and buzz to life.

Vi has posed:
Some time passes as the work is seen to. The school grounds are enormous, covering acres, and a lot of the battle raged nearer to the perimeters of it. So by the time that there is someone else coming out to the backyard, only one Jamie is left where Vi can see him.

Because that is who comes out. A young woman, looking at the very end of her teens, or maybe even twenty. Short and slender enough that at a distance it might be easy to take her for younger. Though her face says otherwise, as do the bits of her figure noticeable through the sweatshirt and jeans that she's wearing.

Vi walks across the grass slowly, a fanny pack worn around her waist. She's looking around the signs of damage here, and sees one of the Jamie's working on filling in a small crater. She walks over, eyeing the work for a moment. The girl picks up a shovel and begins lending him a hand. Spreading dirt back into the hole to fill it in as she glances up and over to the man.

Multiple Man has posed:
It's getting colder. Jamie is not a fan of winter. The cold bites and not even the memory of whiskey awaiting offers any bit of respite. He should get to work. He should. But he'd rather supervise. Complain. Smoke and grumble. An angry Jamie. They happen. The debris, the bits of this and that. Two of him sweep the grass for metal with hand held detectors. Little PDA sized devices. The wonders of the future. Others drag larger pieces of wreckage and timber away in small groups. Busy even if their work is mostly outside the light, loitering in the dark.

Madrox still questions his choice on how to give back to the school. Groundskeepers? He passed the bar exam. He's learned meditation techniques from Shaolin masters. He's a damned detective! He's also a Hydra agent somewhere out there, a Preacher and a SHIELD agent. So he hears. "But noooo. The sun will do you some good, Jamie. He says as the sun goes down while he fills a friggin' hole."

The approach of Vi brings the shovel to a standstill momentarily. Brows furrowed, that M tattoo on his face scrunches a smidgen at the corner of his eye. When she picks up a spade and starts to work, he actually laughs. Nods in acceptance and plants the shovel deep. Twist at the waist and repeat. "You that bored, huh? Hank in giving lectures in the halls on the benefits of reading entirely too much?" Stab. Lift. Fling. Repeat. In the background, little orange dots of cigarette cherries bob and dance. Like low budget, menthol fireflies.

Vi has posed:
Vi glances up and over to the man with the unusual tattoo. Though she probably doesn't know enough to realize it's unusual. "No, I just came out to see how it looked. I was down in the shelter with a lot of the others when it went on," she says quietly. "Sounded like... I don't even know. So much booming. Lightning, I heard?" she says, looking at the hole she's helping him fill in.

She doesn't have nearly the mass, nor the strength, to put behind the shovel, so sometimes she has to really get her foot on it good to get it into the dirt. "I'm Vi," she offers in a soft voice, peeking up from beneath dark brown hair to peek over at the man. "Only been here for a couple of weeks. So if we've met and I've forgotten, I'm really sorry. So many faces and names to learn," she explains.

Stab. Lift. Fling. Repeat.

Multiple Man has posed:
Another shovel full of scorched earth is thrown into the pit. A glance across the grounds behind Vi's back, three Madri drag what looks like a piece of something extremely valuable. Also extremely ruined. Jamie lets them be. Jabbing the shovel into the dirt, he drapes his forearm atop it and leans. An eyebrow arches curiously, complete with a little head tilt. Inquisitive. Invasive. All the same to him. "Ororo knows how to really kick a party into turbo. I'm telling you, there are few things on this earth that I'm more primally afraid of than a pissed off Storm." He smiles then, bright and cheery. He stopped shoveling.

Watching Vi struggle valiantly to help, he doesn't budge from his spot yet. He's okay with this shift change. "Jamie Madrox." Taking a drag off his smoke, he flicks it into the crater and snatches up uis shovel to join Vi on her side of the ruined portion of lawn. "I've seen you here and there." He chuckles then, light. Easy. Somewhere in the dark, Angry Jamie starts smashing something with a shovel of his own. "Don't beat yourself up. It's clinically crazy around here. Case in point? You're filling a hole made by lightning cast by a woman that could end all life on this planet as we know it." With that, he offers a hand after wiping it off on his jeans. "Welcome to the mad house. The faces all change, the names get weird and the place blows up from time to time. It's home though. Well... not to me but... you get what I mean. I hope."

Vi has posed:
Vi gets up a shove of dirt, the slender girl getting it over into the hole, covering up Jamie's cigarette after he tosses it in there. "Someone said there was another person too. I mean, the lightning. Storm and... um... something like Thor? I'm not sure, I haven't met him yet whoever he is. Or, if I have the name didn't stick," she says.

Vi glances around, though she doesn't seem to spot the other Jamie's off working in the other areas of the yard. "She could really do that?" Vi says, a little wide eyed. "I really had no idea," she says, eyes glancing at the school with a little bit of a worried light.

The introduction from Jamie though draws the girl's attention back. She reaches out and shakes his hand. "Nice to meet you, Jamie Madrox," she tells him. "So, are you someone I should call Mister Madrox?" she asks him. "And, what do you mean, it isn't your home? You don't stay here?" she asks him quietly.

Multiple Man has posed:
Jamie looks legitimately surprised for a moment. The dull blink, his head rocks back as if she just breathed fire. Which, around here, would likely be par for course anyway. "Thor was here? And Storm? This place is -still- here?" He lets out a low whistle. Shaking his head in disbelief. "I will never understand how Xavier keeps this place insured. Greatest mutant mystery of all time." He laughs under a breath, giving a little shrug. Nonchallant. "Eh, you probably wouldn't recognize him. Little guy. Kinda ugly. Swings a hammer around a lot. That and the lightning thing. Completely forgettable." He adds with a dismissive wave.

"Theoretically." He states quickly. "Just doing the quick math in my head, enough tequila and cocaine? Yeah. We'd all be well and truly doomed." Quicky, he snaps his fingers and lets that toothy, almost smug grin come flaring back. "She's on our side though. Thor? Ehhhhh.... probably." Asgardians, aliens, vampires. Sometimes Jamie misses the simple things like cheating spouses to snoop on or stake outs watching shady business partners. Sometimes.

That shake, firm but not too hard. Hands a tad rough from a youth spent on the farm and a a few dozen lifetimes afterward of struggle, wrath and hard work. "Nice to meet you, Vi. Again. Probably." He winks at that before she hears his voice behind her. "Do NOT call me Mister Madrox. I will not be held accountable for my actions afterwards." Jamie Madrox infront of her upnods to his surly, passing self. "Don't listen to him, Vi. He just found out he's adopted."

A wry twist of a half assed smirk plays across his lips. "No. I have a brownstone just outside of Mutant Town. Office. Type thing. Nothing special." Clearing his throat, Jamie finally lets go of her hand. Muttering an appology before continuing on. "Other than the biblical warfare, that I conveniently missed, you're getting on well? Like the place?"

Vi has posed:
The girl gives a soft, "Oh," and a little nod as if Jamie has shared some useful information when he paints the picture of little, ugly Thor. That will probably help her identify him, her expression seems to say. Enough evidence she has no clue who Thor is, at least, beyond what Jamie has told her.

"Nice to meet you too," she tells him, before the voice comes from behind her and Vi glances back. There's a moment's surprise and then she looks back to Jamie. "Your brother works here too?" she asks him, no doubt jumping to the conclusion they must be twins or something.

"Mutant Town? Is there an entire town of all mutants then, too? I had no idea," she tells him softly. She didn't seem to think anything unusual of the long handshake. She brushes her fingers through her hair, combing it back over a shoulder. "I'm really kind of new to all of this," Vi says, looking over at the school.

"Not just the school," she says though after a moment. "I grew up somewhere really different than any of this. Some of the students think I'm kind of slow because of how much I don't understand," she says, looking down and digging the tip of the shovel into the ground gently a few times. A mild expression of frustration. "I like the school a lot though. I'd say it's much better than where I came from, but that would be such an understatement," she says.

Multiple Man has posed:
A little jest goes a touch too far. As it tends to do with Jamie. A DeVito-esque Thor planted in Vi's mind, he casually wonders if that will be the straw that broke the camels back. He can almost see Thor knocking on the frosted glass of the office door. He nods in acceptance of this fate.

Again that right eyebrow lofts sharply upward. Surprised. Amused. He can't help a sheepish, light smirk. "Yeah, he's the ugly one." He'a quick to say. Jamie Dupe grumbles off in the dark. Cursing as he trips over something. Which gets some laughter from the rest of the crew.

"Yeah there's... " Blink, blink. Madrox has the briefly perplexed expression of a dog trying to solve a math problem. "Yeah. Bushwick. It's... Yeah. You haven't been?" He seems almost insulted by the notion before it starts to add up. So he presses on. He can't help himself. "You don't say."

Jamie takes in her explaination with far, far more understanding than she may expect. "But you're not slow, are you, Vi? Just different." Taking in a breath, he holds it a lingering moment before he sighs hard. Forcing out any tension in his shoulders and back. "Sokovian accent? Hey. If it helps? I spent about five years by myselves on an an old farm after my folks died. Not everybody gets to go to pizza parties and little league." He takes that little clue and can't stop from prying more. "Better how? Bigger? Newer?"

Vi has posed:
Vi gets a soft smile at the joke about his twin. Or so she thinks. As the other Jamie draws the laughter from the rest of the Jamies, one of Vi's gently sculpted eyebrows arches a little bit. She turns to look around her, into the dark that makes it probably too difficult to see the others well enough to make out their identities.

"They are all your brothers?" she asks in surprise. Apparently the dark wasn't enough to hide them, though she didn't seem to take notice of them before. Vi turns back to Jamie. "How big is your family?" she asks curiously.

Vi starts shoveling again though, the girl looking, well, like a girl. Lacking the Olympic athlete sort of tone of so many of the students and staff here. Slender, but the sweatshirt and jeans gives the suggestion of curves beneath. But not much in the way of muscles. "Sokovia, that's where they said I grew up," Vi confirms softly. She does have a noticeable Eastern European accent.

Vi pauses at the question of how Xavier's School is better than where she grew up. She rests her hands on the shovel, grounding the tip in the dirt and leaning on it. "Fewer guards with guns who shoot you if you go near the fence. No work crews. Or ration cards. Enough food for everyone," Vi says, eyes going to the school. And the matter of factness of her delivery might be what stands out the most.

Multiple Man has posed:
Ah, the dawning horror that there are more of him. He'd be lying if he said he ever got tired of watching people add the numbers and Madri. Coming to an impossible conclussion that is dangerous for one's mental health to believe. A soft, restrained smile twitches on his lips. He has to bite his upper lip a moment.

"In a manner of speaking. Yeah. In another? No." He's still not shoveling. He's more interested in picking at her story and watch her toil at his own task. He's picking her apart bit by bit. It's a force of habit. Hands in his overcoat pockets, Jamie rocks on his heels ever so lightly. Tragically gifted with the physique of a man trained to fight giant robots and evil mutants, that tight green shirt of his is a stark contrast to her flowing attire. "It's complicated." He says with a shrug.

"That's actually me." He says with a nod towards Angry Jamie. Another nod to a pair of him dragging scrap through the glare of flood lights. "They're me. My gift is a weird one. Kinetic Duplication. I am legion." He says with. theatrically ominous tone before waving it off as nothing of interest.

Her explaination is one that wipes any remnants of a smile from his face. Jamie frowns, sucks his teeth and gives his best puppy dog, appologetic gaze. He's been practicing. "Labor camp. Jesus. I'm so sorry, Vi. I shouldn't have prodded at you like that."

Vi has posed:
Vi turns and stares, and it's definitely taking time for her to work it out. The explanation, even if she might not know what 'Kinetic' means, finally seems to make things click. "So you... can control all of them. Make it seem like there are copies of yourself?" she asks him curiously. "I had never heard of mutants before, let alone known things like this could be done," she says, as if wanting him to not think she's slow for not catching on very quickly.

The girl looks back over to him as Jamie's demeanor changes after the digging - into her, not the dirt - comes up with answers. "It's ok. I mean, it was pretty horrible, yeah. But it was all I knew. Until I escaped, and ended up here," she says. "I knew it was bad, but, I just never really knew it could be better. Was born there. I guess, I had to know the stories new people told were true. But I never really believed you know?" she says, and giving a little shrug.

"So, the place you life. Can you tell me what it's like?" she asked. "Miss Grey took me to her parents home one time. And, I followed a student into the city. But that's about it for what I've seen. Well, a car ride or two back and forth to SHIELD. Oh, and Clint's place. He has cats. They were nice. I didn't realize they could be like that."

Multiple Man has posed:
There it is. The dawning terror that there are -more- of him. He doesn't judge her as she puts the pieces together in her own way. His own weirdly sheltered life was nowhere near as horrific but the strange social scars are there none the less. In Jamie's case? Overcompensation. "Nope. I don't control them. They're me. Down to the change in my pockets and the memory of how to samba." The corner of his mouth twists into a self satisfied smirk of sorts. He can't help himself. "Each one is me. Luckily, we all mostly agree on things. Mostly." That reassuring curve of his smile takes form.

A nod, slow and understanding. Jamie reminds himself he's not on the clock. No need for the Columbo routine. "Thankfully you're here now. It's different. Weird. A little dangerous but at the end of the day? You can count on tbe people here, Vi. Even if they only have one eye." He says with a lightly teasing wink. "You think this is something? You haven't seen anything yet."

Looko g over shoulder, Jamie brings two fingers to his lips and lets out a sharp whistle that can be heard across the grounds. "Round up, boys!" A twirl of a finger above his head. The snap of his fingers. The various Dupes start to fade like dust on the wind, flowing toward the man infront of her. He doesn't skip a beat even as he absorbs all the various, filthy and sweaty Madri. "Tell you? Vi, I may not be a crazy cat lady named Clint but I can do you one better. Want to go to Mutant Town? I have to go pick up some paperwork. Not too exciting initially but I have a feeling we can find some trouble to get into. What do you say?"

Vi has posed:
Vi doesn't seem worried or scared by the revelation. Just curious. She's seen so many odd things just walking through the hallways of the school that it is getting difficult to truly surprise her. "So they are... you, but separate you?" she asks softly, trying to make sure she understands it.

Jamie's change in topic causes her to glance back to the school. "It was hard to believe," Vi says. She pauses a moment and then rubs a hand across her eyes. "There's so many things... basic things and... it's all so different. It's... too good to be true. I've kept waiting to find out it wasn't true. And there's others, Samuel, he knows what it's been like for me. Tells me it is what it seems."

Vi swallows, eyes on the school. Looking like she's too afraid to herself really believe that.

She clears her throat and looks back to Jamie as he gathers in the Madri. The girl watches a little wide-eyed. "That... is so... cool," she says, after trying to search for a word that expresses it. Vi looks up to meet Jamie's eyes. "Really?" She asks hopefully. "I'd really like to see it, if you wouldn't be bothered to have me along?"