11036/Never Trust Google Maps

Never Trust Google Maps
Date of Scene:	10 February 2020
Location:	Savage Land, Savage Land and Pangea
Synopsis:	No one breaks in. No one dies. Just some ancient fish!
Cast of Characters:	Cypher, Magik

---

Cypher has posed:
For unspoiled beaches, you really can't beat the Savage Land -- though you do need to keep an eye out for dinosaurs. But Doug found a lake with a little crystal-blue lagoon that's too shallow for the big carnivores -- and the water's so clear you can see them anyway.

But right now he's sitting on a rock, with his ankles in the water, fishing. "I guess it's wrong to catch and eat fish everyone else thinks are extinct." He says. "...But it's nice to go fishing."

Magik has posed:
So, every now and then, trouble raises its head. No New Mutant gets to escape that fact, even bowels-deep in a system reconfiguration or wiring. Not even when dashing away from a sycophantic infernal lackey eager to show his prowess, how he deserves to go to the good place in a demon-queen's palace by putting down the rebellion she orchestrated behind the scenes in the first place. Except she _isn't_ there. Some debts and favours might be called in, but for now, they have an actual hint of peace in a world wracked by turmoil.

Illyana stands knee-deep in the water, at an angle to Doug so he cannot cast that line into her back or hook her. "Coelacanths were thought to be lost for centuries. They survive. The trouble is humanity's voracious appetite, pushing out animals and despoiling environments until nothing else grows. Lives." Her shoulders roll back. Having shed her habitual coat and that long, sword-wrapped scarf, she has stripped down to leather a cropped top and shorts that really are swim bottoms. Sort of. "Dp you enjoy it? It seems to require more patience and appreciation for your surroundings than hope of catching something."

Cypher has posed:
Well not necessarily, considering why Doug was here in the first place, but you get the quiet moments where you can grab them. Doug looks at a herd of dinosaurs at the other end of the lake and listens to the low call of a duckbill, before he kicks his feet slightly and stirs up the fish.

"Well, it's meditative." Doug says. "I just listen to the language of life all around me and try not to giggle, and lie to the fish with my movements... 'I am not going to eat you' or 'This is delicious' - and off we go."

Magik has posed:
"Meditative." With a nod of confirmation, the Russian peers down at her own reflection in the water. Blonde hair and a fair face stare back to her, distorted by the occasional ripple caused by her withdrawing her foot from the warm basin and placing it back in. Water droplets surge to rejoin their origin. "Is that not cheating, encouraging them to stay put and that your bait is harmless?" Glancing over the slope of her shoulder to him, Illyana doesn't glance away so fast as she might have once.

"When have you giggled?" Pinched brows slope gracefully down for a moment, turning over that cause in her mind. "Douglas Ramsey, I would think it the cause of the second coming."

Cypher has posed:
"Well, I'd tell them the opposite, if I didn't want to have dinner tonight." But the brace of fish hanging there is proof positive that Doug does intend to have dinner tonight -- the things you learn how to do in the scouts. Doug looks up, and bats baby blues for a moment. "Think of nature like a giant singles bar, Illyana. And all the birds and the bees are saying 'for a good time, call'. Life is a remarkable thing." He kicks his legs, slowly, and then his rod jerks, and he proceeds to leisurely reel in a pre-historic fish the size of a good sized trout.

Magik has posed:
The brace of fish calls for him to debone and filet them, presuming Illyana has no skills in that direction. Given the actual armory she owns and the talents she commands, it's unlikely she lacks some kind of experience. Flensing the damned is something of an artform, demanding the lightest of touches and fierce precision. Better for her to leave the greatest Eagle Scout after Teddy to take care of dinner while she glares at one of the sinuous, dark-skinned fish shaped rather like an eel, its primitive scales and long body telling in the distance. "Does this mean you are constantly bombarded by flirtations or merely privy to them?" The fish sailing past her on a line might be tempted to fight, but she basks in the sunshine, hand sheltering her eyes. "For a good time, ask. It must be rather loud."

Cypher has posed:
Doug merely gives a wide grin. "Why Illyana Nikolaevna Rasputina." He says, "If I didn't know any better... I'd think you were jealous." He gives a litle smirk. "Well," He says, with his newest catch, "I think I've caught enough." He stands on the stone, and lets his bare feet and calves drip dry, toes gripping the rock, as he reels in the rod and holds the fish up, and then gives a lazy stretch. "...You do like fish, right?"

Magik has posed:
The use of her Russian name, properly given in full, warrants that brief raise of her eyebrows. Water laps innocently on the white strand, soft and pure, a gentle movement that ignores whatever humans in their fleeting behaviour achieve. Responding to Doug's smirk with a sweep of her hand down her side, she reveals those deadly hairpin turns and flat, lithe figure on full display. "I have nothing to be jealous of." She stretches out her arms overhead, lifting them straight up and tilting slightly back as her spine tilts little by little. Shaking out her pinstraight hair, she swings her arms back down to her sides. "Having eaten whatever I could to survive, it will not make me unhappy. Lake Baikal has good fish. Even though the contamination on the shores worried my brother so. We sometimes would have it, not often. But it was a meal that reminds me of winter, pulling them from the ice, or the spring thaw."

Cypher has posed:
"Whereas here, even though we're surrounded on all sides by winter, there's none to be had." Doug holds his arms out to his sides. "Just months and months of endless warmth and sunshine." He hops off the rock, and hangs the fish up with the rest of his catch. Five fine, fat... whatever they are, they haven't existed anywhere else for tens of millions of years and they don't have a name.

He puts his hands over his head, lacing normal fingers together with techno-organic ones, and stretches, before he reaches down with both hands to pull off his shirt. His speedos are... red.

Magik has posed:
"The southern hemisphere would not have snow, either. Antarctica is too warm and will be slurry and slush at this rate." She rolls her shoulders and doubles over, scooping her hands into the water and splashing her face. Seawater might not be the best for cleansing, but it nonetheless invokes a certain thrill, a tease of heat beating down on her skin. The fish without a name might flee with Doug not convincing them to stay, and she's too much a threat, happy to run her hand over her chin and decolletage until flicking the water away.

"Will they be safe there? I can set a guard if you intend on swimming," she replies, hands dropping to her hips. Diamonds run down her black attire, bare skin shining in kind. "Last one doused has to start the fire," she replies and gives a swift kick to the water just because.

Cypher has posed:
"They're not gonna go anywhere." Doug says, before he puts them in a cooler, and proceeds to splash into the shallow water. It comes up to his waist and he stands there, his hands dropping down into it, before he says, "This is nice. Which used to mean our world was about to explode. But... I don't think it will today. The stuff that's happened recently -- I'm convinced I was born to... adventure, I guess. I just have to be doing SOMETHING, even if that something is fishing in a prehistoric paradise with a sorceress. I think I'm a weirdo."

Magik has posed:
Should some kind of hungry, fang-faced beast be trying to convince its superiors or peers to traverse the distance between its home realm and the mortal plane by way of a mirror or a few flaming leaps around Mars, it doesn't cause too many disturbances. Though Yana can sense every last one of her subjects, attempting to track the seething millions -- or magnitudes more -- is a fine way to be driven insane. She has no just cause to look around with a suspicious cant to her gaze anymore than usual, other than Doug tripping her paranoia.

"You do not sit still any better than I do. That makes us well-matched. Some of the others seem happy to sit on a couch and relax all weekend long." She shakes her head, vaguely mystified. "Maybe we make up for lost time. Maybe we know better."

Cypher has posed:
"You should create like... a golem or something." Doug says, "That you can use as your enforcer when you're not in Limbo. If you're always having to babysit those demons..." He says, "Who're basically cunning idiots, but the sadistic and evil pretty much always are." He dips down, to soak his head for a minute, and then throws it back, running his hands through it. "If I'm going to do nothing," He says, "I prefer to do it someplace I haven't been before."

Magik has posed:
"A sign of weakness." Illyana shakes her head slightly, the tips of her hair dappled with diamond-drops. Water coils around her legs, marking the sorceress heading deeper into the lagoon. She prods at the sandy bottom with her toe, mindful of anything that might wiggles up or snaps at them, lashing out with some kind of horrible snapping punch, as certain mantis shrimp are known to do. Mantis shrimp versus Doug, there's a fight to consider...

Given a few moments, she absolutely does not sneak up on Doug. Absolutely does not look stony-faced and unremarkable while folding her arms around his midsection, pulling him back to her. Or at least pulling them back. They might equally be proven to tumble over in a mess of splashing, tangled limbs, and worse.

Cypher has posed:
Doug has his feet firmly rooted in the firmament, at least at first, but really, Illyana is physically stronger than he is. Still. He beams, brightly, and then says, "I don't know, you could base its personality on Sam, and use it to keep the Demons in line--" He puts his hands over Illyana's, and leans his weight into her, before he slips in the mud. "Whoop!" And they do tumble over into the water, or at least, he does.

Magik has posed:
Lagoon water dipping over them, the brine on their skin is also in every breath. Illyana happily crashes downward, waiting until buoyancy takes over or her knees hit sand. Either way, no thrashing around threatens either of them. She does tend to rotate so Doug stays more upward, braving the zing of the techno-organic arm biting into bare skin if that comes to pass. Nothing like water for conducting the odd effects of lightning on the senses, no? She perches her chin on his shoulder, releasing her grip a little so he might spin, pivot, or swim away like a mad fish being chased by a shark.

"No," she replies. "I would have to find someone worse. More demanding about their rules. Less likely to put up with them but not overthrow me. In short, there is no one like that. Or I could put you on that duty."

Cypher has posed:
"What, you want to make a golem based on me?" Doug asks. "A ten foot tall steel giant that likes to play sudoku?" He thinks about that, and then the corner of his mouth turns up in a litle smile. "I'm flattered." The arm isn't a toaster, it doesn't spark and sizzle in the water but as a fish swims by it the circuitry does seem to adjust itself, crawling down his arm after it.

"I used it a little bit on Cybertron, but haven't been able to since," He says, holding it up, fingers splayed.

Magik has posed:
"A six foot tall adamantine and energy-infused construct? An incorporeal haunt that emerges from the system? Or simply you, prowling about with my mantle of authority shielding you while you get up to trouble of a sort or another that no one else has to know about," Illyana murmurs close to Doug's ear, and she is mindful of that melding between circuitry, scars, and flesh. Her chin comes back to rest upon the spot, waiting to see if it tingles or not. "What did you have it do?" As long as it isn't talking to her directly, the fish is ignored. Mostly. A toaster arm wouldn't be, but then she has a fondness for English muffins with jam on them. "What could it do, if you tested it out?"

Every so often they have to kick or bob; the water isn't purely supportive.

Cypher has posed:
"It gave me a direct physical link to an alien supercomputer... which was actually the interface port with an alien god... which was also the planet." Doug says, before he sighs. It's not a clean meld - techno-organic matter roots into flesh and bone in a manner that looks like it might've been painful, but by now they're inseparable.

Doug lies on his back and stares at the clouds in the sky. He prefers orange marmalade, himself... "I don't know, that's the problem. So far it does... arm things."

Magik has posed:
She is often intrigued, but rarely direct about it. Just the sweep of her thumb over the proud flesh is enough to signal that focused consideration where Doug ends and Doug begins, in soe respect. Likely those synapses flare and convert the merest brush of her fingers with superhuman acuity to some degree. More importantly, she releases him to float, otherwise that means his head bumping her midsection or deluging Illyana, submerging her beneath him. Rather, she swims in ovals to the side, stopping when a hunched shape sniffing about in the distance might be attracted to fish guts or human smells. She goes upright, fist lifted out of the water. It might startle at the motion of the bipedal creatures, but her palm faces out. "Cover your ears. This may be loud."

A warping of air sends a shrill, caterwauling comet roaring over the lagoon and the shore, the kind of abrupt noise that makes most animals flatten their ears and run. Even those that haven't got normal auditory structures or have no idea what the hell a bipedal primate is. They know noise, and that descending orange flare light is definitely loud. Nothing like restoring the peace by disrupting it. "You go about inserting points into mysterious alien interface ports? I should examine myself to be sure nothing is off."

Really. It's said with a straight face. But then it might be even with horns, hooves, and fangs.

Cypher has posed:
"What can I say." Doug says, with a sigh, "I like to live dangerously." He shrugs, and says, "But all this time in the Savage Land has me feeling a little bit like a dinosaur," He says, before he does what few alive would dare to do -- he pounces Illyana and pretends to bite her. "Gnarrrrrarr-"

Of course, he's not actually trying to hurt her -- he's got an arm around her waist and his teeth are innefectually on her shoulder. "Rrrrr-!"

Magik has posed:
"Dangerously. Stick your hand in the socket, move it around til it fits, and pray you do not end up devoured or zapped?" The words hum with promise, long enough for Illyana to rotate with Doug leaping out of the water at her. She is a creature of paranoid survival, backstabbing treachery an inheritance of her more ancient forebear and Belasco both. As he closes the distance, her gaze ignites in blue flame traced by arctic ice.

He might get a punch in the stomach if he were not, in fact, her boyfriend. Doug probably has the singular stance on that, even as she hooks her foot around his calf with probable intent to pull it out from under him. <<Omnomnom, the sacred words of the tyrant king,>> she hisses in Russian, squirming around enough that water is churned to a froth. "Rar is I love you in Dinosaur. I have it on a t-shirt. Yes?"

Cypher has posed:
"Well maybe it's Doug for I love you." Doug admits. "We just... we work, Illyana. We work, and I like it." He drapes an arm around her shoulder, and then rears his head back. "RaaaAAAaAAAAAr-" And he bits her shoulder again, to no great effect. "Rrr."

Then he sighs, and murmurs, "So uh. Would you like me to translate the language of birdsong for you? I can do it the old-fashioned way, or I can do it interpretively." He raises an eyebrow.

Magik has posed:
Too bad, precious arm! She has teeth too, particularly good ones considering the state of Russian dentistry in bloody Siberia. Thank Xavier for the intervention of a proper dentist in the early years, and Belasco for a fiendishly good health plan thereafter. That's to say tiny blunt points bury into the arm when she bites him in return, indentations going hardly anywhere with an element of pain. Simply put, there isn't much discomfort to be concerned about, right? Chomp. "Mmnnrrrf."

That's her dinosaur noise locked at the back of her throat, and if she is still figuring out how to do this right, Illyana can safely judge her ability to rar at him with a muffled rattle in her throat. Only after licking the twin marks with her tongue in figure eights again does she answer Doug. "I am not sorry." Okay, really, getting there. "Interpret it all. What does it mean? What do you feel?"

Cypher has posed:
"Well." Doug says, "Birds generally sing about one of three things. Either there's something dangerous nearby, they're running off a rival, or... l'amour." Doug turns. "And since dinosaurs are basically birds... let me demonstrate." He cocks his head at her, like a velociraptor, and grins, a little bit like a velociraptor...

Magik has posed:
Except velociraptors were about the size of turkeys, fierce, but not what a certain director insisted they were. He might cock his head and she returns that blunt, withering stare throwing whole legions of monsters in line. "Skreeeeeeee," is a high-pitched, strangely whistling noise replying to him in kind, shrill and loud. It can't be another way, which Illyana is fearless about. "You are my dinner, volchonok. So will you run or is it l'amour?"

Cypher has posed:
"Well," Doug says, "We both know you'd catch me in the end--" He pushes himself up, and turns to sprint along the beach. "But half the fun is in the chase." And boy, can the boy with no mutant powers to save his skin run. He's off like a cheetah, across the sand. Still, the result is inevitable.

Magik has posed:
And for her part, Illyana just enjoys the show for a bit, arms crossed over her chest rather than breaking into a dead sprint. There is, after all, all the time in the world. In many worlds.

The demon queen lives under that skin, but for a moment, it's just her there, daring to break into an oddly bright, content smile as Doug takes off for the hills. All legs, all sun. "Volchonok, I'm /this/ way!"

Cypher has posed:
Doug stops, and then turns, and he makes like an invisible lead is dragging him across the sand back to Illyana. He drops onto her side in the warm sand, at her feet. "Yes ma'am." He says, looking up. "You are in fact this way."

Magik has posed:
"Come on." That much being said, Illyana waits until he galumphs back to her side before simply flipping over and draping herself across him for a moment. A growl strummed from the depths of her throat is infinitely more effective that way as the sun beats down and she stifles a dark laugh.

So it goes.