2758/Log 2758

Log 2758
Date of Scene:	06 October 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Speed, 87

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Speed has posed:
    Noontime in the park, even Tommy (Shepherd) had to admit that it was sorta beautiful out. The lean white haired teen smiles as he sits down on a bench in the shade of the Superman statue. The teen's dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with a pair of yellow tinted shades pushed up to his forehead. As he sits he quickly flicks through the cash in his hand, counting. "Hmm, two-hundred," he says stuffing the bills in his pocket and frowning. "Stupid cashless society," he mutters. For those who might look, in a nearby garbage can there's a couple of recently missing wallets.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
Tommy (Hunter) is of a similar mind. That is, that it is a rather beautiful day out. The promise of snow and misery in the winter is enough to get him out and about and enjoy some R&R before it's teeth-chatteringly cold out there.

He has decided to not use his illusions to disguise his unusual looks, mostly out of mental laziness than anything else, since you can't *really* relax while still keeping a spell going in the background.

He, unwisely, does have a visible wallet, since he is not dressed in his super-suit but just regular jeans and a T-shirt. That that wallet is tied to a chain on his belt only shows how woefully behind the times he is, fashion-wise. That, or maybe he just likes having shiny stuff around. He walks in a leisurely manner, idly licking at an ice-cream cone on his right hand. Chocolate's on his cone, and all's right with the world.

Speed has posed:
tSpeed catches sight of the chain, oddly, before the giant cat its attached to, speedsters, shiny things, it happens. He begins zipping in that direction when as the world speeds up to match his perceptions he takes note of where the chain goes and comes up short, skidding to a stop at the cost of a good deal of shoe rubber. "Hey, Vorp, what's up?" Tommy covers nicely, pulling his hand back. It's a coin toss if he's going to look larcenous or just like a weirdo.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
Vorpal nearly jumps out of his skin when Tommy skids to a halt near him. It's a bit embarrassing, because there is a bit of the jump back, the crouch, and the wide eyes in preparation for an attack that doesn't come.

And then a couple of blinks, until he gives the silver-haired young man a good look, a look to the glasses, and says "... Speed?"

Quiet-like, because he has learned discretion from Robin. Sort of. "You're not... you don't have... you're civvied up," he says, as he comes up to the other's side. Granted, so was he... but Tommy Hunter had it harder. There was no mask and no bodysuit on earth that could hide his appearance. He needed Hocus-Pocus for that.

He tries not to draw attention to the weird gesture. For all he knows, that's how speedsters say 'hi'- the Titans didn't have a speedster (something he had harped to Starfire about because it seemed like a requirement these days) so his expertise with them was very limited.

"I see that ankle's not giving you trouble anymore," he says with a grin.

Speed has posed:
    "Whoa, sorry," Speed says when Vorpal goes full cat jump scare. "I forget how you snails react to superspeed sometimes," he says, yeah, that's right, totally... He rubs the back of his head and says, "Yeah it's me, I hope you don't mind me just coming up to you and laying the codename on you in public, I just figured with, y'know, all of this," he gestures at Vorp's face. "You probably didn't keep a low profile. I'm sorta' the same really, my suit's great for speed work, but my face? I'm just a dude wearing a pair of goggles."

    He give a a little shrug.

     Glacing at his ankle he nods. "Yeah, good is new, ribs too, I heal fast, but hey, thanks for letting me crash after the thing with the shadow guys, big help."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Hey, it's no big deal, we unusual folk have to stick together. Even snails and roadrunners." He looks at the ice cream cone which, miraculously, had not fallen out of his hand. But it is melting quickly, so he tries to remedy that situation as fast as possible by licking it fast. "Have you found another place to crash at yet? If not, you can always use my pad until you do. I spend a lot of the time at the Tower."

"And yeah. I can't really hide my identity unless I do something special. But I decided today was a day I could go without it. So... I guess that you know my 'true' face and me knowing yours..."

He holds out his non-ice cream hand as he walks, as an offer to shake hands. "Might as well tell you my name. I'm Thomas Hunter. But you can call me Tommy-----aaaaaauuuuuuugh!"

He squints and scrunches up his face.

"Oh god... like... a stiletto made of ice... in my brain..." brainfreeze. He is in agony for a couple of seconds and then... begins to lick it again. "But so good..."

Speed has posed:
     "True," Speed agrees and says. "Yeah, renting a spot here in Metropolis for the moment, but I've got plans to move as soon as I can track some people down. Don't suppose you know any X-Men do you?" he asks off-hand before accepting the offered one for a second before drawing it back when the cat-man screams in pain. "Oooh brain freeze?" he asks with a pained look for Vorpal. "And hey, I'm Tommy too, Tommy Shepherd."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
The cat laughs, "No way. We're both Tommies? Maybe we should start a band." The Cheshire offers his hand again, and says "It's a pleasure to meetcha officially, Tommy. As it happens, I *do* happen to know some... a certain blue fuzzy elf, though I haven't spoken with him since I transfered out of the school. Do you need any help? I could get in touch with him or Dr. McCoy."

"I take it you're on the mutant side of the spectrum?" he asks, curious, while nibbling on the cone now that the ice cream proper is gone.

Speed has posed:
     Speed snorts. "Yeah, we can call it the Tom Cats," he says with a grin before shaking his head. "Nah, not in trouble, just looking for them," he pauses a moment considering what he wants to just come out and say here. "I was at the big fight with Darkseid and saw what they could do, sort of want to see if they'd let me join up," he admits looking down at his feet before he looks back up. "And yeah, I'm a mutant," he says, his eyes watching he people around him for signs they heard and might take offense. Like he's hoping for it. "What about you, I didn't figure you were a flatscan with all of that," he says gesturing towards Vorpal's face again. "What's the story?"

Vorpal (87) has posed:
The young man reaches out and puts a hand on Speed's shoulder while looking ahead with a big, Cheshire grin. In case anyone gives a disapproving glance, and there's one or two, he doesn't glare them down... he *grins* them down. It's a more subtle, and unsettling, way to do it.

"I'm not a mutant per sse, but I figured that I could learn a thing or two about my own powers at the school. I don't know if you saw Nightcrawler do his acrobatic thing or not, but the guy moves through the air like a fish through water. He's just amazing. And he teleports, too! SO, of course, I was all 'Sensei teach me...'"

He chuckles and shrugs, "It's going to sound totally balls-out cuckoo-nanners insane, but my story is that I am, basically, the Cheshire cat. As in *the* cheshire cat, emphasis added. I'm also Tommy. It's a bit of a...." he removes his hand from Tommy's shoulder to make a few gestures, as if he were trying to compress something with both hands into a small sphere, "... soul meld? Yeah. I am two souls melded in one. I'm basically walking chaos magic. With fur. Which means summers are my death. Which is incidentally how this happened to me- I died. So... how about your origin story?"

He hmmms. The ice cream stand is coming up. "You fancy some ice? My treat."

Speed has posed:
     Speed snorts at Vorpal's approach to the whole bigot issue. "More fun my way," he remarks but lets it go. Though both guys get a fair bit of stink eye from him before he does. "Wait a minute, there's a school?" he asks suddenly interested, like he's going to run there this second. "You know where it is?"

     The rest of it, is sort of ignored, Speed is hung up on the idea there is an X-Men school. "Me? Mutant, got powers at fourteen, captured, experiments, went to Genosha for a bit, back now, but seriously, there's a school?" There will be time for longer stories and ice cream in a minute.

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"There's a school where mutants and other powered folk can learn about their powers. It's a really nice place, I can set you up on a contact. I only went there for half the summer for some training with some of the teachers... but I have contacts there. One of my friends also graduated from the place, so... anything I can do to help you. It'd be my pleasure, one Tommy to another."

He approaches the stand and says "Gimme a mandarin orange one, and whatever my friend wants." His demeanor is easy and confident. It's as if he assumes people are going to treat him like a regular person. The funny thing is that they usually *do*... unless the person happens to be irredeemably bigoted. Nothing can change that. But it's almost as if some people are embarrassed if they don't meet the silent expectation that has been set up.

He looks at SpeedTommy and muses on what he said. Captured and experiments. That can't have been an easy childhood. "Have an ice cream sandwich, too. My treat." Because ice cream heals all wounds. At least, it does in his book.

Speed has posed:
     "Yeah?" Speed asks when VorpTommy offers him an in with the school. He considers it for a moment then nods, "Sure. If you know some people, I'd be grateful for the introduction. If I knew anyone worth knowing I'd return the favour too," he says giving Vorp a clap on the shoulder. He follows Vorp to the stand and considers the list. "Chocolate for me and the sandwich, but I'm paying," he says producing the wad of bills from earlier and slapping a twenty down on the cart. "I already owe you too much, man, so my treat." While the guy with the cart scoops up their ice cream he says, "So, wait, you're -the- Cheshire Cat? Like from the book? How does that work?"

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Well, Wonderland exists. It's just... not here. A dimension apart, but close enough to this world that sometimes things 'bleed' between them. When a connection between this dimension and that dimension happens, they're called 'Rabbit Holes.'"

After getting their ice cream, the cat grins at the vendor and they proceed to walk. Tommy warms up to his subject while he cools down with the ice-cream, "Alice Liddel went through one such Rabbit Hole. Wonderland is a... realm in flux, more subjective than objective. It's hard to explain. But that she survived the trip and came back was admirable. So... naturally... the part of me that is the Cheshire Cat was intrigued by her and decided to follow her." He shrugs and his bare feet kick a stone that's in the path. It bounces off a trash can and makes a loud *bang*.

"A lot of stuff is fuzzy. I don't have all of the memories nor and all of the knowledge. But I do know that something happened to my soul. Rent. Torn in half. I wish I knew the rest, but this half of my soul was trapped in a magic mirror belonging to a British magician when I crossed over, and it stayed trapped there. I guess I was lucky enough that I... Tommy, that is... went to the exhibition at the Museum where that glass was being shown. Some supervillains showed up, boom boom, explosion, and suddenly I was flying through the air and into the mirror."

He thuds his broad chest with a fist, "Splurt. Big ol' shard right through the heart. And that's how two became... this mess of a person." He chuckles and gestures to himself.

"It's an interesting experience, but I don't recommend it."

Speed has posed:
    "Huh, so all of that was real, the book I mean?" Speed asks around bites of his ice cream. The chocolate first, the sandwich has a wrapper, it'll keep longer. "And I think you kind of lost me with all the magic stuff. So basically you're half the Cheshire Cat, that was stuck in a mirror that ended up stuck in your heart?" he asks. "Because, wow, that's kind of messed up. So now you're like one half someone else forever? What's that even like? I can barely share a room with someone for too long without going nuts, I can't imagine sharing a brain, or a soul or whatever."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Well. IT was real enough. Alice exaggerated some things, and I suspect Samuel Dodgson embellished others. But the rough outlines? Sure, especially the parts that paint me as a completely awesome and cool cat." He shoots Tommy a grin, and then sits down on one of the park benches, crossing his legs under him.

"It's... not like you'd think. It's not like we're two separate people sharing one body, but ... I guess the best way I could put it is that I died, and I was re-born back as these two people in one. Sure, at the start... it was disturbing. I kept changing my mind, my thinking was *very* chaotic but..." he takes a second to lick a trickle of orange that is falling down the side of his cone, "Eventually I think my human side sort of helped tether things. Sometimes it's confusing, when I think about my past, because I've technically lived two lives at once and establishing a timeline is... tough. Especially on the Wonderland side of things, because Time doesn't flow evenly there. Not since it got angry with the Hatter, anyways. And personality wise..." He shrugs.

"I'm sort of more outspoken and shamless than I used to be. I take more risks, and I tend to find things funny that... some people don't. Sometimes my team-mates get cross at me for making jokes in the middle of combat. And I am bad about thinking about consequences. Like.... I used to be the kind of guy not to go up to a guy I liked and just let it be. I'm not like that anymore. But I also don't think about what will happen if he turns out to hate me, or not like guys in general, and how awkward things will be after that, for example." He shrugs.

Then he grows a little quiet. "Sometimes? There are times when it all comes down, to be honest. It's usually late at night when I'm alone and thinking. Then it seems like who I am is just this great big sham and neither side of me is real. That *I'm* not real and I could just vanish into nothingness with the slightest breeze." He turns from his ice cream and looks at the other Tommy. "That time is a little scary, because it seems as if mirrors have turned into doors, and they're inviting me to go through them. But..." he takes a deep breath, and a hint of the smile returns, "It never lasts long, and I've had the good sense to never be curious enough to try to go through them. That would be... mad, right?"

Speed has posed:
    Speed listens while he finishes his ice cream cone and begins to tear into his ice cream sandwich's wrapper. "Wild, so there's actually a Wonderland, and most of that trippy stuff happened? Huh." He pulls the wrapper open and tugs out the sandwich and zips off and back to dispose of the wrapper, it takes less than half a second. "As for the cat living in your brain, dude, I can't even imagine, sounds like a raw deal to me. I mean, the confidence is cool I guess, I was born with that, so I can speak from experience, but the rest of it would mess with my head," he gives that head a shake. "I guess that's the thing with powers though, I mean, take me. I am super fast, but so's my brain, it's faster when I run but-" he stops walking. "Right now, standing still, the whole place seems like it's a video game with with some serious lag issues. Drives me nuts. Like I want to just make it stop, but I can't, I'm a mutant, I've got powers and powers have drawbacks, it's the way life goes for mutants and the rest of post-humans," he says the last in air quotes.

     Speed finishes off the sandwich at his speeds, which is to say fast, "About feeling the pull to go back through the mirror, I dunno man, part of me would say Wonderland's got to be kind of cool, but if you don't think the door goes both ways, best to keep fighting it, at least, that's my two cents."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Yeah, I am not really jonesin' to go back. There's too many cool things here... and I have family and friends. Both old ones..." he tilts his melting cone in Tommy's direction, "And new ones gere. But... should we keep walking? I don't want you to have to feel like you're on pins and needles sitting down. It almost sounds like you've got what the Mad Hatter got when Time decided not to run for him. You've got my sympathies."

Speed has posed:
    Speed nods, "Yeah, something like that," he says and starts walking again, putting in a little bit of speed so he's caught up all at once. "And fair enough, if it were me? I dunno, I might chance it but there's nobody much here worth sticking around for, but who knows maybe this school will be a good fit. First time for everything. So, what do they teach? Just powers or like math and whatever too?"

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"You get the full education treatment, so if you've had some holes, it's always useful. And they do have help for tuition, too, which is always nice." He doesn't want to assume Tommy's situation, but having lost all your stuff does constitute a hit, even if you weren't doing too badly before.

"Of course, there's also the Titans, but we don't offer the education these other guys do. Of course, I'm speaking from purely selfish reasons- I think it'd be great to have a speedster in the team, especially if it's someone as cool as you... but hey, you gotta go where it's best for you. I'll be happy to set you up on a meet with them. And-" he raises a finger, "They have a pool. So, I don't know if as a temp student I am entitled to go back and enjoy that... but if you get in, you better fricking invite me over for a visit in the late spring so I can get some pool time! We don't have a pool at the tower yet. And that... blows so much!"

The cat keeps up with Tommy, working quickly through his ice cream. Yes, there are brain freezes, but he just can't resist the taste...

Speed has posed:
    The mention of tuition has him frowning as does the idea of regular schooling. "I dunno if I can handle an actual sit down class like I am now. It was hard enough before I had powers, and just how much help do they give on tuition?" he asks, because other than what he's been able to lift he doesn't have much.

    The rest gets a non-comital nod, "I've heard of the Titans, they're cool, but I want to check out the school first, y'know, they're my people, mutant and proud and all of that, even if it the school part is going to suck."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"When I spoke with Doctor McCoy, I got the impression that help was very ... flexible. I am sure they will be happy to have you." He could be wrong, but he hopes he isn't. He had a stable family and the chance at an education, he feels Tommy should get a shot of that.

"Well, I like to think of all of us as your people. But I know your meaning, too. Just know that if you're ever in a dire strait, you can count on me. And the Titans, too, if it ever comes to that."

He chomps down on the cone. "So.... how does someone who *lives* at super-speed have fun? I'm curious now."

Speed has posed:
"Well, if the school part is optional, then that might work," Speed says his mood improving now that the prospect of school has been lifted from his shoulders. The rest gets a slow nod, "Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those brotherhood types trying to kill anyone who isn't a mutant, just something happened recently that made me realize-" he frowns at himself. "Never mind it's lame, but let me just say, don't get me wrong I've got nothing but love for my fellow post-humans I am just craving some mutant company right now."

The short answer to Vorpal's question: crime. The answer he gives though, "Man that is the question. Movies are boring, games and music are slow, so I mostly read or run or hang out with people, you know, clubs or whatever. Anything that passes the time."

Vorpal (87) has posed:
"Nah, I totally get you. It's why I spend time with the Titans and any meta or mutant I know most of the time. Some people don't really understand the things we go through." He licks the last of the ice cream off his fingers and tosses the kerchief away in one of the trash bins.

"Well, we should hang out more often. I often tend to run into Strange Adventures," he makes the air quotes "Since I'm chaos magic and I tend to attract them, so I seldom have time to get bored. Here... let's trade phone numbers. I'll try to get in touch with Dr. McDee this week and forward you his info. When you get in at the school, call me and I'll help you move your stuff. With my Rabbit Holes it's literally a one-step process." He grins and pats Tommy across the back, "You're going to have to tell me what clubs are fun around here. I was too shy to hang in them before becoming a mirror kabob."

Speed has posed:
    Speed nods. "Something like that," he agrees with Vorp's assessment before he snorts when the cat-man offers to hang out more. "If they're the all like our last adventure I am not sure I'm down," he says with a smirk. "But yeah, we'll hang," he says before nodding he takes out his phone for the swapping of the digits. "Cool, call me anytime you hear back from that school, as for clubs, haven't found any good ones here yet, I know a couple in Mutant Town that are great though, so we'll check em out, y'know when the repairs are done."