854/Log

Log
Date of Scene:	09 June 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Phoenix, Jillian Holtzmann

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Phoenix has posed:
Jean arrives at the Ghostbusters' firehouse with no warning and a paper lunch bag. The high-waisted black skirt and short-sleeved black blouse patterned with red petals comes from her work wardrobe, because it was either that or spend half the day sorting through hastily foraged thrift store tees for something to wear.

She at least has the good sense to text, 'Hey, you aren't fighting the restless spirits of the dead or anything right now, are you?' to Holtzmann before daring to face Kevin. 'I brought you something, but I've gotta get past your security first, right?'

Once that's out, she looks up and around for the receptionist, who she'll wave to upon spotting.

"Hey, Kevin!"

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
Kevin, god bless him, is standing in front of a box of dirty dishes and she's staring at them all while pouring dish soap over them. When the woman's voice suddenly speaks up to his left he looks over to her and out at her from behind his lenseless glasses. He's a ridiculously attractive man, the kind of man that looks like he belongs on a Calvin Klein ad. But he's dressed like a 12 year old boy on his way to Sunday school. "Oh. Uh, Welcome to the Ghostbusters!" He shouts at Jean. "Just caught me in the middle of doing some dishes." He motions to the cardboard box before dumping the soap into the box with the dishes and moving toward his desk that wasn't too far way.

"How might I be of service to you?" He asks Jean while sitting down in his squeaky office chair, flatting his tie against his burly chest and moving to pick up a pen and his calculator watch.

Jillian, hadn't yet responded to the text that Jean had sent.

Phoenix has posed:
Jean's greeting winds up being delayed for approximately 1.7 doubletakes at the sight of Kevin's innovative dishwashing technique. And-- Kevin.

Who apparently moonlights as the world's oldest child model.

"Well, I'm here to see-- uh, the 'Scary One'?" she replies while approaching his desk. "They aren't out on a mission or anything, are they?" Upon getting close enough to let the bag rest atop Kevin's desk, her eyes flick down to it, then to Kevin; her smile doesn't quite vanish, but it does shrink and grow sheepish as she opens it up.

"Also," she says while rummaging, "I got you something-- just, for your desk-- "

When her hand emerges, there are two colorful models roughly three inches high between her fingers, each attached to a little circular base, which she sets on a corner. One's of Nightcrawler, the other's of Storm-- more or less. Nightcrawler has an extra digit on both hands and feet and two tails; Storm has lightning for hair.

"-- if you're into collectibles, anyway. As far as superhero bootlegs go, these aren't half bad." Following a beat, she sticks a hand out and adds, "I'm, uh, the desert city you spoke with the other day, by the way."

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
Kevin was a mountain of muscle beneath that white and red checkered short sleeved dress shirt he was wearing. He was all smiles too for Jean, reaching up to adjust his glasses and squint out the lenseless holes at her as she unboxes those figurines on his desk.

"Mission?" He asked and looked around. "Oh, no no. Heavens no. The Scary One is down in the basement, she's working on... well... she told me it was a brain sucking machine... so, I don't wanna go down there!" He laughed nervously then and went to inspect the 'toys' on the desk. "Fascinating!" He said, assessing them visually up close. "I like this one the most!" He pointed at the NIghtcrawler one. "He reminds me of my cat, Thomas!"

When Jean said she was the city who called him, Kevin looked up then, horribly confused. "Oh, right... right. Hah!" He slapped his hand down on the desk. "Phoenix! I remember you. A whole city calling... ahhhh... I'm such a scatter brain!" He threw his hands up in the air then, which caused his computer keyboard to go flying, and him having to fumble it and catch it!

"Oh uh... you're welcome to go down to see her. I really don't go down there. Thats where all the terrifying noises come from..." He whispered that last part up to Jean.

Phoenix has posed:
The extended hand twists when Kevin's keyboard flies. Palm facing the ground, its fingers draw taut as green eyes narrow--

-- the keyboard is caught, and Jean relaxes with a slow exhale followed by a small, stiff chuckle and a quiet, "Careful-- you don't wanna break your new Thomas avatar, right?"

Dropping her hand to clutch the bag in both, she leans a little in the direction of the staircase, squints, and nods along with Kevin's trepidation. She then reaches across the desk to give him a firm pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for the warning," she says, suddenly solemn. "I'll just have to brave it alone, because she's definitely not answering her phone right now."

And then, with a final smile and a brisk wave, she's off for the stairs, ears open for noises-- terrifying or otherwise.

"Hey, Jillian!" she calls down through cupped hands after the first few steps. "Kevin said you were down here, doing science! It's-- "

A beat, a murmured, "-- ugh, Christ, secret identities-- " and then she finishes, "-- Phoenix!"

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
Kevin was quite happy with the two figurines on his desk and he was setting his keyboard down while eyeballing them both. "Thanks! Maybe later I'll let you help me decide on what I'm going to eat tonight!" The phone rang then and Kevin went to pick it up as Jean was headed down stairs, he could be heard speaking into it. "Hello. You've reached Kevin's House. Kevin speaking."

The basement of the Ghostbusters firehouse had once upon a time been quite a bit smaller, half the size of the main floor even... but after a certain 'event' occurred the walls had been blown out to the east and the size of the basement has been inadvertantly tripled in scale.

Now, located down here was a wide array of tables loaded with all kinds of strange and odd equipment and experiments in-progress or seemingly long since finished... which all took up the southern and western walls. To the east were cages and cages of gear and equipment all properly stored and organized... as well as more resting on push-carts that seemed to be filthy and in need of work/cleaning.

On the Northern wall, was a giant, red, metal, machine. It looked like something right out of the heart of a space ship infact. Sitting in front of this were a few desks and lamps and some more gear.

When Jean called her name out, a noise from a door on the southern wall could be heard, it was marked 'SUB-BASEMENT: DO NOT ENTER' ... This door suddenly flung open and Holtzmann came stumbling out of it, followed by an overwhelming level of fog/mist... it almost might look like she was a rockstar coming out on stage! Except she was coughing and dragging behind her a machine inside of a metal net that was literally on-fire and smoking quite heavily.

Jillian saw Jean, smiled at her and the pointed at the Fire extinguisher to Jean's left. "Would you be a doll, which I know you are already, and hand that over?" She said, gloved hand wiggling gloved fingers.

Phoenix has posed:
Jean actually slows down a little once she's among the gear and experiments. She knows better than to touch //anything//, given how little of it makes sense to her at a glance, but she can't help but gawk a little; the fascination and her knowledge of basic SCIENCE! protocol come from the same place.

Her attention snaps up from a device that looks positively, undeniably lethal to-- //something// when Holtzmann and an ominous fogbank-- or smoke cloud?-- roll into the basement. She's laughing quietly and watching the spectacle with upraised eyebrows until she catches her first glimpse of fire through the netting; her eyebrows stay up after that, but the smile is gone as her free hand thrusts forward.

As Holtzmann asks for the fire extinguisher, red hair flutters and telekinetic force presses upon the flaming machine from multiple angles until there's no oxygen left to burn.

Once the fire's out, Jean brings her hand up to push hair from her face and return the wave with another - nervy - laugh and a quiet explanation of, "Reflexes." Raising her voice, she tips her chin towards the machine and wonders, "Don't tell me this is the brain-sucking device-- what happened?"

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
Holtzmann had her gloved hand out doing the gimmie-fingers until she realized that Jean was doing something else entirely that she hadn't expected.... Holtz would move to stand back and straighten up, letting the metal net of equipment drop to the ground, now it was just a smoking pile of junk... or so it would seem to the average set of eyes... to an esteemed scientist and Doctor of Engineering Things, it might seem like--

"What a pile of junk." Holtz muttered and reached over to a table beside her to grab a big black hose and she flipped a switch and aimed iat t the smoke and steam... which started to just get pulled right inside the device... without it making any annoying vacuum noise what-so-ever.

Jillian's gloved right hand went up to her face and she picked her goggles up and put them up on her head. "Brain sucking mach--" She then glanced upstairs and then back down to Jean with a big mischevious grin. "I just tell him that so he won't come down here. He's... he's beautiful... but... something's missing..."

A headhskae of dismissal later and Jill looked Jean over head to toe and back to head again. "If I just put on a shirt that says 'Marry Me' when I'm arround you, would that bother you very much?" She then asked in a serious voice, punctuating it with a headtilt, while the smoke-sucking (not brain sucking) machine did its job in complete silence within her left hand. "It would save me on repeating myself over and over."

Phoenix has posed:
A squint down at the-- not so smoking junk.

Well, it //could// have been a brain sucking machine, given what Jean knows about mad science. Or a death ray. Or a climate control device.

Indeed, she's learned a fair bit about mad science, and most of it is terrifying.

"Yeah," she says with a headshake of her own and a slight wrinkling of the nose. "I was, uh-- //not// expecting what I saw up there, in any possible sense." She starts to offer the bag out to Jillian, only for the motion to be intercepted by a question.

"Well, that depends," she replies with an arching brow, free hand rising to tap her chin thoughtfully, "are we talking a single shirt, or closet full of identical shirts kinda situation? Or a closet full of different-but-similar shirts, at that? //Completely// different situations."

//Now// she holds the bag out. There's one more toy inside: a moderately articulated Marvel Girl, complete with pink telekinesis bubble, an overly pointy mask, and a big pink brain symbol on the chest.

"You were right by the way," she says while shaking the bag a little, offering a smile despite its dread contents. "Whoever did your bootleg got lazy as hell on the hair. How've you been? any 'busting? Or Murder Box progress?"

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
Holtzmann grins at the question about the shirts and tbe number-of them. "That depends on how much time we'll spend together." Was her response to that before she put the smoke-sucking machine away by just tossing the black plastic tube down onto the table she found it on... every table seemed to have one of those, actually... maybe there's a lot of fires inside this firehouse?

The bag was taken and she looked inside of it, almost expecting to see food or some such but when she DID see what it was she looked back up and mouthed out a 'YES' without verbally saying the words.

A second later and the science-gal was skipping her way over to her own peresonal desk space and she sat the bag down. "My new crown jewel piece..." She said, setting the Marvel Girl figure down in the center of her desk amongst the empty cans of pringles chips and girlscout thin mint boxes.

"I looked online for this... what I found were things no mortal should witness with their eyes. Thankfully though, I am immortal." She quietly whispered while centering the Marvel Girl statue perfectly.

Holtz flipped around then and finger-gun-aimed at Jean. "You look a lot better in person though, my mysterious-photographer-friend-who-has-all-kinds-of-wild-and-whacky-super-powers-that-I'm-too-afraid-to-ask-about-because-I-think-I-might-want-to-experiment-on-you." She sighed softly then and said in a lower toned voice. "People usually run away when I ask them if I can experiment on them..." Sadness.

Phoenix has posed:
For better or worse, Jean only sees the mouthing and the skipping through a slit, because as the bag leaves one hand, the other finds its way to her face.

"I'm impressed," is muffled into her palm after a quiet laugh, "it sounds like you sacrificed a lot. Just-- uh-- try not to dwell on any of it." The finger-slit widens a little as she looks back up at Holtzmann, tacks on, "Tee eye aye," then combs those digits back through her hair. Eye contact is made when the Ghostbuster turns back to her, the finger gun drawing another soft laugh and a shake of the head.

"You're sweet," she says, pushing a few stray strands behind her ear before letting her arms fall to her sides. "//And// lucky, because I'm pretty sure I already asked you to experiment on me-- which is why I kinda thought the brain sucking thing was real, I guess." Her eyes drift towards one of those black tubes, briefly; when they return to Jillian, she remarks, "I think I know a guy who could get some mileage out of this-- vacuum?-- system," pretty much as an aside.

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
"That is a good point." Holtzmann said then as she lowered her finger-guns back to her hips and holstered them like a mime might do. Her hand sthen went to her desk's edge as she leaned back on it and stared at Jean like she were a statue at a museum.

"That is true." She said to the redhead. "You did volunteer yourself for my sciences... Even after you saw my brand of field-work. You are either very brave, or those head games of yours have left you a little... touch of the madness?" She quirked an eyedbrow up over a blue eye and then glanced toward the smoke tubes.

"Yeah. those are linked directly into the ghost dimension." She said then in a very serious tone. "I just send the smoke right into the grid behind me htere." She pointed over her shoulder at the giant red Containment Unit. "Thats where all the ghosts we've ever captured are. The smoke goes into the walls, into the back of the Grid and it just... keeps the whole damn thing working nice and... smooth."

"So... you're a mutant." JIllian said boldly then, still staring at Jean with more more eye contact than the average person would give someone, where most people pretend to look away for social-necessity, Jill just seems to keep staring.

"My cousin is a mutant. She can clean her house one minute, the dirty it again in under thirty seconds." The next part was whispered. ".. its remarkable..."

Phoenix has posed:
"I brought you physical proof of my greatest shame," Jean notes, gesturing towards the knock-off with a broad sweep while leaning - carefully - against a nearby table, "I'm //incredibly// brave." She keeps her hands at her sides, rather than risk triggering or jostling anything by accident.

Her eyes shift back to a tube as their function is explained, prompting raised eyebrows and incredulous squinting. Before she has a chance to press the 'ghost dimension' issue, though, Jillian draws the redhead's attention back to her with four stark words that - depending on how they're phrased and the body language accompanying them - could mean a dozen different things. The tone doesn't seem hostile; the stare, however, doesn't seem natural.

"Yyyyep," she quietly replies, shoulders tensing as she makes herself maintain eye contact.

Soft, shaky laughter begins to bubble up after the lingering silence that follows, her eyes flicking away as she shakes her head. Jill's cousin brings them back, along with a soft sigh and another, steadier laugh. "Some kind of super speed?" she wonders. "I can at least tell you that I've yet to meet a mutant whose powers make 'em superhumanly prone to keeping a clean house. Or room. Or-- anything, hones-- wait, no." Her head lowers and a finger taps her bottom lip.

"Technically, I guess there was Gill Gal, but she kind of //had// to keep her space clean." When her hand falls, her arms loosely fold and her head tilts a little as she studies Holtzmann. "But I take it you're-- you know. Fine, with it. Cleaning habits aside. Right?"

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
Jillian grinend here and there throughout what Jean said, but she only just nodded her head at the cousin thing and then added on. "Yeah, she's really fast... I call her Coffee Girl... I'm workshopping more clever titles, but... give me a break here, I'm busy." She grinned again before turning to pick up her own thermos of god-knows-what and sips from it.

When Jean reacts to the question about the mutant stuff, and then asks her own in response... Jillian slowly shakes her head. "I hate it." She said in a serious tone, leveling her blue eyed gaze once again upon Grey's face.

"Because technically we're all mutants. We all have mutations in us, every person on this planet... well, I don't know about the space people, though I'd be willing to bet they do too."

Jillian nodded then and she stood up off of her desk and sipped her drink again. "Thats what I hate about it though. I really don't care about any other aspects of it... just that its mis-labeling everyone. 'The Science of It' is what bothers me." She showed a smirk then to Jean.

Jillian then walked over to a desk a few feet away from Jean's right side and she set her thermos down and picked up a scanning device. She flipped it on and turned it toward Jean. "You're a telekinetic, and a telepathic... you can fly... and you dable in pyromancer and flame control." She said while aiming the scanner at Jean.

"Plus you look amazing in that outfit." She added in a dry and serious tone while adjusting a few switches and dials on the scanning device. "You were faking being a photo-journalist that night, in Kirby, right? You're a... vigilante? Like... Superwoman? Using your powers for the 'good of mankind'."

Phoenix has posed:
The recoil is visible, immediate. It forces the color from Jean's palms as they're drawn taut against the desk and sends a shudder through her tresses. Green eyes widen; muted red lips begin to part.

Jillian continues speaking.

And once again, the redhead lets out a breath of relief.

"Okay, well, roundabout," she murmurs as her head falls, "but I guess that's-- fair. Whoever coined the term first probably did so without thinking about it in those terms." Holtzmann's adjacent to her when she looks up, so she twists and busies herself with pushing hair out of her face as Jill runs through the back of her trading card.

"Pyro//kinesis//," she lightly corrects while standing up straight. "It's all psychic-- haa-- " The addendum - unexpected, somehow - sends her eyes flicking downwards and draws a small smile.

"-- yes. Yeah, no-- I mean, I was legitimately gonna film what was happening, because I know someone who might have been been able to do something useful with the footage, but-- yeah, Phoenix is my vigilante name." Her tongue rolls around the edges of her teeth and her gaze flicks towards the figure. "Used to be Marvel Girl," she adds, a bit quieter, "but then I eventually realized I wasn't 15 anymore, so that had to change." She then gestures towards the scanner, similar - if only superficially - to tools she's seen Hank deploy now and again. "What's that for-- part of the experiment?"

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
Jillian would slowly nod her head when Jean corrected her about the pyro-bit and she adjusted something else on the scanner while staring at the screen on the other side of it so Jean wasn't able to see what she was looking at.

"You have an amazing head, Marvelous Phoenix Girl." Holtz would then say. A second later she looked up at the last question. "This?" She asked. She stepped closer and then turned the device around to show her the readout, it was now paused and showed Jean herself... in some sort of thermal-vision of purples and pinks and blues, but they were pulsing slowly... except around Jean's head. The colors around Jean's head were swirling like water going down a drain.

"You're mind is effecting the energies in this room, seemingly all the time.. unless you're actively doing something that I'm not aware of." Holtz looked back at the display, then back at Jean and grinned at her. "Never seen anything like it."

Her blonde eyebrows shot up for a moment. "I mean, I get all kinds of people in here who claim to be psychics and telepaths... sorcerers and living ghosts. But, you're the real deal. Never seen it on scan before. You'll have forgive my 15 year old self..." Jill paused then for a moment, still smiling at the other before she added a second later. "I didn't have a silly name."

Phoenix has posed:
Squinting, Jean gently draws the scanner in while leaning towards it.

Jillian's description gets a soft, "Hunh," and a slow headshake as she studies the display intently. Her eyes don't leave it until Jillian mentions her own adolesence, at which point she glances up at the scientist, clicking her tongue. "//Maybe// I can find my way to letting you off the hook for not being a teenage vigilante," she warily says. "It'll be hard, but I think I can find it somewhere in my heart to do that. 'til then, though-- " She lets go of Holtzmann's hand/the scanner and takes a step back, eyes bobbing around the room until they settle on Holtzmann's desk.

"-- I'm gonna go ahead and do something. I'll-- keep the signature loud for now..."

Pink light floods her irises as her right hand extends. If Jillian is actually looking up from the scanner, she might catch the moment where the world subtly ripples in a line between Jean's outstretched fingers and the debris before the latter - wreathed in a pink halo - slowly begins to levitate.

"... and the output low, to start."

Tumbling end over end, the can slowly works its way into an orbit around the two women's heads.

Jillian Holtzmann has posed:
"I was just a teenage dirtbag, baby." Holtzmann replied to Jean, quoting an old favorite song of hers just before the redhead moved to do her fancy trick.

Jillian stepped aside and lifted up the scanner to catch the information that it was going to likely provide and when the other woman's eyes flushed with energies Holtz just got a big smile on her face.

While flipping a few switches on the side of the screen, Jillian offered a little story up. "We had a mutant in my highschool when I was a kid. I never had a chance to talk to him, he was the 'quiet kid' ... you know the type. So one day, some of the soccer team hooligans started pushing him around for being 'weird' and, well, next thing you know he has all SIX of them attached to the cafeteria ceiling via these glowing-ropes that he was throwing out of his fingertips..." She shook her head side to side. "Never saw him again after that day... nobody knows what happened to him.

Jillian looked up in time to see the levitating can and she just seemed too damn amused by all of this, truly excited even. "Hell yes." She said over to Jean. "You realize I'm going to have to write down all the stuff you can do and then make you do, like... all of it... for me. I need demonstrations, girl!" She said this and grinned once more. "I mean, with the data I'm gathering here, I'm starting to think my 8th grade science project of a mind-reading-helmet could be possible again."