8927/Nightcap

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Nightcap
Date of Scene: 23 August 2019
Location: Logan's Cabin - Breakstone Lake
Synopsis: Noriko visits Logan for the world's most bizarre detention session.
Cast of Characters: Wolverine, Surge




Wolverine has posed:
Logan's cabin is technically on school grounds, although it's a bit of a walk from the Mansion. The truth is he could have had lodgings nearer by - he could have even taken up residence in the Boathouse before the Cajun infested it - but he wanted to live a little closer to nature. On top of that, students don't often go tromping out into the woods without a good reason and it gives him enough of the peace and quiet he values so much.

The sun is close to setting, and in the little clearing the House That Logan Built is about as active as it ever gets. A warm yellow light is on in the window, the pane open and the curtains fluttering in the breeze. About thirty feet away there is what looks to be a freshly cut tree stump, and around the side of the cabin itself Logan exhibits what happens to any timber that dares cross him.

Clad in a sleeveless white tank top and jeans, his brow slick with sweat and brandishing an axe, he hacks away at the wood with practiced and well-timed swings. Nearby, a plastic bucket of the kind one buys at Home Depot has been filled with ice now half-melted and a few floating cans of Molsons.

Surge has posed:
Okay, so when Jean said she could go have a 'nightcap' with Logan, Noriko really didn't expect to have to earn her forest merit badge. She is not dressed for this kind of wilderness excertion, brushing limbs out of her face and spittling up leaves that snap back against her lips, flailing at insects of all shapes, sizes, and temperment.

It's not okay. Nobody should live like this. God invented AC for a reason.

Upon making it to the clearing where The House that Logan Built stands, she brushes at her brow, having removed her headband and goggles to use as a rag rather than keeping her hair back. The heavy gauntlets she's wearing are burdenous in this heat too, nevermind the act of lugging them around for extended periods of time. "HEY!" Shouting, hands cupped around her mouth with a tangling pair of goggles looped about her pinky. "Don't fucking shoot me or anything okay. It's Noriko... Ashida. Surge. Jean said I could come raid your liqour cabinet." That is, in fact, not at all what Jean said.

Wolverine has posed:
Logan lifts the axe over his head, draws a bead on the chunk of unsplit wood and then turns his head as the wind carries something to him. He sniffs the air a couple of times, still clasping the handle of the axe in both hands as he walks around the cabin to see where the scent is coming from.

There's no immediate reaction from the man at first when Noriko speaks. He simply stands there, axe held longways before him and a stern, slightly pissed off scowl on his face. He's mastered the art of looking like he has no idea what she is saying, and somehow that's her fault.

"She did, huh?" Logan asks finally, propping the axe against the cabin and turning to disappear behind it again. He's gone for a long moment, giving the impression that he might not be coming back at all. But then he returns, a single can of beer in one big hand that he cracks open with his thumb.

"Not really like Miz Grey t' send kids out for a Mickey. What're you? Twelve?"

Surge has posed:
Nori is still brushing at herself when Logan comes around the side of the cabin and to her credit, she doesn't startle seeing him standing there lugging an axe. Instead she just sort of smirks a cockily and shrugs, "Dude, I don't even know, but I said I was going to go polish off a bottle of cough syrup.. I suppose she thought having a drink with you might be more constructive."

Her palms slap together with a metalic clanking as she clears the last bit of distance between them, "She was pretty pissed off at me anyways, so maybe she expects you'll stab me through the fucking heart or something." Her hand comes up, clearly expecting the beer was for her... at least until he pops it open with his thumb.

It's like when you wave at a stranger who was waving at someone behind you, except Nori doesn't look embarassed, she just bobs her head a couple times. Lips kind of puckered out a little as she glances back and forth at the clearing. "Nice log cabin in twenty twenty seven, man.. you /trying/ to come off as a caveman or is this just coincidental?"

He fired the first shots.

12. HUH!

Wolverine has posed:
"Maybe I am a fuckin' caveman," Logan answers, taking a noisy swig of the beer and wiping his mouth with the back of his other hand, "An' a fuckin' caveman would prob'ly live in a fuckin' cave, eh?"

The mouth on him. He doesn't do much teaching - mostly just his occasional mentees - so he hasn't trained much to keep a civil tongue. He cusses up a storm and doesn't seem to feel all that bad about it. He leans back against the side of the cabin, booted foot lifting up off the ground to rest the sole against the woodwork.

"My assumption," he begins, "is that Miz Grey was sendin' you here as a sort of cautionary tale. The dangers of excessive alcohol consumption. 'Cept that this stuff might as well be water, as drunk as I'ma gonna get off it."

Nevertheless, he takes another gulping swallow of beer and crinkles the can a little beneath his fingers. He turns about, walking into the cabin and appearing at the open window a second later. There's a noise of clanging and banging as he searches through kitchen drawers and mutters to himself. After a moment, he shouts out the window without looking up.

"Who are you, anyway?"

Surge has posed:
Noriko is unamused! That's not true, she's super amused. Grinning from ear to ear as he banters back at her in the language of her people: The Xavier school Dilequint. "Dude, it's twenty twenty seven, anything before two thousand may as well be caveman." She tucks her metal fingers into her pockets and walks over with heavy steps. It is unlikely there's a ninja bone in her body for how sneaky she is.

"You know what they say about assumptions right? You look like a dick when you say them." This /could/ be why she ended up in Jean's loving embrace. Then again, Logan really isn't a teacher so much as an adult and she's legally allowed to cuss in the state of New York. It says so in the law books or something.

"Whatever she 'meant', she said I could come up here and have a drink. So I just walked a mile into the woods and I'm sweating like a pig... I figured she'd let you know I was coming though." Not that she cares that she showed up unnanounced. Far from it, she leans against the open window and peers inside noisely because she has almost as few boundries as Illyana.

"Where's your TV?"

Murmured, mostly to herself, unaware of how good his hearing it.

"Who am I? I told you, Noriko Ashida. I blew up the Oven? No... okay, I'm a senior.. and I'm here to have a drink."

Wolverine has posed:
"Yeah, I got the Noriko Ashida part," Logan answers, the name pronounced flawlessly for someone who looks like he couldn't point to Japan on a map let alone speak Japanese, "so you're a senior? That makes you, what? Eighteen? Nineteen? Legal drinking age hasn't been nineteen in New York since the Eighties. Here."

He glances up from the drawer, producing a foil packet and ripping the top off it with his teeth. A trio of squat, thick cigars fall from it as he empties the contents into his hand. One he looks at for a moment and drops back in the drawer, one he clenches between his teeth and the other he tosses almost offensively at Noriko.

"There," he talks through the unlit cigar in his teeth, "I don't en'ertain without a stogie, an' not sharin' s'bad manners."

As he bares his teeth to bite the end off the cigar, his teeth reveal sharpened and animalistic canines. He spits the discarded tip into the sink and walks back out through the door, glaring sidelong at Noriko as he steps into the open.

"What're the gloves for? Some kind of fashion statement?"

Surge has posed:
"So you were asking a question you already knew the answer to?" Nori narrows her eyes, but it's more amusedly than inspective, "That's cool." She doesn't notice the part where he pronounces her name, though, it's entirely possible she's already high. She is, of course, having had a gummi bear long before she ever started her trek through the woods to find this cabin ala a horror movie.

"So?" That's her response to the legal drinking age, "What's a drink going to do, honestly? Give me a little buzz, if I'm lucky, and then I'mma go on back up to the mansion and crawl into bed like a good girl because classes start in the morning." She zero intention of doing that.

Or letting Ellie do that.

The tossed cigar juggles as it's tossed, but her gauntlets are cumbersome for this kind of activity and she ends up dropping it. It aint a thing to bend over and scoop it off the dirt though, "What's this for? We putting some pot in it?" Sniffing with a wrinkled nose, glancy glancing twice in his direction at mention of those cumbersome accessory.

"I absorb and release electricity. If I have too much or too little it can fuck with my head and metabolism, so I have to wear this God damned things so I know when I'm in the green... sometimes I'll suck up a little extra though, especially if I'm going out dancing.. it's a super high, totally recommend it."

Another sniff, another nose wrinkling. "Is it true you can't die? Even if a train hit you or something?"

Wolverine has posed:
"Bite the end off it and smoke it," Logan fishes a silvery lighter from his pocket, the sort that looks ancient and beat up yet lovingly cared for, and lights his own cigar, "And no, it ain't. If you need reefer, yer smokin' it wrong."

His cigar lit, Logan tosses the lighter through the air to her. Once again, he seems to have little regard for how difficult it is to catch things while we're big honkin' gauntlets. The lighter itself has an engraving on the side, reading 'Jim Logan' at the top and the words 'Fighter by Day, Lover by Night, Drunkard by Choice, GI by Mistake' underneath.

The question about him causes him to raise his eyebrows and stick out his bottom lip, cigar pulled from his mouth to smoulder between his index and middle fingers for a moment as he considers it.

"I guess? Haven't died yet. Have been hit by a train. I think."

Surge has posed:
"Bite off the tip, smoke it." Seems easy enough. Nori turns the cigar over in her fingers, the only one she's ever smoked didn't have a tip to bite off and she most certainly didn't have tobacoo in it, "You /sure/ you wouldn't rather smoke pot?" Honest question, once more trying to catch something thrown at her and failing to do so miserably. God /damn/ she hates these gauntlets. It too is snatched off the ground, reading the engraving as she does instructed with the stogie, and then flicks her metalic thumb across the wheel to produce flame.

Big plums of smoke errupt over her head with each toke. She pinchs at the end with thumb and index finger, which she's hitting like a blunt rather than a cigar. "Okay well that's... I guess that's cool, right? If I got hit by a train, squish.. But I have the good fucking sense to get out of the way of one." BUT NOT to not poke the bear. She plays loose and fast with caution and danger signs.

The light is tossed back in through the open window, leaning on it with both forearms, chewing the end of the lit cigar. "So... not a big people person, are you? Kind of got this leave me the fuck alone or Ill gut you vibe. Kind of like Ellie, only not as cute."

Wolverine has posed:
"I'm fuckin' adorable," Logan argues, simply dragging deep on the cigar and letting the white-grey smoke coil up around his face in the twilight. They're not the fanciest of cigars, but they seem to be a step up from the kind one would buy over the counter at a gas station. Not that it could be picked up just by looking at them.

"'Mazed you worked that all out by yerself," he continues, "fella who lives in a cabin out in the woods, mile away from the big house, wants t'be left alone? Fuck me, Jeanie didn't say she was sendin' Sherlock Holmes. What're ya doin' wastin' your time jawin' with me for? Go stop Moriarty!"

He sits down on the little wooden stoop at the cabin's daw, cigar resting between his fingers and trailing a faint thread of smoke upwards into the night air, "Broke the oven, huh? Just dickin' around or ... ?"

Surge has posed:
"Oh, now /that/ is adorable! I saw that movie, Robert Downey Jr's accident was dope." Nori does not really care that there's a book version of the movie in question, still leaning on her arms, excpet periodically reaching up to grab the cigar. Mostly she's just letting it burn after the first big puff goes down her lungs, where it does not belong, and nearly killed her.

"I didn't see the sequal, no spoilers." Pointing a warning finger at him, "Don't be a dick." Besides, "It's absolutely obvious, which makes me wonder why Jean sent me out here, if not to get a drink. Other than you're such pleasant company and I'm surprised you aren't getting stream after stream of would be vistors knocking upon your door endlessly."

Broke the Oven... Nori shrugs, "I fell asleep at the counter, Ellie startled me with an explosion, I shout electricity at it because I thought it was a creepy ass fucking Chain wielding Supernatural looking son of a bitch... It was an accident."

Wolverine has posed:
"Bet they raked you over the coals for it, huh?"

Logan breathes in the fragrant smoke from the cigar, holding it in his chest for a moment before exhaling it in a long plume. He taps it on his knee, the ash momentarily marking his jeans before falling to the ground.

"Made ya feel like you'd done wrong," he continues, staring off into the distance thoughtfully, "Like you meant it, or like yer a bad kid lookin' to cause trouble. They're like that, up there."

He jerks his head in the general direction of the Mansion, "Some of 'em, anyway."

Surge has posed:
Noriko grunts quietly and shrugs a shoulder, just one, glancing off in the direction of the trees surrounding his cabin. "Kind of, yeah.. not really.. It was odd. I expected to get grounded or something, detention at the least, but instead she gave me this big long speech about only you can prevent forest fires.. she didn't really use those words though." Puff, smoke rolling out either side of her mouth where it puckers around the cigar in her teeth.

"This tastes like ass..." Glancing at it, smacking her lips, and then taking another puff. "Whatever, I don't give a fuck if they punish me. I can handle that shit, so long as they don't kick me out. I mean, I'm a fucking mutant, the hell do they expect? Things will blow up, people will accidentally grow spikes out of their ass and punchture the couch cushions, that's the price you pay for teaching kids how to use abilities."

"Get some fucking insurance or something."

Nori is unaffected by blame.

Wolverine has posed:
"Good."

Whatever Logan finds to be good about what Noriko just said, he doesn't share it. He just nods his head and takes another drag of the cigarette. When she complains about the taste, he just looks sidelong at her.

"Know you don't care much for manners n' etiquette," he rumbles, "But it'd be wrong a' you to throw that away. Y'don't like it? Just close yer eyes an' think of England."

Another stretch of silence passes as he smokes, leaning his forearms on his raised knees and staring off into the woods.

"S'pose I owe you that nightcap Jeanie promised now, eh?"

Surge has posed:
Noriko coughs again when she dares think she's eased her way into taking another lung full of the harsh smoke. It's problematic, really, she's use to cigars having a very specific purpose and it isn't standing around nursing them slowly like this. Savoring something really isn't in her deck.. "Gah..." She shakes her head and turns her head a little to vomit. It's not a lot, just enough to remind her that the throat bone is connected to the stomach bone. "How do you even do this?" Holding the stogie up.

That said, she still puffs it again, albeit with a little more precaution as to regarding where the smoke ends up.

"After torturing me with this flaming phallic symbol, I think so, yeah..." Another cough, lighter, gray smoke belching from the sides of the cigar in her teeth. "What's your poison? I'm betting bourbon.. probably cheap shit, which is totally cool dude, I dated a girl who drank mouthwash to get drunk."

Wolverine has posed:
Logan simply raises his eyebrows at her, lifting the cigar to his mouth to take a deep drag that doesn't so much as prompt him to bat an eye. He blows the smoke in her direction, the cloud mostly dispersing before it reaches her.

"How d'you get t'Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice."

He rises up to his feet with an old man groan, more out of time honored deference to old codgers everywhere than actual discomfort. The guy looks like he could backflip his way back into the cabin if he chose to. Once he's inside, he clatters around once more looking for whatever it is he's looking for. Finally, the noise ceases and he returns with a bottle of amber fluid.

"Close enough," he unscrews the top, the bottle already a quarter drunk, and holds it out for Noriko to take, "Fireball."

Surge has posed:
This is kind of repulsive. The cigar. The taste of vomitus in her mouth making the flavor no better, "You actively practiced smoking these so that you could smoke these?" The absurdity of that is mind boggling, "Isn't that kind of fucking crazy though? I mean we do all kinds of terrible shit that we know we're not suppose to and most of that time that shit is completely disgusting the first dozen times. Like oysters..." Puff, more smoke.

"Dude the first time I ate an oyster I was thinking... okay I was fucking starving and was use to eating McDonalds out of a garbage can, but my point is, you really have to /want/ to eat that shit the first time. It does not go down smooth, that's all I'm saying." Her point having been lost to her in stoned mind.

Her eyes are a little blood shot.

She was speaking the whole while he was inside and breaks into a wide grin around the stogie when he reappears with the bottle of amber drank. "Oh fuck, dude, this is my jam!" Reaching out for it suddenly, sending the multi-tude of necklaces around her neck jingling by the sharpness of her motion.

"So there /is/ some taste in you afterall!"

Wolverine has posed:
"Tell you what," Logan answers as he hands her off the bottle, "You find a century a time t' kill? You can tell me what you fill it with. We'll trade notes."

He doesn't seem to be in a rush to get the bottle back. It's likely he has a dozen more just like it inside. After all, he's a mile from anywhere and even someone with his robust constitution doesn't want to have to trudge to the liquor store every time he needs a two-four.

He taps the side of his nose when she speaks about his having taste, lip curling into a half-grin, "Don't tell anyone."

Surge has posed:
Nori sets the cigar down amber outward on the window seal and twists off the cap of the long necked bottle of liqour, "Fair, fair... I'd probably play a fuckkkk ton of video games." Glancing up at him, then down as the cap tumbles into her metal palm upon completing the thread. For a second she just holds it, weighing out that half-grin and don't tell anyone, "Oh, that you're giving booze to minors up here in your secluded cabin?"

It's a joke, obviously. "Well, I'm definitely going to tell Ellie." At least she's honest. Honestly drinking fireball straight from the bottle like a boss! Turned up against her mouth, she guzzles three big swallows and breaths out a heady sigh. Shoulder slumping against the cabin with a satisfying grin, "You want some? It's yours... I'll share." Wiggling the bottle out at Logan.

"Dude you should totally come to the mansion more. You've got like five hundred years worth of useless information in your brain.. I bet you'd /kill/ at trivia pursuit."

Wolverine has posed:
Logan reaches out for the bottle, taking it and upending it into his mouth. There's a glugging sound, an exhalation as it burns its way down, and then he wipes the remnants off his lips with his free, cigar-nursing hand. All of it a practiced maneuver bought by decades of experience.

"That's yer nightcap," he says pointedly, putting the bottle down alongside him on the stoop - his body between it and Noriko, "An' sure, maybe I'll wander up n' tell yer li'l friends how me an' Thog discovered fire."

Another pensive puff on the cigar, entering the middle third now as tendrils of smoke trail up from the corners of his mouth.

"Alright, you better take off. Clumsy as you are, you'll break a fuckin' leg stompin' around in the woods at night."

Surge has posed:
Noriko squints an eye at him, nose wrinkled slightly around the grin spreading across her face. "Oh, you're just a barrel of good cheer, aren't you?" She reaches for her cigar and has to puff it several times quite hard to get it reignited. "Fine, I'll head back, but I really can't wait to hear the story of how you discovered math and learned about the wheel."

She does stumble a little, but manages to keep her footing, when she comes down off the porch. Cigar clutched in the corner of her mouth, fingers flicking slightly out at her side, "Thanks for the Nightcap, grandpa." Strained words for the object between her lips. "Don't forget to clean your outhouse." Finger waving in his direction with a hnk hnk hnk sound of metal on metal as her her gauntleted fingers cross together.

Wolverine has posed:
"Fuck off,' Logan says with a smile and a good natured tone that suggests he might as well have been saying 'see you soon!'

He watches Noriko go from his seat on the stoop, making sure she doesn't stumble or break her neck until she's out of his sight. After all, if she's going to meet her death drunk and smoke-addled in the woods he'd rather it be some other idiot's problem. When she's gone, however, he rises to his feet - this time without the old man groan - and steps back into the cabin.

He wanders over to an old victrola, dropping the needle on the record and prompting some old and dusty blues number to begin in media res with a bit of a scratch. He settles down in the overstuffed, comfy chair and leans back with a sigh.

"Good kid."