A Picture of Sophisticated Grace (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hello!" Aquaria looked down to find herself the object of fascinated attention by the cat, a species with which she had only a passing familiarity. "I'm Aquaria Innsmouth." She bent her head down to look Avro in the eye and soon found herself the subject of fascinated attention by a loudly purring cat who had begun licking her face like she'd been rubbing her muzzled jaw in cat ice cream. "Oh he's purring! And giving me kitty kisses! I love you kitty, but I should not pet you because then fur will be stuck to my skin and that will be gross!" He smelled funny, even for a Surfacer animal, but she'd learned it was impolitic to comment on such things. She raised her eyes to Kimber and went on, "Okay - I have dietary restrictions." She was obviously reciting a memorized phrase. "I need to eat protein, but with no eggs." Springing back to her feet, she grinned at Jessie as they followed the others towards the kitchen. "Our first day out and we are already guests in someone's lair!" 

[Fox]

"'Home'," Indira automatically corrected, though there was no malice or disdain in it - as someone with occasional language problems herself, it was reflex more than anything. "Lairs usually belong to animals, I believe. Though I could be wrong," she added, frowning. Having to learn two new languages on top of her original two had, admittedly, left some gaps in her vocabulary. "I have heard the word used sometimes for places bad people hide. Perhaps it is a metaphor."

She followed them to the kitchen, though she had to pause a bit at the door, uncertain. "I...am unlikely to be much help in creating good food," she admitted, frowning at the relatively unknown contents of the various cabinets and containers. "I also have 'dietary restrictions', and they render my taste unusual. I can provide help as needed, however. I am, at least, very good with knives."

[Gizmo]

"Uh huh!" Kimber confirmed for Indira's benefit as she led the way. "Although a castle on top of a skyscraper is a little bit lair-ish, really. That's fair." Avro licked his lips as he followed along, contented with leftover lobster juices and turning his attention to the visitor who seemed more likely to lavish attention upon him, butting his head into Jessie's ankles and making oddly brassy yowling sounds. "Oh sure, Eve's the best!" the chipper brunette continued, gesturing emphatically to emphasize her point. "We all went to school together for a while and stayed friends! Do you need anything special for food? We've got plenty of meat in the freezer for, um, reasons but I've really, really been wanting to try out this waffle recipe and the kitchen here has one of those great waffle iron things that you flip around and everything!"

[Electra]

"I would eat a waffle," Jessie offered, breaking into a smile as the cat began to return her interest. She crouched again to stroke the cat's fur and scratch behind his ears. "We have new appliances in our kitchen too, but it's been a long time since we did anything but help cook in the kitchen at Project Freedom. I don't know how to use a waffle iron or a rice cooker or a food processor, but we have all those things. Maybe we could help you make waffles and you could show us how?" She studied Kimber, cocking her head to one side. "You're not exactly a normal human person, are you?" Her tone wasn't accusing, just curious and perhaps a shade nervous. 

[Gizmo]

"Oh, did I accidentally walk through something?" Kimber asked, looking down at her feet in consternation. "It usually takes longer for people to notice! Oh well." The colour leeched out of her skin and hair first, then her clothes until she was rendered entirely in a palate of blue shades from deep cerulean to pale periwinkle. She lifted off od the ground by a few inches as those blues became noticeably translucent, bobbing up and down slightly as she gave their guests a small shrug and smile. "I like to think I'm pretty normal, just a little more, y'know, dead than most folks you'd meet! Flying is a lot easier than pretending to walk, though, so unless this is freaking you out...?"

Leaning into Jessie's fingers, Avro let out a brassy, trumpet-like yowl. "Oh, right, Avro's not really a cat, either!" She rotated easily in the air until she was hanging almost upside down and fiddled with the charm on his collar. The tabby fur was replaced with soft quills and a segmented, scorpion tail, while his face became noticeably more simian than feline. Looking inordinately pleased with himself, he continued to butt his head into the blonde's hand.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Amazing!" declared Aquaria, her already goggle eyes wide and her tremendous mouth drawn back in a smile. "Can...can all cats do that? Or is he just a super-cat?" She listened to Kimber's explanation about herself and blinked those giant eyes. "Wait, are you a..a g-ghost?!" She seemed to find the idea endlessly fascinating, and hopped towards Kimber, a three-fingered hand outstretched. "Can-can I touch you? Unless that's weird!" she added, immediately drawing back her hand and placing it against her chest. It wasn't hard to guess that Aquaria had been told a lot of things she wanted to do were weird. "Deep Ones don't leave ghosts behind, you see, for when we die we descend directly into Dagon and Hydra's waiting arms...no, maws is the word. I've never met a ghost-Surfacer before." 

[Fox]

"It is not your fault," Indira assured her friend, smiling. "They saw through me as well, and very quickly."

Indira's features melted away, like wax under heat: her color leached away until her surface was sheer, smooth metal, and that surface smoothed and lost detail until she was only a vaguely humanoid form bearing four-clawed hands and an orifice-less face marked only by three large, black almond-shaped voids for eyes.

Not having a mouth didn't seem to impede her ability to talk, at least, though her voice was now backed by a curious hum. "Kimber is a ghost, yes, and most cats are not like Avro, no; he is a manticore. I am...something else, which I am afraid I cannot share. You were right to think that I am not human, however."

[Electra]

Jessie's eyes widened at Kimber's sudden transforrmation, but it was Avro who made her gasp and snatch back her hands in startled dismay. "Oh! What... what is he?" She twined her fingers tightly together and stared at Avro, obviously trying to parse what on earth kind of creature he could possibly be, and coming up with no answers. Even so, she carefully, very carefully, extended one hand toward him again, keeping a very careful eye on that scorpion tail. "Cats are... not always what they seem," she ventured cautiously. "So, um, is he a pet for real, or is does he just live here with the rest of you?" 

She scrambled backwards on her heels when Indira changed as well, only her preternatural grace keeping her from falling on her butt. For a moment her eyes were too wide and her breath too fast, but she looked over at Aquaria, who did not seem at all bothered, and made herself calm down. "Nobody here is the way they seem," she muttered, sounding mildly disgruntled. 

Edited September 25, 2015 by Electra

[Gizmo]

Avro scrambled around to look in the same direction as Jessie when she jumped backward, continuing around in two full circles as he found nothing amiss. "Mmrrrow?" Facing the startled visitor again he sat down on the hallway floor with his head tilted to one side quizzically, segmented tail swishing back and forth as he waited for her to continue toward the kitchen.

"Aw, I'm sorry!" Kimber apologized, bringing one hand to her cheek and looking distressed by Jessie's distress. "Avro's just a kitten, we saved him from a poacher and now we take care of him! The waffles will really be waffles?" she offered hopefully. After a moment she was forced to admit, "Unless I mess up the recipe again. It's hard to know if you're doing it right when you can't actually eat what you make, but I get bored sometimes and like to try anyway!" Looking to Aquaria she offered a broad smile. "People usually think it's weird when I stick my hand through them! Go ahead, I won't even feel it! Neat, right?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Aquaria did her best to be helpful during the cooking process, especially when Kimber broke out the bacon for frying. But she was obviously too excited by these new circumstances, and all these new people - she wound up poking several limbs through Kimber during the cooking process, and at least once shooting out a long pink tongue as thick as her forearm and about as long! She obviously found the whole thing hilarious, croaking so loud her throat sacs bulged. She had climbed onto the walls by now and was padding around while waffles cooked and Jessie made friends with everybody, experimenting with the ceiling with her long, padded fingers that stuck to interior walls as well as they did wet, seaweedy rocks on the coast. As everybody talked, the first clap of thunder from outside made her give a happy yelp and scramble over to press her face against the glass.

The squall outside quickly grew into a bigger, broader one and soon thick, fat drops of rain were splattering against the glass outside as the sky turned truly, deeply dark. 

"Ooh, that looks so niccceeee," she whispered in a lisp, her muzzled face still pressed against the glass, big eyes staring out at the summer storm.  

[Electra]

Jessie followed the others to the kitchen, but quickly lost interest in the cooking, instead curling up with the "cat" in one of the kitchen chairs. It was probably just as well, since Aquaria was getting in the way enough for both of them! She jumped at the first crack of thunder, her eyes widening, then settled back to her comfortable slump. "I guess it's a good thing we moved this morning instead of in the afternoon," she observed idly. "Maybe you can go outside and run around?" she suggested to Aquaria. "But you better keep your clothes on, people won't like it if you run out naked on the street." 

[Fox]

"You would likely be fine if you remained around the castle," Indira mused, looking out into the rain with black eyes that didn't reflect the lightning. She had seemed fairly comfortable standing by in the kitchen, offering a hand when it was needed and politely responding when addressed...though she had, at least once, mimicked Aquaria's bulging throat. The flaring metal and vaguely frog-like face had seemed more reflexive than anything; an unconscious curiosity when she was distracted by the oncoming weather. "I would be happy to accompany you, if you like. The rain does not bother me - and so long as we remain up here and within the building's area, the lightning rods should spare us from potential harm. It would, perhaps, be best to not descend to any of the other windows."

[Gizmo]

Avro kept his balance easily enough as Jessie started at the thunder, shifting his weight from one side to the other atop her lap then pressing a paw lightly to the blonde's stomach with little sounds of query. "Rrrow? Yowrrr?" The manticore's quills stiffened slightly in apprehensive concern, though they didn't stand on end just yet.

Floating over to the table while Aquaria and Indira watched the weather outside the window, Kimber kept her hands clasped behind her back and approached Jessie. "Um, did you still want any waffles?" she asked hopefully, a plate loaded with a half dozen of the disks in question levitating from the counter through the air to set itself down nearby, a set of cutlery and a bottle of syrup following suit in an airborne parade. "We made more than one person can probably eat but some of them, ah, didn't really turn out." She offered a small smile before biting her lower lip. "Are you... still upset about the shapeshifting and all? We sort of forget that its weird for most people! I'm really sorry for startling you."

[Avenger Assembled]

Aquaria padded after Indira on the way to one of the nearby roof accesses, actually hopping up onto the ceiling and scuttling along above the stairs to reach the roof faster. Just inside the door to the outside, she paused and began removing her clothing, shirt and pants, until all she was left in was a leather harness underneath. "I keep my ID in here," she croaked cheerfully, patting a leather strap that ran across her midsection. "Let's go!" She dropped to all fours and scampered out onto the flat roof, splashing her way through the torrential downpour. As lightning cracked above them, casting the room into dramatic shadows, she did a little dance in the rain and croaked a song in her native tongue, hopping around with her face set in an inhumanely broad smile. 

[Electra]

"Nice kitty," Jessie assured Avro, carefully stroking the ruffled quills. "Good kitty. It's just a thunderstorm. We can use the rain." She scratched behind his ears, the points of his quills not able to penetrate the skin of her fingers anyway, and looked up as Kimber came over. "Yeah, I would like some waffles. I'm pretty hungry," she admitted. "I was nervous to leave Project Freedom this morning and I couldn't eat breakfast. It looks really good." She carefully freed up one hand from manticore duty to pick up a fork. "I'm not upset," she assured Kimber as she poured syrup liberally over the waffles. "It was just, um, surprising. Everybody at the group home had powers, but they said that once we moved out, we would meet mostly regular people. And I'm not very good at meeting people," she admitted ruefully, then took a bite. "They're good!" 

[Fox]

Indira was considerably less bouncy than Aquaria, though she seemed no less bothered by the rain - albeit not inherently thrilled, either. Her surface rippled and shifted as she stepped out into the inclement weather, arms and legs lengthening for reach, knees inverting into a formation somewhat more quadruped than biped for power, and some of her torso thinning out to extend a thick, lizard-like tail out of her backside for balance.

"It is good weather," she hummed, looking up into the rain and extending a clawed hand to catch a few drops. "Fewer people try to cause trouble when it rains - humans do not often enjoy being in it for longer than they have to. Their hair and clothing absorb too much water, and are difficult to get clean again. I do not enjoy it as much as proper darkness, but it is very refreshing."

[Gizmo]

"Yay! It's always so tough to tell without being able to try them, I have to go off of smell mostly," Kimber confided, bending down a bit to rub Avro's back where he had comfortably settled back down onto Jessie's lap. "I think mostly 'regular people' are what everybody thinks everybody else is," she continued philosophically, folding her legs underneath herself and hovering in the air so that she was looking the other woman in the eye without craning her neck. "I haven't met that many people who are really regular, anyway, but maybe that's just because of the sort of people I already know! Hard to say!" She grinned broadly and shrugged, unconcerned with what that said about her or her circle of friends. "I think you're pretty good at meeting new people! You met me and Indira okay! Project Freedom sounds familiar but I can't remember where I heard about it?" The phantom tilted her head to one side waiting for an explanation.

[Electra]

"It's a halfway house," Jessie explained, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, "for criminals with superpowers. They take people and make them ready to go back into society, so that they won't commit more crimes when they're released." She abandoned her waffles for a moment, petting Avro with both hands again instead. "Sometimes they're bad people who get parole. Sometimes, like Aquaria, they just don't understand the laws and get in trouble that way. Sometimes if they don't know what to do with somebody and they can't stay in prison, they get put there. But they teach, um, life skills and stuff, how to make easy meals, how to keep a checkbook, how to pay bills. I was there for twenty-seven months. This is my first day out." She didn't look at Kimber, choosing to focus instead on her very nonjudgmental quasi-feline friend. 

[Gizmo]

"Oh! Congratulations!" Kimber beamed at Jessie and clapped her hands together excitedly. "This is such a big day, then! Did you have a cake? You should have a cake!" The poltergeist bobbed up and down in the air a little, acting more like she'd just found out it was her guest's birthday than that she might be hosting a hardened criminal. She looked around the kitchen trying to remember if they had any icing she could put on the waffles and if that would actually be appetizing or not. "Barely more than two years, too, gosh. I spent like fifteen years totally out of my gourd in an abandoned cabin in the woods after y'know, kkkk!" She ran a thumb across her neck and stuck out her tongue in case the emphatic sound effect didn't convey what she meant clearly enough. "And you're already moved into a new place and meeting new people! So is that where you and Aquaria met? You guys seem like really good friends!"

[Electra]

Jessie looked up, surprised and a little baffled by Kimber's reaction, but willing to take it at face value. She relaxed enough to pick up her fork again and keep eating while Kimber flitted about the kitchen. "We were suitemates," she confirmed, "we each had our own room but we shared a bathroom. Aquaria sleeps in a pool of water, so it didn't bother her when I would be loud at night. And I was in Blackstone Prison for almost three years before Project Freedom," she felt compelled to admit. "It took a long time for them to make me better. How did you get out, if you were stuck in the cabin for such a long time?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

With her body exposed to the elements, Wraith could make out the magnificent tattoos that ran all across Aquaria's back and upper limbs; figures of warriors and beasts cast in blue ink that reminded her of the cave paintings she'd seen in Terran history books. Sitting on all fours in the middle of the rain, Aquaria suddenly croaked, "I was born in rain." She hopped around till she was facing Indira indirectly, evidently unable to turn her head that far. "Surfacers run and hide when there's a storm - and Atlanteans dive deep into their cities. But my tribe, we would cling to the rocks as the hurricane raged around us, and we would know that Dagon and Hydra were blessing us with their might!" She ducked her head. "Do you have any gods, Indira? You are far from home too."  

[Fox]

"....further than you might think," Indira admitted, gazing into the sky with rain streaming across her face - the rain didn't seem to bother her eyes any, but the hesitation in her voice made it clear that this wasn't a subject she broached often. "But I have gods, yes. Or, my people do; we each choose one in this life, to worship as a...private choice."

She put up a hand again, craning her head bonelessly to watch the water run off it in drops and waves. "I do not worship the storm, or believe it to bless me. But it is an enjoyable experience none the less, and reminds me of greater things."

[Gizmo]

"Oh, I can walk through walls," Kimber explained brightly as she rummaged through the cabinets. The closest thing she could find to birthday cake candles were some tea lights but she realized that even those she'd have to actually light with something and the idea was quickly discarded. "The crazy part, you mean! Well, ghost stuff, it's not as interesting as you'd think," she admitted as she caught onto Jessie's meaning and turned around to face her. "One of the heroes back home found my remains and did a proper burial which is supposed to put a ghost to rest all the way but instead... tada!" She made jazz hands and pointed to herself with a grin. "It's a little more complicated than that, though. I lost all my memories, basically, had to pick a new name for myself and figure out if I was just an echo of somebody else, pretty much a downer! It worked out, though, 'cause I got to go to school here and make all kinds of great friends!"

[Electra]

"Do you like it?" Jessie asked carefully, sounding as though the answer to the question was more important than just small talk. "Going to school, making friends, all that stuff? Do you think about not having your name and your memories all the time, or does it sort of just go away after awhile?" She forked up another bite of waffles and studied Kimber carefully. "And how come you didn't get to rest, if it was your time? Did they do the ritual wrong on you and now it's broken?" 

[Gizmo]

Sensing something in Jessie's tone or body language, Avro raised the volume of his brassy purring a few notches and butted his head more insistently into the hand not occupied with a fork. Kimber's face fell a little bit, turning more serious as she descended through the air until she was level with their guest. "Going to Claremont and meeting Indira and Eve and everyone was the best thing," she said truthfully, wishing she could reach out and take Jessie's hand comfortingly. "And I do sometimes think about what I was like when I was alive and if that me was better or worse or what but all those friends I made? That was me-me.  Y'know? That's just for me and it's good." She lifted her hands in a gesture of ignorance. "Maybe that's why I didn't pass on. Dunno!"