notrosecolored

He was quiet for a heartbeat, considering the issue for a moment before glancing up to look Scott in the glasses before letting his eyes slip closed again.

"I remember being... enthusiastic," he admitted quietly. "Being a kid. They remember me like that. I'll put money on that being why."

When Sandy was looking at him, Scott was mostly just glad that it was all but impossible to see his eyes behind them. When Sandy's glance slid away, he found himself wishing that they'd sent someone else on this particular mission.

He found himself thinking about Bobby, too. About how enthusiastic and bright Bobby had been, in the beginning. Then the way he'd changed, even while he held onto the facade.

He didn't say any of that. All he said was, "Nobody gets to stay upbeat and enthusiastic doing this, but maybe they're right. Maybe the moment will help." Fuck all if he knew. "They're either good friends, or the absolute worst kind."

"The best," Sandy said before standing up to grab a glass of water from the kitchenette. "Or I wouldn't be here. I've got other things I could be doing."

It was smaller scale most of the time, but that didn't mean it wasn't important. He was, in some ways, more of a mystery man than a 'superhero', no matter the level of his abilities.

"I'd assume it's the same for you?" And there was the faintest hint of a smile curling at the corner of his lips. "Your group reminds me more of the JSA than the Avengers, after all."

There was a reason they didn't deal much with the Avengers. The Avengers could deal with the Justice League, since they were much more aligned. But the results that the JSA were concerned with had more to do with the lives and quality of the members than anything else.

The X-men and the Avengers had gone head to head more than once. They had very different priorities and sometimes those priorities clashed, badly.

"You assume I have good friends?" Just clarifying. "I have good people. Some of those people are my friends. Some of them drive me crazy. Some of them despise me. It changes around, but I'm not here to make friends or be popular. My job's to get shit done so as many of them as possible can have a decent life - or at least be safe."

He'd been a soldier for a long, long, time. He made decisions no one else wanted to, he pissed people off, he pushed and demanded and remained by and large remote. With Jean gone, that was... more acute and more obvious. On the other hand, his grief had been so raw and close to the surface for so long, there wasn't much doubt that he felt, to anyone.

"You're right on the other point, though. We are nothing like the Avengers."

"Pretty much the same," he admitted with a hand through his hair. Maybe once upon a time, he could call everyone in the JSA a friend, but those days were long past.

He would never forgive Lance for what he'd done to the JSA, for the division the man had caused in the organization. For the ideals he'd tried to jam onto the organization. For the poison he'd put into the minds of the younger members.

Never.

"The one who asked me to come here is a friend."

Michael he trusted. Michael understood the old values, the old ways. He innovated, he made changes, but he never forgot the root of what they were supposed to be doing, what they were supposed to be. The fact that Michael was still among the JSA leadership was one of the reasons he was still there. Michael, Kara, Alan, Jay, Ted... and Courtney, Maxine, and King Chimera were getting there.

The fact that they hadn't kicked Lance out ages ago was part of the reason he was now on the outskirts of an organization he'd given his home, his funds, and his memories to.

"The Avengers can save the world from the big flashy dangers and feel good about themselves. We'll just make sure the next generation's around to live in it."

Scott shook his head, definitively and started to speak but was cut off by a knock at the door. He did his pivot and stand and went to collect their food and coffee and pay for it. He got a pretty hard, unpleasant (and uncomfortable) look when he opened the door with deeply tinted glasses, but he didn't respond to it.

He didn't respond to it at all, actually, just paid the man, gave him the tip, and walked back inside to hand Sandy his food and coffee before returning to the desk with his own.

"The Avenger's aren't fighting for anything. They'll fend off the big threats, they'll train and they'll work but at the end of the day they're a special forces unit wielded by the government. They might deny it, sometimes they might defy it, but that doesn't change their end purpose and function as a team."

And the government and all its arms could just fuck right off as far as Scott was concerned.

He took the coffee like it was mana from heaven and downed half of it immediately, despite the fact that it was probably roughly three degrees down from boiling water. Once he'd swallowed it down, he nodded to Scott's point.

"They're also pretty crappy neighbors."

Damn Tony Stark and his stupid building-literally-across-the-street-from-them.

Scott left his coffee on the desk to cool to a level that would let him swallow it, even left his burger and fries beside it and went to crouch by his bag. He rummaged around in it for a few minutes, found the bottle he was looking for and popped the cap off. He shook out four tylenol, and dry swallowed them before he went back to his food.

"I wouldn't want to find out personally. I don't think it would end well for anyone, but what do they do that's so bad?"

Sand was, first and foremost, a detective. Of course, someone taking tylenol wasn't exactly a difficult clue, but he was always watching even when he was half awake. He was usually half-awake.

"What you'd expect. Headache?"

Because that was more interesting than talking about the general property damage issues that happened when you were neighbors with the Avengers. ASIDE from the Hulk being the Hulk on occasion, the number of attacks on the street had tripled since the Avengers had set up shop there.

If he had less dignity, he would have called Tony Stark a hooligan and told him to get off the lawn.

"Massive property damage and loud parties?" The loud parties probably wasn't fair, but Stark was pretty obnoxious and he had a reputation.

Scott sat down at the desk, balanced his heel on the edge of his chair and unwrapped his burger. He made a low noise in the back of his throat that was a vague sort of agreement. "No off switch," he explained, almost absently. "The glasses contain the force, but it's still being produced." He took a bite of his sandwich, chewed and swallowed. "Just gets stuck in my head and keeps building until I blow it off."

Which fucking hurt. He was very, very used to it, though. "Nothing to worry about." As in: It wouldn't be a distraction and wasn't likely to kill him.

"I'd probably get the mother of all headaches if I ever stopped mainlining caffeine," Sandy mused as he opened his own food. Chicken fingers and fries. Simple, stupid food but still tasty.

Then he pointed over at the glasses in between bites.

"Red quartz?" because he didn't exactly need to ask. Not when he could feel it at the edge of his senses. But it was polite to ask.

"You would, unless you're immune to caffeine withdrawal and chronic sleep deprivation," Scott said, between a bite of his hamburger and a drink of his coffee. "They're red quartz, yes. Why?"

Look, he was deeply protective of those things and with good reason - or so he thought.

"No one's sure what the hell I am at this point," he said, not quite blithe but somewhat dismissive. He mostly dealt with existential crises by deciding not to have them. "So no telling. Even if I did, it might just be psychosomatic."

The defensiveness got an eyebrow raise but he answered by letting his appearance become that of sandstone... then obsidian, and even let a couple of cracks of bright hot red lava show along his hairline before it all faded back to something that looked human enough.

Usually, he didn't show what he could do. Normally he didn't tell people the extent of his abilities. But you didn't question a man's control mechanism and then give him nothing.

Alliances couldn't be made with words or documents or even missions. They had to be made through people. And if he was here to help the relationship between the JSA and the X-Men, he was going to give it his all. It wasn't like he had a secret identity like some of the others, after all. That meant trust. That meant trusting Scott.

"Your files on me aren't entirely complete." He knew because the only files that existed on his abilities were the JSAs, which were knowingly incomplete. "I can feel them. I'm making sure I know what it is in case you need a repair or a replacement in the field."

If Jean had still been alive, she would have been acutely aware of the wave of soul deep relief and gratitude Scott felt at Sandy's answer.

That by far, far, eclipsed his moment of being impressed by the way Sandy changed his body and the control and precision of those changes.

Trust wasn't completely there, but just having an alternative if something happened was an enormous weight off. It was the removal of something he always had to consider on some level but, for this mission, didn't.

"I can get around better than you'd think blind, but it's not ideal." He paused, and then just said, "Thanks." People would be surprised. People were idiots about Scott. "You need to look at the visor, or is the only part of it that matters here the quartz?" Hell, he didn't know.

For Sandy, showing how far from human he really was now meant... a lot. It was easy to hide under the hat, behind the mask. It was easy to just be the Sandman, to live in Wesley's shadow, with his sleep gas and his wirepoon gun. It was easy to pretend he hadn't been changed irrevocably and turned into something that confused even him sometimes.

If anyone ever thought he was showing off and was stupid enough to say so out loud, it was very likely they'd get a sock to the jaw.

"If I can just put a finger to it?" Feel his way around what was in there with his abilities. Touch was always best. "I wouldn't ask you to remove it."

Scott didn't think Sandy was showing off. Scott was just... matter of fact about such things. One of his oldest friends turned into a block of solid ice, after all - and that wasn't even the half of it. So he was impressed, but he was a long way from awed.

He shook his head in silent negation, still chewing, and went to his bag to get his actual visor - instead of the glasses he'd been wearing and would be wearing until they went out tonight. They drew less attention, especially during the day. Looking normal, blending in, he'd do as much of it as was useful. Sometimes, he'd resent it. Others, he'd feel guilty for it, but none of that changed him doing it.

He took the visor out, walked over and handed it to Sandy, wholesale. His return of trust, and it wasn't small.

"Knock yourself out. It isn't mechanically complicated."

"More complicated than you'd think," Sandy murmured, mostly to himself, taking the visor into his hands and closing his eyes to focus on his other senses.

It took him about five minutes of silence before he said anything at all.

"I can fix the crystal portions instantly if they crack or cloud for some reason," Sand reported before carefully placing the visor on the table.

"I can also make new pieces if necessary, though I find some of the design to be fiddly, probably necessitated by a shortage of ruby quartz in a certain size. That's not a problem."

He looked Scott in the face then.

"Making you a replacement, I could do in twenty minutes. Making you a functional visor that accomplishes the same with purely manual controls would take about a minute and a half. Something like your glasses there, I can do almost instantly."

He took a look at the visor again before glancing to Scott's face once more.

"Developing a prototype for a visor that shouldn't give you nearly as bad of a headache... maybe a month? If you wanted me to."

Edited 2015-10-10 23:48 (UTC)

"You might be surprised," Scott murmured, in response to it being more complicated than he thought. Charles had done most of the design, but Scott had participated here and there for increased efficiency in use - as they'd figured out what worked for him and what didn't.

Purely functional and mechanical controls were all he'd been thinking. Completely functioning at the level he was used to with this itineration? Was well beyond what he'd expected of Sandy.

He finished his food, and took a drink of coffee, mulling over the rest of what had been said. The rest of that input. He was... touched, but at the same time he found the idea slightly uncomfortable. That visor, even his glasses, were so fucking personal. In some ways they were almost a body part. They were a prosthetic in every way that counted.

Yet he'd handed it over voluntarily, and found the idea of an extra safety net incredibly relieving.

"I was thinking mostly of pure function in an emergency situation," Scott admitted, but. "If you want to get together with Charles and mess with the design, or even see what you come up with on your own I'll give it a shot. It isn't necessary, though. I'm pretty used to the headache." Between the fall out of a plane and actual damage to that part of his brain, the period leading up to manifestation - where he was wasn't half bad.

If it could be better.... Worth a test run. Might be interesting to see what Sandy did, anyway.

This was, he realized with a bit of bemusement, working. He liked this guy.

"I'll see if I can make some time when we get back to talk to your Professor," he said, respectful. He knew how personally someone could take their equipment, especially when it was such a part of how they functioned. He hadn't been able to shake the reminder of Pieter and, to some degree, Charles when he'd found out about the man's ability and his required equipment. It was where he'd gotten the idea, honestly.

"To be fair, the ideas I have for improvements involve a level of controlled crystal production most people don't think of as possible and technology that's been locked down by one of my associates since the 40s."

Translation: I don't think your equipment is terrible; I just know things and have resources you probably weren't even aware were possible.

"And I'll keep the exact schematics I can feel in my own head."

He wouldn't be sharing anything about his current partner unless said partner was all right with him sharing it.

Of all the things to make Scott crack a smile....

He grinned, lopsided and wry. "There's nothing classified about the visor's design. I get pretty protective of it and I'm lost without one, but some form of it or another has been in public use since I was 16. I get about one good surprise per upgrade, and then I might as well publish the schematics on facebook. Add in the ones that've been torn or broken off my face with the pieces left lying around in the aftermath."

He threaded his fingers together and stretched them above his head, cracking his knuckles and back all at once. "Lucky for me, yanking my glasses off my face or disabling the visor tends to be a pretty bad idea for them, too, since it sticks them right in the line of fire." Barring TK, or Magneto, or - it could be used against him, sure, but it wasn't something Tom, Dick, and Harry were going to risk. An uncontrolled mutant was not what the government wanted.

"The stuff that could really put me down's still locked down."

Edited 2015-10-11 00:33 (UTC)

He spread his hands for a moment before reaching over to grab his coffee.

"Can't put a cat back in a bag. I figured I'd be delicate first."

He took a long sip before closing his eyes and breathing in. It wasn't that hard to find quartz, after all. Assembling it into the shape he wanted, growing the crystal... and introducing the proper impurities to make it ruby quartz was just as easy. Pulling it through the the stone and the rock and the foundation of the building, into the wall...

He plucked a thick crescent of red crystal out of the wall, pushing his fingers through it like it was water. A turn of his hand and it was clear that it was a single piece that could be fitted on his face like the glasses.

He held it out for Scott.

"I appreciate the consideration," Scott said, honestly if very bluntly. "About half the new people who turn up, including the kids, have a pretty steep learning curve and need some training about what's appropriate and what's just not gonna fly."

Sandy was respecting that line, beautifully.

He reached out slowly when the red quartz appeared, took it in his hand and tilted it in a couple of directions just so it caught the golden, late afternoon sunlight. It was, without a doubt, the single biggest piece of red quartz he'd ever seen. It was heavy as hell as a result, probably fairly brittle but it would work. Scott knew that beyond a doubt.

He closed his eyes, instinctively turned his head away from Sandy and toward the floor and replaced his glasses with the piece of quartz. He kept his head turned and down while he opened his eyes again, then turned back. "This is going to sound strange," he warned. "But that's really red."

He always saw in red, of course, but without the frames - metal and plastic - blocking some of the light and his peripheral vision it was a much, much, brighter red. Never mind the nature of quartz itself, and the fact that the entire piece was, effectively, glass.

Oh. Right. Also: "Thanks."

Edited 2015-10-11 01:09 (UTC)

"The color is actually adjustable," Sand observed as he leaned on his knees.

"But I figured you were more comfortable with the red to start. I wanted to make sure I had the composition right."

Faint, slightly smirky smile.

"And you're welcome."

"Unless we're in an emergency situation and turning them red will slow you down, don't mess with the color." Could he make an argument for it being some kind of tactical decision? Yes. Would it be the truth? No.

The truth was, he was used to it and he was comfortable with it. The truth was, his associations to seeing without that red filter were either very, very negative or very, very deeply positive but also painful, and he didn't want to revisit either.

Sinister and Jean.

He hoped that the blunt statement would be enough for Sandy to leave it alone, even as he reversed the entire process to put his glasses back on. He wasn't interested in being a dick right now. Not when he was, surprisingly, enjoying the company.

Sandy didn't question it. He just nodded. If he'd learned nothing else from working with both the first and the third Dr. Mid-Nite, it was that you didn't argue with a man about his vision during a fight. You did what he needed from you.

"In this case, I just introduced the appropriate impurities to make ruby quartz. I didn't control much of anything else, other than choosing a more stable crystalline structure to make it a little less brittle than the stone usually would be."

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