notrosecolored

Sandy popped out of the wall then, stepping down onto the carpet before letting his mask and gloves fade away. His coat was pulled off a moment later and hung on one of the hooks.

"She's being kept as far underground as the prison goes," Sand informed him as he went towards the room's small table, "which from what I understand was done so they could bury her if they thought she was too dangerous. And to discourage escape, of course."

He glanced over at Scott.

"...you didn't bring coffee?"

He stared at Sandy from behind those red lenses and then his eyebrows appeared over the frames. He put his bag down, and tossed the keys onto the dresser. "I didn't stop to pick up coffee, no. I haven't eaten yet, either. I'm sure we can take care of both with a phone call." There had to be delivery to their area. It was on top of O'Hare, and in a major city.

He stretched the kinks out of his back. "Underground is good for more than one reason. It'll provide a buffering zone for us, as well as easy access." Provided they didn't get stuck down there too long. If that happened, Scott was going to run out of battery power. That wasn't going to happen in one night, though, and he didn't anticipate too much trouble, here.

These people just weren't that good.

A few steps to find the laminated menu of delivery options in the area, and he looked down to read that. While he read: "And of course they want to bury her. Isolated now, kill her later, and blame it on the mutation. That's how these people work. Or they'll let a lynch mob in and pretend they couldn't stop it."

"Deep down past where cameras can easily reach," Sandy said with some distaste.

"And underground, I'll be able to provide more support. Like cutting off outside access to the floor."

All it took was a wall of stone inserted into a few spots, phased back out and into the ground once they were done. No muss, no fuss. Or the least amount of muss possible.

He glanced over at the menu before ruffling his own hair.

"Honestly, you and me both are practically overkill for this. The only thing in there is standard police weaponry and human police officers."

Scott passed the menu over to Sandy to look at, so he wasn't stuck reading over Scott's shoulder. "I have no idea why you're here." He was content to believe that the JSA had a reason to be involved in this, but. "I haven't been sent out on this kind of mission in years. If they needed an X-man with you, I can think of a dozen who would have been equally or better suited." Based on mutation and powers, not based on tactics.

And when it came down to it tactics, strategy, leadership, and making shitty decisions was what Scott was really good at. He was far from the most powerful among them, when it came down to the nature of his mutation. Add in brain damage leading to that mutation being haywire, and well.

"They wanted me out of the house and moving. This was an excuse." Not self-pitying, just - really bluntly stated. Aware.

He glanced at the menu, found something he knew he could eat, and put it down.

"Sounds like we're both here for the same reason," and he scrubbed at his face. "You an antisocial grumpy workaholic too or is that just me?"

He didn't actually wait for the answer before sitting up a little straighter.

"And the JSA is here to cover any cases of metahumans you happen to stumble over. Metahumans and family members of known JSA members, known or otherwise. It was deemed by Mr. Terrific and your Professor to be a good mission for relations between our two organizations."

"I'm certainly an antisocial workaholic." Was he grumpy? Depended on who you compared him to, actually, but he sure as fuck wasn't warm and fuzzy. "That's not why I'm here." If it was, he would have been here a whole hell of a lot sooner. "Not entirely, anyway. If it was, they would have sent Logan."

Scott picked up the phone in the room and started dialing one of the numbers, to order his food and coffee and then passed the receiver to Sandy to place his own damned order since Scott wasn't sure what it was and he was lousy at playing waiter - and small talk.

He was more than willing to accept the 'relations' remark, though only sort of. May as well work in concert - until they got into a situation where they fought over the same person, but honestly... unless they pulled Avenger's level shit, Scott would let it go. Avenger's level shit and there was going to be flat out fucking war.

He made his order before hanging up the phone and spreading his hands.

"They don't ask me to do much," not that he had to do much, given what Wes and Dian had left him. But then there were the nightmares. And the only people he still cared about. And the organization that kept Wesley's legacy alive.

"I'm not chairman, so I do what's asked and leave it at that."

Scott closed his eyes and pushed up his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. It kept things safe, but also provided some relief from the weight of those things. The visor was lighter, but impacted his field of vision and was uncomfortable in other ways.

"And now they're trying to make you social. With me." He paused. "That's almost laughable." Scott was lousy at social.

He shrugged and leaned back in the chair to tuck his hands behind his head.

"Guess they're starting me on easy mode."

Scott moved to take the chair at the desk, nearer to the door and positioned so all he'd have to do was pivot slightly when he stood to open it - or face it.

He laughed at Sandy's remark, anyway. It was a low, somewhat harsh, sound. "Yeah, sure." He was too self-aware to buy that. "Why is this something they want you to do, anyway?"

He tilted his head back and forth a couple of times before quirking his lips to one side and shrugging.

"Something a little more positive than my usual work maybe?"

Most of the cases he found on his own, the ones that made every sleeping moment a parade of nightmares, weren't exactly pleasant. There were occasionally world-ending events that needed handling, but more often it was just shootings, stabbings, murder, rape, kidnapping, suicides...

The common tragedies that he'd started his career fighting against, still around after decades.

"Maybe." That was pretty close to an agreement, if not a full one.

Truth was, more than making him social, that felt like the truth for him, too. Maybe not so much more positive than his usual work, but a reminder of what they were doing and why, and a high chance of success with little chance of seeing someone he loved and fought for dead. Mental release, and emotional payoff.

He smiled, pretty wryly but a smile. Sank a little deeper into his chair and glanced toward the door.

"Nothing like rescuing a kid and getting them somewhere safe to give you a case of warm fuzzies." Even if the situation disgusted and enraged him to start with, it was providing him a way to strike back - simply. An easy win.

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."

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