[EP] A Bored Smartass - OTA

[st_x5_494]

Alec was bored and so he decided to test the waters with the various creepy Inn workers. He started by walking up to the man at the desk. He plopped the towels down on the counter. Some were ripped, others had blood on them. "This is really unacceptable. How's a guy supposed to enjoy his time here at the Madonna Inn when these towels are dirty and destroyed? I thought this was a fine establishment, but I guess I was mistaken." The man behind the counter apologized, though there didn't seem to be any actual regret in his voice.

"Take this down. I want blue towels. They should smell like Lavender. And folded like various animals on my bed." There was a nod from the man, but how much would actually be followed through it would be hard to tell. Alec ended their interaction by tossing one of the towel's on the man's head.


His next destination was the kitchen. The chef was there preparing something chicken, as always. Alec stood next to the oven, watching. When the chef turned to get an ingredient, Alec flung a few shrimp into the dish. He watched with vague amusement as the chef came back, discovered the shrimp, and threw out the contents of the dish before starting over again. Alec repeated this a few times, the last two times being blatant about it and not getting much of a response from the chef at all.


Hours later Alec ran into the housekeeper. He spent a good hour walking behind her littering with small pieces of paper. Each time she'd stop and pick up or vacuum the mess. At one point he walked up looking earnest. "Oh here, let me help you." He grabbed the vacuum cleaner and 'accidentally' emptied its contents on the ground. The woman didn't even blink, but started to sweep the mess up.


After a while, Alec got bored of even this and ended up flopping down onto one of the couches in the lounge and exhaled.

(ooc: Feel free to find him at any point in his journey)

Comments

[st_x5_494]

Alec watched, putting everything to memory which was easy when yours was eiditic. When she mentioned there was a way to dice, he held out the knife. "Can you show me the way to dice. Just once. I'll figure it out from there." If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right. Max had said once that a guy who could cook was hot and it seemed to be true with Logan who was very good at cooking so it didn't hurt to try and learn. He could go home and impress everyone, assuming they didn't die right away with all those guns pointed at them.

[st_ackeddeck]

Dicing peppers and celery were much more straightforward, and if he could handle a knife, he should be able to handle that without any trouble. She cut the onion in half and laid one half cut side down. Checking that he was watching, she made several cuts parallel to the cutting board not quite all the way through. "The onion layers do part of the work. Cutting it along all three axes keeps things more stable while you work and lets you control the size of the pieces." Then perpendicular, and finally perpendicular at right angles to the previous cuts. Then she repeated the cuts along the root end she'd been holding to keep it stable. In the end, she had a pile of onion bits all cut to approximately the same size.

[st_x5_494]

Alec watched with an expression that might have come off as a little disinterested, but it was from years of learning to observe while not being obvious about it. "Where'd you learn to cook? School?"

Once she was done showing him, he started on the vegetables. It took him only a few cuts before he was dicing the peppers. By the time he got to the celery he was dicing as quickly as a seasoned chef. When he finished the onions, everything was unison and he had made good time, too. Except his eyes seemed to be a little itchy, though he couldn't quite pinpoint why, and he rubbed his eye with his hand and some of the residual onion bombarded his eye. "Ah. Ow, ow ow." He blinked, shut his eye tight, blinked again and went in to rub his eye again as they stung and started to water.

[st_ackeddeck]

"Don't rub your eyes." Emma hadn't thought to warn him about onions. "First, wash your hands again. Then you can either flush your eyes with cool water, or use a cool compress for a few seconds. Or you can let tears do what they're supposed to do and rinse the irritant out."

A lot of the science Emma had been most interested in had started from cooking. "There's something in onions that reacts with air, forms um... sulfon- sulfenic...some kind of sulfur-based acid. Makes your eyes tear up. It doesn't last long usually. Unless you go and rub your eyes when there's traces of onion on your hands.

"My grandmother taught me to cook, and how to cry less when chopping onions. But Sister Thérèse taught me to make gumbo. She was one of my teachers, and use to let me hang out," hide out, "in the kitchens when she was cooking."

[st_x5_494]

He moved to the sink, eyes squinty and looking a little ridiculous as he washed his hands and then proceeded to stick his face in the flowing water. After a few moments the stinging subsided and Alec straightened, blinking before he pulled up his t-shirt, revealing briefly an abdomen of a man who was quite fit, to wipe his eyes with the bottom edge of the fabric. He let out a sigh. "Wow. Who knew food could sting like that." If he was ever in a fight with someone in a kitchen, he was going straight for the onions.

"Your sister was your teacher?" Yep, he asked that.

[st_ackeddeck]

Sabine had taught her a lot of things, and was a close as a sister, but –

It took longer than maybe it should have for Emma to realize what he meant. "No. No no. I went to convent school. Sister Thérèse was a nun." Technically there was a difference, but for someone who had to ask, and a lot of people who didn't, it was easier just to lump sisters and nuns together. "All the teachers were. I dropped out, ran away when I was thirteen, though. Except for Sister Thérèse, I hated it there."

[st_x5_494]

"Nuns, huh?" He had a passing knowledge of nuns. It may or may not be mostly from porn but that would be Sketchy's fault, really.

"I'd have left too." He nodded. "Organized religion is freaky."

[st_ackeddeck]

"It's not all bad. I like the ritual of it." She always had. "But I'm a really bad Catholic, and after my grandmother died, I had no reason to stay." Not to mention, there'd been no school to have school in for a while, after Katrina.

"So I ran away and joined a carnival. Found my home with the outcasts and the freaks."

[st_x5_494]

"Freaks and outcasts, huh?" He looked her over for a second. "Not really seeing either of those, unless you mean in the bed." He smirked, then winked to say he wasn't exactly being serious.

[st_ackeddeck]

With her attention on the pan she was stirring, Emma missed the wink, but even if she'd seen it, her reaction would have been the same. Her eyes widened then lowered, focusing very intently on her roux, as her skin ignited blushing so hard.

She couldn't do anything about that reaction, but when she'd had a few seconds, she took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly. Turning off the heat, she moved the pan to a cold burner, still stirring. "Stir this for me?" she asked, keeping her gaze on the roux. "You need to keep all of it from sitting too long, even the edges.

Then more quietly, "I meant because I'm a mutant."

[st_x5_494]

He always liked it when he could make a girl blush and he grinned. When she asked for his help, he moved over and obliged. Alec stirred, trying to make sure he wasn't missing the edges. Somehow he was worried he was going to stir it wrong, out of all the things he had done so far.

Alec looked up and over to her, though he kept stirring. "You're a mutant?" More interest than surprise. "Like, you have special abilities and stuff?"

[st_ackeddeck]

"Precog with psionic projections," from where she'd gone to get some things from the fridge. Gumbo obviously wasn't going to happen. Not if she couldn't get a decent dark roux, and she didn't trust she'd be able to do that now. A good Creole-style étouffée was a better choice.

When she came back, she looked at the color of the roux, put a hand above it to feel the temperature. "That's probably okay now," she told him, reaching for a bowl to transfer the hot paste to so it wouldn't continue to cook.

[st_x5_494]

Alec was pretty proud he hadn't fucked up the roux, but he was still focused on her explanation. "Psionic projections?" He thought. "Can you make people see things?"

[st_ackeddeck]

"It's a little more than that." A kitchen was not the place for a pegasus, but showing was much better than telling. Reaching into the pocket of her sweater, Emma pulled out a single card, flipping it through her fingers before glancing at it while looking down and away from Alec. Maybe he wouldn't see the way the color vanished from her eyes, leaving them solid white. Especially when a dark-haired young woman, in plus-fours and tail coat, with goggles perched on her head and a contraption on one arm, carrying a cane in the other appeared next to them. The woman bowed to Alec, then offered her hand. If he shook it, he'd find it as solid as Emma's would have been.

"The technical explanation is, I manifest two-dimensional images as three-dimensional, tangible constructs of psi energy, I can then manipulate."

[st_x5_494]

Alec definitely tried to shake her hand and looked amazed when he could actually do it. "That's - that's the coolest thing I've ever seen." And he had seen a lot. His nature was to think about all the tactical uses her powers would give her in a fight. "So you could make someone appear and do something for you without you having to even get your hands dirty? Amazing."

[st_ackeddeck]

"As long as it makes sense for the image or its interpretation. I couldn't have her stir a roux – not that I'd want to – but she could fight off an attacker to give me time to put distance between us." It was easier when Emma thought of her projections as real. Little things, like referring to the page as 'she' or treating her pegasus like she would a horse made her connection to them stronger and easier to maintain.

"I'm still the one responsible, though." I can kill you with my brain, she thought, but didn't say.

She let the projection go, the green and pupil returning to her eyes as the page disappeared.

[st_x5_494]

Alec could think of so many practical applications... And then his mind wandered to less practical and more bedroom fun stuff and he smiled as he pictured it briefly before remembering he was standing there still.

"Well that's awesome. I wish I had that ability"

[st_ackeddeck]

Emma dipped her head, a lock of hair that had come loose from the quick bun she'd twisted it into earlier falling over her eye. Her projections could be pretty useful or fun sometimes, but it was different someone else saying so. Other than Pyro, who always insisted it was awesome, and encouraged her to find the joy in being a mutant.

"Some of it's pretty cool," she admitted. "Flying was so worth all the practice."

[st_x5_494]

"Wait, wait, wait. You can fly too?" Alec looked behind her as if he would find wings, then back at her again. "Do you sprout wings too?"

[st_ackeddeck]

With the back of her hand, Emma nudged the opposite sleeve up her arm to reveal the tattoo on her inner arm. "I carry my ride with me."

[st_x5_494]

Alec took a step forward even though he could see perfectly well where he was, then looked back up at Emma. "No. Way." She had a flying horse? How cool was that?

[st_ackeddeck]

"I'm not going to bring a knight and pegasus into the kitchen just to prove a point. But I don't exactly sneak around when I take it exploring either." He could see for himself if he was paying attention.

"He's a favorite, and useful. Offense, defense, and egress all in one card. In case of emergencies."

[st_x5_494]

He nodded. It made sense not to bring a horse here even if he wanted to see one pretty badly.

"If you did, could... Anyone ride it?" Like a curious man named Alec?

[st_ackeddeck]

Emma laughed to herself and murmured, "No wonder I drew the Page."

But Alec had asked, so she owed him an answer. "If I let them." She eyed him a moment. "Something I'm not likely to do for someone who goes around tormenting people who can't defend themselves or wasting food in the name of fun."

[st_x5_494]

He put up his hands. "Alright, alright. I can get a hint." He smiled back though, a bit playful. "Incentives are always a good way to keep me in line." He winked.