12133/Kawfee Tawk

Kawfee Tawk
Date of Scene:	24 July 2022
Location:	Boardwalk - St Martin's Island
Synopsis:	Gar catches Lois up on matters regarding Terry before she goes on the rampage over interns failing to get her quality coffee. Set after 'Wonderland:The Crown That's Always Hidden' but before 'Gaming To Get Away From It All'
Cast of Characters:	Gar Logan, Lois Lane

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Gar Logan has posed:
Within days of Wonderland being saved, stabilized, or whatever the case is - details are still fuzzy in some parts - the need to relay the news to a few key individuals becomes paramount. Chief among them: Lois Lane. Terry's internship with her is well-known, and she's been instrumental in helping him with numerous stories, including the one about the Titans coming back together, along with his role as part of it.

A few days into Terry failing to show up at the Daily Planet, a text comes through from one of the objects of Terry's affections: <<Hey, Miss Lane? This is Gar, of the Titans. There's some stuff I need to talk to you about, and it's pretty important. Can we meet up somewhere? I was thinking the boardwalk. Let me know. Thanks.>>

They had apartments in the same building. Why he didn't just go over and knock on her door...well. He just didn't think that way about it. Lots on the mind, really. Then again, she hadn't dropped by either.

Lois Lane has posed:
Lois had honestly been thinking about dropping by. It'd been too many days of shitty coffee at the Planet, too many days of Terry not being there to pick up the overwhelming stacks of papers on her desk, and too many days where he wasn't getting into trouble. That's likely because he was. The text from Gar was pretty much the indicating factor.

<<I'll meet you at the boardwalk. Thanks for contacting me.>>

True to her word, Lois ended up at the boardwalk, casually wandering as she waits to find Gar.

Gar Logan has posed:
<<Already on my way.>>

Really, Gar is not hard to spot. One, he's green. Two, he's always got at least one or two autograph seekers trailing after him. All right, most of the time. At least, once in a while. Today, it's someone who wants a selfie. Dressed in civvies rather than a costume, Gar's hands are stuffed in the pockets of some baggy basketball shorts, a matching sports jersey going with it that leaves his arms bare.

His demeanor is serious rather than carefree, but he turns on the comedic charm long enough for the guy who wants a moment and a picture, then it's back to the way it was before as he comes closer. A hand comes back out for a muted wave, then he looks around at the stalls and stands that serve a mix of typical food and drink for the place. "Hey," he begins.

Lois Lane has posed:
Lois, on the other hand, is a bit harder to spot. At least, for those who aren't familiar with her. She's chosen a sundress and oversized hat and sunglasses, so she blends in just fine at the boardwalk. She spots Gar, taking careful note of the change in attitude, giving him a nod of welcome when he approaches. "Hey," she begins as well. "I'm guessing this must be about Terry somehow."

Gar Logan has posed:
"Maybe we should get something first," Gar says, without going into the details just yet. He certainly looks like he could use some sleep, or at least better sleep than he's probably been getting. Energy levels lower than usual for him, eyes somewhat heavy. Lois herself may be more than familiar with that state of being, with deadlines and whatnot.

Wetting his lips, he eyes a pizza vendor. "Yeah, I could go for a couple of slices and a soda. What about you? Things been okay at the Planet?" This is a question he must already know part of the answer to, but it is asked in spite of that.

Lois Lane has posed:
Avoidance. Lois was already concerned about Terry not being there, but now with the way Gar seems to be acting, she's really concerned. "Of course, some food would be good. Get whatever you want, my treat." She knows that's a dangerous thing to say, but Gar looks like he could use the pick-me-up.

"The Planet's the usual, Perry wanting everything done by two days ago, interns scampering out of his view, no Terry bringing me my coffee. Everyone else gets the black tar from the coffee maker in the break room, Terry gets me /actual/ coffee. Do you know what the break room's coffee tastes like, Gar? It's not good. Not good is an understatement."

There's a long pause. As much as she jokes around, she's used to him being there and considers him a friend, and his penchant for trouble rivals her own. Her tone is more serious. "You okay? He okay?"

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan is a decent actor, when he wants to be. Other times, he doesn't bother trying to hide his mood, or he overcompensates to the point it's painfully obvious. Whichever it is here, Lois already has an idea that something's off given her own awareness of Terry not being around.

"Ah, thanks, but you don't have to. I know you reporters probably aren't getting paid all that well. I was gonna offer to take care of it for you." Maybe Lois /does/ make good money if she's high enough up the ladder. "Oh, yeah. He's told me about the coffee being from the one of the circles of hell or something like that." An attempt at a joke, at least.

Once food and drink's been secured and they get a table, no matter who paid, he looks across at her while weighing the question. "Yes. No. I mean, I think so, but I don't know for sure." Clearing his throat, he asks her, "How familiar are you with him being connected to Wonderland?"

Lois Lane has posed:
"You're welcome to pay if you'd like, I thought it might be one less thing to stress from," Lois says, her voice genuinely sympathetic. "He's right about that coffee. I think something might crawl out alive from that pot at some point. I don't know how they can even call it coffee."

Lois takes a sip from her soda as she listens to Gar, then gives him the slightest nod of her head. "He's mentioned a little here and there, though I've never really got a full rundown or anything."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan's mouth twitches in a ghost of a grin, a fleeting thing. When he's smiling and laughing, he looks like the life of the party. When the doubt and emotions creep in and take hold, he can feel like a microorganism with the world weighing down on him from all sides.

"Can't they put in, like, something better? Or is it more a case of making you all suffer for your craft? Is Terry cheating by getting you the good stuff?" Forced jokes can still be decent ones.

After performing a magic trick in making the first slice of pizza disappear, Gar wipes with a napkin and downs a bit of cola as well. "Okay..so. You know he's Vorpal. He talked about you helping him with how to do that story on us, since he was part of it by then." He waits just to be sure she's on the same path he's taking with this.

Lois Lane has posed:
"I actually think the whole room is cursed, but I can't be sure. Never brought anyone in to take a look at it, but like I said, the coffee pot is /awful/. Pretty sure no one ever actually uses that break room for breaks anyway," Lois replies. "But Terry gets me the good stuff because he actually does his job. You should hear the way I have to remind the other interns of every single thing and they never bring the right coffee. Terry knows his stuff." She offers him more of a grin, though it's mostly to make sure to put him more at ease--clearly there's something up.

"Right, he was pretty worried about the story and making sure his integrity would hold up with everything going on. I'm proud of that piece, honestly. He did really well and worked hard on it."

Gar Logan has posed:
"You might need an exorcist to get rid of the ghosts of past interns or something," Gar remarks. "Or at least a new coffee machine." Clearing his throat, he nods once and says, "We kind of got outed back then too, so I head to get out on top of it and say something." He waves it off, focusing on his food again for a moment.

Then, he exhales and fiddles with his fingers. "So, you probably remember when Terry was trying to find out about his dad and all that. I'm not sure how much you ended up learning, but his dad was the Cheshire Cat. Yeah, from Wonderland. Somehow he..I dunno how it really works, like magic or whatever, but anyway..he was both a regular person and the Cheshire Cat, and when Terry was born that passed on to him." He looks up to see how Lois is tracking this so far.

Lois Lane has posed:
Lois has seen a lot of shit.

Thankfully, that means that she can in fact follow most of what's going on. She nods slowly, glancing at Gar. "Okay, so Terry got his abilities from his dad, then? I think I'm following. So... I imagine you must have found someone if you got the information on the Cheshire Cat and how it passed stuff on to Terry."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan clears his throat. "Yeah, something like that." Truth be told, even for him, some of the details are fuzzy. "We were dealing with a problem one day and he was with us, then the next thing we knew there was this guy that sort of had the Cheshire Cat coloring and stuff. He helped out, but we didn't learn right away that he was actually Terry. His dad left before he was born, because basically..ahh, there can only be one Cheshire Cat, and that meant..." He gestures with a hand, hoping Lois can fill in the blanks without him having to spell it out all the way. He will if truly necessary.

"Terry and I were already getting, like, close and stuff, and trying to figure all of that out, and suddenly he's also this cat guy calling himself Vorpal. He joined us, and when those doppelgangers were going around..uh, mine ambushed me and came this close to killing me." He holds his thumb and index finger a couple millimeters apart. "I..well, he threw me into the ocean and I turned into a starfish and held it until the Titans found me, but the other me said some really bad stuff. Vorpal got so mad he got kind of out of control and even made a sword appear, but Wonder Woman stopped him before he went through with it. I got better and we stopped the other me and the rest, and that was that." He rushes through the rest of the explanation, adding, "That was when we started figuring out there was more he was capable of."

Lois Lane has posed:
"Aaaah. So it's like Highlander," Lois murmurs, though she nods slightly. She gets the beginning, and then the more Gar rambles on about what happened, she nods along as /if/ following, and then when he finishes, she waves her hand. "So what I'm hearing is that a lot of shit happened and then you're figuring out what Terry's capable of. That does sum it up, doesn't it?"

Gar Logan has posed:
"Yyyyyyeeeaaaaahhh, but here's where it starts getting really weird," Gar says. He's trying to speed it up a bit, without completely glossing over important things, but it's tough. He's a natural talker when it comes to some things, and without knowing just what Terry's told Lois over the last number of months, it's hard to be sure what she needs to know.

He gets down to it. "Parts of Wonderland started seeping into our world, and we had to make a number of visits there to figure out first why, but then how to make it stop. All the characters? They were there, and one of the people on the team looks close enough to Alice that some of them started believing /she/ was Alice. But we also ran into Hekate and Eris.." He waves his hands. "I know, I know. Sorry. They're Greek goddesses and we went through Tartarus at one point and got to visit Themyscira."

Deep breath. "There's just so much. But we figured out that the Jabberwock was after the Red King, who'd lost his daughter and went into a deep sleep and made up Wonderland, and the Cheshire Cat fled here. That's how Terry was born. So we're in Wonderland at one point, and the Jabberwock found Vorpal and was starting to rip the Cheshire Cat out of Terry, and I thought I could distract it by turning into the Cheshire Cat myself..and it ended up part of /me/ instead. It was crazy."

Lois Lane has posed:
"Weird, got it." Lois tilts her head to the side and quietly lets Gar continue explaining. "Okay so I've just gotten the story of Terry's birth, but I'm waiting for the part where it makes sense as to where Terry currently is."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan fingersnaps and points at Lois. "Getting there. The Red King was stuck in a forest where if you go into it, you forget your name and who you are and all that, but we found a way to get him out and defeated the Jabberwock. But..well, Terry's stuck there right now. The Red King saw, like, the ghost of his daughter or something and he found peace, but he stopped his dream and Wonderland started to come apart."

Biting his lip as he looks off to the side, the snaggletooth shows up. "He took over the dream to keep Wonderland from fading away, and we're trying to figure out how to get him back out without losing it. I don't know if he'd lose the Cheshire Cat, and I'm afraid to find out. But he can come to your dream, so if you think hard about him when you go to sleep, he could probably find you that way."

Lois Lane has posed:
"So we've got to figure out how to get him out," Lois taps her chin. "I doubt he can get me //dream// coffee, so it does sound like I need to catch some 'zzz' to catch up with him. So I just... think really hard?" She chuckles. "I guess it's good that he's somewhere... remotely safe?"

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan sinks back into his chair, as if he's let off a load of weight from his shoulders. "Don't be surprised if coffee's part of the dreaming, but I have a feeling it won't be the same. Buuuuut..yeah. We've all been through a lot of different things. If there's a way, we'll find it somehow. I have to be optimistic, right? And someone else who was there knows a thing or two about fate, and he believes this isn't the end of the story."

He spreads his arms wide, offering a weary smile. "So, enough about us and our craziness. Are you doing fine? How's the reporting going?"

Lois Lane has posed:
"Dream coffee could be good, actually," Lois says, "no way it could be as bad as the break room coffee..." She grins a bit, then nods in Gar's direction. "We'll get him out. If I have any leads I'll fill you in, but this is a bit out of my alley. I do know a lot of people." The weary smile is returned. "Reporting is always busy, going to try and work on some long-term projects in the future. Hopefully Terry will be back to help, I could use a competent intern to help."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan flags down someone roaming around offering lemonade for sale, and after one of those moments where he assures her he's who he looks like, he buys one for himself, one for Lois. "Yeah, I just thought you needed to know before you really started wondering. I'm sure he could catch you up on some more of the details if you meet up in the dream."

Letting out a small breath, he slurps up some of the drink through a wide straw. "I'm no writer or anything, but if I can help you out a little while he's..dreaming.." he waves a hand again at the description of such, "just let me know. I could probably use a distraction. I'm already restless, and I can't help but be worried. He didn't give us any warning about this."

Lois Lane has posed:
The lemonade is accepted and Lois give a polite nod of thanks to the salesperson before looking back to Gar. "I do appreciate that, it'd be weird if he managed to get into my dreams and I didn't have a lot of warning? I've been through weirder though." She takes a sip through the straw, then shrugs a little.

"Not a lot of it is the actual writing. Most of it is gathering information, poking around places to see who might be where, that sort of thing. I could probably send you on some of the less stealthy information gathering."

Gar Logan has posed:
"It was weird, but also a relief because, you know, he's still around," Gar shares, drumming a few fingers against the tabletop. "Kian - he's the alien with the bird wings - and I were dreaming, and Terry showed up. Then we shifted to Wonderland like we were going to have a big tea party, and he had to shoo the Mad Hatter off so we could talk. So if it's anything like that, you're gonna have an interesting ride if you meet up."

On the topic of helping out, he inspects his nails and flashes her one of those winning Garfield Logan grins. "Me, I'm great at being stealthy. I can be a literal fly on the wall, you know, but I'm guessing that could break some ethics guidelines for getting stuff for a story." Changing the subject, he asks, "So how are you and Clark doing?"

Lois Lane has posed:
"Oh god, I hope it doesn't end up feeling like a //nightmare//. It does sound like an interesting ride though. Hopefully it won't make me feel less rested." Lois leans against the table. "Clark and I are fine, thankfully not too much chaos on our end lately. Just a lot of work, definitely have no real work life balance."

Gar Logan has posed:
"/I/ felt pretty refreshed after waking up," Gar says without really thinking about it, catching himself quickly to add, "Relieved. I meant relieved. Because we knew he was still around, and it wasn't just in our heads." There's a hint of color in his cheeks.

After hitting the lemonade again, he says, "That's good. You two deserve some peace and quiet, so you gotta take it when you can get it. When we get him back, Terry, Kian and I are definitely gonna take a real vacation of our own." The green Titan wonders, "Anything you're curious about knowing while I'm here?"

Lois Lane has posed:
"Uh huh. I'm sure you seeing him again was lovely," Lois teases. "I'll look forward to getting a small chat with him. Making sure he's okay and all." She chuckles. "Do you have any real leads on how to fix the whole Wonderland problem?"

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan pinches the bridge of his nose, but he doesn't have a retort to that. She caught it. After all, the slip was obvious and so was the attempted recovery. "He's probably gonna apologize for leaving you without your coffee and stuff, so take that how you will. There's some stuff we're trying to figure out, so hopefully we'll have something soon."

Clearing his throat, he flashes Lois a quick glance. "Oh, and once he /is/ back, I'd probably watch out. I dunno how he's gonna be and I may have overdone it a little with some glitter. Apparently that's not just a Terry-slash-Vorpal thing. And I think I flirted with his mother when I had the Cheshire. There are some, uh, memories in there. So if he gets me back, try not to get caught in the crossfire."

Lois Lane has posed:
"If I can help him find something to help, I'll do my best to help you both," Lois grins. "I'll be careful for your glitter battle. Just as long as it doesn't end up in my coffee."

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan raises his hands. "I can't make any promises where he's concerned." Having finished his food and drink, he gets up to toss it all in the trash before giving the reporter a wave. "I should get back to the Tower, but I'm glad I got to you when I did. I'll keep you in the loop, and you just let me know if I can help you out with anything." He morphs himself into a sparrow, adds a little chirp for Lois, then zips off for the place the Titans call home.