12181/OMG Friends!

OMG Friends!
Date of Scene:	27 July 2022
Location:	W06 - Irie's Dorm - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	Mads comes over to visit Irie and they play a little bit of the Star Wars LCG and talk about.... THE FUTURE	!
Cast of Characters:	Irie West, Madison Evans

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Irie West has posed:
    Irie is sitting around in her room, idly playing some video game or another. Probably that one where you're a cat. She's a bit restless because Maddie is supposed to come over and /she's not here yet/. OMG. Why is she not here yet? Being so slow sucks.

Madison Evans has posed:
    Why is Madison not here yet? Because the donuts were supposed to have a pistachio crumble on top and //how could a store be out of pistachios//? But there you have it. After going to a second store, she chops the, dips the donuts in a glaze, and sprinkles the crumble on top - leaving a box in the Titan's kitchen before hurrying to the dorms.
    "OH. EM. GEE, so sorry I'm late!" Madison declares breathlessly when her friend opens her door at the chime. She pushes forward a small box towards her. "I brought enough for both of us! OH. Did you hear about Doctor MacIntyre? I mean- how on Earth, you kno- oh, what're you playing?!"

Irie West has posed:
    Irie puts the game on pause and jumps and dashes to the door to let her friend in, and relieves her of the donut boxes long enough to give her a hug. That's how important Maddie is to her. Hugs before donuts.

    "I did! I don't know, but in the superhero business people come back from the dead all the time," she answers. She looks surreptitiously about before whispering, "Dad came back from the dead /twice/." She holds up two finger in punctuation.

    "I'm playing Stray!" She walks back to her desk where she set down the donuts and opens the box, scanning them. "Mm. Maple bars." She grabs it and sits down in her computer chair. "It's where you get to play as a cat in this futuristic world that doesn't have any humans left. It's cute! You've got a dedicated meow button."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Well, I mean, I know I've heard about stuff like that but- but- I mean... I //saw// her //die.// Like- there- there wasn't anything left," Madison remarks after returning the hug. She looks down and away for a moment - and then lets her attention be drawn in by the video game instead.
    "What happened to all the people?" she asks. "How can it be a //stray// if there aren't any people? Then it's just- well. A cat. A wild cat."

Irie West has posed:
    Irie looks thoughtful for a bit as she chows down on the maple bar. "Yeah. It's just... one of those things. When somebody dies it's hard. Harder because you don't know if they're gonna come back or not. It doesn't happen all the time but it does enough that... there's always a sliver of hope. It's kinda cruel if you think about it."

    She swivels in her chair to look at her game. "Dunno. That's part of the game is unravelling the mystery of what happened to the people." She giggles, "You've got a point, but I don't think they could have named it just /Cat/ now could they?"

Madison Evans has posed:
    Madison nods in silent agreement - but decides not to comment further on Morrigan, even though she was the one to bring it up. The whole thing was still raw for her, and scary, and painful. ...and it didn't make any sort of sense.
    "I suppose they could have called it Wild Cat? Feral Cat? I don't know," she says thoughtfully.
    Then in a teasing voice she adds, "So this isn't a game you //already played// in the future? Guess it doesn't last, huh?" She grins at her friend - even if she's no longer a teen. Some people might see it as a strange friendship: thank goodness her mom wasn't one of them.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie chuckles, "Naw. Never got a chance to play it. When it came out everybody was, like, OMG Cat! for a month or two, but after that people moved on." She waves a hand at the screen, "It's a pretty short game. Six hours or so? I'm only two hours in. Want me to restart it so you can have a go? They give you three save slots."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Sure, I suppose. If that's not boring for you. I mean, or we could play a board game or whatever," Madison replies, picking up one of the donuts she'd made to nibble at it, getting her fingers slightly sticky.
    "Did you know when we met that I'd be a Titan?" she asks abruptly. "Only you never said anything - and I mean, I know you try not to say anything but- you knew this whole time?"

Irie West has posed:
    "Board game," Irie decides after giving it a bit of thought. "I picked up the Star Wars LCG starter set and we can try that. Had to scrounge around for it since it's out of print."

    She falls silent when her best friend in the whole wide world asks her if she'd been keeping information from her. Her lips twist around as conflicting emotions run through her before settling down. "I... didn't know. Not until you actually /joined/. I suspected, though. I never knew your secret identity when you were a full fledged hero." She looks up and gives Madison a pained look. "I can't really tell you much about it. I /want/ to because you're really cool and I looked up to you like I did with every other Titan, but I can't risk the timestream and tell you something that might... blip you out of existence or worse."

    She hurriedly adds, "That's not why I'm friends with you, though! I didn't even suspect until you started getting serious about the heroing business. Then I thought to myself, 'wouldn't it be neat if...' and as time wore on that idle thought became more concrete." She gives Mads a deadly serious look. "I swear that no matter what happens, I will be friends with you /for/ you. Not for anything else."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Ooo! Yes! Let's play that!" Madison agrees, a large smile growing on her lips - though as Irie speaks, that expression changes to one of surprise. "Wait," she says. "...I'm really cool?" That Irie would //look up to her// like that - somehow it never even occurd to her as a possibility.
    She's silent for aa momnt considering that before she asks, "...could you tell my mom anything about it? I mean, just enough to make her think that- that I really will be okay? That it's not like I'm just gonna get..." she slaps her hands together and makes a raspberry sound, "on my first real mission?"

Irie West has posed:
    Irie brings out the box and pulls out two decks of cards and a handful of tokens. She looks up at Madison and gives her a smirk, "Well, /duh/, you're really cool. I'd think that even if you /didn't/ become a superhero."

    "I thought about it when we were having her talk, to be honest," she says. She looks at the two decks and asks, as an aside, "Light side or dark side? But she was really getting on me about you being a hero and I thought that confirming that you /did/ become one would just make things worse. Maybe not now, now that you're a Titan."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "I'll play Dark," Madison offers - holding out her hand for the cards.
    "I know she's just worried about me," she adds in a serious voice. "I mean, it's hard to get too mad at her, even when she's telling me what I can and can't do, when I know she's just saying it 'cuz- 'cuz she wants to keep me safe. I don't like worrying her. But I don't know what to do about that - you know?"

Irie West has posed:
    Irie sets the Dark Side set of cards in Madison's hands and then starts sorting out the tokens. God. If only she could use her super speed. This is gonna take /forever/.

    "Yeah," agrees Irie. "I get it. She's trying to walk the line of trying to keep you safe versus letting you do and explore the things that you want to. When she talked to me, I told her that she really needed to talk to Donna about it." She giggles, "I didn't expect friggin' /Wonder Woman/ to show up. That must have been a surprise."

    She looks thoughtful as she sorts out the tokens. "I'll tell her if you want me to," she says. "She'll probably be mad at me for a bit for not telling her but... I'll take one for the team, yeah?"

Madison Evans has posed:
    "If she knows I'm still supposed to be alive when you're born... I mean, I know the future isn't set in stone or anything, but- the things you've seen so far, they mostly match with the stuff you knew from the future, yeah? Like - there haven't been any //big// contradictions like that..." Madison sighs, and starts helping with the tokens. "I don't think she'd stay mad. She might even be grateful, you know? I think- I think she's more scared than I am about all this."

Irie West has posed:
    "I don't blame her," Irie says. "She's your mother after all. I'd be worried that she'd been replaced by a pod person or something if she /wasn't/ worried about you." She purses her lips as they finish sorting out the tokens. "No, I don't think she'd stay mad either."

    As for the future question, "I don't know /everything/ that happened in the past. I mean. Now. You know what I mean. Just some of the big events. I know in general how some things /go/ but I don't know the specifics." She lets out a little chuckle and shakes her head, "Really the big thing that's throwing everything for a loop is that /I'm/ here and nobody ever really talked about it in the future. It's an unresolved paradox and it worries me."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Well. I know you don't know everything, I just mean... there's nothing that's an obvious change like 'Oh, the President was supposed to be assassinated last month and that never happened,' or, 'gosh, I thought World War III started in //February// of 2022...' or, I don't know, 'We'ren't the aliens from the... Mybroxium Quadrant supposed to show up by now?' - nothing //majorly// different. That you've noticed." There's a brief pause before Madison asks uncertainly, "If something were majorly different - would you be able to tell anyone?" She's still not entirely sure how all this TIME stuff works.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie bites at her lower lip as she ponders the question. "I don't know. I think I would because that would mean /somebody/ is messing with the timestream, and we wouldn't know what their motivations are, or what the result they might be going after." She gives Mads a little wince, "I mean. There's some stuff that I'd like to keep from happening, personally, but I just don't know that if I did that I'd be making everything /worse/ in the end."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Which means nothing like that has happened yet!" Madison crows triumphantly. "All the major stuff is on track. Including, you know, angelic invasions. And possibly even Doctor MacIntyre dying." She eyes Irie speculatively for a moment before adding, "...you probably didn't know about that, huh? I mean - sure, it's kind'f a... big deal for me right now, but- well. I can't see any reason why you would have known about something like //that// - that far in the future. It's like a blip."
    Weird talking about something like that as just a blip.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie shakes her head at Mads, "No, I didn't know about that. Like I said, I know mostly the big stuff. I know that... that implies that Doctor MacIntyre's death was /small/, but it wasn't. Every death is big, especially for the people close to them."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "Well I mean - you didn't know she was going to be the Director of your school, or that you'd know her at all so- I mean. Why would you know? It's just- ...another death. And death happens all the time." Madison smiles a bit sadly, looking down at the cards she's picked back up.
    "Anyways. I guess I'm a little bit of a big deal in the future? That's kind'f cool. You know? Even if the mind-trick stuff still isn't working very well."

Irie West has posed:
    Irie laughs, and shakes her head. "I'm sorry to spoil things, but you never did get a hang of the mind trick."

Madison Evans has posed:
    "...aww com'on!" Madison protests. "Really?! Why do I have to be the reverse Corran Horn?" she asks, letting out a beleaguered sigh. "I mean. At least it's worked //twice.// I just need to work on it more. Right?" She gives Irie an uncertain look. "...right?" she tries to insist.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie gives her best friend an inscrutable look. "Well. If you did, you never did it publicly," she concedes.

Madison Evans has posed:
    Madison lets out a dramatic sigh before declaring, "Well. Maybe I just decided that affecting minds skirts too close to the Dark Side, and I opted not to do it. //That's// probably the reason." Right? Right?
    "Speaking of which!" She holds up her cards. "Prepared to be //awed// by the power of the Dark Side! MWAHAHAHAHA!"
    Yes, she cackles. Of //course// she cackles. A good evil laugh is about //standards.//

Irie West has posed:
    Irie grudgingly gives Mads a shrug. "Probably, yeah."

    She grins when Mads starts cackling. "The Dark Side holds no power over me!" she says as she starts shuffling her deck. "We'll see who comes out on top!"