16416/Secret Stash

Secret Stash
Date of Scene:	26 November 2023
Location:	Pugsley Creek
Synopsis:	Rogue confiscates Hopes guns!
Cast of Characters:	Hope Summers, Rogue

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Hope Summers has posed:
It's sleeting a little bit, and chilly winds are blowing through the trees in the expansive grounds surrounding Xavier's Schools for Kids Who Don't Mutant Good and Want To Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too. The creek isn't flowing steadily, the ice already starting to form, and the ground has a dusting of light snow though it hasn't had much of a chance to pile up yet.

Hope, clad in a heavy canvas overcoat lined with lambswool, stands by the trunk of a particularly large tree. A deep hole has been dug, and the tree's gnarled roots peek out from the earthen sides of the pit. A well-used shovel leans against the tree next to the redhead, and she's removed her hands from her glove in order to breathe warmly onto her palms and rub them together.

Nearby, a tarpaulin has been wrapped around something suspiciously long and narrow. If one didn't know better, it'd look like she was burying a corpse in the woods.

She's surely not.

Surely ...

Rogue has posed:
the pathway alongside Pugsley Creek was a notorious walking pathway for Rogue and Mr. Jeepers. Thus today they are out on said walk, Rogue in a dark grey wool peacoat, and Jeepers in a Vietnam-style military green jacket, his aviators on over his eyes, and Rogue's on over hers, though with it gettting darker now, she raises her glasses up over her hairline, as she pulls on his lead a bit to keep him focused on the walk.

"Come on," she tells him, "I'll get us some hot chocolate when we get home. Or well, some for me. You can have some hot water."

The dog happily pants as his four yellow paws pad along the pathway beside Rogue in her knee high leather boots, and blue jeans disappearing up under the coat.

Up ahead, she spies someone doing something shady, and her initial impression is it must be Jubilee... but the red hair soon gives it away.

"Rachel?" Rogue calls out, as Jeepers now stares at the woman ahead, happily panting with his tail going a mile a minute behind him now upon seeing someone new!

Hope Summers has posed:
"Think less face tattoos," Hope calls back, her own red hair a bit longer and less pinned down. She runs her hands through it now before she begins to put her gloves back on, tugging them down. They're covered in black dirt, stained from whatever white-green hue they once had.

She gives the bundled up tarp a wary glance, pondering if there's time to drag it somewhere hidden. But with Rogue having already seen her, she instead opts to step out onto the path proper and try to draw attention away from where she was standing.

"Oh! Whose this guy?" she asks, crouching down and reaching both hands out towards Jeepers, "So handsome!"

This isn't Hope's normal attitude. While she isn't grim or acerbic, she's never been one to gush over anything.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue had Rachel on the brain because she'd run in to the distraught redhead a week or two ago by the tennis courts. She'd seemed rather... mentally injured, at the time. Seeing someone out here digging, seemed like it might be along those lines. When Hope reveals herself though, Rogue pauses her stride when close enough, and smiles softly toward her. "Oh, hey, Hope." She tells her, holding Jeepers' leash in her green gloved hands in front of her.

Jeepers is all manner of receptive to the greeting, whether it's done with sincerity or not! He licks at Hope's face, paws at her knees, and tries to jump up on her, but Rogue keeps him at-bay without any trouble at all, via that leash and his harness sewn in to his military jacket.

"What are you doin' out here? It's cold as Hell, and you're just plantin a tree or some such?" She asks then in that husky southern style of hers.

Hope Summers has posed:
"Eh, there was no one around in the colege house and the Mansion is just ... too comfy for me. Where I'm from ... originally, I mean ... this was the bad time of the year. It got cold, water sources got hard to come by. It sucked, but it doesn't feel right without it."

Hope didn't love lying. She knew Rogue sort of okay, and didn't think she deserved it. But ...

She sighs, shaking her head, and decides to come clean.

"Okay, that's bullshit. I'm burying a stash out here. I know I can't ... well, shouldn't keep anything in the school. So, I'm keeping it out here where I can get at it if we need it but Little Jimmy isn't going to wander out and blow his face off."

Rogue has posed:
Throughout what Hope says, Jeepers continues his antsy pantsy excitement dancey. It isn't until the redhead goes to totally focus on Rogue that, the dog just goes back to snuffing at the ground like he had been when they'd been walking along the pathway. The dog is ever obsessed with tracking the animals that call the outdoors home.

Rogue watches Hope change her tune, which causes the Belle to tilt her head to the side a little before her green eyes go back to where Hope had been when she'd first found the girl from another world.

"Guns?" Rogue asks then, jumping to that obvious conclusion after hearing those spoken words. "Oh, you definitely shouldn't leave them out here anywhere like this." She tells the other. "You should put them in storage in the rooms under the school buildin'." She offers. "the X-Men Base." She states further, as Jeepers walks around behind Rogue, the leash wrapping around her left thigh now.

"The kids around here will find anything you hide out here that you don't want them to find. They're magnets to it. Don't matter much what steps you take t'hide them, they'll find'em. Hell, Deadpool was even caught with some kinda flame thrower or somethin' tucked in to a tree. We got lucky nobody found that from the student body... The little bastards woulda lit the place up if they had..."

Rogue smirks softly at the other then. "Let me help ya take'em somewhere legit safe."

Hope Summers has posed:
"I've already got the good shit in storage," Hope explains, "Like, I'm not going to keep a plasma launcher or a rail gun out here. It'd fry the electrics. But if the whole place collapses or blows up? Well, I'm still in business."

Hope frowns at the idea of not leaving them out here. She plants her gloved hands on her hips, tilting her head to one side and furrowing her brow at Rogue.

"I mean, I was planning to bury them pretty deep ... "

Rogue has posed:
Jeepers continues to snuffle around the pathway behind Rogue's heels as the Belle herself watches Hope, a small smirk showing for her. "Yeah... Scott an' Jean an' the Professah really don't like guns though." She tries to explain. "I get the notion'a havin' a backup cache somewhere, but maybe we can take them back to the Base for now, and propose setting something up out here, like a lock and key shelter with a gun safe inside it?" She proposes as a compromise.

"I figure a big box with a key and lock is better than havin' t'dig a damn hole t'get'em out if ya need'em, right?" She asks, now grinning at the other.

"I'll help ya with the pitch for the secure shack too, if that helps."

Jeepers comes around Rogue's other side now, effectively wrapping his leash around her legs, but the Belle is used to it, and absently starts to step over the leash with her right foot first, followed by her left, as the dog is now stepping off the path to Rogue's right to nose around the tall grass. He hikes a leg up to pee a little on the blades.

Hope Summers has posed:
"I already dug the hole," Hope complains, though it doesn't seem like she has the drive to really argue the point, "It's kinda funny that they hate guns but I'd wager my Mosin is less dangerous than the guy who can melt brains or the guy who can punch a hole in a tank with his eyes."

Still, she's smirking and seems resigned to locking the guns up all in one place.

"I suppose it's fine. Not like I paid much for 'em. The woman who was selling them just steals them from cartels and unsanctioned regimes and stuff. No overhead."

Rogue has posed:
"Well that is just fiscally responsible, right there!" Rogue does declare, showing the other a big grin as she pulls on Jeepers leash to keep him from going to deep in to the tall grass, like the over protective dog owner that she is!

A grin is given to Hope next, along with a couple vague nods of her head, her white bangs flowing across her face from right to left in a gust of cold wind coming across the creek's flowing waters.

"Yeah, a lotta mutant powers can do a lot'a damage around here, but yeah... I mean people hate guns, or love'em, that's America for ya, baby." She states, holding a grin.

"How have ya been otherwise?" Rogue asks as she starts toward whatever Hope was digging, and whatever she has laying around said hole. "You enrolled in college classes?" She asks.

Hope Summers has posed:
"I don't really love 'em," Hope admits, rolling her shoulders into a shrug, "I mean, they work. I know about 'em. They're just tools. The people who get way into them are weird. Dad excluded, I guess."

She rises up to her feet, planting her hands on her back and stretching by leaning backwards and arching. She lets out a sigh, tightening her scarf around her neck.

"I've been okay. Reading the study material for the high school equivalency. Some of the stuff people think is important to know is ridiculous, but I'm gettin' there. What about you? I heard you were like married now or whatever."

Rogue has posed:
Rogue runs her eyes over whatever Hope had stashed out here, before she glances back at the other in mid-stretch. she smirks at the marriage question, and shakes her head side to side. "Nah. Not married. Spoken for, I guess you'd say." She responds before letting out a heavy sigh and glancing back to the southwest where the path leads back toward Breakstone Lake and the forest pathways toward the school.

"Your dad?" She asks. "Don't think I've ever met him. Can't imagine he's not a character though." She says with a pleasant smile offered before she motions toward the stuff. "Want me to carry this?" She asks, offering the leash to Jeepers. "You can walk him back if you'd like." She says then with a light sigh and a brush of a gloved hand across her face to clear her green eyes of that pure white hair framing her features.

Hope Summers has posed:
"Yeah, I guess," Hope answers, taking the leash and reaching down to pet Jeepers between the ears. She looks to Rogue, pointing to exactly where the tarp full of firearms is laying by the big hole in the dirt.

When Jeepers jumps up to paw at her, she grabs his paws and does one of those little dances people do with their dogs sometimes. She laughs.

"He's cute."

Rogue has posed:
With the leash offered over, and Jeepers happily dancing along with the other, Rogue just smirks on her way over to thetarp. "He's definitely somethin'..." She says with a mildly distracted tone to her voice. She proceeds to move the tarp around, viewing the items underneath, before she has it all rolled up and is lifting it up to tuck under one of her arms, like a Santa Claus stash of guns...

Jeepers pants and even lets out a happy woof at Hope before he looks toward Rogue, and drops down again to try and chase after her and that strange new sack she's carrying.

"We'll hop down a side passage, that will take us right in to the hangar. A nice short cut." She says back over a shoulder at the other.