17593/A book, a Cigar, and a Lake

A book, a Cigar, and a Lake
Date of Scene:	07 April 2024
Location:	Breakstone Lake
Synopsis:	Norkia and Bishop talk about world munching and what it might do to a stomach.
Cast of Characters:	Bishop, Noriko Ashida

---

Bishop has posed:
The smell of a cigar, the sound of light music jazz is coming up from under a tree. There sits Bishop with a book in his right hand, the left is holding the cigar as he takes a long inhale of it. His right combat clad is boot, is tapping to the jazz. He is in peace, watching the lake as he enjoys this quiet moment, everything seems to be at peace with the man for the moment.

Done with teaching for the day, he ashes the cigar into a ashtray that is next to him, as he glances around to make sure he is still decently hidden, the last smoke got him in a bit of trouble but for now it seems the coast is clear!

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Back on the baseball diamond, Noriko is hitting some softballs against a backstop.  Poor backstop.  It's a staccato of bats as she repeatedly pops up a ball and smacks it, but to the naked eye it just looks like a bunch of balls bubbling up out of a 5 dollar bucket only to get slammed.

In the middle of this assault, which Bishop must be none the wiser, since he's so innocently enjoying his perfectly harmless, perfectly private indulgences, one of the balls pops up past the backstop and just starts SAILING into yonder.

"Oops."  Noriko tries to jump up and get it but the ball keeps moving through the air higher than she can snatch it before she gets there.  And so this is how Noriko crickets along toward the Lake at great speeds, only to catch the ball an inch from the ground and a foot from Bishop's side...without any warning at all.

Bishop has posed:
Bishop exhales the smoke deep in his relaxing and than out of nowhere a ball and a kid, and well an oops he looks over at her unphased, it is typically the way of the manor. "Hello Noriko, you enjoying your game?" He stands with that cigar clenched between his teeth hard, the only sign of his annoyance, that book is left on the grass as he exhales the smoke with a soft chuckle. "Your taking the giant murderous thing, that wants to eat our planet well it seems. Thoughts on this creature, we have learned about?"

Noriko Ashida has posed:
A spark ball of charge suddenly blossoms from her gauntlets and is quickly squelched as she hot-potatoes the ball away from her in uncharacteristic clumsiness.  She says nothing, playing it off right before she quickly zips over and snatches it out of the air, now no longer in danger of possibly being flaming.  She zips right back into place, hoping she was fast enough not to notice, even if it causes a tell tale weird stutter effect since she can't get her re-placement perfect.

"One got away from me," the young woman says with a shrug.  "I have too much time on my hands to be obsessing over the world ending.  It's ending constantly.  I'd go mad."  A touch of vocabulary betrays she didn't grow up on US soil.  "Honestly?  With all that firstborn, secondborn, fiftiethborn crap, I thought maybe firstborn are humans, secondborn are freak mutants posing as gods, and thirdborn are just Polly Pocket mutants like us.  You know, like, those weirdo greek gods?"  Noriko obviously doesn't take stock in gods as real beings, even if she knows other things are real.  It's like the fact that everything fantastic can be real has instantly made it all mundane and worthy of cooler talk.  To her, it seems natural that people would have thought mutants to be gods in different contexts (such as the past).

"I think this dude wants to know where this guy is so he can unleash him, control him, collect him, or like, trade him for something else he wants.  No special thoughts there.  You?"

Bishop has posed:
Bishop chuckles softly as he places the cigar bending to bash it to death in the ash tray with another fire of smoke into the air as he listens to Noriko. "Yeah, maybe and I'm not paid to think and my job is to shoot, protect and fight. So, your ideas are good and make solid sense. Muntants and gods, have or could have the same powers and both hated for being outside of the normal." His hand is moves to brush along his dreads flying them back and forth idly as he speaks with a chuckle. "But yeah, that dude wants to know where he is most like to collect him hence the name, but I think that is a bad idea you know. But, not my call."

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"I guess I just don't understand why he's a problem if he hasn't been so far.  I mean, what if we get this guy's attention when we just try to find out where he is?"  Noriko obviously has way way way too much time to think, and a mind that needs to occupy its iterations or it will rut on things.  "Maybe we could give him a fake," Noriko says with a wry little laugh.  It's more of a fantasy than an idea.  There's an electric spark in her eyes for a moment at the thought.

"Actually...we're just handing over some kind of record right or something?  Maybe we can tamper with it or just say that nothing happened."  By the sound of it, she doesn't sound convinced even as the words come out of her mouth.  It's like a rushed teenager's plan.

"I don't get paid to think either," Nori reveals with a laugh.  "I mean.  I'm practically the janitor around here."  It's true.  Noriko is the one who goes and runs errands like grocery shopping, washing the cars, and so on.  "To be fair, the gig is pretty good.  I get an all you can eat benefit," she rattles as her mind and mouth races faster than she cares the regulate.

Then Noriko stares off over the lake.  "I really hope our planet doesn't get slurped....I bet that guy shits solar systems.  Well if he does get us, I hope we make him Milky Way all over the place."

Bishop has posed:
Bishop listens to her rant standing there under the tree, his eyes on the teen with a nodding his head in a few spots, his eyes unmoving. "No we give him heart burn, than hje milky ways himself. Get it right, but your right and we will handle this in the end. Maybe tricking him is not the right answer, but it could be I leave those thoughts to those that want to dwell there. My role is simple, fight for the dream of Xavier, to defend it with everything I have, to make sure that the future I come from never comes to be, in my future we did not get munched. So I feel we will be fine, we will figure out a way to stop this and if not, we will go down swinging, like a some sort of battle toad or something. We will handle this, the world is always in danger and we always find a way out out it either with our own powers or those of the world around us. Too many heroes for us to fail."

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Sounds like you've got everything figured out...How long did that take?" Noriko arches her brow, skeptical that working out one's direction in life is anything but a lifelong scam of the universe.  The tone is easily misinterpret-able, like most of the tonal edges to what she says.

"That's reassuring though...a non-munched future.  So you're saying we can fail upwards here, hmm."  Noriko smirks at the idea, even if it is just a stray thread of her imagination.  She then actually considers some of Bishop's words, in an instant, his confidence.  It brings a rare grin to her face.

Noriko spins the ball in the palm of her gauntlet at dizzying speeds like a fidget toy, every 3 to 5 seconds.  "You're right.  And if all else fails, we can always tie his shoes together and shove him into a black hole," Noriko says as if it were as easy as it is for an elementary recess bully.  

"I'll see you around Bishop."  Noriko has never been one for prolonged interactions.  Her natural velocity is faster than those around her, requiring her to slow down just to participate, but for the girl with the prickly reputation who can be slow to warm up, this is just about as friendly an encounter as one could expect.  "One day I'm going to pick your brain about the future, or...your past."  As in, her possible future.  There's a non-electrical twinkle in her eye before she turns to blurrily pad back across campus, still spinning the ball in her palm with the flick of her clunky gauntlet.