vivisection

Fiamma made a scoffing sound. It was hard to believe that there were other, more important things to focus on, but she was satisfied that he took it from her. She made a face at the question and brushed her hands together, as if merely touching the device had sullied them. “Some agent that wasn’t paying attention.” Despite her disgust, she couldn’t hold back a smirk. “He’s in trouble, too.”

Gabe managed to take the casing off without damaging the internal mechanisms, and he immediately started turning it over in his hands, trying to deactivate the part that actually dampened powers—but without a closer look and a careful deconstruction, it was going to be hard. He hummed in response. “Hope you’re not in trouble,” he replied.

Kid was somewhat further away so the power dampener hardly bothered him yet. Still, he felt it’s light presence vanish as the other dealt with it and took a few steps closer, looking down at the unconscious would-be attacker. “How wonderfully vague.” he said lightly, “I’m curious enough to see where this will lead. I think I’ll stick around and see what you learn. After all, a mutant outside of the district is a rare thing in Star City nowadays.”

Gabe shrugged. “It’s not like I have much reason to trust you,” he replied, looking over at the other. “I could say the same about you.” He picked up the broken pieces of the dampener, sifting through it in his palm to see if he could glean any information from it, but frankly, in its broken state, he wasn’t able to feel out where everything was supposed to go. He figured that was the lasting impact of the power dampener on his abilities. He tucked it into his backpack anyway. 

He knew he’d be meeting Gabe sooner or later since he’d moved to Star City, but he would’ve preferred it to be over dinner or at a bowling alley or…really any other scenario. Jim furrowed his brows and there was a long, drawn out momen where he just looked at him. “That’d be me. I’m assuming this means you’re the boyfriend.” Not that he’d introduced himself. Jim stood there, fidgeting with his phone on the pocket of his jacket. “Am I waiting for her in the hallway, son, or are you planning on letting me come in?”

“You teach at the Institute too?” Maybe he should’ve known that already, but he tried to keep contact with that place at a bare minimum. He wanted to know as little as he could get away with.

Josh motioned for Gabe to lean forward. He placed a hand on either side of his jaw, cradling his face. Under very different circumstances, it might have been a comforting, sweet gesture. Instead, Josh pressed his thumb against the cut just below his eye. “What? You don’t want to tell the same story fifty different times? Can’t see why not.” As he spoke, the various injuries began to fade.

“Yeah. Intro to Strategy and Planning.” He paused. “I promise it’s not as boring as it sounds. Or maybe it is, I never cared much to find out how my students feel about it.” As a teacher, Gabe was dry, but he was direct and effective, which was all he cared about. 

Emma didn’t understand the bond between Gabe and Scott. She knew that Jean had been part of it, at one point, which - admittedly - made her no more eager to accept the situation. What had recently happened with NOVA was more bewildering rather than alarming. Targeting Gabe, someone closely tied with a telepath, and then releasing him back to District X had been a move more on par with the SCPD (hapless as they were). “Come in.” She finished signing the document on her desk before looking up, still frowning. “Gabe. Whenever I see you, it seems someone else has taken on the role of mastermind. Have a seat.” If she were known for anything aside from her power, it was certainly her candor. 

“I never liked the name anyway,” he replied, sitting down across from her and interlacing his fingers in his lap. “It was a stupid name my little brother came up with and it just ended up sticking for a decade.” Gabe had never felt the title fit—while he was a strategist and keenly aware of his surroundings, he wasn’t manipulative. He didn’t mastermind plans, he executed them. Flawlessly, usually. “I’m assuming Scott filled you in?” 

Ever since she had found out that she truly needed water, and not just to drink, Elysia had been spending more of her time beneath the waves than on dry land, which was fine with her; there seemed to be less drama in the ocean, at least, in the areas not swarmed with Atlanteans. There was just less hassle to deal with, but, she couldn’t stay down there forever. 

Unfortunately, the man on the shore made her want to turn on her heel and dive back beneath the waves—until she recognized him from the school. Elysia frowned at him, dripping, as she took a heavy seat on the beach and shrugged—she supposed she was, though the fins were lacking. She also wasn’t sure how many mermaids could manipulate blood, but she wasn’t going to argue his point.

Gabe lifted his cigarette to his lips again, unable to stop himself from taking another deep drag as he tried to process. “Right. Well. This is the least crazy thing to happen to me this week, so I suppose you should just—” He gestured vaguely. “I don’t know. Do what you do.” Gabe didn’t think about the lack of fins or anything like that—all he knew was that she was under water and now she wasn’t and mermaid was the first word that popped to mind. 

Erik could have wasted his breath by telling Gabe he should’ve been better prepared to defend himself, but that was a lecture and a task for Scott. He did not have the spare time or energy to care how much or how little effort Gabe put into protecting his own life.

He turned and walked inside without actually answering him at all. The doors slid open with a gesture. Erik kept going until the two of them were in his study. He sat behind the desk and motioned toward a chair in the corner, which moved across toward him and stopped just beside Gabe.

“Tell me everything they said to you.” As satisfying as it would have been to simply enter a single building and dismantle it as they’d done with the HIVE facility, the situation with NOVA was more complicated. Not least of all because they were physically more prepared to contend with mutants.

Gabe knew that they were all looking down at him but that was just something he was going to have to live with. He kept fucking up and they kept treating him like a child and he was going to have to just know that he wasn’t going to be up to anyone’s standards. It wasn’t like he ever had been before. 

He followed Erik silently, knowing that Erik would speak when he had taken them wherever they were supposed to go. Perhaps he should have felt some measure of fear or intimidation but he didn’t. All he felt was rage at his situation. 

“Harpoon guy.” He said it quietly enough that it wouldn’t be overheard, but he definitely recognized Gabe. It wasn’t like that was a wound he encountered every day. Definitely not in the street. “You look better off this time.” He’d seen people get their ass kicked, and even without touching him or asking questions he could pretty much tell that’s what had happened. Blunt force trauma all over the place.

“You’ll get over wanting them to be nice to you. I did.” He was used to being the one with a stick up his ass (not his own words). But all of his students left knowing more than they did going in, and not a single one got out without learning how to defend themselves. Not even Gabe, no matter how late to the game he’d been.

“Are you trying to fight me, too?” He’d have rolled his eyes if Gabe could’ve seen it. “What I’m going to do is tell you that I’m disappointed. Because I am. I don’t need people keeping things from me. Not knowing what’s going on is what makes things harder.” Harder and more dangerous for all of them. Gabe was lucky they’d just turned him loose again.

He folded his arms. “Erik is strong, but that doesn’t matter against power dampeners. NOVA is more complicated than just knocking down a door and leveling the place.” Of course Gabe knew that already. Scott wasn’t going to say that bringing Erik in on it was necessarily a bad idea, either.

Gabe groaned. “It’s done, Scott. It’s over, I get it, I fucked up. You don’t need to lecture me like a child.” If Gabe could go back, he probably would have done the same thing—he wasn’t all that sure that Scott could have done much to help him in this scenario. Something about it made his heightened senses twitch. Something was off. 

@gabriclspencer

Though they had both been residing in District X, Erik had maintained no contact with Gabe after the destruction of HIVE. The two of them generally operated on different wavelengths. Typically that meant he just found the boy to be disappointing.

But when Gabe reached out, there was no reason to refuse to meet with him. He waited for him outside the home he shared with Anna, tucked away in one of the areas of the District not yet heavily occupied. It was the most privacy they could have. It wasn’t as if anyone would dare come there without permission.

Gabe had been specifically avoiding Erik if only because he knew he would get that same stupid look of disapproval every time Erik saw him. He wasn’t interested in going down the same path as Erik. At least, that was what he told himself. 

“…NOVA has been watching you?” Barbara repeated, clearly confused. “But why you? That’s so risky. Surely they know you’d tell Scott the moment you had the chance…” If NOVA wanted someone to be a spy, it seemed they made a mistake in choosing Gabe. Everyone knew he had close ties to Scott Summers and Emma Frost. She nodded immediately, frowning in concern as she watched him nurse his lip. “I’ll call him now.”

Kid only chuckled slightly, stopping to lean against a wall and observing the other with an indifferent expression. “Hmm, you may be right on both counts. But of the two us, I’m not pointing a gun at you.” he said lightly, “Whatever did you do to bring that man down on you?” he asked, “And there’s no need to look so tense, if I wanted to hurt you’d you’d be dead already,” he gestured slightly and two arms sprouted from the man’s shoulders, “I’d just snap your neck.” he explained easily before the limbs vanished.

Gabe tilted his head to the side as he observed the other man, taking a few steps to the side to bring his boot down hard on a nearby power dampener, taking a deep breath and letting out as a sigh of relief as the chokehold of the dampener released from his abilities. “I’ve done a lot of things,” he replied. “It could be any number of them that brought this shit down on me.” He crouched down to check the man’s pockets. 

Gabe knew that he would have to talk to Emma about things sooner or later, but he had been hoping that Scott would just act as the go-between for them and he wouldn’t have to deal with or worry about anything with Emma. Clearly, that wasn’t always going to be the case, and he figured that it was better to try and patch things up and deal with her demeanor rather than avoiding her entirely for the time he was living in District X. They all had to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation. She should have been expecting him, so he just walked right up to the door of the office and knocked sharply with two knuckles. “It’s Gabe.” 

Gabe scrambled to his feet from where he had been sitting on the beach, sneaking in a cigarette he knew he shouldn’t smoke (he had quit approximately 8 years earlier, though he had been sneaking cigarettes now and again ever since) when he realized that someone was coming out of the murky water. He still had the cigarette between his lips. “Right. You’re coming out of the water. You—you’re a goddamn mermaid aren’t you? Figures. This city only gets more insane,” he grumbled.