google translate looking ass

“I’ve got a mermaid tail swimsuit I can drown you in,” she offers, chipper as she hops off her couch and drops down beside him. Kitty puts her feet up on the coffee table in front of her, arms behind her head like she’s stretched out on the beach and not in a frigid mansion in the middle of a fricken frigid winter. “Now you’re speaking my language,” she snatches a notepad another student in sketching in on the floor, ignoring their protests, and digs out a pencil from between the couch cushions. There was always a few. She scratches out the equation as she glances at his screen. “What are we up to?”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He retorted playfully without looking up from the long strings of if/thens, parenthesis, and semicolons. “Fill in current estimates for first three requirements. 3 for R*, N sup e and F sup p basically go together and that’s 3400. I’ve adapted the danger room’s simulation program to randomly generate the answers to the next four inputs based on what we know. It’s a bit temperamental but its great because it’ll tell me what didn’t over lap. You know, if L or  F sup c or whatever was the missing link each time it runs.” Doug explains finally looking up from the code. 

At his narrowing eyes she starts chuckling she’s full on giggling in her seat. “Mermaids want to drown you, unicorns are stabby. They all have their downsides, Doug,” she says with a longing sigh as her giggles taper off. She shrugs at his question, she was just bored. Terribly bored. Everyone was morose, and she didn’t know what for. “I have nothing better to do.”

“Oh!” Doug cooed as if this were in any way a surprise. “Really? You should have said so because I’ve got a project you might be interested in.” He said, closing his school work down and launching a file in bluefish. “And for the record, the mermaids are welcome to drown me.” He added. “How familiar are you with the drake equation? The actual equation, not just the theory.”

Kitty snorts at his answer, tossing the book over her shoulder. It lands with a heavy thud. “Mermaids probably have tuna breath,” she says with a nose wrinkle, resting her cheek in her palm as she looks at her friend. She knew he’d take the bait, and finally free her from the boredom of the day. “Fairies are where it’s at.”

Doug narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “That’s cheating, Kitty. You can’t just offer up a choice and then pick neither. Besides, fairies just invite trouble. What would you do, accidentally given them the right to your first born?” He smiled again. “What’s this about anyway?”

“Mermaids or unicorns?” Kitty’s voice breaks the silence in the lounge. She looks around to find any takers before leaning forward, finger on the page of her open book to keep her place. “Choose your sparkle. Mermaids? Unicorns?” The book of mythology on her lap looks old as dirt, and she’d found it in the school’s library. No one seemed to know where it came from and it wasn’t particularly sunshiney and wonder-like as she’d expected it to be. So she made her own fun.

“Mermaids.” Doug answered without looking up immediately. Quickly finishing the line he’d been working on before Kitty could distracting him indefinably--or at least to the point of forgetting his thought. “Unicorns are just horse with a weird tooth.” He hit enter and looked up. “Mermaids or unicorns?”

❛ a fallen king. that is what you are, just like your father. BROKEN DOWN BY THE WEIGHT OF HEART AND A SINGLE, FOOLISH GIRL. ❜ it’s cruel, the words he hears her say to him. a mother who stole away her sons chance at life of his own. she was the very one who put him onto this path, taking away the one thing she, as his mother, should have been willing to give to him in bountiful  ———— happiness. what always seemed too far out of reach for him. instead he was stuck looming over a father who would never love him. and sometimes maven would find himself, same as always, jealous of cal. it only got worse when he started to notice how he and mare looked so happy together. the way they danced in the darkness of the ballroom. both of them stupid enough to think they wouldn’t be seen, but the pale moonlight casting in from the windows was just enough light to let them be detected by the cameras in the room. it was always cal, and it was always going to be, EVERY DAMNED TIME. whenever a ball or specially held event was taking place at the palace, all the girls from the high houses would throw themselves at his older brothers feet, hoping to be future queens. maven thought them baseless. everyone knew cal had no choice in the matter of who he was going to wed, the queenstrial would do just that.

but it seemed even the same kind of baseless imbeciles roamed even so far out here. ❝ i guess you could say that. ❞ he says through gritted teeth. the air surrounding maven increasing a few degrees. he steps out of the boys grasp quickly, not at all comfortable with a strangers hands on his skin. in the little amount of time he’d been in this odd place he’d seen what people could do. some of them without even touching, let alone thinking of anything. he thinks of oblivions, the ones in norta whose colors are orange and red, and able to make an explosion out of anything they laid their fingers on. there was little use in alienating himself here,  especially when he felt so out matched. turning his gaze to the flame maker that is taunt around his inhumanly pale wrist, he inspects it carefully. ❝ it’s fine. though, have to wonder what’s gotten you so worked up in there to have almost bulldozed me over. ❞ his voice is neutral now, eyes flickering back up to the boy before giving the bracelet one more good look. it sparks a small fire at his call and he feels a great bode of relief. if it were to break he’s not sure he’d even be able to find anyone in this forsaken place to repair it.

Having nearly run through the other boy, Doug could sympathize with his curt but he still wasn’t sure how to take it. “Would you really like to know?” Doug asked because it seemed obvious that this boy had little interest in Doug. However, he did seem the type to humor others. Doug tilted his head, shifting his book bag from one shoulder to the other and pulls out a quickly sketched out scene of a circus that looked nearly a century and a half old. “I wanted to look up if this ever happened because--well, that’s hard to explain.” He couldn’t exactly say he’d accidentally stepped into a pocket universe without sounding like a madman. “I’m sorry again, I didn’t break that did I?” He said, shoving his fever drawing into a book. He knew plenty of mutants here had devices that held them together in one way or another and he didn’t want to have harmed the boy.

In the days that followed, Doug found himself ruminating on his accidental journey into the past. If that’s what it. Or, what had Illyana called it? A mirror world, like ours but different. He hadn’t stayed long enough for a better explanation and he doubted he would have gotten one had he. Part of him was cautious in his considerations, mostly because having your dead friend tell you you accidentally waltzed into an alternate universe felt insane. But it was so Philip K. Dick that Doug couldn’t quite exercise it from his mind. How could he even begin to— 

“Opf!” Doug managed to grab onto the other student before knocking him over completely. “I’m so sorry! I guess you could say my mind was somewhere else.” He laughed. “I’m not usually this absentminded.” 

Illyana is just wondering out loud, not paying attention to who is nearby to hear it. But that voice… Her neck practically snaps with how fast her head turns. Her heartbeat speeds up in surprise. Of course Albert had shown up at the manor, and there was Adalinda, but she could tell from Doug’s brainwaves that he didn’t belong here. Did he not recognize her? “How did you get here?” she asks, eyes flitting over his face. “When did you get here?” This wasn’t a safe place for him, not with what was planned for tonight.

“I don’t know.” He was still looking around trying to figure out where here was. “Just now, I guess. I don’t really remember to be perfectly honest.” He tore his eyes away from the spectacle to face her. It didn’t take him long to recognize her. “Illyana? You’re... dead, aren’t you? You died.” Despite the skepticism in his voice, Doug was almost positive she’d died. It made things even more confusing but somehow less dreamlike. The hast in her voice only added to the lessening of that feeling. “Where are we?”

Illyana had taken some convincing to come tonight but it gave her a reason to get dressed. To do anything other than stare at the ceiling, trying to find ways to break into Limbo and rescue her brother. The dress she was wearing belonged to Raven, and she’d heard the older woman’s grumbling about how many dresses she’d been lending out lately. Smoothing her hand over her corset, she takes a seat and watches the crowd rather than the stage. When she feels someone sit beside her, she doesn’t look at them as she regards them. “Do you think they’re aware? Does that make them complicit in our suffering?”

Doug felt as though he’d stumbled into a dream. A dream with the eccentrics of an 19th century circus populated by distorted familiars. He’d have sworn he’d been in Salem Center just moments ago but dreams were often like that, weren’t they? Still, he thought, his fingers grazing over the wooden seating, It all felt far too vivid. Her question caught him off guard. He looked up, somewhat confused by what she meant. Normally dreams, no matter how nonsensical, had away of being understandable in the moment but Doug had no clue as to her meaning. “I’m sorry. Do I think who’s aware of what?” He asked.

“Woah, woah, woah, what?” he asks, voice clearly showing his shock. “Scott and Alex!? They’re both here?”

“Um, yeah. Most of the time anyway. I don’t really know either of them that well, but they’re usually very nice.”

Gabriel isn’t really sure how to put up with someone actually tolerating his presence. It’s not something that he’s ever been used to. But here he was, attempting to be amicable at least to avoid a further confrontation. He doesn’t want to potentially fight someone that his brother might tolerate to the level of bond or any such thing. “Gabriel Summers,” he offers up following the nod with a weird look on his face. God, the customs on this planet were strange.

“Ohhh.” Doug mused aloud without noticing it. “So you’re looking for Scott and Alex than?”

“Or, like, maybe Elon Musk was right and our reality really is just a computer simulation and this whole time we’ve been chilling on some cosmic neck beard’s hard drive. Until now.” she offered, unhelpfully, “Maybe you’ve just found the fatal flaw in the code. Our very existence could be a binary string of 0′s and 1′s and you might be two seconds away from blowing this shit wide open.” Her eyes widened as she said this, like a physical exclamation to her point. And as she came up with a more absurdist thought train, her mouth twisted up into a brilliantly devious smile. “Or maybe this is like the Truman Show and I’m just an actor in your life. This whole danger room code thing is just a weird plot point in the episode. Oh, and hey, wouldn’t you know it… The script says I’m supposed to take the rest of your M&M’s.” She reached over him and grabbed the candy bag from the other side of the counter, launching a handful of the chocolates into her mouth. “Honestly, if you ask me, the Doug Show really jumped the shark after the fifth season.” 

She affectionately bumped his shoulder with her own, as her gaze went back to the code on his computer screen. “Yeah, you probably just copied it wrong.”

“Ugh!” Doug groaned in frustration and deleted the program. If he wanted to use the code, he’d need the whole thing. No flaws. All the hours he’d put into reading it were waisted if any of it was wrong. He was usually good at catching broken or incorrect code but he wouldn’t risk it. “What a waist.” He said, more so to himself than to Kitty. He could just re-download it tomorrow morning when he met Bobby for sparing practice. 

“Hey!” His attention turned to Kitty. Narrowing his eyes at the candy thief, Doug made a playful swipe for his candy back knowing full well he wouldn’t get it. “I’ll have you know, while the Doug Show’s ratings might have slipped in the past few years the core fanbase is loyal.”

“Yeah, well if you’d been through what I’d been through, seen what I’ve seen, you wouldn’t be very pleasant either,” he admits. Shaking his head, Gabriel pushes the hair back to cover the tips of his ears. “I don’t know if I am. I’m just here to find out if I still have any family. I haven’t seen my dad in years, but I’m supposed to have some brothers. If they survived, one of them is here. I can sense his power here. I just have to find him. He’s all I have left in this stupid universe.”

Pushing his hair back from covering his ears, Gabriel shows off his pointy ears. “Not 100% human, or human at all. Mostly mutant, some alien physiology though too. I’m not lying, I’m telling the truth. I wouldn’t bother lying to weaker lifeforms, it’s simply a waste of effort.”

Doug looked on cautiously. He didn’t seem to be lying, even if Doug thought the ears weren’t really proof of ‘being an E.T.’ Especially not in a place like this. “Okay. But you know,” Doug began. “The whole ‘I hate everything around me’ thing is only going to make everything worse for you. And if you tell people they aren’t worth the effort, they are going to believe that you aren’t worth the effort either.”

The M&M hit her square in the forehead (really putting those ninja skills to work, Kitty), and tumbled onto the tile floor. Shamelessly, she picked it up and tossed it in her mouth. “Sure, dude,” she said, “Lemme take a crack at it.” If Doug of all people was finding it difficult to ascertain the problem, Kitty wasn’t sure how much help she’d be. While she was certainly proficient in programming languages, Doug was fluent in them. Never in her life had she seen someone code as well and efficiently as him, and she often marveled at his work as though she were viewing a fine piece of art. And to her, it was. 

She peered at the screen over his shoulder, eyes narrowing as they dissected the four lines of code. “That’s really weird,” was Kitty’s intelligent and professional assessment. “It doesn’t make any sense. All the necessary components are there. And there’s nothing at all to indicate that it should be acting on its own accord…” Then, suddenly, a hand flew up to clap him on the shoulder, and with eyes comically wide she posited a new idea: “What if it’s, like, gaining sentience, and the next thing we know it’s all A Space Odyssey up in this bitch?” She was joking, mostly, but it was obvious the idea intrigued her. “You do realize we’d be the people most qualified to stop it.”

Doug’s eyes widened, playing off her joke. “That’s. Terrifying.” His head bobbed with each word. “Can you imagine? It’s basically just a giant weapon designed to know exactly what you can’t handle. It’d make HAL look like a stubborn child.” However after a moments consideration, it really did seem terrifying. I mean look at it, a little voice inside his head told him. The code shifted before his eyes back and forth. It’s nothing else. Look how upset it is. You’ve probably found some kind of terrible virus. Some terrible sentient virus and now you’ve copied it on to you computer and— “Maybe I copied it wrong?” He said, thinking out loud and hopefully inviting a less dystopian explanation. “Or, like...” Doug frowned and shrugged. He turned to Kitty in hopes she’d fill in what it might be like since he hadn’t a clue. 

Kurt was just making his way to class when he heard his name. Stopping, his head tilted to the side as he stuck said head around the corner, spotting Doug from the field trip. They hadn’t exactly had much of a chance to talk, but he was one of Kitty’s friends, so he must have been a nice person, right? “Ah, guten tag,” Kurt said, smiling. He chuckled. “Ja, I’ve been told I can be.” He scratched the back of his head. “Are you well? After the summit?”

“Oh, sure. All my limbs and digits are still attached so I can’t complain.” Doug laughed. They hadn‘t really the opportunity for more than basic introductions on their way to New York and then everything with the summit happened. Doug supposed it was easy to just fall back into routine which is why he’d made a point to finish their introductions, properly this time. “And you? You look like your all in one piece...”