blood and metal

“Firstly: Shut up, I don’t actually care about your weird infection.” Well, not on an interpersonal level. Obviously, the virus is a big deal, though with the addition of new mutant technologies (circlejerks) and the egg system it seems less of one. “Secondly: Can we just forget about the ‘shitting the bed’ thing? It was just a hyperbolic fucking suggestion, Christ. Please don’t make it a thing.”

Daken watches the metallic limb interface with Cable’s stump with a mix of disgust, interest and amusement. He’s very tempted to make a quip about tentacles, but bites his tongue when he realizes the only audience is juvenile. “Freaky,” he says, instead.

“I don’t get why you didn’t just call for mommy and daddy. When you texted me, I thought you killed killed a human, rather than getting into a slap-fight with a clone.” He takes the duct tape out of his bag and, rather than politely handing it over, chucks it directly at Cable’s head.

“Not that you’d end up in the Pit even if you did violate that law. You know…” Daken pulls his gloves off one-by-one; figures he’s done here. “…Nepotism.”

“I don’t care that you don’t care! I’m telling you so you don't try the stupid ‘how do I know you’re the real you’ bullshit again.” Nathan replies snippily. The lack of empathy is expected, Daken’s incapable of giving a single fuck and that’s one of the reasons he called him here in the first place, but it still rubs him the wrong way. “And I am never, ever letting that go.” 

He’s a teenager. Toilet humor is peak comedy. But more than that, it seems to bother Daken so he’s going to carry it with him for as long as memory serves out of sheer pettiness and spite.

Cable’s mouth does a little twist at the implication that he would kill a human, turning into a toothy snarl when the duct tape is thrown at his head. He catches the tape with his telekinesis before it smacks him in the face. An insult to injury. He’s not a complete idiot. Killing a human’s not something he’d do on purpose-- he has a healthy respect (fear) for the Pit. And he sure as shit wouldn’t want to join his uncle on that damnable team of Hellions.

“You’re the one who thought that. I didn’t say anything to imply the person I’d killed was human.” An irritated sound leaves his throat as he struggles to get the roll of tape started. Metal arm’s got no dexterity. T.K.’s not coordinated enough. He succeeds with his right hand and his teeth.

@technoorganic

Looming is… yes, there’s looming, and row upon row of permanently exposed teeth that are larger than Cable himself. (Those ever-widening mutant social circles are a real bitch at times like these.) There’s also a big damn tail, a disconcerting lack of eyes, and a tongue the size of a tree trunk that darts out to taste the air when he speaks.

Some women take up a lot of space: Tess McKay is one of them. 

She lumbers to a stop, throat sacs vibrating with a subtle motion. Then, she growls, settling down on all fours like a dog. Krakoa itself shudders beneath her weight, but the massive head that leans in to “study” him doesn’t do much more than that.

‘Mutant. This is a mutant,’ the little part of her that still retains human reminds her. Tess rumbles again, the force of her breath causing his clothes and hair to whip about him. Granted, he doesn’t have much hair to rustle about his face, but what little he has brings the drama. ‘This is–’

Familiar.

Bright Lady.

His heart is pounding, hammering against the metal of his ribcage. He’s fought a lot of battles in his life. He’s seen and fought things that are big. And things with teeth both numerous and sharp. But never something like this. Not taller than the X-Mansion with teeth longer than he is tall, with jiggly.... pouches and no eyes and a disturbingly large tongue. 

Nathan Summers is certain that he’s staring his death in the face, but like a moth drawn to a light, he can’t look away. He squeezes his eyes shut only for a few seconds when it breathes on him, unconsciously leaning away from the fetid air. He’s not even sure if running would do him any good. You’re not supposed to run from predators, right? And with those teeth, he’s sure this thing’s a predator. He just hopes it’s a mutant in there somewhere. And not the feral kind. 

& maybe kid ca.ble is different because he hasn’t had the decades worth of shitty and traumatizing experiences that og ca.ble did. 

str.yfe is a given. he’s been cloned before and that obviously backfired. 

the t.o. virus is a bit trickier. he’s damned if it transfers over, damned if it doesn’t. there’s no great outcome there. 

if the cloned body is somehow infected (& thus far there’s been no indication that any of his clones have been, str.yfe is a perfect copy and is virtually virus-free) then he’s still in for a life of pain and fear. (the t.o. virus is canonically his greatest fear, ever-present since childhood) but now there’s no hope of being reborn fresh and not sick and it’s depressing as hell. 

if it doesn’t and his shiny new body is without it, he’s going to burn out like og ca.ble and nat.e gr.ey did, probably burning out his body in the process because it just can’t handle his vast psionic power. 

It’s a hell of a mess, that’s for sure. Daken pulls those yellow gloves from his bag and pulls them over his hands – he can see the reason why he needs them gyrating on the floor – and approaches the arm…

…then stops beside it without stooping down to pick it up, looking pointedly at Cable. “Now. Hold on a second, scout. Did you think this one through?”

“You look the same, you smell the same.” That’s a lie. The one that’s alive smells like one that’s actually lived – teenage boy shit like eating junk food and not washing his hands enough after guess-what, and the other smells like a genetically identical mass living in a lab until he picked up a gun and left two hours ago. Daken is going to try to push this, though. “What’s to tell me that you’re the real deal, huh?”

The rubber gloves make a little squeaky noise when Daken slowly clenches his fists in them, a grin playing across his face.

“It’s a national security matter.” A pause to imply an imminent egg hatching, in which something immediately dawns on him. Oops. “Fuck, the virus. Your arm. Nevermind, just kidding.”

Minding the tentacles – really, grabbing the wrist and holding out the shoulder like a baseball bat – Daken manages to grab it and carry it over. Sticks it out and down towards Cable, feisty end first.

Nathan gives Daken a look of disbelief when he starts the ‘how do i know it’s really you’ spiel. It’s not so outrageous of a thing to be hesitant about, with literal clones involved, but he’s also guessing that Daken’s only doing it to be a dick. 

It’s probably also technically a national security matter-- the techno-organic virus. But he’s got it under control. For the most part. 

“The virus doesn’t clone. Renders it inert or something, I don’t know. Funny how that works.” Cable offers ruefully, in case there’s ever a question of if he’s the real deal or not. Stryfe’s unaffected. Stryfe’s clone are all unaffected with cybernetics to imitate the the outward bio-mechanical appearance. As far as he knows, he’s the only one that deals with it. It makes him wonder sometimes if that’s because he’s the outlier, the imperfect clone himself. “Or would you rather me ask if you’ve shit in any beds recently?”

Nate removes his hand from what’s left of his brachium, sticky with blood and bits of living metal, and takes the rest of his arm from Daken. As he slowly brings them together, the metallic tendrils reach out, intertwining, beginning to reconnect and reform. It’s not exactly a pleasant sensation, nor is it particularly easy on his control. 

So, that’s either an intentionally vague yes or a yes to a murder – Daken assumes it’s the latter. Is the kid calling him to dispose of a body? That’s funny. Also: Yet again reminding him of the irony that they put a serial killer (him; he is, absolutely) on Krakoa’s homicide investigation team.

Ah, whatever, sounds like fun. Daken types in the coordinates and estimates the transit time via gate-hopping, then throws the kid an informative text…

( ✉ → cable ) eta 15min

…which he follows nearly on the dot, coming with the requested (and a little extra) gear in tow in a knapsack slung across the shoulder. Well, it’s not that bad. Clone murders are more or less Krakoa-permissible (to his discomfort, with his sisters).

Daken nudges the dead teenager with his shoe, not even bothering to look at the amputated one learning against the wall. “Wow, kid. You really fucked up your dishwasher.”

Fifteen minutes is a long time when you’ve got your back against a wall, slumped over in your own blood and your clone’s clone’s blood. Most of it belongs to the latter. There’s not a lot of original tissue left in his techno-organic arm, so blood loss isn’t that big of an issue. Cable’s damn lucky the stupid copy didn’t go for his other arm- the one that’s still flesh and blood- or he’d really be in a bind. 

“Yeah, I really voided that warranty.” The corner of the teen’s mouth tugs upwards, revealing some of his teeth. Real unfortunate that it wasn’t the real deal. He’d trade an arm for taking down Stryfe. Maybe even a leg too. 

He pushes himself up against the wall a little higher so he can see Daken and the mess he’s made a little better. Normally this is something he’d be able to handle himself, but the stupid clone got a good hit on his knee that left him open to getting his arm chopped off in the first place. It’s not broken, but he can’t use it and his TK is wrapped up in staunching the bleeding from his stump and the T.O. virus, hence his predicament. 

Daken can’t sleep. Doesn’t feel like sleeping. Whatever, he’s in the kitchen making a 2 AM smoothie when his phone starts buzzing. Daken eagerly picks it up and frowns when it’s not an impromptu invite to an orgy. Instead the tiny asshole Nathan Summers is bothering him… for some reason. He almost just puts the phone face down, if it isn’t for the final ‘Please’ popping up in the notifications and the current time.

As if the kid would ever use a term as polite as please to him without it being vital.

( ✉ → cable ) did you kill someone or is your dishwasher broken? ( ✉ → cable ) i forgot we use goop instead of dishwashers. ( ✉ → cable ) what happened? ( ✉ → cable ) what are your coords?

[ text → daken ] Yes [ text → daken ] (location drop) 

Nathan exhales through his teeth, a mixture between a sigh of relief and a hiss of pain. Thank the Bright Lady. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be ignored or told to fuck off or if he was actually going to get some help. He’s hoping the request for his coordinates means it’s going to be the latter because he really needs a hand. And an arm.

Texting with one hand is hard, harder with blood smearing on the screen, even if he’s only doing the bare minimum of hitting activating the voice-to-text option and hitting send.

[ text → daken ] Hey jerk face this is cable. I need a hand and some duct tape [ text → daken ] And bring rubber gloves [ text → daken ] Please

“Oh, thank goddess,” Ororo replied, her shoulders slumping with relief at not having to converse with Forge. But she wasn’t completely out of the clear just yet.  

“Please, do not take offense when I say this,” she cautiously began. 

“I understand you trusting your former colleagues, but can the rest of us?”

“Nah! Tried that in Nam once didn’t quite work at well. Was told my punchlines were not enough punch.” He chuckles slightly as he checks his own scope of his own gun, “So what are we doing? Why would a man outta time need a man like me?” He was quite curious why Summers needed him though he was in awe of the others weapons.