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It's been an uneventful week for Sam, which given the previous week's excitement is probably a good thing. His classes have been going well, and though he's got a lot of work on his plate these days, he's been keeping his head above water. But now it's Friday, and though he's got a fair bit of studying to catch up on, he's decided he's tired of doing so in his dorm room, or in the library. And of course, he's hungry. Not far from the Columbia campus is an all-night restaurant; for the area it's considered a bit of a dive, but the food is decent and cheap, and this time of night there aren't many others around. Sam has camped himself out at a booth, a couple of textbooks piled beside him while he reads and makes notes. Coffee in front of him, an empty plate pushed to one side. He's not /completely/ oblivious to the rest of the world, as the studying is quickly losing its ability to keep his focus. His eyes occasionally flit about the dining area, as if actively looking for a distraction to take his mind off his work.
There's nothing really unusual about the eatery at this hour. At least, nothing most people would find remarkable. Certainly the redhead in the blue jeans and leather jacket was perfectly ordinary and would likely fit with most of the students in the area. He walks with a certain fatigue that usually denotes a long and tiring day, but he is not asleep because he is young, and most likely because he needs to study for class.
At least, that's the assumptions most would make. Keith seems tired enough that he doesn't seem to notice the patrons in the place as he slides into the booth across from Sam, the weary voice with which he orders coffee, and a lot of it, seems to confirm it.
When the waitress wanders off, he stretches and yawns without shame or decorum, in a very feline manner. It looks out of place, under a human guise.
Sam lifts his eyes from the book as Keith slides into the seat in the booth across the aisle, and lets out a soft chuckle to himself. He closes the textbook and sets it atop the small pile with the others before moving them down to the seat in order to clear some space on the tabletop. "Keith," he says loud enough for the Cheshire Cat to hear him and gain his attention, snap him out of his reverie.
The Cheshire cat in question blinks a couple of times, and the human illusion he has cast on himself follows suit. Green eyes focus on Sam, and the young man chuckles. "Hey, when did you get here?"
He slides out of his booth and into the space cleared for him. With a chuckle, he says "You must be exceptionally quiet, I didn't even hear you come in," he says, clearly a little embarrassed at having been taken by surprise like this.
He peers at the textbooks curiously and reaches over to look at the cover of the nearest one, "Whatcha reading? Dirty mags? Nice binding job, nobody would be able to tell what's inside just by looking at the respectable cover."
He opens it, and blinks. "Hey. This is actual learning. What gives?" he asks, grinning.
"Easy to sneak in when I got here before you," Sam says with a laugh. "Nothing scandalous here," he says, motioning to the books. "Unless calculus really gets your motor running. I prefer ladies, myself, but to each their own. Pretty sure at least a few of the TAs in my classes can get themselves excited over Leibniz notation." Ah, math. "Are you doing alright? You seem a bit out of it. Everything okay?"
"Just tired. Sleepy. Been awake for a day or two. Nothing some good coffe won't help," Keith says, returning the textbook to the pile. He stifles a yawn and stretches. "Neither girls nor Leibniz for me. You can't trust a dude who spent all his time playing with his Monads."
He smirks and leans back against the seat, stretching a little. "So this is what you've been up to? Any 'wooosh'ing around?" he asks discreetly. Well, as discreetly as Keith is capable of asking.
"You should probably get some sleep," Sam says rather matter-of-factly. "I hear it's the best cure for that particular ailment. Better than coffee, for sure. But, who am I to offer advice?" He motions to his own steaming cup of java. "Not much whooshing this last little while. Our little maneuver last week really hit me hard, have been taking it easy since.. classes got a bit intense too." Sam's voice is quiet as well, though this time of night there aren't too many people in the diner to overhear, apart from the waitress. "You didn't follow us through after you got us out of Times Square. Did you have any trouble after?"
He's easy to miss as he slips inside, pausing to adjust his cuffs ever so casually before sweeping past the waitress with a muttered order. The first warning of his arrival however, is a clearing of the throat. "Ahem, aren't you young men out well past curfew? Whatever will your mothers say when they hear you've been out at all hours of the night, getting up to no good obviously."A smile, though a thin one as he eyes the pair. "Mind if I join you gents?"
"Me? Nah, I've got practice skippin' the Lilly Law. They can't lay a finger on me," Keith answers, his grin widening as his own cup of coffee arrives.
When Eito also arrives, the redhead smirks, "My mom ain't fit to say anything anymore anymore, and my old man threw me out. He'd probably say "none of my business." Go ahead and grab a seat, foxy." He pats the space next to him and scootches a bit to free up some more room.
"I'll sleep soon enough. Just gotta remember which deserted beach in the Caribbean was it where I stashed my bedroll. It'll come to me. That's what coffee's for, right?"
"By all means," Sam says, moving as well to make sure everyone has enough room for a seat. "My mom would send me straight to bed. Please don't tell her," he says with a smirk. "Of course, she might be tickled to get a call from a mythical mail fox," he says. As soon as he says it, he realizes that his mother of all people would probably not be weirded out by such a thing. She'd certainly handle it better than he did at first. "Let's give it a few hours, and you can give her a call," he says to Eito. "I'd like to see how that conversation goes." He turns to Keith again when everyone is settled, "Glad to hear you didn't run into any trouble. Didn't think you would, but didn't have any way to get a hold of you to be sure," he says. "Would be nice if we had a way to rectify that. We need radios, or something."
"I'm more interested in letters than phone calls actually, theres a whole level of complexity I'm not even going to get into."Waving it off before slumping back to accept his own black coffee and scrambled eggs. "Anyway, what have you two been up to without your designated divine guardian around to keep you out of trouble? I do of course apologize for my absence there, unfortunately I had some critical issues to handle myself."Another pause as Eito begins to tuck into his eggs with gusto. "Unfortunately, not everyone like me is quite so kind. Plenty of pretenders who fancy riding on our good reputation, without the good intentions nor the might to back it up. Such things of course, command my attention."
"Radios would be nice. I'm afraid I don't have anything like that on me, though." And another yaaaaaawn stifled, Keith smirks at Eito. "Well, I didn't get into too much trouble. Rescued people from a secret lab and narrowly escaped it sinking into the ocean. Y'know, your usual stuff." He'd go into more detail but these aren't his secrets to reveal, unfortunately. "And Sam has been playing the good student, so he at least has been keeping out of trouble. But this is.. .what, the third time we meet serendipitously? We seriously need some plan of action to stay in touch. It's clear that the heavens, or maybe the hells, are trying to drive home the point that we need to work together."
"Stopped an anti-mutant demonstration last week, but otherwise, I've been face-deep in calculus," Sam says, a bit of a motion toward the small pile of textbooks beside him. "And I got myself a girlfriend?" he says. It might not be the most exciting news for the others, but Sam's pretty happy about it. "We should definitely figure out a way to get contact one another. Seems a bit unpredictable to rely on fate for all of our get-togethers. I wonder if.." he trails off a bit, thinking.
"Radios are insecure, I played that game plenty with the Chinese. We should just go figure out a place, and a signal and we check in regularly. A simple signal, like which direction a car is parked or if a light is on."A pause as Eito ponders this a minute, and of course gets after his eggs. "How easily can you two make it to Chinatown, no big complication with checking around there regularly yes? I have a place available we could use, it's nothing special but it's safe and dry."
"I can go anywhere I want, remember?" Keith replies, leaning back against the seat and closing his eyes for a moment. Just to rest his eyes, really. "What kinda place is this? You have some secret underground lair? Does it have secret passages?"
He opens his eyes briefly and grins, "With… firemen poles you can slide down to get to the secret part of the lair and then…"
He trails off. "I need more coffee."
He reaches over for his cup and begins to drink.
"I can get around at night without any trouble. During the day, it's a bit slower," Sam says, taking a sip of his own coffee. "We could arrange a standing meeting time," he muses after a moment. "I wouldn't mind a secret lair. Or even a regular lair. Sounds a lot better than living in a dorm room," he says with a faint smirk.
"It was an air raid shelter built for the second world war, it was built quite illegally and the only person outside of this table who knows about it can be trusted. It's not my lair, but I do store things there"A slight huff of indignation as Eito finishes off those eggs and gets after his coffee. "My lair is a shrine, and we can't just conduct such things there. I don't want to burden you two with living in fear of disrespecting Mom. She's not big on forgiveness."A glance to his watch and a hmm. "You wanna go see it?"
"I'll take a rain check- you should first clear my coming over with your mother. Do you know what chaos magic does to shrine energy flow?" Keith asks, raising his eyebrows, "Just want to make sure my stopping by has been accounted for. The last thing we need is for me to drop in and accidentally open a rift into Jigoku because I sneezed or something like that."
He stifles yet another yawn and drains his cup, sighing, "I'm fading fast, I should probably head back to-" he quickly catches himself from saying where he was going, "-some friends' place and stop there for the night."
Technically speaking that isn't a lie. The mansion can be considered his friends' place. It just happens to be so much more. "You can take our freedom flier to see it though. Once I'm cleared, I can take a peek myself."
Pushing his drained cup away, he digs into his jacket and pulls out a couple of bills, accounting for the cost of the drink and a tip besides, and puts them next to the cup.
"Congratulations on the girlfriend thing by the way. You two look good flying holding hands." He has no idea if that is the girl, but if it is, he figures he'll get some points for observation. "Love's just spreading out all over the place. Be careful, foxy," he says to Eito as he slides out of the booth, "You might catch it and then there'll be no help for it. I'm innoculated against it, so at least one member of this team will have his feet on the ground."
They were a team? Well, unofficially, that's how things were shaping. "You'll let me know when it's safe for me to come, right, foxy?"
Sam turns a slightly redder shade at Keith's joke, but doesn't say anything else about it. "I feel like I'm never going to get used to all of this magic," he says quietly. Shrine energy flow? Jigoku? At least he's just an alien. His life is simple. "Yeah, let's go check it out," Sam says to Eito, fishing a few bills out as well to cover the cost of his coffee and the meal he ate earlier. "As long as you promise to have me home before curfew. My mother will have your head if you don't," he jokes.