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With Nate suggesting he wants to have words, Lorna made note that she wanted to go grab a drink, which is how they wind up here at Club Atomic. Lorna has some rep, so it's easy for her to arrange for a private table. She is rather distinct in her unique leather biker jacket, with the pyramid studs forming an Omega character prominently across the back. The rest of it covered with patches, badges and pins.
As they walk inside, Lorna heads along with Nate towards the bar first, "what's your drink, Nate?" She asks curiously, brushing a hand through her very differently colored green hair.
Bobby Drake just happens to be here! Well, it's not like there are a ton of mutant hangouts, even in New York City. And while Bobby could easily pass for a hu-man, he feels a bit more comfortable being himself among others of the species. He's got a light blue polo, the kind with an alligator at the breast, a pair of khakis and some black shoes. He's sipping on a rum and coke and basically just being a nondescript guy who just happens to be sitting very close to Lorna and Nate. It's possible, if either of them attended Xavier's, that they might recognize Bobby, who graduated some time ago and still visits often.
Nate had walked with Lorna side by side to Club Atomic, and like Lorna, wearing a leather jacket with the Mutant 'M' symbol on the back of it. Though he finally got a nice-ish shirt, that being just a white loose shirt and leather pants, combat boots. Very metal. "A whiskey will do me fine, thanks." he tells Lorna as he moves up to the bar, leaning against it. "What about you? what's your pick?" he asks her before he takes notice of Bobby. He looks a bit too normal to be here, doesn't he? Not so often you see a nicely dressed dude just chilling. (PUNS)
The quirky thing about Nate, is how he somehow manages to find those futuristic influences to make him look utterly different. Lorna has been rather impressed with his ability to make her look like the properly dressed one. "Scotch it is," Lorna notes as she orders two glasses, before heading back to the table, not before giving Bobby a look-over with her green eyes, a rather intense look, taking his measure perhaps?
Bobby Drake has definitely worked hard on passing for 'regular', since he definitely is not. He casually strokes a hand along the side of his glass and there's a skein of frost that spreads across the surface, cooling his drink further before he takes a long sip.
He notices the newcomers looking at him and nods in a friendly fashion, "I never got a taste for whiskey. It's like drinking turpentine," he admits.
With Bobby doing that to his drink, Nate now knows that he's a mutant without even having to read his mind. Yay! He's cool. For now. Nevertheless, Nate turns his head to Lorna, smirking at her. "Not a bad choice at all." he smiles, looking to the bar before he looks at Lorna. "So, do anything drastic lately that I should know about?" of course, he knows absolutely nothing of Lorna's coming and going, but it's his way of saying 'what's new?'. He does glance over to Bobby when he speaks though.
"It's an often acquired taste. Gotta work for it."
"Well, the usual, patrolling Mutant Town, making a point to show the authorities they can't shake around any ol' mutant they feel like. It feels good." Her eyes are drawn to Bobby's trick, and his table being so close to theirs, she remarks, "neat trick, care to join our table…? We're just discussing making life easier for our kind. You like making a difference?"
Bobby moves over and joins the pair, setting his drink down, "I don't know about working for it. I mean, if your body says 'this tastes like poison', maybe you should listen to your tongue. That's a tongue's job after all! Let it do its job, I say," he says.
He smiles, "I do try to help, whenever I can."
Nate looks to Lorna and he nods lightly. "Same, really. Though m ytime was probably less amusing than yours was." Turning his attention to Bobby, he looks at him and simply chuckles. "Well, where I'm from, everything tastes like shit, so you get used to it." Nate says with a bit of a snarkiness to his voice, but it's good natured. "Good, you might be a good fit then." he lets Lorna do the rest of the talking.
"Sometimes it's just to get numb," Lorna offers her two cents about the uses of whisky, but she's quick to go back on topic, "that's wonderful…you got a name?" She asks Bobby before offering her own, "ever heard of the Brotherhood? They help poor defenseless mutants around Mutant Town. It's a good cause. Look like your trick should be good enough to land a hand…"
Bobby Drake takes the proferred hand, "So you're from Jersey, then?" he grins at Nate and then takes the proferred hand. "Bobby Drake. I've heard the name going around. Some people think you're the good guys, some people think you might be a little rough around the edges. I'm not the judgmental type. And I can do a lot more than that," he says.
Nate looks at Bobby and just shakes his head in amusement. "Sure, if that floats your boat." the truth is….much more complicated. But! He nods lightly. "Good. Judgements don't do a whole lot for us." though as he hears that Bobby can do a lot more than that, he smiles lightly. a prospect perhaps?
"And some people say that mutants should be extinct," Lorna answers rather gruffly, clearly not having liked the moral ambiguity attributed to her group. "We're all about making sure that doesn't happen, and mutants are left alone to live their lives like every other person wants to live their lives, you think you might like to join or lend a hand or not?" Lorna goes straight to the point, after all, it's not like Bobby wouldn't have persumed by now that Lorna and Nate are in this Brotherhood, they pretty much made it a point to be clear about it. "My name's Lorna, by the way, and he's Nate."
Bobby takes another sip on his drink, "I mean, I literally just met you, so signing up for your club might take a wee bit more 'getting to know you'. The art of wooing is getting lost these days. I'm listening, though, which is more than you'd get from some," he said. "It's easy to say noble things and noble goals. A lot harder to do them."
Nate seems to give a little two finger wave to Bobby before he whispers something to Lorna, but steps back, looking at Bobby as he speaks. "Heh, I like him already. Careful type. He'd be a good fit either way." and he moves back to the bar, sipping on his whiskey.
Lorna snorts, "I usually only extend the offer to those who prove themselves, you just seemed unafraid to flaunt your thing in public, even if in Mutant Town. Figured you were brave enough." She shrugs, apparently not about to do a wooing song and dance routine. "I don't mind getting to know, but getting to know us could be dangerous. People might come to you looking for us, and you better not give them what they want." Lorna turns to look at Nate when he offers his input and shrugs, "maybe."
She turns to look at Bobby again, "heard about Senator Williams withdrawing his Anti-Mutant Legislation? That was us, I'd call that doing."
Bobby leans back in his chair, glancing over at Nate, "She's very intense. Is she going to start talking into her watch any second now? Are the reds creeping in every corner?" he says. "I'm brave enough and capable enough. And I'm not afraid of a bit of danger. If you're responsible for that, it's definitely impressive - and shows that you're about more than just kicking the crap out of humans. I don't blame some mutants for being into that. Catharsis and all that stuff. It can be fun! But you have to know who you're hitting and why."
Nate would seem to smile at Lorna for quite a bit, as if happy, before he looks to Bobby. "She is pretty intense. You should see her glare." he teases the green-haired magnetokinetic before he leans against the bar, sipping on his whiskey once more. "Yeah, beating up humans really isn't our thing. Sure, we'll defend mutants, but our whole thing is improving quality of life for mutants and letting the human populace know they can't treat us like shit."
"You're funny, Bobby Drake," Lorna mutters dryly with a deadpan expression on her face, making it a bit difficult to guesstimate just how she took his joke. "What's the point? Beating on humans get more cops in Mutant Town, more hysteria on tv and radio, and more politicians against our case…did you not hear me state we are looking to make things better to our fellow mutants?"
Bobby Drake doesn't seem perturbed particularly by Lorna's intensity. He's dealt with intense before. And, stereotype that it may be, he can be pretty cool under fire. "I'm hilarious, I'll have you know," he says. "And I'm glad to hear it. Making things better is good. I want to make sure that you're thoughtful about it and not just looking to lash out. Again, getting to know you, getting to know all about youuuuuuuuuu…" he says, sing-songing the last. "When you're angry, subtlety can seem like appeasement. When you want revenge, picking your battles can seem like cowardice."
Elmo comes in, toolbox in hand, goggles pushed up to rest on his hair. There's people here he doesn't know, and it makes him hesitate, looking at Lorna and Bobby, but—they're in Atomic, they must be okay, or Doug and Jay would have thrown them out. And Nate, definitely okay. So he comes over, setting his toolbox on the bar with a clank. "Nate, hey pal. Who's your friends?"
Nate turns his head to Elmo. "Oh hey Elmo. Hows it going? Well, the pretty lady with the green hair is Lorna and the polo over there is Bobby. Go say hi." he teases, still leaning agains the bar as Bobby states. "Trust us, we are."
Lorna tilts her head ever so slightly to the right, as if weighing on Bobby's assurance that he's hilarious. She puts on quite an obvious feigned smile at Bobby's rendition of the song. "When you get a racist xenophobic Senator to change his way, that can seem effective."
When Elmo comes in and talks to Nate, Lorna quiets down and reaches to sip from her scotch, eyeing Elmo with her green eyes but saying nothing. She does incline her head at him when Nate introduces her.
Bobby Drake raises a hand to Elmo, "Elmo! That's a name you don't hear much. Not like Bobby. I drown in friggin' Bobbys," he mutters.
"So how exactly did you get him to change his ways, then? If he's as bad as you say (and I don't know, because I've never met the man and I only read the newspapers because I don't have a television and even then I usually just skim because I have things to do and most of the writers are SO DRY), so I may have missed all the details of the Brotherhood's involvement. Please, enlighten me," he says, signalling for a fresh drink.
"How ya doin," Elmo says to Bobby. And reddens right up as Lorna eyes him. "Uh, hi. Nice ta meet ya." His shoulders tighten. "Yeah, kinda unusual, huh? Named after my great-uncle, he died in the war. Hah, like you care." Maybe he's rambling a little. "What's goin' on?"
Nate smiles to Elmo lightly. "Yep yep. Well not much. We're all just enjoying drinks and talking about the happenstances around Mutant Town and how it's changing for the better. Hopefully." His eyes shifting to Bobby with a chuckle. "We simply presented him with the facts, not what his paranoia dictated." his eyes moving then to Lorna as he gave her a small smile.
"We just made him have a better opinion of mutants, and a better understanding of how disasterous his legislation was," Lorna offers no meaningful details. Just as Bobby mentioned becoming better friends first matters, she seems to concur.
"Nice to meet you too," Lorna says back to Elmo, albeit her tone is still rather rough from her addressing of Bobby. "Paranoia isn't healthy when you're actually being considered a threat by elements of your government."
Bobby Drake smiles, "Persuasion is definitely a lost art. You definitely have my attention," he says. "So, how does it work exactly? Are there meetings? Do I sign up for a newsletter? I hope we don't have uniforms. I've done that before and it's really not me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I look good, but I like being an individual. Although, when I'm powered up, so to speak, I do kind of…stick out a bit anyway."
Elmo gives Nate and Lorna both a funny look. "You run around with the Brotherhood?" That's something he didn't know about Nate, at least. He turns to ask the bartender for a whiskey sour. "We're workin' on it," he says, about Mutant Town. "Me 'n my team. We're the X-Ternals." Oh yeah, he's proud of that.
Nate shrugs lightly to Elmo. "I help out on the stuff worth doing for the improvement of mutantkind." he turns then to Lorna "I help Elmo and his gang keep Mutant Town's streets clean." and do other mischievous robin-hood-esque work. though he looks to Bobby "A handshake usually does it." he teases the guy before seemingly fading to the background, having nothing else to say
"We help. That's how it works. Some stupid Senator want to make us being alive illegal? We fix it. Cops want to shake down some teens on Mutant Town for no reason? We stop it. That's what we're committed to." Lorna makes it short and to the point. "If you're worried we want to topple the government and take over? That's not us." Lorna turns to look at Elmo, "we are Brotherhood. I heard of the X-Ternals…I think we're doing similar work. That's good. I got no beef with that."
Bobby Drake smiles to Nate, "Handshakes are good," he says. "I've run with the X-men a few times, although I've been…out of the loop for a while. Life has a habit of getting in the way sometimes," he sighs. "Fighting for mutant rights is satisfying, but the pay stinks."
"I don't know if I'm ready to start putting it on my cards, but you've definitely got my interest. I'd like to help. And I'd like to know more."
Elmo studies Lorna out of the corner of his eye; he doesn't dare do it directly, apparently. "Yeah. Sounds like we do. I got no problem with it either. God knows there's enough work." He grins a little, wryly, at Bobby. "Ain't nobody ever got rich off civil rights. Hey, we used to have a guy was an X-man, too. Bobby deCosta. Man, that guy can wreck stuff." He sounds impressed.
"Fine…we had help from others before, you don't need to join the club to help," Lorna remarks to Bobby in manner of appeasement. "I'll call on you next time we do something. You like, you can join. That works?" She looks a bit skeptical when the X-Men are mentioned, "heard about them, I think you're the first person I met that actually ran with them…so, they got everybody living in peace yet? Heard they don't believe in fighting for what they want."
Bobby laughs, "It's not exactly like that. Yeah, I remember Bobby, good guy. Sure, I'd be happy to lend a hand or a snowball if I can. Has anybody told you you're grumpy? You seem grumpy. Have some pretzels. Nobody feels grumpy with pretzels."
Elmo snorts, when Lorna asks if the X-men have achieved world peace yet. He says to Bobby, "I feel like I oughta be trying to recruit you, too. What's it ya do?"
Lorna motions at Elmo, "see, Bobby Drake? When people want to achieve objectives they act," she turns to look at Elmo, her green gaze still quite intense. Weirdly, it almost carries an etheral quality, and yet nothing about her speaks to magic at all. "Go for it, but Bobby would like to get to know you better first, he's a scaredy cat like that," and for the first time she shows something besides steeled seriousness, in flashing Drake a wink.
Bobby Drake grins, "Do people usually get provoked that easily? Look, some people may fall easy for five minutes of conversation and a drink, I usually require a little bit more than that. If that makes me a chicken, paint me yellow and I'll lay you an egg," he says.
To Elmo's question, he puts his hand on the table and starts to build ice, a slow constructed figure of a ballerina forming out of the crystals, slowly spinning on its axis, "For the record, I can make ice, not ballerinas. I only make ice ballerinas. They're pretty."
Elmo immediately looks away when Lorna looks at him with those intense green eyes. His blush had cooled, but now it's back. Nervous little guy. But he laughs, at both of them. "Hey, that's fair, I like to get to know a guy too before I invite him over." That sentence could go several ways and he doesn't seem to be aware of any of them. He leans forward to see the details of Bobby's power in action better, getting excited. "That's gevaldik, pal. You got a lot of control, huh?"
"You're alright, Bobby Drake," Lorna eventually concludes after seeing Bobby's response to her getting on his case for no good reason. She does stop to look solely at his work, as she drinks the rest of her glass, "you've got skills Drake. It's beautiful." But even as she speaks the words, there's underlaying anger reverberating as a subtext. Her hand closes to a fist and she gets up sharply. "If you'll excuse me, I've got things to do," she inclines her head once at Bobby and once at Elmo, "plesaed to meet you gentlemen," and with that she storms away.
"That one's got a backstory," he says, pointing after the departing Lorna, "I wouldn't like to be whoever it was who pissed her off in the first place. I get the feeling she doesn't play nice."
"And yes, I have a lot of control. I have no idea what the other word you said was, but it sounded very throaty. I'm not sure I can manage it. And yeah, I tend to make sure I know who I'm dealing with before I have a guy over myself."
"No kiddin', right?" Elmo says, glancing after Lorna with eyebrows up in a curious expression. He goes back to examining Bobby's little statue, though, and prods it in an experimental fashion. "Gevaldik, just means 'cool' in Yiddish. Because that's real cool, Bobby. Ice powers, huh?"
Bobby nods, "I'm half-Jewish, but my mom never spoke much Yiddish. Not real close to her family. They weren't crazy about her marrying the Irish-Catholic boy. God knows what they'd think of me," he says.
"Yeah, ice, cold, all of that stuff. I call myself Iceman, when I'm feeling foxy."
Elmo shrugs. "Some of us, we're jerks about that. Your ma is Jewish, you're all Jewish far as I'm concerned. So can you keep it frozen? How much ice can you make? What's it like bein' an X-man?" Suddenly a torrent of questions comes out of him and he looks eagerly back at Bobby, from fussing with the ice statue.
He laughs, "Um, I can keep it frozen for hours, if I like. I can lower the temperature in the whole room or make the status as big as a horse. Probably bigger," he says. "Being an X-man was pretty neat. I mean, I felt like I was doing some good. But I needed to go out in the world. It can be kind of…sheltering. The team was like a coccoon. I needed to go out and test my wings a bit."
Bobby Drake says, "Not that I have wings. That's a different guy."
"Sheltering?" Elmo says, interested. "Like how? Hey, I know what you mean about needin' to get out, though. You just gotta do your own thing sooner or later." Elbows on the bar, he's leaning on it, watching Bobby with eyes as black and bright as a crow's. "I know one guy who's got wings, Jay Guthrie."
Bobby shakes his head, "I was thinking of a different guy. Guess it's going around," he says. "I mean…not to talk out of school, but the X-men kind of live out of the city, remote, on their own. It's safer but it's also not as involved. It's easy to just exist and be among others of your kind and not have to worry about the downsides of being what we are. And hey, I can pass better than most, by a longshot, I"m lucky."
"And yeah, I had to do my own thing for a bit. Figure things out. Figure me out. Doesn't everybody?"
Elmo considers that. "To be honest, sounds kinda amazing. Me and my partner, JP, we own the garage a couple streets over. We picked the M.T. so we could live around other mutants, not gotta hide so much." He shows Bobby his left hand, and tiny lightning bolts crackle into life around his fingers. "The guys, they call me Sparkplug."
Bobby Drake smiles, "It was kind of amazing. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. But everything has its season, y'know? I still go back and visit."
"Sparkplug, huh? That's pretty cool. Yeah, I have a place in the neighborhood, too. I help some people out with their taxes. My dad insisted I get my accounting degree. Something to fall back on. Not that I really had anything as a first choice. Like I said: fighting for civil rights does not pay the bills."
Elmo laughs, shaking his head. "It really don't. That's why we got the garage, keep a roof over our heads while we're tryin' to save the world. Or at least Mutant Town." He lets the electricity dissipate with a pop. Static is making his hair start to rise, and he runs his hand over it idly like he does it a thousand times a day, gathering up charge. "Ain't it usually artists who get their parents telling them they need a real career? You could make ice statues for tourists in Central Park." He's kidding, and grins cheerfully at Bobby.
He smiles, "I've thought about it," he admits, a little wistfully. "Maybe if we find a way to make people more receptive. I could make a killing out on the ice rink come Christmastime, I bet," he says. "Being a mutant is kind of like being an artist to my mom and dad. They try to be understanding, but they kind of wish I would try to be something else. Story of my life," he mutters.
"My folks don't know I'm a mutant. Yet." Elmo raises his eyes to the ceiling as if asking for help keeping it that way. "To be real honest, though, lookin' back, I dunno how they could think I was anything else. Always messin' with some weird machine, scavenging stuff. They just think I'm weird. I guess they're not wrong." He gives him a sympathetic hitch of the eyebrows. "They don't know we can't be nothin' else."
Bobby Drake is, of course, hiding a little more than being a mutant from them. He's thinking telling them he was a mutant might have been the easy part. He has no blueprint to tell them the rest.
"It should be okay to be a mutant. And it should be okay to be weird. We just need people to be nicer to each other. Which is hard to do by force," he says.
"Should be. Should be okay to be all kindsa things. Mutant, weird, black, Jewish. Queer." Elmo's hiding more than his mutation, too. "Why's it so goddamn hard?"
Bobby Drake almost spits out his rum and coke at the last one, "Yeah, I'm, uh, most of those. Not black. I'm not black. Not that I know. Who knows what Grandpa got up to?"
"And it's hard because people hate and fear things that are different from them. Professor Xavier used to tell me it was an evolutionary instinct - that the humans couldn't help it, that we just had to educate them and help them be better and prove to them they were wrong so that they could overcome their reptile brains telling them to be scared. But it does get tiring."
Elmo grins a little mischeviously when Bobby reacts. "Yeah. Same here, pal. Same here. Atomic's a pretty good place to be all those things." The grin fades, though, into annoyance. "That's awful freakin' nice of him," he says, sour, "what'm I supposed to do when some normies are going after some poor schmuck in the M.T.? Talk to 'em real nice and ask 'em not to hurt him? Look, my family's from Germany. Sweet reason only goes so far."
Bobby Drake nods, "I know. There are no easy answers," he says. He actually blushes a little bit at his own admission. It's not something he tells people, generally, for obvious reasons. "Yeah, this is a good place to be different. And yeah, Professor X is a nice guy. ONe of the nicest. I don't know if he always knows how hard it is for the rest of us."
"Never met 'im. Not one of the school types." Elmo sips his drink, reddening a little when Bobby does, but trying very hard to play it cool. "Got a buddy who is. Me 'n my team, though? We're X-ternal for a reason, you know what I mean? Just a bunch of working stiffs tryin' to do what's right."
Bobby Drake nods, "That I can definitely get behind. DOWN WITH! OH GOD," he says, laying his face on the table. "I really have to work on my metaphors. Um, this seems like a noble cause, indeed, brave sir knight?" he says, running a hand back through his blonde hair a bit.
Elmo cracks up, losing the fight against his blush and hiding his face in his hand. He laughs helplessly into his palm. "Oy vey, you had to say it!" Now they're both embarrassed, Elmo by proxy. "Yes! Noble cause, that's us. Noble as all get-out, you better believe it."
Bobby Drake downs the rest of his rum and coke and shakes his head, "Sorry, I guess it's not…I'm not used to being sort of…open," he says. "Even most of my friends don't know about that. Being a mutant was easier. At least I got a cool power with that."
"Me neither," Elmo admits. "But, hey. It's okay. Right? It's okay." He hasn't offered to shake hands or do anything that involves physical contact, but now he jostles Bobby gently with an elbow. "Lots of us are, here. Mutant and…you know. Like that." It's a little hard for him to say, too. "Somethin' else my folks don't know," he adds, sighing.
Bobby Drake nods and pushes himself up a little, "Yeah. I mean, I'm mostly okay, I sort of…did my wrestling with it over the last couple of years. And yeah. I am what I am," he shrugs, "I know I"m a good person. The rest I have to work out. My family isn't, like, super-religious anyway. Otherwise they wouldn't have gotten together in the first place."
"Might be lucky about that," Elmo says. "Though if they're okay with you being a mutant…" He hitches a shrug. "It's almost the same thing, ain't it? Like bein' short or having red hair. It just happened. We can't change it."
Bobby Drake nods, "True enough. Lord knows I tried," he sighs, signalling for another drink. "But I don't know. It feels different. Mom's always wanted me to get married, have a bunch of kids. Come visit Long Island on the weekends in a wood-panel station wagon. Play horseshoes with the old man while my wife cooks with her," he says. "Hard to tell her it isn't going to happen."
Elmo's nursing his drink. Maybe he can't hold too much liquor—he's really thin. "My parents want me to be a rabbi," he says with bitter amusement. "Marry a nice Jewish girl, have a lot of nice Jewish kids, just like yours. Not gonna happen. Well. I guess I wouldn't mind kids someday. Hope my sisters have some, then I'm off the hook. Yeah. It's tough to say, sorry Ma, sorry Pop, the family name ends here."
Bobby Drake nods, "Yeah, I'm an only child. I don't know how Ma's gonna take it. Dad won't say anything, but he never does. He's good at repression," he chuckles. "That's okay. It's not like I have someone to take home to them anyway. As far as they know, I"m just a bachelor, playing the field. I stopped making up fake girlfriends, though."
Elmo snickers. "I never made up fake girlfriends. No girl was gonna go out with me in the first place, why bother? So you're not going out with anyone?" He realizes how that one sounds. "I mean. I'm not asking. I'm just…nosy and klutzy, that's all." Embarrassed again.
He shakes his head, "No, I'm not seeing anyone. And that's okay, I'm not exactly good at…any of this myself. Fighting off armed attackers with ice shields and witty repartee? Fine. Talking to a cute guy at a strange bar? Nope, definitely outside of my experience."
"Mine too," Elmo admits. "I'm a huge dweeb. You probably noticed. Well, there's a whole lotta cute guys around here. Maybe you could give it a shot."
Bobby Drake grins, "Man, I"m an accountant. They don't get much dweebier than me. I am the captain of the dweeb train. If there is a Dweeb Club, I'm right up there in the mouse ears with Annette Funicello and that weird old guy who always hung around the kids. What was with that guy anyway? What was he doing there?" he said, shaking his head. "But, um…yeah, it's good to meet someone else like me."
Elmo seems taken aback. "I never thought about the old guy like that," he says, eyes a little wide. "That is weird." He shakes his head, dismissing that, and smiling lopsided at Bobby. "Good, ain't it? Knowing you're not alone."
Bobby Drake nods, "It is," he admits, a little quietly. He reaches over and cools Elmo's glass as well, the two of them sitting together companionably with Lorna having long since left them to their own devices.
Eventually, after having a private word with Lorna about clearly something meant to be kept from the other gentlemen in the room, X-Man returns to Elmo and Bobby, whiskey still in hand. "Sorry about that, just ran out of things to say. What'd I miss? I might have been daydreaming at one point."
Elmo tinks his newly-chilled glass to Bobby's. Nate comes back and he says to both him and Bobby, "Okay, so, the X-ternals. Hate to say it, but we're not that different from the Brotherhood. We all got makin' life better for mutants in mind, right?"
Bobby Drake nods, "I think Elmo's trying to do his own recruitment pitch, now that Lorna's gone. Although I can definitely see how she could develop a following. She's got those eyes, y'know, and that witchy intensity. She scares me a little bit, but I definitely want to be on her side."
Nate smiles lightly to Elmo with a bit of a smile. "Yeah, we're not that much different. But, it's better to have the same goal. That makes us friends, yeah? Mutant Town is our place where we keep mutants safe. One day we can expand, but for now, that's our turf." He looks at Bobby. "Heh, yeah, once you introduce yourself, Lorna's actually a sweetheart. So she's just got those eyes." he teases.
"Mmmmhm," Elmo says, sounding unconvinced about how sweet Lorna may or may not be. "We may be on the same side, but if it's changing national legislation you wanna do, my team can't offer you that. We just don't got those kinds of resources. We don't got that kind of firepower, either. We're down in the gutter with the rest of the M.T. Like I said, we're just a bunch of working stiffs. Except for Nate here," he jerks his head towards him.
He smiles, "Hey, firepower ain't nothing. Icepower is where it's at," he says. "Look, I just want to keep a hand in and try to help people out where I can. I'm not that ambitious. I'm nobody's leader. I barely pay my rent and I often forget to put the trash out. But, y'know, I can freeze the crap out of things and turn into a living iceman so y'know…use the talents you got, I say."
Nate looks to Iceman. "Someday I should show you what I can do. Elmo has a fairly good idea. and I dunno, I'm fairly bummish myself, 'Mo." given, he was probably the most powerful member of the X-ternals BY FAR. muscle of the group, right here. But he smiles to Iceman. "But you'd be a good addition to the Brotherhood or X-Ternals. In the end, we all work together anyway." he teases just softly. "But living iceman huh? Sounds cool."
Elmo groans. "Nate, with the 'Mo'. C'mon, I hate it." Kvetching sounds so natural from him. He looks intrigued too, though. "Yeah, I gotta see this living iceman thing. When, yannow, it's appropriate or whatever. I dunno how much the Brotherhood pays, but we'll pay ya. We can't afford workin' for free." Even though in fact they do, all the time. "We get our hands dirty, for the right reasons. Okay, I have to admit at this point I don't actually have a pitch, but that's what we do. Don't feel like you gotta do anything, Bobby," he adds, completely undermining his entire point. "Do what you wanna do."
Bobby Drake grins, "Yeah, it might be a little obvious to do it right in the middle of a bar, even a mutant bar. But I can show you a little," he says. He holds up his hand and concentrates. After a moment, his hand begins to crystallize, becoming translucent and sparkling, but he still moves it, even as light passes through and leaves a prismatic tint in the dim light of the place.
"So, like that, but, y'know, all over. We can figure out all that stuff. I think I'm in, probably on both counts. Don't tell Lorna yet, though. I wanna make her wait," he teases.
Nate laughs a little bit, looking to Elmo. "Fair enough, fair enough. I'll stick with Elmo then." he teases the fellow before he looks to Bobby. Laughing a bit. "Yeah, don't worry about it. and sounds awesome to me, man. Good to have you on board on both occasions." he smiles softly to the fellow. "don't worry, I won't." and he takes a seat, smiling at Bobby as he crystalizes some. "oooo…nice."