2013.05.20 - Destiny Decrees

Some time has passed now since Mystique's shown herself anywhere around the globe. Disappearing for months or years on end is a simple matter, and quite useful when hunting bigger game. She would have been content to let things continue running their course, biding her time for the next big strike, but something else came up. Out of the blue, as it were. It's important enough to steal some of her immediate focus, bringing her around to Genosha on another recruitment run.

The last batch had some definite potential, though their loyalties had been mixed from the start. She needs someone with some personal investment of their own. Less 'come join our rebellion' and more 'kill that first.' What better place to find such a creature than the island Magneto himself is bringing together for the betterment of their species?

There's one mutant in particular which she seeks. She knows where to start. Between her information network and her ability to be anyone at any point, finding this mutant is only a matter of time. Not that much time, either. When she approaches it will be as the younger punk woman going by the name Jacqueline Gauge, complete with spikes, leather, torn fishnet, and a shock of bright pink mixed into short, dark hair.

Enter the metamorph.

Bored. Olena has been sitting around a mutant safehouse in Genosha for weeks, now, and she's bored. She's disciplined enough that her boredom hasn't gotten her into too much trouble, since she's spent much of her time practicing what skills the safehouse can accommodate. But, she's had to get more creative with others. Her parkour requires space to run, after all. And her archery requires a decent range -- or at least a good place for target practice. Practicing the small handful of combat katas one of the other mutants in the safehouse offered to show her has kept her fairly interested, but most of them are defensive in nature and not greatly different than the moves she naturally already employs, thanks to her basic gymnastics and instinctive understanding of momentum and trajectory.

So, she's had to find ways to entertain herself.

Since, unlike many of the other mutants that call the island home, she looks entirely human, passing amidst the mundane populous has been easy. As has gulling several marks out of their nightly bar cash. Deadly with arrows, she's also a shark at darts and pool. Because it's all trajectories and momentum. And when your mutant ability includes the manipulation of the same? Yeah. There are a few bars that don't want to see her back there again.

But, hey. It's netted her some cash and given her a bit of freedom to wander the streets and see just what the general feeling is in the city. Magneto did tell her to keep her ear to the ground. So, she has.

She's also done a little shopping, ditching the high fashion she milked out of the NYC crowd for darker, more rough-and-ready look, here. Biker leathers and a disaffected countenance that lets her blend in just a little better at the dives she hunts.

On her way to a bar just outside the circle she's already worn out, she walks casually down the streets, restless eyes ever watchful, senses ever attuned to the slightest hints of threat. But, nonetheless, bored.

When one has a mind as analytical and manipulative as Mystique's, one can never be certain of where she stands. Add in that she's almost entirely immune to psychic probing and things get even more difficult. She's sided with Erik some time ago. They share similar views, have a similar endgame in mind, and aren't afraid to play dirty to have things go their way.

That doesn't always mean that she follows every move that he makes.

"Roight borin' out heah, ain't it?" Jackie calls out to the 'normal but not' woman, catching up the last bit of distance with accelerated steps. "I know that look, see. All show and no go. Was a bloody mistake keepin' ya heah with nothin' ta do. Woman of your focus? Should be out there on the front loine, makin' a difference, not warmin' a bench. Lovely day in paradise ain't much mean a thing to us."

Sometimes the best way out of a bored streak is to be impulsive, and with the promise of action, and a ticket back off of this rock? She's been doing her homework. This mutie's got nothing but time.

"Thing here is, I know a way back to tha city from heah, see? Got word some trouble's about ta go down. Ya wouldn't happen ta know of someone that moight wanna get their hands dirty, would ya?"

Olena straightens some as she's unexpectedly addressed by the punk woman that's trailed her for a block or so. Well, perhaps not so 'unexpectedly' given the unobtrusive tail. Certainly, it's a much better tail than the occasional copper, Humanity First agent, or usual mutant grifter that likes to occasionally follow her. It's a bit of sport, really, to lose them. She'd been pondering doing the same with Punk, here, but that moment's past. "Who are you?" she asks bluntly, her Ukrainian accent as much of a sore thumb in this place as the punk's London guttersnipe.

Yeah, she's bored. But, she doesn't trust easily.

"And what are you talking of? What city?" Her brows are drawn together in a wary scowl. The woman obviously knows her... or seems to. And seems to know that she's been cooling her heels. Given Olena hasn't breathed a word of it outside the safehouse... "Do I know you?"

The city we found ya in," Jacqueline replies with an impish grin. The expression holds through as she shifts just enough to turn her skin a cobalt blue and her eyes a blank, backlit yellow. "Saved yer hide from those thugs on the rooftops, ya know. Would be a shame if ya forgot about me so soon, though it is easy ta do. Nature of tha beast. C'mon then, no sense talkin' out in tha street."

Mystique can lead from here. She knows plenty of safe places to hold conversations without too many prying eyes, ears, or other sensory devices.

"Now I've only got so many details up front, but s'like this. One a'ours is gonna be in some trouble. Ya ever heah 'bout tha Sentinels? Roight nasty big buggahs built to kill us all. They all think they're safe behind their Japanese robot ripoffs. Some a'us wanna remind them how wrong they are. Save the mutie, knock humanity back down a few pegs where they belong. Gonna happen on Staten Island, ya familiah with it?"

Mystique.

Olena, unlike many others, actually relaxes as she realizes Punk Girl is actually the blue-skinned metamorph in disguise. She smiles, now, eyes sharp, and nods. "Da," she says simply. "Mutant Town." That's how she knows Staten Island. "Ok. Let's go."

She's become re-acquainted with a lot of pop culture over the last little while. Japanese robot ripoffs, she now understands. The Sentinels? Well, she's not, perhaps, as familiar with them as she no doubt will become, but she grasps the basics. "How do we fight them?"

Hey! Does this mean she finally gets the fancy arrow ordinance? Arrows that go *BOOM*. She'd like that.

Jogging a step or two to keep up with the other woman, she soon falls in step beside her. "I must get gear from house, before we go, da?" She likes her new bow and reinforced costume.

An impish grin is quick to follow. Recognition, she -does- remember. It's so much more fun to put on a little show than to flat out drop a name. "Ah..Mutant Town. So derogative, but not without its charms."

And Mystique claims another mutant soul to fight alongside her. Or, perhaps, -for- her.

"S'not so complicated. Bring out yer biggest toys and go nuts. There's no holdin' back heah, they won't be doin' it neither. They want a show a'force, we'll respond same as they. I'll give ya a chance propah ta load yourself up, know of this lovely little safehouse fulla hardweah."

Machine guns, RPG's, claymore mines... It'll be fun!

"Take what time ya need, still got some days 'fore things get messy."

It's the beauty of dating a precog. Sometimes she knows about things before they're going to happen. Destiny called it, and Destiny decrees their intervention. Mystique's got a head start on this urban disaster.

Olena will be able to retrieve her bow and black leathers, then. This pleases her. "Hardware," she repeats. "For my bow? Or something I must practice with more?" Not, mind, that she doesn't practice rigorously with that bow. But, guns and other such weaponry. Well... just give her some pointers. She's a quick study. And she did develop something of a knack for them when she was on the run from the Ukraine army and had only the weapons she could steal off of them, rather than her more elegant preference.

"There are weapons and fighting I should learn better," she muses. "For when I have no bow." Because, really, that happens more often than she'd like. Idly, she adds, glancing sidelong at her companion to gauge her reaction, "Pan Lehnsherr has said I should to go back to school. I must find subject worth study. I am thinking science. Or something to gain much influence over people. Make them do as should. What do you think?"

"For yer bow, for yer fists, whatevah looks loike fun to ya," Mystique replies. "We've got ourselves some nasty big 'bots ta cut down. If ya think it'll help or be fun ta try, that's all ya need worry 'bout. We've got tha time to try a few things on first."

"Oi think we can be anythin' that we want ta be," Jackie replies before shifting into another one of her egos, hair growing curly and blonde while ratty leathers switch into figure-hugging-yet-professional blacks.

Enter Melissa Hawthorne.

"But never deny who you are, dear. If science interests you then by all means, pursue it. But I can tell you what I see in you," she says with a pause while leaning forward to peer right into your eyes. "I see someone in search of change. A seeker of justice. Tell me child, have you ever handled a Russian RPG?"

Olena's brows rise at that question (and the shape change -- that never gets old... and she has to admit a certain amount of 'power-envy' over it). She shakes her head. "No. It easier to run with handgun than missile launcher." Ever practical, she.

"But, I learn quick." She smiles briefly, sharply. "Especially if is good against Japanese robot ripoff."

She still keeps pace with the other mutant, weaving through the streets to their destination. "I like science," she says after a moment. "But, justice. Da. I will do whatever must for that."