2014.03.15 - The Cat's Request

It's afternoon on a Saturday, and that meant Jocelyn was out running. It being above fifty degrees, Jocelyn had gone with a simple tank top with a light windbreaker tied around her waist. She's finished up her run, however, and ended it over at the old castle in Central Park. Not as many tourists are running around here today. People didn't travel to New York for tourism until it warmed up, not compared to how it usually is.

Vorpal may or may not have heard that Channel was involved in some of the battles with Darkseid, given his connection to the JLA. She'd done her usual laying low afterwards, however. Truthfully, the mutant had kept out of the public eye for quite some time, and even after that fight the name Channel hadn't cropped up in any of the papers.

She had found herself a bench and had sat down, having thrown her jacket on, and was flipping through a couple messages on her phone at the moment, seeming to be reasonably relaxed.

Keith had been involved in the Darkseid raid in his own way. His claim to fame if it could be called that, had been to piss Grayven so much that the Cheshire cat managed to trick him into blowing himself up with his own Omega beams.

He had come out of that unscathed, miraculously so. So of course it only made sense that a week later he would end up taking a knife to the leg. Wasn't that the way things went?

The Cheshire walks down the path, leaning on a purple, glowing crutch, clearly wrapped up in his thoughts.

The glowing crutch, of course, twigs Jocelyn's energy senses pretty quickly, and the woman glances up to spot Keith. "Keith!" Jocelyn could use Vorpal, she supposed, but eh, she didn't think too hard about these things. Vorpal was a public hero, what with the fact he couldn't hide his identity as easily as she could. "Long time, no see. What happened to you?" Jocelyn asks, that healer's eye going right to the leg before she turns it back upon Keith's face. "Come, sit down for a few minutes. I haven't seen you in ages". And they got assigned to different fronts, but that happens sometimes.

"As I live and breathe, Joce." The cat smirks, seeing an old friend. His costume is quite different from the rather generic bodysuit he had employed in the past- it had more of a 'Cheshire' flavor to it. He sits down next to her, the construct vanishin into thin air. "Long story-- demon summoning, I stabbed myself with a satanic dagger. How are you? I heard you were rocking it over in Apokolips too. I was with the backdoor infiltration crew... and I am entirely aware of the joke that tells itself there."

"Let me see it. I can heal your injury," Jocelyn tells Vorpal. "No need for stupid crutch. Cats weren't meant to be limp, don't you agree?" Jocelyn jokes lightly. If Vorpal will let her, she'll put her hand on his leg lightly, and he'll feel a brief surge of life energy as it fixes up the wound. It won't take more than half a minute for the woman to patch up.

"Yeah, I was over there, though nobody else knew me there except as Channel," Jocelyn says easily. "Met Darkseid himself, threw a few shots at him, all that stuff. I did alright, I suppose, for the first time working with the JLA. I wasn't sure how well I was going to work with them there, to be honest".

The cat lets out a loooong sigh as injured muscles heal. It felt so much better...

"You met Darkseid? Did you try to mess with his omega beams? How did those feel?"

"I didn't directly absorb any, but...". Jocelyn pauses. "I've gone through a secondary mutation, Keith. I can turn one type of energy into another, as long as that energy is present around me. So I may have possibly turned some energy into Omega Energy and shot him with it to draw his attention away long enough to let the others knock him around," Jocelyn tells him. "Captain Marvel took one of his Omega Blasts head on protecting Wonder Woman. She lived to tell the tale," Jocelyn tells Vorpal. Somehow. Probably because of how strong Carol's energy absorption powers were, though it had cost her friend greatly.

Vorpal frowns at this. "...Joce ... you know what happened to Tony Stark, of course...."

"Yes," Jocelyn says seriously. "He wasn't physically with us. I never saw his lifesign. I suspect he died in another part of the plan I wasn't aware of, but he was controlling his suits on the frontal attack," Jocelyn says to Vorpal. "I heard about Booster passing as well". Jocelyn hadn't been filled in that there might be a chance they were alive.

"They're not dead..." Keith says quietly. "Well... Tony was dead. But then Darkseid must have brought him back to life in Apokolips... his Omega Beams can re-create what they destroy. As for Booster... he's not dead. Just lost in time." The Cheshire leans back and exhales, "Joce... would you be willing to help the team in getting Tony back? I'm useless against Darkseid... but your powers..."

Jocelyn is quiet for a long moment as she takes that all in. She doesn't seem completely shocked at that statement from Vorpal. Finally, she speaks up.

"Well, considering I was the one who was the human battery for the portals into Apokolips, they might have to find another way in, unless Tony had another method planned to power the portals," Jocelyn tells Keith. "Given he is being manipulated like that, I'll help if they want a hand with it. I did tell Wonder Woman that if she ever needed a hand with anything, to let me know". She shrugs. "I think they find my secretiveness a little strange. But have them give me a call".

There's a shake of her head. "You are not useless against him. Maybe in a straight up fight, you'd lose. I'm not the one who plays superhero theory matchup or whatever. But a hero is more than just the sum of their powers. You helped in the attack on his planet. You've more than earned your stripes". Jocelyn pauses and smiles. "Even if you're not strictly a tiger".

"I'm being serious, Jocelyn. Darkseid is far out of my league, far out of everything I can do. His son nearly killed me, it was just a stroke of luck and Superlass yanking me out of the way of an Omega beam that I'm not dead. I don't know what the Justice League is doing--" Outside of what may have been said, there had been no formalization of his inclusion into the league. There was too much stuff happening right now. "-- but I know the Avengers are going to try something, and we -do- have the specs of the tech Tony used to open the portals first. If... would you like to help them?"

There's a nod to that. "I'll help". Jocelyn is fine with helping. It was what she feels she's meant to do, help out in things like that. "I have some experience with...spiritual matters. Depending on the state he's in when we find him, energy-wise, I might be of some use". Jocelyn didn't know what state they'd find him in. Though Vorpal may notice the way she pauses would indicate there's a pretty heavy story behind those particular words.

"It makes sense the Avengers are going in," Jocelyn says. "If they know of this, then they'd go in as soon as possible". Tony was one of them well before he was a member of the JLA, after all.

"Oh... no. He's not a ghost, Joce. He's alive. Thor told me that his soul was torn from Valhalla... and that is only possible if the body comes back. No... I think your powers will come in handy dealing with the horrible energy that Darkseid can put out. I'll go with you to protect you with my constructs... if Black Widow lets me go at all." The cat sighs.

"Black Widow can be stubborn about certain things," Jocelyn says with an easy smile. "Sounds to me like you asked to go with and got denied. Why?" Jocelyn questions. "And yes, I know Black Widow. Though she only knows me as Channel," Jocelyn adds to Keith. Just so those things are clear. She doesn't elaborate on the matter of the spirit. There was no reason to go into the tale of the Phoenix and the Imperator right now.

"I wasn't exactly denied. Yet. It was more of a 'We will speak soon.'" he says, his voice suddenly mimicking Black Widow's voice perfectly. "She... scares the hell out of me, honestly,"

"Ahh," Jocelyn says. "Probably means she wants to have a serious talk with you first". That was Jocelyn's suspicion. "You weren't still limping, were you?" the woman asks with a raised eyebrow. The healer in her could see exactly the sort of logic that would be used if Vorpal was still limping when he asked.

"I believe I have stored a small bit of the necessary energy. It's possible Tony did as well, and there actually is enough for them to teleport without me. But regardless, I will still help. I'll get ahold of one of them soon, if they don't reach out to me first". Of course, it was possible they'd not want the help, given Vorpal did ask on their behalf. But Joce was prepared for that possibility, too.

"As a matter of fact... yeah, I was still injured." Keith nods. "Do you want me to put you in contact with the Widow? We sort of... can't talk to Pepper. She doesn't know that this is going on at all, and Widow doesn't want to let Pepper hear about it... in case we can't get Tony back."

"I can contact her," Jocelyn says. "Though if you let her know, that'd help too". A nod is given. "She'd not let you go with an injury like that. End of story," Jocelyn tells Keith. "Doesn't matter how much you want to, you'd be a liability limping around like that". This was her training as an X-Man talking, not that Keith knows about that. A nod is given about Pepper. "Truthfully? I don't know Tony Stark or Pepper Potts particularly well, so that won't be a problem. But he gave his life, and if he's stuck with Darkseid, we need to get him back," Jocelyn says. She pulls her phone out and sends a quick text out to Widow. Secured, of course, by certain applications. Between her X-Man security features and the YAL app, her phone was locked down tight.

"Thank you Jocelyn... I appreciate it more than you know. There's... so much strange stuff going around. I saw Kurt the other day and he didn't know me from Adam... a man with white hair approached him, identified himself as Erik Lesrh....something. Kept asking about 'Professor X' and 'X-Men'... he was formal... and very unpleasant, in a stick-up-the-ass way. But what really stuck me was that Kurt didn't know who I was. Kurt! Bobby was there and said he'd take him to some mansion so he could get care..." Keith sighs a little. "Amnesia seems to be going around. I ran into another hero a few days ago who was like that, too. But in his case, they were able to fix it."

There's a frown from Jocelyn. That did seem strange. Also, that was totally NOT Magneto. Because Magneto was now a young man. Jocelyn had helped bring that about, actually. "That does seem odd," the woman says as she thinks that over. Also, why hadn't she heard of this guy being at the mansion? Huh. "I didn't know you knew Kurt particularly well. I must admit, he and I haven't always seen eye to eye". Jocelyn shrugs a little bit. It was what it was, she supposed.

"We were friends... when he remembered me. Then he disappeared for a long time. I don't know where he went." The Cheshire frowns and looks at Jocelyn "...what happened? Between the two of you, I mean..."

"He doesn't believe someone of my age should be out doing the whole cape thing," Jocelyn says. "I pointed out to him that most of my life, I'd been fighting in some capacity. The conversation didn't go much further after that, but there's always been some uncomfortableness between us, and not because of his skin". The teen shrugs at that. "That's in the past though. He did disappear for quite some time," she agrees. "I haven't heard a peep from him in months, and a blue furball isn't hard to miss, even in this city".

Keith looks at Jocelyn "... but I'm only one year older than you..." the cat frowns. Kurt had no trouble offering to train him, but took objection to Jocelyn?

There's a smile. "Well. You see, when we first met, I was sixteen," Jocelyn says. "And that was a year or so ago, when my powers showed up. See, I didn't find out until later that I was, in fact, nineteen. There was some under-the-table manipulation of birth records at my birth, which resulted in everyone believing I was two and a half or three years younger than I actually was". Jocelyn laughs at that. "So he did have a bit of a point, though I don't think it was a completely valid one. I was going pro MMA, after all, at that age, before my powers manifested".

"Okay... that's interesting. I guess if we go by how old my 'soul' or whatever is, I'm twenty-one. But my body is only eight months old..." the cat ponders. "I hope I don't age at cat rates. That'd suck."

Jocelyn stretches her arms upwards. "Hmm. Afraid that while I'm good at healing, that's not something I can tell just by looking at you," Jocelyn tells Vorpal. "Frankly, age is really just a number. It's experiences and personality that matter most". She shrugs, then laughs. "Though I suppose I'll be twenty in a few days. Still not old enough to drink, but old enough to fight gods," the woman comments with a shake of her head. "Anyway. What else have you been getting into?" Jocelyn asks. "Anything interesting lately?"

"Well... I was inducted into the Avengers right before this mess started. Don't ask me what the hell Tony was drinking when he decided that... aside from that? Just... going to the Academy, doing my patrols, still looking like a freak." He grins.

Maybe Tony thought that Tigra needed another cat to play with? Not that Jocelyn would EVER say that outloud.

"Well, congratulations," Jocelyn says to Vorpal with a smile. "Hadn't heard you'd made it to one of the 'big league' clubs, so to speak," Jocelyn comments with a grin. "Academy of Tomorrow? Ended up going there, huh?" Jocelyn didn't really know the Academy all that well. But she knew some who went there. "What's it like?"

"Well it's the only place I felt comfortable going. Not a lot of schools really look favorably on people like me attending... they get paranoid that villains will break through the walls. It's ok... Miss Frost can be... intimidating as hell. She and Black Widow should go out sometime for drinks, I think." He smirks.

"Emma Frost is an interesting individual. Telepath," Jocelyn comments. "And yeah, I suppose it might be a bit trickier, though there are those that'll take you. Technically, discrimination against race is ill...". Jocelyn pauses. "Well, I can't even say that with a straight face. If I put 'mutant' as my race, there's no way I could get into a school," Jocelyn adds with a shake of her head. "I thought about the Academy briefly, but decided I'd just head to college instead". Seemed...easier. More logical. And Charles wouldn't have a heart attack at the prospect.

"I wouldn't call it discrimination... more like survival instinct. With someone like me, it IS very likely that someone will want to take a potshot at me. I can't hide my identity." Keith adds.

"But where did you study?" The cat asks. "If you had trouble getting into a school because of being a mutant?"

"I'm surprised you can't do an illusion around yourself," Jocelyn says. "With your ability to create illusions, I would think disguising yourself would be possible". Jocelyn is just thinking a little bit outside the box when it comes to power manipulation and such. "But yeah. That makes sense. And I'm lucky. I don't look like a mutant, so I didn't put on any college applications that I'm a mutant. They didn't ask, and I didn't tell. I mostly got into school because they need to fill their demographic quotas. Poor girl from Detroit? Works well for that sort of thing".

"Yeah, that works... but an illusion? An illusion that is wrapped around me all day long requires constant concentration. It's fine for a fight or for a limited time... but if I try to keep up an active illusion for that long, I get the mother of all headaches and I can't even see straight. Passive illusions, things that don't change? I can keep that up for days, even. But to turn myself into something I'm not for eight or more hours a day... that's asking for pain."

"Maybe as you get better with your power, you'll be able to do that. Though hopefully, by that time, people will be more used to seeing individuals who don't fit the usual norm," Jocelyn responds. "I'm glad the Academy is working out for you though," Jocelyn tells Keith. She stands up. "But I gotta get rolling. Give me a call later, and we'll hang out, get some food or something," Jocelyn suggests. "And don't stab yourself in the leg for at least a week. Doctor's orders," the teen tells him with a grin.