2013.06.24 - Curiosity and the Cait

It'd taken some explaining in the aftermath of the desolation of the Cumberbatch wanna-be, but Doug Ramsey had managed to at least trade in on his past with SHIELD in order to get the explanation squared away under the metahuman privacy issues, even with unregistered metahumans. Caitlin and Richard didn't have to worry -terribly- so about their issues, but that just led to a lot of questions for Doug Ramsey, judging by the look the curious Caitlin was flashing him through the whole ordeal. And as soon as it was over, well...

Glancing around Caitlin's room, with particular attention paid to her computing gear, and pointedly ignoring her walls, Doug sighs, aware of the questions that were about to come his way...

Questions!? There are a ton of questions that Caitlin's sure -everyone- will have, including to herself. Doug's ability to maneuver through the bombardment of officials was impressive and awe inspiring and dog gone /curious/. Though of course - Richard has his /own/ secrets, which really the three of them should know. They've been through enough together already! And lets not even begin to forget Caitlin's own mysteries that she's barely offered to anyone. So. Yeah.

It's time that the three of them sat down and got everything out in the open. To fix any curiosities Caitlin might have - and surely Rich and Doug have themselves! Shoving a computer chair towards Rich, and her other to Doug, Caitlin, herself, settles onto the bean bag on the floor, the cushions letting out faint *swooosh* noises as she gets comfortable. Doug and Rich have been given whatever they want from the fridge, mostly diet sodas with a few bottles of water mixed into things, while Cait has taken to sipping quietly upon a bottle of water.

As she gets comfortable (having taken the time to actually disappear into the bathroom a moment and returned with a proper pair of jeans and t-shirt that has many TARDISes printed in various shades of blue to create the Union Jack design), Caitlin idly follows a line of condensation down the water bottle with her finger before just talking. "So, I guess everyone has a lot of questions. Okay mostly me too, but..." And her emerald eyes lift upwards from the bottle to gaze at Doug and Rich, a soft smile spreading outwards. "So I'll go first. Doug knows most of this - but Rich, on my desk there, beneath the TARDIS cookie jar - you can grab a cookie if you want - there's a picture. That's me. A year ago."

And, indeed, the photo will show a very skinny, very small, very nerdy red-head that /could/ be Caitlin, if she wasn't y'know, six feet four, and built like a model.

Richard /could/ have kept his brass bucket hat on and done the talking. But since Doug was so confident of himself Rich just let him get on with it, taking a moment when no-one was paying much attention to swap back to his street clothes, his helmet collapsing down into a form as malleable as cloth and being stuffed away in his jacket pocket until he needs it again. Besides, Rich is honestly curious of just who and what Doug is, really. While he might not know all of Caitlin's story, she's pretty open, and perhaps innocent. Doug? There's clearly more to him than meets the eye. So Rich took the opportunity to watch.

Once the formalities are out of the way and they're retreated to Caitlin's apartment, Rich took up a position comfortably straddling the chair she offered, arms folded across the backrest, a bottle of water hanging loosely from one hand. He'd disdained the diet options. "One or two." He comments offhandedly as questions are brought up, but then just takes a long sip of his water to let Caitlin speak. He looks mildly surprised when it seems he's getting the first reveal, but he's swift enough reach out for the cookie jar and snag the picture beneath. His eyebrows go up a bit as his eyes flicker from the picture to Caitlin and back again. "That's some growth spurt right there." He says at length, offering a bit of a smile in case the six foot four knockout is at all self-conscious. And then he starts munching on a cookie. Go on, his pose seems to say.

Nodding at having heard Caitlin's story, Doug instead falls quiet, before grinning at the picture. "It's a cute picture," Doug says quietly. It really was. Far more relatable, at least for the young blond.

Letting Cait go on to complete her story, Doug smiles sympathetically. He'd heard the details already, and while she was telling her tale, he'd mentally gone over what he'd told Caitlin. Which was all true, just that there was an -awkward- part about why he'd never completed school.

Offering a smile when she'd completed her tale, Doug takes a deep breath, a swig of water, and then grins depricatingly. Clear blue eyes peer from person to person as he runs a hair through his tussled blond hair. "Doug Ramsey. I teach several students at the Xavier Institute. I'm a mutant. And I used to work for SHIELD, after I... well... not exactly graduated..."

Yes, Caitlin goes through and explains the events that transpired - from her attending Princeton, to being recruited into what she thought was a sanctioned government program, to finding out things weren't as they seemed. She goes on to explain how her and a few others managed to escape that institute, though it was more of a prison than institute, and went their separate ways. "To this day I have no idea what transpired, whether I'm a mutant and this is my mutation, or they managed to alter my genetic make-up." Her shoulders lift upwards in the shrug, as Caitlin's gaze flickers from Rich to Doug and then down to her water bottle as she finishes.

When she /has/ finished, Caitlin's gaze flickers to Doug as he speaks up, her eyes narrowing just a bit, "Full disclosure, Doug." Caitlin states with a slight bob of her head. "Why /not/? I can't imagine anyone as intelligent as you /not/ graduating. So. Spill. What happened?"

As she speaks, Caitlin stretches out more in the bean bag, the bottle of water now resting on the floor, as she sinks more and more into the fabric of the chair, nestling into it like a tight fitting cocoon.

Richard glances across at Doug when he gives his verdict on the picture, a smirk that seems a bit... knowing, flashing across his face for a moment before he takes another bite of his cookie and washes it down with another swig from his water bottle. He doesn't interrupt as Caitlin speaks, and there's no hint of disbelief in his features as he listens. Finally, when she shrugs, he says a bit indistinctly, around his last bite of cookie, "If you'd told me that a couple of years ago, even with the picture..." He swallows the cookie, and flashes a grin in Caitlin's direction, "But now..." He begins, then shakes his head, and waves a hand encouragingly toward Doug. Let him take his turn next.

Rich's reaction to Doug's tale is a little less reserved than with Caitlin, putting in a quick, "Does that mean they caught you?" In a cheerful manner, when he mentions that he didn't /exactly/ graduate. When Caitlin jumps in, though, Rich sits back a bit and lets her badger him. Reaching back, he takes another cookie. "I reckon they caught him and turned him. International Man of Mystery type, that one." He's grinning as he says it, though. Not giving Doug /too/ much of a hard time.

"Well, I didn't -graduate- from the Xavier Institute," Doug replies, wrinkling his nose. "Though they let me off with a GED. I mean, you know..." He shrugs. "I died for a while there, then when I came back, I needed to get away from the Institute for a bit. SHIELD gave me something to do with myself while I got re-acclimated."

Wrinkling his nose, Doug counted on his fingers. "Figure I'd been gone four years, maybe five?" It's a bit dispassionate, the way Doug talks about coming back, but there's really no explanation for -that-, and that's something he admits to, that he has no clue whatsoever on that front.

"So, uh... what's your story, Rich?" Doug hurries on a bit, trying to not dwell on it.

Insert foot into mouth, chew a healthy dose of humility, and spit out again; that's Caitlin's reaction to Doug's revelation. Her eyes widen as her mind adjusts to the word 'died'. And it is there she sits. Stunned. Shocked. Slightly embarrassed. And utterly confused. If Doug's revelation meant that there were no more questions in Caitlin's mind - FAR FROM. A quiet 'cuh' sound softly echoes from the red-head, followed by her grabbing her water bottle and taking a small sip, idly wondering if she shouldn't have gotten something stronger. Like a wine cooler. (She's such a drinker.)

At Doug's fairly hurrying and trying to move things along to Rich - Caitlin doesn't inquire any further. She's learned her lesson there! No. Instead, she shifts a bit more and tries to recover her composure, which only results in the bean bag letting out a fairly annoying swoosh and swish of sound as Cait shifts her weight.

Her mouth parts, closes, then finally she offers a quiet, "The world is a really strange place. I'm glad you're okay now; Doug." And her voice and tone means it, lashes lowering over emerald eyes before her gaze flickers to Rich. "Yes, you know Dr. Strange - it seems, and you're incredibly powerful. What is your story, if you don't mind the inquiry, Rich?"

OK, that little revelation /does/ manage to make it past Rich's casual pose. His eyes narrow measuringly on Doug, before he decides he actually believes him and sits up straighter in his chair. He looks like he might interrupt as Doug rushes quickly beyond the meat of his story, but subsides when it becomes clear that it's really something that Doug doesn't want to talk about. Still, as the other man aims to turn the spotlight on /him/, Rich can't help but think, somewhat uncharitably, that Doug's getting off lightly. "All right. I didn't see that one coming." He says, keeping his eyes on Doug for a moment as Caitlin tries to help steer the conversation his way.

Tipping his water bottle up to drain the last drops from it, as much to kill another couple of seconds as from thirst, Rich looks between the other two before responding. Finally he quirks a crooked smile as he remembers Doctor Strange greeting him on the beach. "Yeah. Me and Dr Strange. We're like that." He raises a hand, index and middle fingers crossed, the gesture as self-deprecating as the tone in which he speaks the words. "OK. A few..." He frowns, then corrects himself. "Wow, OK, more than a few, now... years ago, there was a dumb kid called Richard Rider." He smirks a bit, his eyes going a bit distant. "I got picked by a dying alien to succeed him as a..." His eyes sharpen up again, though the smirk's still there. "Centurion, in the Nova Corps." He's very aware of how this sounds. Making a vague 'bear with me' gesture with the empty water bottle, he explains. Or tries to. "Think of them like... Space Police. Anyway. I got the power, and I tried to make a name for myself. Nova." He chuckles quietly to himself. "If you've never heard of me, don't worry. I had no idea what I was doing back then." Again, he looks between the others, as if expecting a comment on that - particularly from Doug, it seems. "Anyway. Let's cut a long story short. Turned out playing superhero wasn't the only thing in the job description. Where /I/'ve been for the last little while? Up there." He makes a vague gesture toward the ceiling. "Trying not to get myself killed. Turns out I was pretty good at it." He goes quiet for a moment, gazing at the water bottle that he's managed to crumple without realising it. "There used to be thousands of us. I'm all that's left. At least, we think I am." In the back of his mind, the presence stirs. Richard? But he carries on, ignoring it. "I've got all their power, and I'm sharing my head with their sentient computer and..." Rich half turns, regarding Caitlin for a moment before shrugging and finishing with, "...I've still got no clue what to do with my life."

Talking about getting her heart strings pulled in two different directions; from Richard's tale of woe concerning his friends and colleagues in the Centurion Corps, to Doug /dying/ for - years -, Caitlin's left just sitting back in her bean bag thinking she's glad she's not a super hero! All she got from her experiences was a few inches in height, and her clothes wont fit right! She's not sure how to respond to either of this, and so she does the only thing she can, she crawls out of the bean bag, as sitting /up/ is difficult in how far she's gotten herself positioned - and rises to stand. One hand runs splayed through her short locks of auburn as she talks. "You should go back to school, Rich. If you mean life - if you mean super hero wise." Well, another shrug passes, "Sadly; I'm not even sure what that /means/." And she'll flush slightly by that revelation, after all - she's been through some bad luck and has been at the wrong place at the wrong time too many times to count - but a hero? Yeah. That's what the professionals are for.

At that, Caitlin's hand rests upon Rich's shoulder, as she leans in and plants a soft peck on his cheek. "I'm glad you're good at staying alive though. How else would I have been able to escape a dragon if you weren't here?" And to Doug.. after the soft peck, which is about as innocent and sweet as one might imagine - that same is planted on Doug's cheek, fingers idly lifting just long enough from Richard's shoulders, to plant onto Doug's, and then she's drawing towards the door. "Thank you both for telling me.. I'm not sure what I want to do - either, but with friends like you both; I consider myself a lucky person. How about we all go out, grab a late night snack, and hope that trouble doesn't follow us?"

Casting a quick glance towards Caitlin, well aware of her -curiosity-, Doug offers her a smile of thanks when she restrains from asking her questions, as well as a slight nod. He'll answer later, just... not right now.

At Caitlin's comment about getting back to school, Doug puffs a bit of air upwards, sending a stray lock of hair drifting up before it settles back down stubbornly against his forehead. "Yeah, you should. I'm probably going to do the same... I mean, training is one thing, but it's not the same as, well, getting through -college-."

The first peck draws a quirk of the eyebrows from Doug, but it was -so- totally innocent, from the way she moved and acted, that he can't really begrudge it... especially when it's followed by the second.

"Sounds like a good idea," Doug comments, as he stands up.

He'd just have to tell Caitlin about her... fitting another time.

Rich might have been looking towards Caitlin when he said that last bit, but he wasn't really looking /at/ her. He was still light years away inside his mind. Her suggestion, though, is so honest, simple, and /practical/ that he blinks, and suddenly he really is looking at her. He grins, and the somber cast to his expression is replaced with something a lot more boyish. "School? Maybe. I wasn't exactly top of the class the first time around." He flicks a look toward Doug, certain now if he was in any doubt before that Doug WAS the straight A student type. Picking up from his pause, he looks quickly toward Caitlin again. "Guess we'll both be finding out, huh?" He might have meant that as innocently as it sounded, and in any case Caitlin's kiss silences him for the moment.... if only for a moment. "You'd have thought of something." He says, confidently, and might continue before thinking better of it.

Standing up as Caitlin moves toward the door, Rich casts a quick look toward Doug, offering a rueful expression and a slight shake of his head. He's oddly confident that the other man will get the message, the mixture of amusement and commiseration, with just a hint of determination in his eyes. "Sure, wouldn't miss it." He adds amiably to Doug's words.