2014.01.20 - Cellular Troll

Well, the phone says it's Pete Wisdom calling. There's been no word from him since the last time he stopped by the mansion, which was something like eight months ago. But when Kitty answers, there's not even time to say anything before he's demanding, "What the hell?"

Tone: primarily disbelief. Amused and annoyed. There's silence in the background, and an exceptionally clear signal: he's probably on the Helicarrier.

"Hi to you, too," Kitty replies; there's the sense, somehow, of her being sprawled with her feet up. Or just being that casual, and more amused than anything else at the non-greeting. "What the hell, what? Hell isn't exactly my specialty, here. And if your phone is hosting an AI, it is /not/ my fault."

"What did you do to my phone?" The shift from baffled to suspicious is sudden, completely derailing what Pete was about to say. "Don't do anything to my phone. I have stuff on it."

"I /didn't/ do anything to your phone, I just couldn't figure out anything else that could've happened to you that'd make you blame /me/ for it," Kitty laughs. There is notably no promise not to do anything to his phone in future. "What's the occasion?"

A second passes, two, while there are cigarette-lighting sounds in the background. "I came up to check my mail and avoid the new shrink, and there's this envelope, right," Pete says, voice a little smoke-filled and stunted for it, and he exhales. "And it's obviously from you. What's left of the envelope makes that pretty clear. And there's a..." Pause. Enunciation. "Picture. In it."

Dead silence.

More dead silence.

... okay, that giggle was not /completely/ successfully stifled. What the hell did she do, put a pillow over her own face?

"Pryde." Exasperation. "Look, you--" The sense that he's still trying to process what he's looking at is implicit: that trailed off, it didn't interrupt itself. "It may as well be Amber," Pete finally says, in a voice that's trying to be a mutter but is a little too rueful. "How did you even find out?"

"I think I'm required not to compromise my sources, or something," comes the cheerful answer. "Especially when there's even the slight possibility I might get an image like /that/ from 'em again. So you didn't actually implode or anything? And you don't sound like you're in medical anyplace. Promising signs!"

Sound of glass against glass, then liquid. "I'm fine. I was sort of undercover. As someone from the Welsh barrier island of Africa on the planet Nilaa. And you can shut it, right now." Clink of glass against countertop. "Anyroad, you're a troll. I figured you were an LMD, but you're really just a troll."

"I am /way/ too cute to be a troll. Also, takes one to know one. How do I know you're actually you, anyway, and not some other person picking up your mail and dodging your doctors? -- wait. Crap. Wait wait wait. How long have you been undercover again?"

Another pause, and then if a voice can sound squinty-eyed, Pete's does. "I'm... not undercover," he says slowly, like he's missing a page, or waiting for the other anvil to drop. "If I were someone else, I wouldn't've known who to blame for the trump."

Words coming way too fast, tumbling over each other. "No, no, no. How long /were/ you undercover? I mean. Not specifically. Just. You know. Did you get a chance to see ... anything ... since, like, oh, the end of November?"

"Less than a day," Pete says, mystified. "I've been about. I mean, not much on the Helicarrier, I more or less moved in with my girlfriend, but I've been in Manhattan when I'm not getting dragged up hill and down dale by terrifying women on flying horses, or, you know, blowing things up."

There is not even a pause for the word 'girlfriend,' because Kitty is still on the trail of something much, much more important. Instantaneous demand: "So you saw the Curator?"

"Of COURSE I did!" There has never been so much not-actually-angry righteous indignation in his voice, like, probably ever. "What do you take me for, some sort of tasteless traitor? I didn't see the Christmas special, though. Still can't stand Clara."

"Oh thank /God/ I didn't know if you were on the right /planet/ so I didn't know whether that had to be /fixed right now/ --" And that's the pause for Kitty to take what sounds like her first breath in a while. And second. "I figure Clara's got a shot at getting more bearable now that she's not the center of the universe anymore, right? That's the most annoying thing about Moffat. Okay, second most, after 'can only write one female character over and over again and she /sucks/.' You didn't miss that much, anyway, it was ... Moffat. Best things about the episode: a one-shot decapitated Cyberman head for a Companion, what the hell, and Capaldi's eyebrows. Okay. Okay." Beat. "Girlfriend?" Another moment's pause. "Could be, I mean, it showed up about as much -- 'Girlfriend.' You mentioned, with the moving in with, and stuff. This is a good thing, right?"

"Ugh I'm sorry I brought it up," Pete talks over Kitty as she starts going 'okay, okay'. "She's the only one I can't stand since River-during-Ten, really, but I'm not about to get into a companion war. Except to say maybe the cyberman head was a shoutout to Kameleon-- sorry, what?"

The girl doing the (largely high-speed) talking on her cellphone is, unsurprisingly, Kitty. She's sprawled sideways on her bed, fully dressed, with her feet up on the wall; her head's turned to let her poke at the laptop next to her in an absent, intermittent fashion.

On the other end of the phone is whoever Kitty's talking to, obviously; she'll be able to hear the cap being screwed back on a bottle, and the smoke in Pete's voice as he answers again. "Yeah! Yeah, it's a really good--" Exhale. Normal voice. "--thing. First girlfriend since secondary school who hasn't tried to kill me."

Knocking on the door, seeing as it was about time to watch -Sherlock- (legally, anyway), Doug waits till it's safe to come in, pausing to eye the phone as he brings in the usual food and drinks to pile up so they could watch Sherlock. Usually this meant geeking out, trading barbs, and sher-locking each other's phones so they could watch. That Kitty was on the phone...?

"... so who's the poor fellow this time that you need to hang up on, Kitty?" Doug comments as he gets set for the premiere.

Pausing as he regards Kitty's comments about Dr. Who, the young mutant adds, "I'm still disturbed by Capaldi's eyebrows. They look like mutant caterpillars are about to weave cocoons on his brow."

Poor Doug has to wait a moment, because Kitty is distracted by waving her free hand in the air. Part of it is probably in greeting; the majority, though, is in "That is /not/ a way you're supposed to judge relationships, Pete! -- I mean, okay, yes, it's a good thing, not getting murdered is good, but it's supposed to in /theory/ be a more or less /standard/ part, okay? Not the exception! Stick with it! /Good/ girlfriend! Don't pick up women in Gotham!"

And then, in a rather more normally paced half-aside, Kitty says up to Doug, "Capaldi's eyebrows /are/ actually the Doctor this time around. The rest of his body is just, you know, costume."

"I don't pick up women in Gotham!" Pete says indignantly enough it's probably audible to Doug. "And besides, she's a lot better than just not trying to kill me. She has a sword! And dyed hair." A pause, then. "I don't think he can regenerate that small. Troughton and McCoy aside. Who's that, sounds like Ramsey. Should I let you go?"

"Is that -Wisdom-?" Doug asks in near-sync as he points at the phone. Drink and food forgotten for the moment, Doug wrinkles his nose. "You're talking relationships with Pete? Isn't that like asking Kim Kardashian what marriage's like?" Now Doug flumps onto the bed next to Kitty. "And I -knew- Dr. Who was a pair of mutant caterpillars piloting around -that- body' this time. Hell of a leap."

"Pete," Kitty says to the phone, "tell Doug you have a girlfriend who hasn't tried to kill you. He's not believing me." The phone is duly held up to the air.

"Oi! You-- what-- shut up! Don't--" Too late. There's that suspicious distance of sound. Pete's voice, tinnily and crankily, says, "I have a girlfriend who hasn't tried to kill me. She's actually way out of my league, I have no idea what she's doing slumming. Satisfied?"

"I'm sure she's doing the charitable thing," Doug assures Pete as he takes the phone. "Maybe she intends to purify the curse. She -has- to be some kind of magician, right?"

Leaning in close to Kitty so that they can both hear, Doug adds, "Do you have, like, protection?"

Kitty's groan, likewise, is audible. "I seriously don't know if you're asking him about condoms, silver, Mafia connections, antivirus, or whether he's found God, Doug," she complains. And then, angled toward the phone, "/I/ think it's awesome."

"There's no curse! But yeah, she's magic all right..." Pete's voice trails off deliberately in such a way that were he present, he'd have things thrown at him. "I'm not dignifying that with an answer. Thank you, Pryde. And thanks for the art-- not sure what I'll do with it, but thanks."

"Yeah... congrats, Wisdom. And my condolences to whoever she is," Doug can't help but add. "She must be like, one hell of a baggage handler. Have fun. And just so you know, Smith's still a better Doctor than Eccleston."

Handing the phone back to Kitty, Doug settles in. "Ready to get Sher-locked?"

"Deluuuuusional," Kitty sing-songs to Doug, as she takes the phone. "Whatever you want with it. The point was, I just couldn't /not/ share the image. Inflict it. Whatever. But our Mister Ramsey here has turned up to remind me of our appointment with Messrs. Freeman and Cumberbatch, so, good luck with whatever you dodge /your/ appointment with next?"

There is laughing on the other side of the phone; Pete's given up. "You two have fun. Maybe come fight monsters in a hell dimension with us sometime. Check in at Doctor Strange's place. Try not to make out with your television screen."

"Pfffft, I'm not the one writing Sherlock/John slashfics," Doug calls out, having heard the last part of it.

"'One,' he says, like we don't know at least three teenaged girls with /taste that terrible/," Kitty groans. "Come fight monsters in a hell dimension. Okay. So we visit you on a Tuesday, check. Good luck, don't scare off your girlfriend before I get to meet this paragon of virtue --" Annnd the phone's cut off, mostly so Kitty can reorient so she's no longer sitting at a weird angle to gravity. Makes it hard to watch.