2012-12-17 Meatloaf and Thai

The plan was to meet once a week or so, but because the two run in the same heroic circle (read: New York's Manhattan Island), running toward the same crime is not unheard of.

The threat came over the police scanners just moments ago, and given the abilities of our two heroes they are well equipped to get to where the action is far ahead of the police. Here's the scenario: A carjacker has just lifted a brand new Porsche and is tearing through the streets trying to head west into New Jersey. The vehicle is burning through red lights like nobodies business and is cackling insanely with his big score.

Street crime isn't really Illyana's thing, but there's not always a global threat looming and well, school is done for the semester and so she's got some free time. And she's bored. A bored demon sorceress is a bad thing.

The Porshe blows through another red light and up over a slight rise, speed making the car buck upwards and stealing the driver's line-of-sight with the road for a second. As the car comes back down what looked like an empty road and a clean getaway is about to become very messy as a certain white-clad quasi-hero stands in the middle of the road a hundred or so feet down. She's got her sword out, point down with hands resting on the pommel in a casual pose. Even if the driver jams on the breaks he's not likely to stop in time.

The unfortunate news, of course, is that--even from Illyana's angle--she can see that the backseat contains a carseat. Rear-facing. Must be a little one. Oh the horror! Who puts a car seat in a Porsche?

WOOOOOOSH!

Suddenly, there's a familiar ketchup-mustard clad hero by Magik's side. "We gotta stop meeting like this. My mom's gonna want to have you over for dinner...Do you like meatloaf?"

Illyana's attention is pretty much taken up by the car comming at her full-speed because despite her blase attitude, she's all too aware that if she gets cocky with her timing she'll be a smear all over the road. That means that Kid Flash's sudden appearance as her blinking at him in surprise and her witty repartee, it is not so witty. "What? No. Ah, spit and Hades." She looks over at the fast-moving one. "Get the kid out." Then she raises a hand, the car about to hit her any moment and opens a portal wide between herself and the oncomming car while another opens a good fifty feet behind said car. The bright sports car hits the disk of light... and comes out the one behind, charging at the disk of light it just entered.

"Aye-Aye, Blue," Kid Flash burns away after the Porsche and catches up to it with relative ease. "No time for love, Dr. Jones!" he says as he momentarily becomes visible sitting next to the driver. But before a reaction can happen, he's in the backseat, unbuckling the baby at superspeeds and getting the little girl outta there.

Magik essentially has the car 'caught' in a loop. Portal physics. Gotta love it. The driver's freaking out more than a little but his answer? Try to outrun it? Which... doesn't really help. "Good." The sorceress answers grimly as Kid Flash speeds away. As she sees the blur exit the car again, the 'exit' portal vanishes so this time when the car drives into that circle of light, it doesn't reappear. In fact, as the car disappears, Magik teleports out herself. A few moments go by and then another portal opens a few feet off the ground and the driver falls through, wrapped in chains with a *thud*. Another moment later and a larger disk appears, leaving behind the Porche off to the side of the road with Magik perched on the hood. "Outrun a teleporter. They never learn."

Kid Flash only lets the awe show for a split second before getting into character, "Honey, I have been stuck at home all day with this crying child. You go off to work every morning and just leave me to do everything with her. Well, no more. You'll do your fair share around this house, missy. I'm putting my foot down." He approaches and his voice gets a little more dry, "Nice work. Cute kid, huh?"

Magik's response to Kid Flash? One pale brow arches upwards. "Uh huh." She leans a bit over to the side to see the kid, as much to reassure herself that it seems alright more than anything else and then leans back away, wrinkling her nose. "Not a baby sort." Those pure souls. They can often pick up on the demonic power in her and she makes them uncomfortable. Which makes Illyana avoid them. "Nice save." She compliments him.

"Thanks," Kid Flash responds before looking down at the baby. "I should probably go return this...uh...kid. Be right back." He zooms away...don't worry fearful audience...the child is well protected by the speed force cacoon. He returns a few moments later and looks pretty proud of the teamwork. "See? One day together and we're already a nasty team. Evildoers beware."

Illyana nosewrinkles as Kid Flash's ZoomZoom musses her hair and when he gets back she pats the car she's sitting on. "OK, now this one." She says, straight-faced. The comment on their team-up gets a chuckle. "Are you down a hero to sidekick to lately?"

"That's gonna be a trick. Despite my excellent abs and killer biceps, I cannot actually lift that car." KF leans agains the car and looks up at her. "You're implying I'd be /your/ sidekick, then. Crass. Specially since I'm probably older than you. Maybe more experienced."

Magik gives the younger Flash a slow up-down and then quirks a brow at him. Hey, he's seen her brother. That's likely her definition of 'excellent abs' and 'killer biceps'. She doesn't say anything beyond the smirk though. She doesn't make any move to go anywhere because it would be silly to have stopped a car theft just to leave said car there to be re-stolen. "Time's tricky for me." She notes. "So you might be. I go with twenty. Twenty-one in March. First kidnapped by superbaddies age 5. You? And no. Just if you were busy sidekicking it, you couldn't do team-ups, right?"

"Me? 19. Started when I was 12. Guess you got me." Kid Flash nods, "Nah, my mentor is more a midwestern kind of sort. I've been out here a couple of months. Moved to a new city. Start out on my own. Us Flashes can get anywhere quick so it's not like proximity much matters for my and Big Red's partnership."

Magik dips her head. "True enough. I moved out here a few months ago too. I haven't really been doing the active hero thing like you, though. Was more of a 'trouble always comes to find me' kinda deal. At least until the Titans. Colossus wanted me to give it a go, so..." She shrugs.

"You're right," KF says gesturing to himself. "Trouble does always find you. Tell me about the Titans. I gotta admit I kind of always wish I was one."

Magik shakes her head. "I'm not one anymore, so I should leave that to someone that is." She points out with a wry smirk.

"Awww, come on. I'm just a rookie...a new kid in New York looking for information about the Big Teams in the Big City." Kid Flash pouts. "Please?"

"And Titans are based out between Metropolis and Gotham." Magik points out with a light laugh. Then she shrugs. "It's the junior team to the JLA, meant for hero-types that maybe don't have the training yet, or can't do the full-bore Justice League bit. Government funded and backed, which means that people get paranoid about the government trying to make their own super-army and ignore the actual good that it could do. It's headed up by Nightwing, and he's kind of iron-fisted about the whole thing."

"I see," Kid Flash responds, looking up at her. Gone is most of the jokeyness. "Not for you then, huh?"

Illyana purses her lips a bit and then looks back over to Kid Flash. "I'm... not the best team player." She admits. "But I sure as hell am not anyone's minion."

"Oh that's perfect," Kid Flash says with a smile. "On our team, you can be the dark and snide one. And I'll be the bubbly over excited one. It'll be like all those old cop shows. Oh, the hijinx we'll get into. It'll be swell."

Magik gives Kid Flash a long look. "I am not Oscar to your Felix." She tells him gravely, though her lips twitch a bit in an effort not to smirk.

"I don't even know who that is. Are they French?" Pause. Kid Flash looks perplexed. "Maybe you can be Tango and I can be Cash."

"You know Tango and Cash, but not the Odd Couple. Eeesh." Magik shakes her head. "I do actually have some friends I call in when things are more serious." They're kind of like a team. Just without the matching uniforms and whatnot.

Kid Flash's mouth twists as he begins to believe he's starting to come off as lame and friend-desperate. She has some friends she calls in. He...doesn't. Oh. His face lowers in its earlier exuberance.

Magik looks over at Kid Flash as he does his kicked-puppy impression, her lips pressing down into a frown. "I'm just... not really doing the whole hero thing anymore. I tried with the Titans and that ended up being a mess. Stuff needs taken care of and I'm gonna see it gets done. Which... isn't always entirely law-abiding." She admits. She bumps him lightly with her boot. "You probably want a better choice for your whole dynamic duo bit. You've got a legacy and all."

"Well, Blue," KF chuckles, "I do admit that you and I probably polar opposites on the whole 'law-abiding' bit, but you can't deny we have a wonderful chemistry. It'd be a shame to break up over ideology. At least so soon."

Illyana doesn't deny that they work well together, but she can't help but ask. "OK. Why 'Blue'?"

"Why do you think?" he responds, almost right when the words leave her mouth.

"You're color blind?" Magik replies, smirking. She's used to being called 'blondie' from the hair. She's decked out in white and black. Blue? Doesn't really cross her mind.

"Yes. I'm color blind." Kid Flash rolls his eyes. "Look, it was meant as a compliment. Like if someone were to call me Red or Freckles. You have really cool blue eyes. That was about as close as I can get to a genuine compliment, so please take it, keep it, and savor it. There aren't many more where that came from." You may get the idea that this guy is full of it--at least on this angle.

Magik gives a slow blink. "Most people try to avoid looking at my eyes." She says, tone a bit soft. If you gaze long into the abyss... Her gaze cuts down then, looking at her toes. Or maybe the pavement beyond them. "Thank you." It comes out a bit awkwardly. Like maybe she's not used to taking compliments.

"You're welcome," Kid Flash responds. "But enough of this mushy stuff. As partners we have to walk the straight and narrow. Keep things professional. Even with your undying attraction to me. You'll just have to stay strong."

Illyana looks over at Kid Flash then, smirk curving her lips again. She reaches out to pat his shoulder. "It's good that you have your ego to keep you company on those long, lonely nights."

"No one else can stand me for much longer," Kid Flash responds with a wicked grin. "But you're used to it. Trouble always finds you. Do you like...food?"

Illyana can't help but snicker at the question. "Some food." She admits. Amusement makes her eyes glint, like sunlight on ice as she adds, "Not a fan of fast food though."

"Is that a speed-joke? I get that a lot. Especially from women. As my new partner, you need to know, there's just lines you can't cross." Kid Flash swings his arms outward in a baseball-safe pose as if speed jokes are the eternal sin of anyone near him. "Do you like thai?"

"Aw, c'mon. There's so much material there!" Magik objects when he declares all speed jokes verboten. "I do like Thai." She admits. "There's a few really good places in Greenwich." Cafeteria food sucks. And Limbo food sucks. So Illyana is quite versed in the eating establishments around NYU.

Kid Flash drops character for a second and gives an aside, "No, that's how this works, see. I say it's off limits, so then you make tons of jokes about it. And the whole time I'm moving in on you really quick, so let's go get some Thai. I'm buying. Totally just friendsies. It's cool."

"You work with a whole set of rules that I am clueless to." Magik informs him. The mutant genre lacks that sort of comedy most of the time. Flash's timing is impeccable, as the cops finally decide to show up. "We're gonna get looks." Magik comments, given their costumes. She waits, instead of teleporting away so that the Kid can hand off his--err THE baby.

"Of course we are. We'll be in the tabloids. They'll totally get the wrong idea of us. And it'll be totally hot." Kid Flash approaches the police, hands over the kid, explains a lot with his hands, and then heads back to where Illyana is waiting. "Wasn't much of a dad anyhow. Where to?"

"Next stop? Hell." Magik says with one of her trademark smirks, lifting her hands and opening a portal beneath their feet. Kid Flash has another of those glimpses of a twisted landscape and the brush of something dark and sinister against places he didn't know he had before they reappear on the street outside of a Thai restaurant in Greenwich. To the stares of many onlookers. Then there's pointing and whispering.

"You take me through the nicest neighborhoods!" Kid Flash says with mock joy. He links Illyana arm in arm and begins to hop-saunter into the restaurant, trying to put a show on for the onlookers. Definitely a playful chap, this one.

Magik is sort of drug within, since she doesn't make with the hopskipping. Not so playful, is the demon queen. "You eat a lot of sugar, don't you?" She surmises.

"I eat a lot of /everything/. If I ever lose my superpower I'm going to end up on some show, I swear." Kid Flash pulls her along. "You're having fun. Don't deny it." He knocks on the stand where the host hangs out and announces in a fake-english-old-man accent. "Good evening, sir. This young lady and I would love a romantically professional group of seating." "For two." "And not close to the entrance to the kitchen. Or the bathroom. I hate being close to the bathroom. Don't you, love?" He turns to Illyana, nodding and then turns back, "Yes she just hates being too close to the bathroom. Tis terrible for the appetite I'm afraid."

Illyana is probably giving Wally the same look that the host is. That 'you are a strange, strange man' sort of peer. "You need to get out more, don't you? For things other than being a superhero."

"That's why you're coming with me, doll. I can't go out by myself. That's depressing. Especially this time of year." Eventually the pair are shown to seats. It's not clear, at first, if the host will pick somewhere close to the window to get more attention, or farther back to avoid it. He settles on the latter and Wally ceremoniously pulls the chair out for Illyana.

"You need adult supervision?" Magik teases, somewhat bemused as he holds out her chair for her. She sweeps her cloak aside to sit and pushes back the hood. "No family? Sounds like you don't have to worry about making travel plans to get home."

"You may find this incredibly hard to believe, but I'm an only child." Kid Flash zips around to the other side and takes a seat and holds the glass up as if they've been talking for hours. His legs are crossed and he leans back with his off arm propped up on the chair. "My mom and dad are great, but they're not 'fun'. At least not yet. Like I said. 19. Truth is that I've been so busy since I moved here with Superheroing and work and other things that I haven't had time to make friends. You're my first. Sorry."

Magik can't help it. Her brows go up and she smirks as he says that she's his 'first'. "Well. Was it good for you?" She drawls. "Youngest of three." She says of her own family. "And my oldest brother was already out of the house by the time I was born." So the baby of the family. At least for a few years.

"Night aint over, yet, m'lady. Ask me again later." Kid Flash browperks, "Ahh, the baby girl. Colossus is related to you, too? Both being Russian? I'd have assumed he was your boyfriend, but there was that campaign earlier this year when a lot of politicians came out in support of him."

Magik nods in answer. "While I think my brother is fabulous." And then she smirks, because hey. "Not my boyfriend." Because brother and, oh yeah, gay. "He's kind of been my father-figure though. He's taken care of me since I was young and we left Russia." There was that ten-year gap when a demon lord did it instead but shhhh.

"He seems pretty awesome," Kid Flash says with a nod. "Between the JLA, being a mutant, and being gay, he kind of holds the torch for a lot of important issues today. You must be very proud."

"I am." Magik says, tone turning soft for a mmoent, looking down at her menu and smoothing a hand over it. "He's my guiding light, in a lot of ways." What Would Piotr Do.

"It's good that you have that. That's the Flash, for me." The younger version looks at his menu and decides rather quickly. He looks up at her and then past her shoulder where a couple of tourists are snapping pictures. He gives a thumbs up and a goofy smile. "What are you going to get?"

"We'd be lost without 'em huh? I'm glad I didn't decide to call myself Kid Colossus though." Magik teases, eyes glinting with her amusement. "Especially since I didn't get the same powers as he did." She looks down and taps her menu. "Yellow curry with shrimp. And some spring rolls. You?"

"Spring Rolls, Rangoon, Triple Rice, Green Duck Curry....for now.." Kid Flash says before looking up with a smile. "You don't like my outfit. YOu don't like my name. Is there anything about me that you do like? Because I'm no sure if you noticed but you've totally been conned into having dinner with me and it's very likely your image and my image will be on some sort of publication and linked in a way that might seem unflattering to you. You really should have been more on your toes this evening, Blue."

"You don't make me want to use your skin for a lampshade." Illyana deadpans. "So, I figure you're doing pretty good. But, the winds may yet turn and I'm getting new furniture. Besides, you said you're buying. I'm a poor college student." She gives him a level look, amusement still riding her. "Really? You think I'm the one that should be worrying about unflattering stuff being written?"

Kid Flash looks confused, "Yeah. I mean, if I'm out with a hot chick, it can only really enhance my street cred." He thinks for a moment. "There are so many jokes I could make about being your furniture, but they're all secondary to the disturbing Ed Geen imagery you've implanted in my brain."

Illyana squints at Kid Flash. "Furniture? Oh. Lamp." She's still sort of peering at him, as though wondering what jokes he's thinkking of, but not sure she wants to actually know. Finally she shakes her head. "Look, you're the up-and-coming superhero, I'm the Titan dropout that consorts with demons. I think you've got the better rep."

"Well," Kid Flash says with a satisified smile, "That might all be true. Nevertheless, I wouldn't be at all bothered by being linked to someone such as yourself. But, of course, with our professional relationship, we must never allow that to happen. Even we have so much in common like...being poor college kids, having fair hair and pale skin. Under different circumstances, you'd be so lucky. Now, you'll just have to settle for Thai dinners and saving babies."

"And cars. Though I'm not a huge fan of Porches, we did save the car too." Magik points out. When he mentions he's a student as well her brows perk up a bit. She opens her mouth to ask him where, and then closes it with a smirk. "Sorry. Shouldn't ask after the mask-free identity."

"Oh crap. I gave something away. Durn. I'm really bad at this sort of thing." Kid Flash shrugs his shoulders. "What kind of cars do you like? I like cars. A lot." He doesn't own one, but he fixes them. Which is kind of ironic. Well maybe it isn't. What's the official defintion of irony? I forget.

Magik looks thoughtful. "I... never really thought about what kind of cars I like. Huh. I mean, it's not like I'd need to use one y'know?" A huff of amusement. "Of course you'd know. Duh." The pair of them are both much faster than cars! "I just don't really care for Porches. They look like bugs. And not the cute VW kind."

"It's a curse for both of us, for certain. Made high school years real tough for a guy like me. No car? Where do you go to get away from parents with that special someone?" He sighs. "A damn pity. ANd you're right about Porsches. I prefer American cars, personally. Probably because I'm from the midwest and overly sentimental."

"I went to a boarding school." Magik says. "In the middle of nowhere." She doesn't add 'that my brother taught at' because that might give too much away. "All muscle, hmm?"

"Boarding school, huh? Sounds fun. Like camp." Kid Flash chuckles at the muscle comment, "Don't get fresh with me young lady. You might get a peck on the cheek if you're lucky, but nothing more. I'm a gentleman. And I don't move fast with these sorts of things."

"Well that's good. I'd hate to see just how fast I can punch." Magik replies with a chuckle. "It was nice." She says of going to Xaviers, keeping it vague like that, since well, secret identity.

"Oh come on. You can't deny that you're having a wonderful time tonight. Don't play coy," Kid Flash giggles mischeviously before sliding the menu across. "I think I'm going to get all of these. "Wanna share?"

And to fastfoward things, the pair eat a nice meal, Kid Flash signs an autograph for a kid who is up WAY past bed time, and departs without making any moves or even a peck or anything like that.