| Doug, Rogue and Space Invaders |
| Summary: | Douglock finds a Rogue playing a video game in Mick's Arcade in North Salem by tracking an unclear mutant signature. They talk and during the conversation Doug and urRamsey play the game as well. |
| Date: | 2016-08-11 |
| Related: | None |
| NPCs: | Rogue's friends and other kids in the arcade, urRamsey (Doug's fork) |
| Scene Runner: | NA |
| Social/Plot: | Social |
| Players: |
 .. .. |
Location: Mick's Arcade in Salem Center, New York
Rogue is within the arcade, she's been here for a little over an hour with some of her friends from Westchester, specifically the employees of the Music Center store just down the street.
The group of four are at a table, finished meals in front of them as they're all chatting and laughing. Rogue seperates herself from them, taking her plastic drinking cup with her as she moves toward one of the nearby aracde machines, sets her cup down on its side and she slips a coin out of her black leather pants. She slides the coin into the slot and then starts to play the game, manipulating the buttons and directional stick… some kind of space-invaders game.
Douglock walks into the arcade, following traces of a mutant signature he first noticed on the Cerebra system at Xavier's Institute. He takes a moment to look around before focusing inwardly on input from the emulation of a portable cerebro he has created inside himself. After mapping the results to his surroundings he walks over to stand where he can watch Rogue's progress though the game over her shoulder, not wanting to interrupt her by speaking.
Rogue was blasting away at alien ships as they rushed at her little space vessel in the bottom center of the arcade game's display screen. She was slamming her gloved right hand down on the attack button and lobbing little digitally rendered space laser globs at the enemies!
Her ship was overwhelmed and it exploded in a ball of wonderfully rendered fire and molten metal and it made her sigh with a defeated tone to her voice. She caught the sense that someone was behind her and the girl looked back over her shoulder at the man, her green eyes staring at his face from behind the white bangs of her wild hair.
"Well hey there." She didn't know him, didn't have any idea who he was. But then again, she apparently wasn't from this 'version of earth' and… as she's been told… has replaced whatever Rogue came from this earth.
"You want'a turn on this thing?" She asked the young man, her accent thick and her voice laced with a natural huskiness.
Doug watches the pattern of the attacking aliens as Rogue plays the game, analyzing the patterns they follow and comparing them to a similar game from his own world. When her ship in the game explodes he was going to comment on her game but decides not to and then she addresses him, sounding just like the Rogue he remembers from 'home'.
":I'm not sure if it would be entirely fair,:" Doug replies with a smile in his vaguely synthetic sounding voice. As he smiles the circuit-like lines on his jaw mirror the motion giving his smile a fractal quality.
His response got a laugh out of the southern belle and she turned around to put her back to the arcade machine and to face him fully. She leaned back on the machine's control board and she folded her arms across her stomach, her long gloves covering her hands all the way up to just past her elbows, the leather sleeves of her jacket taking care of the rest.
"So you're sayin' you're better'n me at the game, huh?" She smirked at him. "Well thats okay. I won't hold that against ya." She assumed this guy was some random dude coming up to flirt with her… something she experienced fairly often in places like this.
"You got an interestin' look about ya, where you from?" She asked then.
Doug laughs along with the southern belle and says, ":I'm not challenging you. I'm just certain that I'm better with computers than you are.:" His tone of voice is not that of a braggart, just stating a fact.
":That's a complicated question really. Would you like the short answer or should I just skip to the fully detailed one?:" Doug asks this, speaking in a manner of one familiar to their companion rather than someone he has just met for the first time.
When he said these things, Rogue smirked and she pushed off of her lean and turned around to pick up her cup of ice tea that was sitting beside her on the arcade machine. "I'm sure that you are better'n me at computers as well, Mistah Star Trek." She said, raising the cup up to her lips to place the straw between them. She flashed a smile at him like this and then sipped from her drink and glanced back to the machine. She stepped to the side and motioned to it. "Well its all yours, I already lost my quarte'ah as is anyhow."
":You sure you don't know me?:" he asks and then says, ":I love Star Trek.:"
He steps up to the game console and says, ":Since you insist,:" as he puts his hands on the sides of the control panel and sends tendrils into the machine though gaps on the sides. He doesn't try to hide this from Rogue, but seems to be counting on their positions from keeping others from idly observing his actions.
Inside the machine, Douglock interfaces with the controls. He makes a point of not changing the game physically or altering its programming. Instead, he simply establishes a direct interface between the game and his mind. He triggers the start of the game without inserting a quarter and the game begins!
Doug's control of the ship makes it seem to weave naturally though the motions of the oncoming opponents.
":I was actually born in North Salem, but I'm also completely not from here.:"
He fires the blasts of emulated plasma almost in anticipation of the alien invaders and he quickly reaches Rogue's score…
"I was born human but I'm not any more, I'm a hybrid of human and an alien species you've likely never heard of since you… well, I'm guessing you aren't from around here either based on not knowing my face.:"
… then he surpasses the point she was at when she lost with a greater point total than she had achieved. At that point he releases his hands, retracting the tendrils and allows the game to destroy his ship for the first time.
":Have you been to the school,:" he asks as the next life begins and he turns to look at Rogue instead of the game.
":Or does that not mean anything to you?:" he asks.
Rogue watches the man do all of this and it makes her smirtk. "Forgive me if I think that you somehow cheated." She teased him lightly, sipping on her tea again. She shifted her eyes from the game, back to him and she nodded her head gently a single time. "I've been t'the school. Was there yesterday. Spoke to Jean a day or so before that. Things seem perfectly peachy, othe'ah than… folks swappin' realities. I've told everyone I've met t'call me if they need anythin' from me. Othe'ahwise, I've just been hangin' out… All of this is kinda outta my wheelhouse, ya know? Seems like its more up the alley'a a fella like yourself."
Doug nods. ":I'm accepting it fairly well,:" he admits, ":But its a little weird laying in someone else's bed. Even if you were them. So you're a deepee also like I thought?:" Yes, he seems fine discussing this in public next to the Space Invader's game.
Rogue's head shook at his first statement. "Thats why I'm not stayin' there, neithe'ah." She replied to him then and she took another sip of her sweet tea. His next question made her pause for a moment and she leveled her green eyes upon his face. "What the hell is a 'deepee'?" She asked him in a flat tone of voice.
":Its the abbreviation of Displaced Person pronounced,:" Doug explains and then adds, ":Worth nine points in Scrabble if I could get enough people to accept it,:" with a huge, somewhat geeky looking grin.
One of Rogue's friends from the music store was passing by them on his way to the rest of their group that was huddled around another arcade machine. "Yo, Marie. Mike'n I will show you what a deepee is!" He then cackled like a hyena and joined up with the rest of their friends, handing out a tray full of frsh sodas. "Right Mikey!" He slapped one of the other guys on the back.
Rogue, glared at the man as he walked by and said these. She slapped him on the back as well before looking back to Doug. "Oh. Uh. Yeah, I guess so then. Though I didn't know that any sorta afficial title had been given out already… I hope I don't gotta start wearin' a special badge or nothin'." She said with a light smirk.
Doug shakes his head no. ":I don't believe that'll happen. I know I won't accept that anymore than anyone else I know.:"
("That's two Maries in one twenty-four hour period,") urRamsey says to Doug in their shared mental space.
Doug nods to his fork's comment and asks, ":Do you prefer to be called Marie then?:"
"I don't know." Rogue said then with a little grin. "Maybe if everyone had on nametags they'd be nice'ah to each othe'ah." She took another sip of her sweet tea and then shook the cup and the ice cubes inside of it, nearly emptied cup. As to what she prefers for her name she looked back at him and shrugged her shoulders. "I don't really give a hoot, honestly. Whateve'ah people wanna call me, so long as its not a insult and I then gotta give'em a smack." She said with a sly grin. "What should I label you as, even if ya like Star Trek, ya probably don't want me callin' ya that."
":No, but it was cool,:" Doug says and then actually extends his hand as he says, ":I'm Doug. Doug Ramsey. If we ever go into the field you can call me Douglock.:" He looks down at his hand after saying that and then lowers his hand quickly, knowing that at some points in her past his world's Rogue was touch-adverse even when wearing gloves.
The name he gave made her smile softly and she nodded once. She noticed his hand and it made her then laugh a little. "I can shake hands. So long as the gloves are on. My classic quarantined-monste'ah self." She teased, herself. "Doug it is then… and when I'm feelin' particularly formal. I may even refer to ya as Douglas. Unless that makes ya hate me… I wouldn't want that." With that said she flashed him a grin and turned to go get a refill of tea from the self-serve machine.
Doug assures Rogue, ":No, it wouldn't make me hate you,:" and then adds,":But my mother and grandmothers were typically the only ones who called me 'Douglas',:" as she turns to get her drink.
":So are you staying out here on the streets or have you a place,… Rogue?:" Yeah, he just can't make himself say 'Marie' for her name.
The young woman refilled her cup at the drink machine and she listened to him. A smile on her face, she spun around and took another drink of her refreshed sweet tea. She then nodded her head toward the people she'd come here with. "They got a few small apartments over their store here in town. One of'em was vacant, so I've just taken it as my own little place for now. I figure any day now the smart-types'll figure out whateve'ahs caused this… Deepee'n and they'll get it sorted out, and you'll get your Marie back. Won't have'ta look at my ugly mug eve'ah again." She grinned at him.
("I want a chance to play the game if its okay, sir,") urRamsey asks his primary. Instead of answering Douglock rests a hand on the game as he continues speaking to Marie.
":/My/ Rogue isn't from here any more than I am,:" Doug says as he taps a finger on the game console while tendrils of his flesh extend into it again.
As the game starts behind him, Doug asks, ":Would you like to meet someone who's job it is to keep track of the deepees so that when that day happens they can account for all of us?:"
Another sip of the tea and she nodded her head, reached her right gloved hand up to brush some of those white locks of hair out of her face to keep her vision clear. "I guess that sound slike a pretty wise idea. I don't wanna get left off the ark for when the flood comes, do I?" She said with a wicked little grin. "Problem someone in Manhattan or somethin' though, huh?" She asked. "I heard Logan talkin' to Kurt about that smart fella, the Reed Richards guy. He the one ya mean?"
":No. Though I understand that Mr. Fantastic is working on trying to figure out the solution,:" Doug says corroborating her information. ":No, I mean Pete Wisdom. He works for the British government, but he's often in New York.:" (And he was at the school last night,) he adds to himself in his mind, not wanting to distract urRamsey who is playing a more reasonable game of SI than Doug did earlier.
Rogue snorted a little as she messed with her straw, making it squeaky-noise inside the lid. "Miste'ah Fantastic. Thats quite the ego on that one." She mumbled before leaning back against a wooden support beam in the middle of the room. She looked over at Doug then and she smiled faintly. "I've always enjoyed meeting people from othe'ah countries, so sign me up. So long as I don't gotta give any blood or somethin' weird like that. That process… kinda odd for me anyhow." She was pretty clueless when it came to science stuff, let alone what exactly Douglock was even really suggesting here, precisely, anyway.
Doug laughs, throwing urRamsey's concentration off costing him the current game. Ignoring his fork's complains, Doug simply continues his conversation. ":Oh no… well, I don't think so at least. So, I'll discuss it with him and either put him in touch with you or arrange for a meeting.:"
("Enough playing,") he says to urRamsey as he retracts the tendrils of his flesh back into his body.
Doug smiles at Rogue and asks, ":How should I get in touch with you, by the way?:"
Rogue was distracted by the odd way of playing the arcade game and when the final question came up she had to take a moment to register it. "Oh! Uh, right." She said and turned to set her tea down on the table beside her. She reached into her jacket's side pocket and pulled out a leather wallet. A moment later and she pulled a business card out of it. It read with her full name and the Xavier School information on how to contact her specifically through several ways, but it also had her private cell phone number on it.
"Strangely enough, my phone still works just fine." She said with a growing grin as she offered the card to Doug.
Doug glances at the card for a moment. ":Yeah, its very odd metaphysical stuff going on around here,:" he says before asking, ":Want the card back? I assume you don't have an unlimited supply of them,:" as he holds it out to her, offering its return.
Rogue grinned then and she shook her head. "Nah. Keep it. It makes me feel special t'hand those out. Have'em come back would be like havin' your kid move back in afte'ah collge." She picked her drink up again then and took another sip from it, flashing Doug a big grin.
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