Second Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

[arsenicmauls]

Fact the first: Gert had gone out this afternoon in search of one (1) sandwich.

Fact the second: Someone (a bartender? Gert hadn't caught his (her?) name, but he (she?) had hair tucked into a baseball cap and seemed very drunk) had been racing around a town with two garbage bags that held a combined two hundred bagels.

Fact the third: Evidently running away from a pursuer, who Gert assumed was the owner of the bagel store, Baseball Cap had thrust one of the bags at Gert and yelled at her to take it and run.

And so it was that a baffled Gert hauled a massive bag of about a hundred bagels up the stairs through town and up to the second floor common room, at which point she proceeded to dump the bag on the counter and collapse on the couch with a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese.

What. The hell.

[[open. i don't know. if you care, it was totally april.]]

Comments

[ultron_junior]

"Not me," Victor said, shaking his head firmly. "I don't love everything. But I like most of it. But Evan sounds pretty miserable, and I just sort of want to tell him to quit being a crybaby, and that's ... really cold."

He chewed at his thumbnail. "You're right," he added. "If people aren't evil, they should do what they want."

[arsenicmauls]

"You want me to talk to him?" Gert offered. "He helped me out once when I first got here. I could try and... give him whatever the opposite of a pep talk is."

[ultron_junior]

Victor squinted toward her, gratitude mixed with concern on his face. "Maybe," he said. "Do you think you can do it and not make it sound like I was bitching about him? 'Cause I'm not, I just -- don't know what to say."

[arsenicmauls]

"You got it," Gert promised. "One vague anti-pep-talk coming up."

Really, anti-pep was her specialty. She should start an anti-pep squad.

"Why do you think he should keep heroing it up, anyway?"

[ultron_junior]

They could shake anti-pom-poms!

"I guess I believe the 'with great power, comes great responsibility' thing," Victor answered cautiously. "It's cheesy, but ... Evan is here for a reason, right? Being a hero is his choice, I know it is, but it still feels wrong to say 'thanks but no thanks' and go back to milking cows."

[arsenicmauls]

"Okay," Gert said slowly, deciding to take that piece by piece, "without getting into the icky religious imposition of the whole 'he's on the planet for a reason' thing, you know an unmotivated superhero is, like, the most dangerous person you can imagine, right?" She'd seen season three of Wendy the Werewolf Stalker; she knew all about what happened when you tried to train someone as a hero who wasn't cut out for it. "Way better that he screw around and just use his powers to turn off the lights in his room and levitate books off high shelves than to stick him in a high-pressure job he doesn't want with a crazy high death toll."

[ultron_junior]

"... You are not supposed to be smarter than me."

Which meant Victor really couldn't argue with what she'd said.

"Okay, but how come you do it? Or any of us? We could, like, hang out in foster care or whatever and decide L.A. is not our problem."

[arsenicmauls]

Gert preened. That would give her something to keep in mind when she met her version of Victor and he got all smug about his dino know-how, thank you.

"Not a superhero," Gert corrected him reflectively, not that he'd actually used that word, "but... I don't know. It's definitely not just because I have a dinosaur and so I can help out, though. If I didn't, and everything else from the past year had still happened the way it did, I'd probably still be doing it."

Which made an argument against powers being a lock-in factor for a career in heroism, as far as she was concerned.

"What about you? Why do you do it?"

[ultron_junior]

Victor thought about saying because I was programmed to but that wasn't the truth. Not anymore.

"Sorry if this makes you want to puke," he began, "but I do believe people are here for a reason. And I promised my mom to help keep people safe, and I want to keep that promise. And ... I dunno. I just like it."

[arsenicmauls]

"Well, liking it's good enough," Gert said. "I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't. And Evan shouldn't either."