Isabel hid a grin as the other young woman seemed to struggle a bit with her shot. She probably should have thought to mention the burn for the cloud-girl’s benefit, but oh well. She’s just have to learn by doing instead. Eventually she’d stop feeling it, probably right around the point when her brain started to go a little fuzzy.

Ghost seemed like an entirely appropriate name for the woman to have, much better than anything weather-related that she probably could have thought up. Certainly better than Sprinkles. Maybe she could be convinced to haunt the nervous bartender later on in the night. Some disembodied drink orders would put a nice bit of variety in his monotonous cocktail mixing.

At the mention of her soggy shirt she simply shrugged. “Not like I’ve never been caught in a rainstorm before. It’ll dry soon enough.” She couldn't say she'd ever been caught in the rain under a mutant cloud, but it was essentially the same thing. After a few more drinks the wet fabric wouldn't feel so irritating anymore.

Seeing the brain freeze crawl over Ghost's expression helped Isabel to make her next selection as she reached for the reddish drink and decided to save the frozen one for after when it'd be a little less slushy. She preferred frozen drinks as they tended to mask the alcohol taste, but she could deal with less ice if it meant a lower chance of also suffering a brain freeze. It was hard to keep consuming when clutching a hurting head.

Isabel gave a dismissive wave while she tipped her glass to her lips and the other woman thanked her for tagging along. "I'm not the kind of person that has a lot of plans to juggle around, so it's easy to do stuff on the fly. Plus, I'm not gonna pass up a legit reason to drink for a few hours," she replied as the drink made its way back to the table. The stormy woman hadn't outright aggravated her yet so there was hope that the evening wouldn't go too badly, especially once the drinks really started flowing. "And if you decide you do wanna crush someone later, I'm down."

This girl had a really good outlook on life. Yeah. It was just a passing rainstorm. That could be extrapolated out to mean that Ghost's predicament was just temporary. It kind of was. She would die in... what? 3 years?

Yeah that was swig worthy, brain-freeze or not.

Ghost huffed out a big, unnaturally long breath. "I don't know about crushing people... I kinda already smashed a bratty Mansion kid today." Ghost addressed her drink because she didn't want to see the disappointment settle into Isabel's eyes. "With his own laptop." She rolled her lips in on each other. Not her proudest moment.

Oh dear. She just left him there! Maybe Ghost should call Gemma. Or... Sam...

She didn't move to take her phone out of her waistband.

If he was dead, calling someone wouldn't fix anything.

"I don't want to feel sad about this."

Ghost took the red drink in hand and gave it a taste, since that was the one her new friend Isabel had taken. It was sweet. Not as sweet as the frozen drink. It sort of made her tongue feel a bit funny.

And now she was getting herself all worked up again. Being angry was a much better feeling than being sad. How dare they? "Or maybe it was the internet that needs crushing. Can we do that?"

Had it not been for the guilt written all over the Ghost woman's face, Isabel might have doubted that she'd heard her correctly. It was a little hard to believe that such a soft-spoken, innocent little lamb of a woman could have assaulted a kid with his own computer. Though the remorse that was obviously bothering her made it seem much more like an accident as opposed to the kind of assault Isabel was usually involved in. Premeditated attacks didn't often lead to drink-until-it's-forgotten guilt in her experience.

"You hit a kid with his own laptop? Is that it?" she asked, a little confused over why such a minor crime would create such a somber mood. Especially if the kid was so bratty that smashing had become an option, which was totally understandable. She often anted to smash a number of bratty Mansion residents herself. "The brats at the Mansion tend to be pretty sturdy. I don't think hitting him with a laptop it going to do any lasting damage. And don't they have a healer anyway? Smashed faces can't be that hard to fix." She'd had the displeasure of meeting the Doc herself at one point. He'd managed to keep her from bleeding to death, so she was fairly confident that a concussion or a broken nose or whatever would be a walk in the park for the grumpy old goat.

The internet on the other hand was a whole other can of worms. Isabel knew from experience thanks to a certain redheaded devil woman. "Unfortunately once something's on the internet it's pretty much there forever. Not much you can do about it but wait it out. We could probably find some internet users and smash them, though."

> "Is that it?"

"Well. No." Ghost squirmed. Isabel was taking this all remarkably well. The elemental hazarded a peek over the top of her glass as she tossed back another gulp.

She didn't seem disappointed at all, actually. More like... mad?

>"And don't they have a healer anyway?"

"Yes they absolutely do." How could she have forgotten? Just because she was constantly trying to forget one healer, didn't mean she should have forgotten them all. And, while DocProf would not approve of her actions, at least he would get to see the whole story before he made his judgement call. Could psychometric healing visions be used as testimony or evidence or something? Ghost fished out her phone and shot a quick text to the healer along with her question.

Please go help the new student, Jiri, who is on the floor of the History classroom. Slightly related question: Are your visions admissible in court?

There. That was better. Suddenly Ghost could breathe again. That geezer could bring people back from the absolute brink. Jiri would be okay. Mostly. Surely. Right?

>"Unfortunately once something's on the internet it's pretty much there forever."

There was something about that statement that made Ghost inspect Isabel closer. She did look a tad familiar now that she was thinking about it. Had she seen the girl on the wrong side of the internet? Perhaps if Ghost confessed, Isabel would open up as well. "So... that laptop thing." Ghost licked her lips. Smothed her skirt. Put down and picked up her glass. "It was maybesortakinda streaming. Live." Ghost trailed down to the merest squeak of a word there, totally nonsensical.

Isabel allowed the guilty woman to text someone in peace while she finished the reddish drink and moved on to the frozen one. It was probably safe to assume the text was being sent to someone in the Mansion to fetch the grouchy healer. She hoped it was an inconvenience for him as her personal dealings with the Doc had not been entirely pleasant. It'd serve him right to have to go hunting around the Mansion only to find a kid with a black eye.

The laptop thing was apparently a bigger deal than she'd assumed. More than just beaning a kid off the head with his computer. The following jumble of words was a little harder to follow, especially since the crowd was starting to grow and get noisier and the drinks between them were making words just a little bit less distinct. 'Streaming Live' made it through clearly enough though, which made the dilemma a little more understandable, but still not nearly as bad as her reaction warranted.

"If you think tossing some kid's laptop on him during a live feed is the worst thing you could do you can't have been on the internet very long," she said with a hint of a smirk as she took a sip of the slushy dink. So sheltered, so innocent. This poor girl would have a heart attack if she heard any of the bonemancer's stories. Maybe after a few more drinks she'd let one of her tamer ones slip to make the woman feel better about her own heinous crime.

"The internet is stuffed fulla videos of people getting hit with stuff. Yours'll get lost in all that noise before too long. And it's definitely not the worst thing you can find there." She had worse things on the web, though it hadn't been her idea or her choice. Maybe one day that stuff would get lost in the noise, too. But certainly not as quickly as a simple funny injury video. "The kid probably had it coming anyway if you had to throw his stuff at him. He can come find me with his camera and I'll throw something at him, too. It can be like his signature video ending or something."

"I know what you're doing." Ghost sipped her red drink. Isabel had already finished hers. She had to catch up. "You're trying to make me feel better." She crossed her arms- well, arm. The other one had a drink in it, so the gesture was probably lost. "I'm grumpy and I feel badly for being that stupid. Yeah. It'll probably pass from attention, but I am me forever, you know? I won't ever escape from it. Strangers will ask me on the street, 'hey! You're that chick who beat a kid with his own computer! Can I take a picture?'" She could be forever branded as a table flipper. Ghost hunched in her seat, both hands on the drink now as she tipped up back. Grumpy, indeed.

The fact that he had it coming... well, she should have been more adult about the situation.

As the club started to fill, for some reason the two girls were getting a lot of side-eye and hushed attention. It wasn't long into Ghost's brown drink when two guys slid into the booth, one on Isabel's side and one on Ghost's.

"Hey! You're the girl from the calendar, right?!"
"Can we get a picture?"

Calendar? Oh! Now that she was looking, Isabel was famous. Someone had tried to get her to stock Isabel calendars at the bookstore. Her mutant power was to make some kind of bikini.

"Uh, yeah kinda." Making the wispy young woman feel better was pretty much the entire point of inviting her to get blackout drunk before the end of the night. Isabel wasn't exactly the best at consoling others so she wasn't going to waste her breath on to many 'there, there's in between drinks. She was going to call it as she saw it and the way she saw it beaning a kid off the head was pretty low on the list of detestable things to do to someone. She wasn't fibbing to spare the girl's feelings. Minor assault just wasn't that big of a deal.

"So if someone asks you for a picture tell 'em off. Just because your face might be on the web doesn't mean you're obligated to play nice with anyone that recognizes you. Not that I think too many-"

Her statement trailed off as two strangers invited themselves to take a seat at their table. One of them had actually decided to sit next to her like the action wouldn't immediately put his life at risk. She didn't care for the way they were grinning at her and wasted little time putting a scowl on her face. She was deciding how best to get rid of them without getting her and her drinking partner into too much trouble when the choice of some severely unfortunate words fell out of their mouths.

Making Ghost feel better by trying to talk her down wasn't working. Maybe a small demonstration would give her some idea of what could be worse than a laptop crashing into someone's forehead.

"Get away from me," she replied, her voice calm but unmistakably threatening. She saw their smiles falter and felt the weight on the seat next to her shift a little further away but they made no move to get up. Maybe they thought they could still weasel a photo out of her anyway, or maybe they were just a little too shocked to move yet. She wasn't particularly fussed over the details. All that mattered was that they were still seated.

Her hand tightened around her half finished drink for only a brief moment before she swung it around and struck the head of the man sitting beside her. The slush spattered the table and soaked the man's face and shirt as he practically launched himself out of the seat clutching his face, his friend not far behind him. Isabel calmly shook her hand to rid it of some of the liquid that had covered it while watching the stranger with detached interest. He'd just barely avoided losing an eye as he'd flinched at her swing, but he's still be digging glass out of the few lacerations running across the side of his head.

She flagged down the staring bartender for a towel to clean the blood and alcohol off of her hand and to wipe down the table with before turning back to Ghost. She'd already lost interest in the young men as they scrambled for the door, finding the untouched brown drink left sitting on the table to be far more deserving of her attention.

"See? You could do worse."

Her friend was persuasive, decisive, and unapologetic. Isabel swung that glass full of slush hard enough to break it and a the guy's face all at the same time.

Ghost sat still, in awe and horror as she remembered where else she had seen that green bow.

It was a spider-looking thing made of bone. Quick and agile, the creature struck at something outside of the King Pharmaceutical building in the midst of the fight. Ghost was busy. She hadn't really been looking too closely so she was surprised when the bone-creature passed her and at its core was an armored woman. Even more surprised when it kept going and Ghost noticed that from the back she could see a large minty green bow bobbing behind the spider.

That was years ago. Lifetimes ago.

The guys were completely gone and Isabel had cleaned up after herself by the time an introspective Ghost came back to the here and now. Isabel. She was a very dangerous lady. A bone manipulator and a member of the secret society of bad guys.

And yet.

She was the one who had taken the time to comfort a distraught little cloud.

"Things aren't as simple as I thought they were." Ghost downed the rest of whatever that red stuff was. It didn't burn, but her cheeks were starting to feel warm and her head felt a little disconnected.

It wasn't a blackout until she couldn't remember anything.

"Do you dance?" Because dancing seemed like a safer, potentially less violent way to get out of a funk.

The other woman was taking the display of aggression pretty well considering she'd been cloud-sobbing all over the sidewalk because she'd hit a kid with a laptop. Isabel let Ghost process the event while the nervous waiter clumsily cleaned the glass and various liquids off of the floor and she pulled a couple of pieces of glass out of her skin and almost as clumsily stitched up the few cuts she'd given herself.

She gave a small grin at the wispy woman's observation and shrugged before taking a sip of her remaining drink. Things tended to be a little more black and white for Isabel, but she could see where stuff got a little more grey in certain situations. Throwing a laptop versus breaking a guy's face with a glass seemed a bit less grey to her in terms of which was worse, but for someone like Ghost who seemed to be genuinely distressed over personal acts of violence she could see where it might be a bit more conflicting.

"Sure, I dance," she replied, laying her glass and the stained cloth on the table a little too roughly before sliding out of the booth. Dancing wasn't usually her first choice when she visited the club, preferring to drink and watch the other patrons mill about, but she could accommodate Ghost and play on the dance floor for a little while especially since she was reacting to everything so graciously. The pleasant hum that was starting to settle at the back of her brain may or may not have made the suggestion more enticing as well.

The crowd on the dance floor was starting to get thicker, but it hadn't yet reached the point of being uncomfortable while trying to maneuver between bodies. Most people tended to give Isabel a bit more wiggle room whenever they noticed her anyway which helped to prevent too much of a claustrophobic crush.

But before she threw herself completely into the whole dancing thing she decided it would be a good idea to pull her phone out and snap a picture of herself with Ghost in the background and send it to her overbearing parental figure.

Look I am making friends and bring social and I ha e only maimed one person d far I deserve a reward layer I ambeing so good!!

This was such a good idea.

Dancing was Ghost's new favorite thing. Ever.

It felt good to move her body with abandon. She put her hands up and let her hips, lacking as they were, take it from there. It was even a little bit challenging when her cheeks were so warm and she felt so brave. Sometimes her steps didn't go like she planned them. Sometimes she misjudged things. She was so suuuuure that guy had been like just a little further away. But then, she had a new friend to dance with! He put his hands on her waist and that was probably okay so Ghost just kept dancing until she noticed her friend had stopped dancing.

"Oh! Can we do more pictures?" Ghost pounced Isabel and her phone on the dance floor and made sure they got at least one picture cheek to cheek with semi-pursed lips. Was that the take a picture button or the video or the send? It was hard to tell under the flashing lights and the thumping bass.

And you know what? Ghost didn't even really care. This was what young, powerful semi-friend-acquaintance mutants did. Take pictures. Drink. And dance. And maybe throw punches or laptops. "Consequemces be ... uh... well, those are dumb. Let future Ghost worry about that!" Okay. Violence was one thing, but she still felt foolish cursing.

Yeah. Dancing was definitely a good thing to focus on. Ghost tugged on Isabel's hand until the two of them could dance together.

She'd been caught. The super subtle flash of her phone held high into the air had not gone unnoticed and she was being punished for her self indulgence with demands for additional pictures.

The only warning she'd had of the incoming body was a split second view of a tiny white-headed blur as she snapped another photo before Ghost gently collided with her and squashed a hot cheek against her own. Isabel wasn't upset over the friendly assault, though. In fact it all seemed rather funny and she obediently allowed the other woman to coax her into making faces into the camera while she fumbled to hit the shutter button. It was a little hard to tell which bits were still pictures and which ones wound up being snippets of video but she didn't particularly care.

She was going to send every single one of them to Zephyr.

Hopefully he was trying to spend a quiet night to himself or something. That's what he got for always getting her up so early but also she really was behaving and she so totally deserved to be praised for playing nice with Ghost.

"Be damned!" she eagerly agreed and snapped one last picture, quickly turning her head to plant her lips against the other woman's warm cheek just as the animated shutter clicked and sent it to the windbag for additional shock value. She was feeling very amused with herself and her brilliant plan while she allowed herself to be pulled more fully into the fray.

Moving felt good. The base thumping in her chest felt good. Even the press of bodies didn't feel altogether unpleasant. It was nice to get lost in the mindless indulgence and not care about anything or anyone else. She usually did her drinking alone and away from the dance floor and she had to admit that this was a nice change of pace. "You should totally hit more kids with technology cuz then you can do fun stuff like this forever."

A cheek kiss! Ghost didn't immediately dislike it. Did that mean... something? That meant something. The dancing was fun, but it wasn't enough to shut down Ghost's thinking entirely. It was something about Cafas...

Oh! She was being decisive! Making choices and acting on her gut feelings! Cafas would be proud!

"That's a waste of technology!" She could have fun sans-smashing. Just a little couple drinks and already things seemed a lot better.

And, it was something of a novelty for Ghost to dance with a girl. They kicked and moved and spun and shimmied, all the while connected by the fingertips they kept raised above their heads. Because, in da club while unattached, you dance with your hands up. The song told her as much many, many times over with it's repetitive chorus.

It seemed something of a novelty for the crowd too. Not the two women part. There were a few of those already. Maybe it was the face-smashing part because as crowded as the dance floor was getting, Ghost and Isabel still had a little more room to maneuver.

Or maybe it was they're totally awesome moves. Total possibility.

Ghost had to lean in close to be heard over the music. Were they actually turning it up as the night went on? "I don't think this is blackout drunk yet."

She had to grin at the technology comment. The woman was funny when she wasn't busy berating herself over silly things that were totally not a big deal. And if Isabel knew who the kid she'd assaulted was then she probably would have agreed with the sentiment. There were far more worthwhile things to be beating people with.

The cloudy woman was allowed to take the lead while Isabel followed along with the movements to the best of her abilities. Dancing wasn't her strongest talent, but when they were in the middle of a crowd of people who were also drinking skill didn't tend to matter too much. Following a leader made it easier, too. And she figured Ghost could use the feeling of freedom and control after the breakdown she'd had and the fallout that might follow which she'd be unable to control.

She shook her head as Ghost leaned in and had to practically shout to be heard over the booming music. "Not even close," she replied in an equally loud voice. Not that either of them would know for sure whether or not they were blacking out until the next morning, but she knew for a fact they hadn't had enough alcohol to be anywhere near that level of drunkenness.

"We need so much more alcohol for blackout. So much." She spun around trying to spot the nervous bartender that had been sort of hovering at a safe distance since Ghost had accidentally roped him into being responsible for Isabel's service for the evening. It was hard to find him when she was trying to dance and look through a bunch of other bodies between her and the bar at the same time, though.

"I don't think we can drink and dance at the same time."

So much? So much sounded expensive.

Expensive was something that passive Ghost would have let stop her from trying to have this new experience.

"We can take a break and come back to it." The crowd was getting a bit braver since Ghost and Isabel were moving slower to discuss their alcoholic options. Someone bumped Ghost from behind and if her head had not already been next to Isabel's ear, they probably would have smashed their noses together.

When Ghost turned around to ... something... there was a freshly evacuated space.

Must've been an accident.

"Do you have a favorite?" Taking a break sounded like a better and better idea. "Maybe more of the shots?" They burned worse, but the little cups were super cute.

Spacing out their dancing was probably a good idea if they were aiming for blackout. They could still achieve it, but the more the moved the longer it would take to reach their goal. Thankfully the crowd was making it easy to move on and off the dance floor as most people were pretty eager to stay out of Isabel's way for fear of accidentally bumping her a little to roughly and triggering her temper.

She made her way to the bar with the other young woman in tow, only a little clumsy a she wove around people and tables. The bartender had beaten them there and was anxiously shifting his gaze between the two, eager to start putting an order together and probably hoping it'd get them back to the dance floor and away from him faster.

"I like anything sweet, really. Or sour. I really like sour drinks," she said, contemplating her next drink order before Ghost suggested more shots. That was a good idea. Shots would definitely work faster than mixed drinks. Mixed drinks could wait until they were even drunker.

"Yes. Shots. You should try Tequila. Tequila will make you so happy," she agreed, promptly turning to the bartender an confirming the order for several shots which were delivered just as quickly along with a pair of salt shakers and a collection of lime wedges. "You lick the salt off your hand, take a shot, and then bite a lime." she explained, picking up one of the shots and a salt shaker for herself. "You are gonna feel so awesome."