(( McNulty's is a completely nondescript middle-of-nowhere neighborhood bar specializing in cheap beer and surprisingly good whiskey. It's small and dimly lit, with about a dozen stools at the bar, and four booths by the wall. The bartender, a surly middle-aged woman with overly bleached hair and pancake makeup, is watching a soap opera on a small TV under the bar; you have to make an effort to get her attention. Three of the stools at one end are patronized by beer-soaked regulars engaged in a loud, pointless, and apparently permanent argument about something. Rupert and Stanley (aka Sonya) are sitting in one of the booths, far from everyone else. ))

(( Picks up from Registration day 1 part 2. Rupe -- you can either have joined Stanley/Sonya when she left that thread, or arranged to meet later, up to you.))

(( Sonya's current appearance: 28-year-old police officer, Stanley Shepherd. 5'10", 210 #, a bit of a pot-belly, pale-skinned redhead. Not currently in uniform.))

Now that they're both actually here and talking, Sonya realizes she has absolutely no idea how to actually get information out of this guy.

It always looks so easy on television, but really, what is she supposed to say? "So, you're dating a mutant, huh? How'd that happen?"... yeah, real smooth. "So, I've been wondering, are there any secret ways to break out of that facility?" "Hey, here's an idea -- let's go rescue all the guys they just arrested!" Anything interesting runs the risk of giving away too much.

She settles for "I'll get this round" to postpone the inevitable, gets up and bangs on the bar to get the barkeep's attention. When she looks up begrudgingly Sonya makes a next-round hand gesture, indicating the two of them, and waits until she gets an acknowledging nod before sitting back down.

The silence grows awkward, and Sonya finally decides to take a chance on something provocative. If she says too much, she figures, she can always blame it on the drinks, and whether he argues with her or agrees with her she'll have learned something. "You know, I don't mind tellin' you, Rupe... this whole thing don't sit right with me. I didn't become a cop so I could beat up teenage girls, I don't care what kind of freaky powers they've got! It just ain't right, y'know?"

((ooc: I shall pick “arranged to meet later”.

Rupert changed into his off-duty clothes: gray sweatpants, and a black Pink Floyd T-shirt.))

As uncomfortable silence evolved into bone-jarringly awkward silence, and Shepherd offered to buy drinks just to have something to say, Rupert realized something: he was here because he didn’t want to get wasted alone. No, more than that: because he was looking for someone to offload on. ...Great. This is exactly what he’d done with that freak Emerald, and with Iris—poor Iris; he’d thoroughly scared off that young woman. He’d picked Stanley Shepard as his drinking partner because he didn’t really know the guy, and that made him an easy target for ranting.

Sloshed drunken ranting was not a pretty sight. But here was Stanley, there was the bartender bringing their first round of alcohol, and here was him feeling like he was ready to punch something into the wall or shout himself hoarse. I will not rant, Rupert promised himself. I will have three or less drinks, then go back to the privacy of my own apartment to swim to the bottom of a bottle of the cheapest, foulest crap I can find. I will not, he repeated to himself, firmly, rant on Shepard.

"You know, I don't mind tellin' you, Rupe... this whole thing don't sit right with me. I didn't become a cop so I could beat up teenage girls, I don't care what kind of freaky powers they've got! It just ain't right, y'know?"

...

......

.........Well, crap. There went that resolve.

“Stanley,” he said, raising his glass in a toast to who-knows-what, “here’s what you have to remember: half of those teenage girls are murders, and the other half are in-training to be. Mutants, they’re all...” he paused for a moment, swilling his glass. Images came into his mind. Emerald picking out a new pair of tennis shoes, Raina—drenched in broccoli soup—laughing, Michael’s open face, Ruby’s cries for her sister. He squashed them all down, and took a swig to wash out the bitter taste they’d left in him. “Mutants aren’t human. They can think, they can feel, but they aren’t human. They’re... beyond us. If we don’t control them, they’re going to take us all down. It’s just their nature. They can’t coexist with us: they... break things. That girl that stabbed at the officers today—the one with the bone weapons?—she’s one of the three that slaughtered our people at the Sanctuary. Unprovoked; they picked a fight, then they waited for us to come in to break it up, and just started mowing us down. That redhead the guards were beating up on? Her and her sister—you know this—they’ve been escalating things, all over the city. That last time they faced the police... it’s only a matter of time until they start killing people. It’s not an issue of ethics here, Shepard. It’s an issue of survival. Are we going to take this crap sitting down, or are we going to try and get in a few punches back?” He upended the rest of his glass, and set it on the table with a clack. “Leave the morals to the rest of the population. Us, it’s our job to keep everyone safe from these freaks. I’ve figured something out—it doesn’t matter what the hell we think. We’ve got to do our jobs. Protect and serve.” He stared down at his empty cup, as if surprised it was gone.

....If this was during round one, his mouth and Stan’s ears were in trouble.

Sonya’s not entirely sure what Rupert is talking about, but he’s said enough to give her a somewhat disturbing picture of her new allies. So is that just bigotry talking? Or did they really do that stuff? She’s reminded of her initial reaction to the Order, before all this fighting started… they did seem like fairly dangerous folks.

Of course, that just proves how stupid a plan all this “registration” stuff is… she’d come in as a neutral, and the police had turned her into an enemy. But she’s not about to say that to Rupert. Mostly, she just tries hard to look like none of this is news to her… presumably Stanley already knows all this stuff, and while she’s been getting a lot of signals from his memories about what is and isn’t familiar, it doesn’t seem to work so well for this kind of abstract stuff.

“Oh, um… that was her?,” she asks, to cover up her ignorance, “I, didn’t recognize her.” There… that should be safe enough. “Anyway… yeah, I know, I know. And, hey, whatever happens to the crazy bone-girl and her cop-killer friends, they earned. But… oh, hell, I dunno. It just doesn’t sit right, pistol-whipping a girl for spitting in the face of some desk-sitter. Hell, I wanna do that myself half the time, I just ain’t got the guts.”

She wants to add something about having a daughter that age, but she’s not sure if that’s Stanley’s memory or her own confabulation, and Rupert might know. Besides, she’s not really out to convince him of anything, just give him a reason to keep talking. Which seems to be working, especially if he keeps bolting drinks down like he’s doing.

> “They’re... beyond us. If we don’t control them, they’re going to
> take us all down. It’s just their nature. They can’t coexist with
> us: they... break things.”

Sonya nods slowly at that. Maybe he’s right, at that… seriously, how does anyone normal co-exist with someone like Abyss? She’d never thought of herself as a soldier, but having an angry armed man talk about people like her as the enemy brings things into a new perspective for her. Well, fuck… if there’s gonna be a war, then I know what side I’m on.

Still, she keeps coming back to the redhead at the coffee shop, the way she looked at this guy, the way she freaked at the thought that her cover might get blown.

> “Leave the morals to the rest of the population. Us, it’s our job to
> keep everyone safe from these freaks. I’ve figured something
> out—it doesn’t matter what the hell we think. We’ve got to do
> our jobs. Protect and serve.”

Sonya nods emphatically. “Damn right. Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of fucking night, right?” It occurs to her only after she’s said it that that’s the post office, and she chuckles loudly to make it seem like a joke. “Anyway, you’re right, Rupe. We just enforce the law, is all. Law says we beat up kids, we beat up kids. Figurin’ out the morals, that’s a fucking politician’s job, right?”

She takes a swig of her drink that looks a lot bigger than it is, and looks around for someplace to discretely dump the bulk of it; she has no intention of matching Rupert drink for drink tonight.

“I guess what throws me is there ain’t no way to tell who’s who no more. They look like us, they sound like us… shit, anyone in this room could be a mutant and we’d never know it! Hell, it’s just like fags, but worse!” She’s not sure about that tack; police have a reputation for homophobia but she doesn’t get that vibe from this guy, so she rushes on to the point she’s hoping to get to. “You ever meet any? I mean, not like firefights and stuff, I mean, just like as if they were normal folks, at a coffee shop or restaurant or something?”

By this time, Rupert had just gotten round four delivered with rounds one-through-three chasing each other around in his empty stomach. This night was not destined to end well for him. Rupert had come in here knowing that, though: he didn’t drink often, but when he did, he drank until he could see the floor of a back alley between his knees. He took a modest sip, looked Stanley Shepard in the eyes, and held up three fingers.

“Okay... Okay. Four things.

“One: I’m sorry, I forgot—you have a daughter about the age of those freaks, don’t you? Shit, that must be a whole new perspective. So that’s brings me—” Quite logically, he congratulated himself, as he stared at his fingers for a moment, and then folded one down, “to point two: don’t you damn parrot at me what you think I want to hear. You understand?” He took a swallow that drained half of round four, and set his cup back down. Somewhere between the cold glass kissing his lips and his cheap lover for the evening slinking down into his belly, he had an incredibly good idea: he should explain what he meant to Stanley.

“Do you even know how screwed up that sounded, what you just said? ‘Law says we beat up kids, we beat up kids’,” he diligently quoted, and picked up his cup. “That,” he shoved his mug towards Shepard for emphasis, and accidentally sloshed a drop of amber gold on the guy’s chin. “Is bullshit. Really. Total bullshit. If they wanted robots doing this job, they’d replace us all with those damn, damn—” He swirled his cup in a slow circle, eyes rolled upwards as he fished for the word, “—robot... things. Stalkers! They’d replace us with Stalkers.

“But we,” he set his cup down with a force that made the liquid inside jump, “are not robots. We’re not mutants, either. We are humans. Part of hu-fucking-manity. That means we’ve got some brains in our heads, for better or worse, and we’d better damn well use them. This law, this law...” he trailed off for a moment, distracted, suddenly, but the image of Raina singing. He pushed the Ice Queen back into his box of unwanted memories, and picked up where he’d left off: “This law says muties have to get registered, so we can tell which of them is committing the crimes. It does not say to fucking pistol whip teenagers and beat up on kids. The politicians who made it don’t give a flying rat’s ass about morals, and you know it. They’re the ones who put aside extra money for camps that look like a bad-taste remake of World War II. Not us. We didn’t do that—we just get handed the laws.”

Round five was in front of him and the barkeep was walking away: he wasn’t quite sure when that had happened, but he diligently picked up his new cup, and used it to gesture at Stanley. “Laws are amoral. Without morals. The law isn’t about morals. The law is about keeping society from tearing itself apart. We, the ever-fucking-appreciated-and-damn-infallible-enforcers of the law—it’s our job to put the morals into the laws they give us. And... this was going somewhere... I... Fuck! Shepard, don’t beat up on the muties just because no one’s going to complain if you do. You see anyone else doing it, you tell them to give it a rest.

“Point four! Don’t you use that word ‘f@g’ around me. Hell, don’t use it at all. People can’t help how they’re born.”

He took a healthy sip out of round five, seemingly unaware that he’d skipped point three. Since he’d ticked off all the fingers he’d been holding up, all must be right with the world. He set his cup back down, and blinked across the table at his fellow officer. “Don’t you even get me started on the freaks I’ve met without knowing it, Shepard. That’s another thing: they’re all liars. Liars,” he repeated, emphatically.

Wow, Sonya thinks to herself, having sat quietly through Rupert's rant. This "get them drunk and question them" thing works pretty well, after all!

Not that she's really learned much of anything worth knowing, other than that Rupert can't count worth a damn when he's drunk (which has helped solve the problem of what to do with the drinks she doesn't want to drink... after round three Rupert started cheerfully downing her drinks with his own). Well, that, and that Stanley really does have a teenage daughter.

If this were a real conversation she'd slap him upside the head and make him face the contradictions in what he's spouting. 'Leave the morals to the rest of the population' but 'it’s our job to put the morals into the laws they give us'... 'don’t beat up on the muties' but 'It’s an issue of survival' and we've got to 'get in a few punches back'... 'People can't help how they're born' but humans and mutants can't coexist, 'it’s just their nature, they... break things'... 'it doesn’t matter what the hell we think' but 'we’ve got brains in our heads and we’d better damn well use them.'

Actually, she's tempted to rub his nose in it anyway, because really he doesn't seem dumb enough not to realize it already... and that's when she makes the first important realization of the night. Sweet Jesus... he really doesn't know what he's saying, does he? She's seen this before, though not as extreme, and it slowly dawns on her that Rupert isn't necessarily the enemy he'd seemed to be at first. Not that he's an ally, either, not by a long shot! What he is, she realizes, is the most internally conflicted man she's ever met in her life.

> “Don’t you even get me started on the freaks I’ve met without knowing it,
> Shepard. That’s another thing: they’re all liars. Liars”

For just a moment, Sonya feels a twinge of guilt... after all, she's lying to him right now. Only for a moment, though, until she thinks about what his reaction would have been if she'd told him the truth about herself, or about Raina, or --
....
Oh.
...

All at once, she gets it. She can't be sure, of course, but she'd seen the way those two looked at each other, and she's seeing the way he'd ranting tonight, like it's something personal. And, OK, yeah, maybe bone-girl did kill his friends and stuff, but that doesn't come close to explaining why he's flip-flopping like this, or where the "liars" business comes from. What does explain it is if he found out about Little Miss Redhead.

The poor shmuck. Sonya really does feel bad for the guy, at least a little. But she doesn't let that distract her from doing her job. If there's a lever she can use to move him, she's pretty sure she just found it.

Except how do I use it? Even drunk, this guy isn't stupid... he's not going to be easy to manipulate. She's already lost a point when he noticed her feeding him what she figured he wanted to hear, she doesn't want to make that mistake again.

So, OK... let's go the blunt road, then. It's risky, but it might get her more information than she'd get in hours of less risky conversation. "Man, Rupert," she mumbles into his mug, "that redheaded mutie really got to you, huh? What's she --" Sonya stops in mid-phrase... she'd been about to go with something crude again, along the lines of 'what are muties like in the sack?', when some instinct warns her off of that approach. "What was her name, again?," she asks instead.

She puts the mostly full mug down on his side of the table and waits.

"Man, Rupert, that redheaded mutie really got to you, huh? What's she -- What was her name, again?"

Rupert gaped at his fellow officer for a moment. Then he began sputtering. “How the hell did you know about—?” The answer to his own question reared its ugly head. He didn’t even have to ask. With the utter certainty that a man gets when he’s thoroughly sloshed, Rupert knew, just knew, the answer. He didn’t even give Stanley a chance to provide one of his own. He just groaned, and ran a hand through his hair. “McKenzie and Black. You heard about this from McKenzie and Black, didn't you? I am going to kill them.” Somehow, another drink had manifested in front of him. What was this, round seventeen? Six? Ten and a half? Rupert had lost track. He had a saying for situations like this, though: don’t look good bar service in the mouth. He downed it.

McKenzie and Black: the officers who had, what seemed like an eternity ago, been starting something with a yellow-eyed mutant in a coffee shop when he and Raina and a girl named Ali had walked in on things. It might have come up, in casual conversation around the precinct coffee machine, that the pretty little dyed-red head was his girlfriend. And he happened to know that the partners had been in on the Mansion raid. It didn’t take all the liquor in the state to piece things together. Rupert slumped down in his seat. “Raina. Her name is Raina. ...How many people know?” He was praying fervently incoherent prayers that McKenzie and Black hadn’t been running their mouths off to everyone. It was bad enough being in love with a freak without having every beat officer and their partner knowing about it.

He had a mission for the night: drink enough to have forgotten about all of this in the morning.

> “You heard about this from McKenzie and Black, didn't you? I am going to kill them. Raina. Her name is Raina. ...How many people know?”

Sonya's first instinct is to ignore both questions, since she really doesn't have an answer for either. Then it occurs to her that that second one isn't really a question at all, it's an admission.

"Well, geez, Rupe, it's not like you were exactly discreet, is it? Word around the precinct is you went clubbing with her, for Christ's sake. I hear she got up on stage and you kissed her in front of a cheering crowd... you expect secrets?" Which isn't quite what happened, but it's close enough.

She's not really sure where she's going with this, but it's clear that Raina is a lever on Rupert's psyche... if she's going to get anything out of him, that's the way to do it.

"So that's gotta suck, huh? I mean, dating one of 'em. What's her thing, anyway... I mean, like, her schtick, her power, her mutation? She take over your mind or something?" Sonya takes a long, slow sip of the coffee she'd poured into her beer mug before probing in another direction. "Say, so how'd you find out about her, anyway? I mean, how'd you find out she was a mutie?"

“Well, geez, Rupe, it's not like you were exactly discreet, is it?”

Rupert’s head sunk a little closer to his latest emptied class with every word.

“Word around the precinct is you went clubbing with her, for Christ's sake. I hear she got up on stage and you kissed her in front of a cheering crowd... you expect secrets?”

That’s not what happened! Part of his mind protested, just as another part was speaking up: It’s damn close enough.

“...She take over your mind or something?”

Rupert groaned, and finally let his forehead hit the table. He was down. “I wish, Shepard. Don’t I wish. No mind tricks—just a pretty face. Ice manipulator.” He looked up, gesturing imploringly. “There was no way to know. She looks human, doesn’t she?” Since he had no reason to suspect that Stanley Shepard had ever actually seen Raina, this was the first clue that Rupert might be trying to convince someone besides his fellow officer. Though maybe ‘first clue’ wasn’t the right word choice. “She was always a little cold, but shit, it’s not like most girls don’t get cold easier than us guys. And that thing with the temperature in my apartment—the air conditioner had just gotten fixed. Who wouldn’t think the thing had just broken again? No way,” he repeated, “I could’ve known.” It wasn’t the most conclusive case the Detective had ever built.

“...I mean, how'd you find out she was a mutie?”

His head hit the table again. A hand ran though his hair. After a very long moment, a barely audible mumble came up past the wood grain of the table: “...I shot her. Mansion raid. I fucking shot her.” He rolled his head to the side, turning a bleary gaze on his fellow officer. “Ever shoot someone you love, Shepard?” His fingertips picked up the empty glass in front of him by the rim. “I don’t recommend it.” He held the glass over the edge of the table for a moment, then let it drop. Just to see it shatter. Falling in love. What a stupid metaphor.

The glass scattered out from the impact point like snow.

> "No mind tricks—just a pretty face. Ice manipulator. There was no way to know. She looks human, doesn’t she?"

"Uh... I guess so?"

Sonya isn't really sure how to respond to that. From what she's seen, most mutants look just like anybody else... visible mutations like Abyss' and Sara's are the exception. And me, she adds after a moment, remembering the white-skinned humanoid body that, no matter how often she reminds herself about, she can't bring herself to think of as her "real" form.

On the other hand, it's not like Rupert seems to particularly be looking for a response.

So, Raina's an 'ice-manipulator'. Sonya isn't entirely sure what that means... even after Abyss' little tour of Sanctuary, she's still not entirely comfortable with the language all these people use about mutants... "shifters" and "elementals" and "ice manipulators" and so forth. It's like listening to boys talk about car engines... she gets the general idea, but sometimes the jargon gets to her. Still, this one seems clear enough on the face of it.

> "Mansion raid. I fucking shot her. Ever shoot someone you love, Shepard? I don’t recommend it."

Sonya's head spins a little, and she responds without thinking. "So why'd you fucking do it, man? Just following your fucking orders like a good little goose-stepper?"

She realizes as soon as the words are out of her mouth that they're a mistake, too hostile and contemptuous, too honest. Fuck. I just blew it, didn't I? Certainly, even drunk as Rupert was, it seemed unlikely he'd miss that that was the reaction of a "mutant sympathizer," not a "law enforcement officer." She bolts out of her chair then, ready to tear out the door... then a sudden insight stops her. No, no... I can use this! She thinks. Maybe. The truth is she doesn't have time to think it through, so she goes with her gut.

First, she stoops down to start picking up the pieces of glass, to cover her sudden standing up.

Then she looks up at Rupert again, schooling her face into an expression of fear and anxiety that isn't in the least bit fake. "Sorry, man. I didn't mean to..."

Her hesitation is fake, as is her sudden defeated drop back into her chair, her head resting against the table not unlike the way Rupert's was a minute ago. OK... here goes nothing...

"I've never told anybody this... not even my wife. Don't know why I'm telling you, either. Maybe it's the beer. But I guess you deserve to know." She takes a deep breath, and continues. "My little girl... she floats. I mean, like, off-the-ground like a soap-bubble floats." She lets the silence gather for a while, then adds. "And let me tell you something, Mr. Get-In-A-Few-Punches-Back: I'd blow my own fucking head off before I'd do anything to hurt her. Anything. I don't care what the damn law is. And if I knew she was in one of those camps I'd do whatever it took to get her out, you get me? So, no, I ain't never shot nobody I love, Rupert. And I ain't never going to. And if you can look me in the eyes and tell me that shooting that girl was the right thing to do, that I should go do my fucking job like a fucking robot and turn my girl in to those second-string Nazis back at the station, well... well, fuck, man, if you can do that, I ain't got anything more to say to you."

There, she thinks, surprised by how calm she suddenly is as she leans back against the chair, waiting for his reaction. Maybe I just blew this cover to smithereens, but here's where I get to see just which way Rupert here jumps.

Rupert’s head was spinning. He’d passed the point where he could tell whether this was physically or mentally. Even though he could feel his cheek pressed against the wood grain, that didn’t stop him from thinking that maybe, just maybe, the whole room was spinning. Now if it would just pick a center to spin around, he might be okay with it. It was this “spin around the glass fragments getting picked up” and then “spin around Stanley’s head” and then “spin around the tip of his little finger” business that was making him feel a little off-color.

It was spinning around key phrases, too, to make matters worse. Couldn’t stick to tangible center-points, could it?

"Just following your fucking orders like a good little goose-stepper?"

"My little girl... she floats. I mean, like, off-the-ground like a soap-bubble floats."

“I'd blow my own fucking head off before I'd do anything to hurt her. Anything.”

“And if you can look me in the eyes and tell me that shooting that girl was the right thing to do, that I should go do my fucking job like a fucking robot and turn my girl in to those second-string Nazis back at the station...”

Then it was back to spinning around something he could actually see, thankfully. His left hand. His gun hand. Rupert watched the world revolve around his trigger finger, entranced.

“You know what, Stanley? You know what?” He started, placing both of his hands on the table to lift himself back up to an upright position. “I never took you for a fucking bleeding-heart mutant lover, that’s what.” He tried to lift up one of his hands to point at the man, but that sent him reeling to the side. Both hands on the table. That was the way to stay upright.

“You know what else? It’s a lot easier to be a fucking goose-stepper than a fucking activist. What do you expect me to do? You telling me this crap because I’m a camp supervisor? You think I can do something about this? Let me tell you—” he caught himself falling to the side again. Two hands down. Right. “—that my position does not mean jackshit. You want me to look you in the eyes and tell you I fucking got off on shooting Raina? Shit. I can’t do that. Now I want you to fucking look me in the eyes and tell me that anything we can do matters. I mean, shit. This is the fucking U.S. government that’s doing this. If I hadn’t been in on that Mansion raid, someone else would have shot her. Maybe killed her. If I didn’t accept the supervisor position, someone else would’ve. Maybe someone who would’ve set up a fucking rape house. You heard talk about that? I have. My position, I can keep some of the guards in line. I can do something. It’d be fucking fields of daisies if I could just let them all go. I might even be able to pull that off. Where would they go, though? There isn’t anywhere that’s safe.”

He risked raising an accusing finger again. “I am wading in fucking shades of gray over here and you are not fucking helping.” He managed to slap the hand back down before he fell over.

> "I never took you for a fucking bleeding-heart mutant lover"

"'Mutant lover'? She's my daughter, you unbelievable son of a bitch. But while we're on the subject, how 'bout you look in a damned mirror some time? Or was that all bullshit before about shooting somebody you loved?" She's actually enjoying this little performance of hers, getting into character in a way she'd never managed during her half-assed high school Drama Club moments.

> "You telling me this crap because I’m a camp supervisor?"

That brings Sonya's whirling thoughts to a screaming halt, and she almost misses much of the rest of his rant. He is? Wow... I didn't know that. That's... interesting.

> "It’s a lot easier to be a fucking goose-stepper than a fucking activist. "
> "Now I want you to fucking look me in the eyes and tell me that anything we can do matters."
> "It’d be fucking fields of daisies if I could just let them all go. I might even be able to pull that off. Where would they go, though? There isn’t anywhere that’s safe."

It might just be drunken confidence talking, but Sonya doesn't think so. Can he really do that? Man, if he can... that would be something. He's right, though, where do they go? A moment later, the obvious answer occurs to her. Hell, where did the guys who escaped after the Sanctuary raid go? Not everyone got caught, I'd have seen 'em. So there's gotta be somewhere, right? Hell, even if it isn't safe, it beats being in the damned camps.

She stands up slowly, grabs Rupert calmly by the collar to straighten him up, and looks him straight in the eyes. "Rupert, I don't care how drunk you are right now, you're going to have to listen to me." She pitches her voice low and steady, like giving orders to her little sister or talking down a stray dog. "There is someplace safe. So if you're serious about what you just said, if you're not just blowing smoke, you may get your chance to do 'something that matters'." The last few words drip with carefully cultivated sarcasm, echoing his own words of a moment before.

She's not entirely sure where she's going with this, but she's starting to get used to that. All she knows is, if Rupert really is a camp supervisor, she can use that. She just needs to get back in contact with him at the camps. Yeah... how're you gonna do that once this Stanley cover gets blown? Her mind races, but all she can think of is a scene from a horrible anime thing her sister made her watch once. Panicky, she decides to go with it.

"OK, here's the deal." She takes a pen from Stanley's pocket and scribbles hastily on a napkin, a circle with a jagged lightning-bolt drawn through it, pointed up and right like a bar-sinister, and shows it to him. "That's their symbol, the... um... the Mutant Sisterhood. You just, um, go to the camps and wait. Do your job, don't do anything stupid. They'll send someone to contact you. They'll use that symbol, you can recognize them that way, y'get me?" This is ridiculous, she chides herself. It's a stupid comic-book idea, who would actually fall for it in real life? Besides, it should've been 'Brotherhood', right?

But on further thought, she realizes it isn't as stupid as it seems. After all, the group at Sanctuary was basically the same kind of thing, except not actually secret... and look where the lack of secrecy got them! Probably somebody was running a secret society of mutants somewhere. And anyway, she had to sound like she believed it if she was going to sell Rupert on this. So she keeps rolling along, trying for the same tone of drunken self-disclosure that Rupert himself has been using all night.

"And, Rupe, 'till they contact you you don't tell fucking nobody, you got that? You don't even talk to me about it after tonight. Ever. This conversation never happened, we were never here. You bring it up again, I won't even fucking remember it." She almost giggles at that before she lets him go, tucks the napkin in his pocket, and calls the bartender over for a final time. "Sweetheart, my buddy here's gonna need a cab back home..."

That, she thinks to herself, is either the smartest thing I've ever done, or the dumbest. It's like there's two different Ruperts in there: one is a decent guy, and Raina's lover, and might really put himself out to do the right thing... the other is some kind of mutant-hating bigot who was willing to shoot her rather than stick his neck out. Question is, once he sobers up, which one of them is going to be in charge?

If it's the bigot, he'll report Stanley and his daughter, or set up his "Sisterhood contact" to be arrested. That could get messy, but Sonya doesn't see how it could make the situation worse.

But if it's the decent guy, maybe she can use him. Least I can try, she tells herself as she starts heading to the door.

((ooc: Continued in “Hungover”.))