Issue 1 Downtime

After a quick bus trip into town Kara leads them down towards the harbor and into a small pub playing rock music. It's looks shabby but not dirty and seems to have a generally rough atmosphere. Not unfriendly, but not exactly the most polite of crowds. Kara walks through the door like she owns the place, though to be fair, she does that anywhere and the crowd doesn't seem to recognize her, so it's probably just for show. "Beer?" she asks Theresa while they move towards the bar.

"Sure, so long as it isn't swill," Theresa says, looking for some place to sit.

"It ain't if you ask the proprietor of this fine establishment at least!" she laughs and muscles her way to the bar to order before continuing on to an empty table with the two mugs. "I got this round." she says as she plops down Theresa's glass in front of her.

Theresa looks at it and takes a sip, "I don't usually drink a whole lot, just warning you."

"Pff, prude Americans. Aren't you supposed to go over the top when you get to college or have the movies misled me?" she teases.

"The movies have not misled you, though most American college students don't create thunderstorms when their judgment goes to shit."

"Just regular property damage. Guess your scope is way bigger, huh?"

"Yeah, I don't just do stupid shit with vehicles and such. I could screw up the weather for miles with a badly manipulated storm. But you didn't drag me out to hear me bitch about meteorological consequences. How's school treating you?"

"Don't get me started. It's only been a couple weeks and I'm already swamped. I can deal with the training regiment for the teams but trying to wrap my head around Math is kicking my ass."

"Which math class?"

"Calculus, but I can already tell that's not going to be the only thing I'll struggle with. I came here for the chance to be an X-Men, I'm not the studious type."

"Well, if you need help with calculus, I can give you a hand. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty decent at math. Other subjects not so much, but I understand math."

"That sounds suspiciously like work." she chuckles. "But thanks, I might take you up on that."

"Trust me, you don't want to be called in for 'the talk' when your grades slip."

"Had the dubious honor of that before?"

"Yeah, last year of high school. Extenuating circumstances, but still not the sort of conversation you want to have."

"Been there. At least over regular crap. Still not as bad as dealing with my parents though."

"Are they still giving you grief?"

"More or less. They have yet to come to terms with how much of a crushing disappointment I am for not wanting to take over the family business. This is basically just 'We were hoping for a boy' part two, bullshit boogaloo."

"Oof. That royally sucks," Theresa said, contemplating her beer for a bit longer before drinking some more of it.

"Shit's idiotic." she says, taking a long pull from her beer. "Their latest thing is that I'm obviously ruining any chances of changing my mind later by not hiding the fact that I'm a mutant."

"Cause hiding it makes it so much better when it eventually comes out anyway," Theresa said with a derisive snort.

"I don't know what they're thinking. They say they don't have a problem with it but oh god, what if somebody finds out."

"Because it reflects on them in their minds, I'm guessing."

"Yeah, because other people might not be fine with it. How fucked is that? Letting random idiots dictate how you feel and act?"

"Pretty fucked," Theresa agreed, though perhaps not with Kara's enthusiasm.

"Anyway, enough of that, we're not here to pity ourselves!" she says and finishes off her beer.

Theresa chuckled and took a long drink of her own, about two-thirds done. "So is this the extent of your social life these days?"

"Hey, I had to leave most of it behind and this is a podunk town. If you're up for it we can go tear up London on the weekend."

"Not much of a big city girl, but I could probably be persuaded. My girlfriend is a bit of a homebody, so we hang out around Maldon mostly."

"Well, ask her if she wants to come along. I'll see who else feels like livin' it up and we can blow off some steam."

"I'll give it a try. She's kind of a quiet person."

"I won't take it personal if she doesn't wanna tag along then." she chuckles before leaning back in her chair so she can gesture at the barkeeper to start drafting her another beer.

Theresa was close to finishing her beer and seemed to be contemplating another one. "So I heard you got to go on your first mission. How was it?"

"Pretty cool! It felt like it was over in a flash because damn did that get my blood pumping. One of those big brainless rock things was just kind of wandering around and we tried to get it to move along. Kind of like dealing with a big animal I guess, only way stranger and more unpredictable. Bit nerve-wracking but that's part of the fun, right?" she grins and waves two fingers towards the barkeeper.

"That rush is why a lot of people do it," Theresa said with a nod. "Sometimes it's the bad kind of rush, but those aren't as common as you'd think."

"If there wasn't the risk of things going wrong it wouldn't be as exciting anyway. Hang on." she holds up one finger before jumping up and muscling her way past a couple guys to get to the bar. She comes back with two glasses of beer and what looks like two glasses of whiskey. "But yeah, it was pretty sweet, even if I had to literally go dumpster diving." she laughs.

Theresa eyed the whiskey distrustfully, "Yeah, ending up in nasty shit like dumpsters kind of goes with the territory."

"I've smelled like worse." she points out before taking a sip of whiskey, which gives her time to reflect on what she just said. "In retrospect, that's probably not something to brag about."

Theresa laughed, "Yeah." She looked at her own whiskey and sniffed at it for a moment before taking a sip. That quickly resulted in coughing. "Wow... that's certainly a thing."