Jinx looked at the figure unexpectedly standing beside her. He was dressed in a nearly featureless slate grey unitard with a prominent insignia on his chest -- a stylized capital letter A in silver that vaguely resembled an old-style rocket with fins. His white furred face smiled at her, but his green eyes seemed to have trouble focussing.
"How the HELL did you just--"
"Woah. That was the edge of the freaking Universe! I fell off reality, and patched my state before I drifted into the void..." Arsenal paused for a moment, then gathered his wits and looked at Jinx. "...sorry if I'm rambling. I'm still adapting to time being all linear again."
"Listen, lady -- who is this dude?" A young man waved his plasma rifle in an unmistakable pantomine of taking aim.
Jinx stared the young man with the gun down. "It's a new ultra-realistic, semi-autonomous illusion spell I'm working on. This is supposed to be Arsenal --"
The young man looked at Arsenal. He let his rifle hang on its strap over his shoulder and rubbed his chin. "You messed up his costume. The real Arsenal doesn't have a chrome dick on his chest."
"That's not a penis! It's a silver rocket!" Arsenal was defensive, and pointed at his chest insignia.
"It totally looks like an erection, dude."
Jinx teleported inconspicuously beside the young man and squinted at Arsenal's chest. "That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?"
"Howcum it can talk?" The young man smiled.
"That's what I meant by semi-autonomous. I can use it to infiltrate Honor Guard." Peter seemed to understand what Jinx was playing at, and stood quietly in front of the other two.
"Cool." The soldier seemed impressed.
They both laughed, and Jinx's eyes locked for a fraction of a second with the young soldier's. This was enough for her mind to touch his with a numbing warmth. "You should lay off the paint fumes, son -- remember that one time you totally forgot you met me and I showed you this neat illusion?"
"Yeah, totally. I gotta get back on patrol."
"You do that." Jinx smiled sweetly at him, and closed the telepathic link. "Be seeing you!"
The soldier walked away. Jinx's face became hard as she swung back to face Peter.
"You can't do that! You SHOULDN'T do that --"
"Time comes all unravelled. I found an eigenstate before you beat me up and replicated it here."
"In a lame new costume with a stylized boner on your chest."
Peter rubbed the spot on the back of his neck where his communications implant used to be. "Stupid! I forgot my implants."
"Considering that you're deep in enemy territory, that's probably for the best. Let's get out of here!" Jinx turned to leave, peering back over her shoulder to see if Peter was following her.
He wasn't. His eyes narrowed as he looked at Jinx. "Wait a minute. I think I might want to beat you up and trash this terrorist base."
Jinx turned around and walked towards him. She held her fists in front of her.
"No, you won't. Tag me."
"What?"
"I want you to tag out. I can stop the operation in about a minute if I get in close enough to the fleet. Tag out -- this is my job."
"You're kidding me!"
"I'm serious. I promised you that before you died."
"But I came back!"
"I don't share your cavalier attitude towards death. Tag out."
Peter looked at Jinx's fists, hesitated for a moment, and tagged out.
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2 comments:
Again, nice job -- although that first paragraph needs some serious editing.
I'm surprised Peter would agree to "tag out," but I presume he can re-incoporate himself at will, now.
I had a quick go at making the first paragraph a little less awkward.
Peter is still woozy and disoriented, and Jinx just made a few gestures of good will by not whacking the guard and agreeing to help stop Demonslayer's plan.
While this may be a decision Jinx will regret in the morning, she and Peter get along better with each other than their team-mates. I hope this will become clearer once they get the chance to work with each other as equals, instead of their earlier predator-prey relationship.
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