Seeing What Bites

[Ryan Foley]

Ryan, mercifully, does not mention Robin nearly coming out of the bottle. Dignity, right?

It's a few tense minutes as Ryan guns the boat, getting them out of range of the mafiosos. "Radio's down," she said, almost to herself. "So they can't call for help. And who'd believe them, anyway?"

After feeling assured they weren't immediately followed, Ryan let out a sigh of relief. Checking to make sure the hold was firmly locked -- it was -- she turned her attention to Robin. She held the bottle up to the rising sun, turning it over a couple times.

"Well, you don't look dead. That's a plus," she said, finally. "Half an hour of churning an engine will take a lot of anyone, I guess."

"Uh, let's see. First aid manual doesn't cover this. You're gonna need something, right? Time? Heat? Like, sugar or something? Some electrolytes?" she said, going through some possibilities.

"You took on a bunch of sea water, too. I guess you...drank it? That's probably not good for you..." she added, tipping the bottle over and letting Robin pour out into her hands. "Maybe you need me to, like...wring you out?" she hazarded, carefully squeezing Robin's protoplasmic form. "Man, you're like...Gak. D'you remember Gak?" she asked, squishing Robin between her fingers. "Grabbable, squishable, squashable, squeezble, or whatever it was? Maybe it's just cause you're so wet, right? Dry you out, and you get back to normal? Man, I hope that's the case. This is probably the kinda thing I should have asked for before hand, isn't it?" she asked, absentmindedly kneading Robin. "Sorry 'bout that, Pink. I suppose worst-case, I can call that school of yours, but maybe we can figure this out on our own first, aye? Save us both some embarrassment."

Dignity. Right.

[Robin Stanton]

Ryan's kneading doesn't squeeze out much water out of Robin other than what is still clinging to the outside of her. That said, it does feel kind of nice. Like a full-body massage working over her tired (theoretical) muscles. She really just needs some rest, maybe some non-salty water, but at least for now communicating that to Ryan is difficult and she'll just have to cope with the indignity of being a stress-ball. She tries to pat Ryan's hand to assure her she's doing okay, but with being squeezed through her fingers it's more just a weak squirming around than anything.

[Ryan Foley]

Ryan continue to squeeze Robin's form as she steered the boat with one hand, letting the pink protoplasm ooze through her fingers some.

"Well, uh, I don't know if you can hear me, so I'm just gonna keep talking," she said.

"You're not like, uh, dripping. So I guess you, like, absorbed all the water? That probably didn't taste very good. I'll, uh, make you something when we get back to the bar. And you can drink it when you can, like, form a mouth again. Or, uh, I could, like, dip you in it? Absorb that, too?" she said, questioningly. "If you could absorb the sea water, and you were affected by the taste, then the same thing would work with, like, some fruit juice and vodka, yeah?"

Curious, Ryan lifted Robin to her nose. "You do still smell like sea water, but that's probably just 'cause you were in the sea, right? I mean, I'm probably the same way," she said, laughing a bit awkwardly. "So, like, you're fine, there. Assuming you're still with me. And I'm not just talking to, like, goo. Like, maybe you're still alive, but you can't think because you don't have, like, brains right now? And you'll regrow slowly or something? Man, I really should have asked, like, any of this, but I didn't realize you'd be so out of it!"

Ryan continued kneading Robin as she turned back to the wheel. "I mean, I'm kinda responsible for this, so if I need to, I'll find some place for ya while you...regenerate? Regrow? Reform? Whatever the heck it is you X-Men things do. Probably can Google something when we get back, too; you can't be the first weird shifter like this whose been stuck. Maybe I just need to, like, mold ya into a human shape, and you'll get that back? You're a little goopy for that now, Pink, sorry, and I think finding some desiccant or something for ya would just make things worse. Right now, between you and me, I'm just hoping that time heals all wouwoups!"

The "woops" was because Ryan's cell phone, sitting on a shelf below the wheel, had started buzzing -- they must be getting closer to land. "One sec, Pink," Ryan said, trying to figure out how to hold Robin and steer and answer the phone. The solution she came to was to pin Robin in her armpit, pressed between her arm and side, and leaving her hand free to pick up the phone.

"Foley. Yeah, yeah, it's all good. Well, not quite like clockwork, but next best thing, aye? Yeah. Yeah. Same time? Yeah. No, they didnt....oh. Yeah. Yeah. Nah, I'm not gonna eat alone, you crazy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, she...yeah. Uh, yeah. I mean, if you know any, like, mutant doct...oh? OK. Yeah. No, no, it'll...yeah, that'll work. Thanks."

[Robin Stanton]

Over the course of Ryan's rambling Robin mostly just let's herself relax and recover some strength. She has no clue what exactly Ryan is talking about on the phone but she'll be damned if she suffers the indignity of being tucked away like a handbag. With some squirming she dislodges herself and drops to the floor, bit by bit pulling pieces of herself together into human shape. Fingers first, long wriggly bits and a tube to stretch 'em outward. Then legs and a vague mass to keep all four appendages together. Finally a rough sphere for a head and two spots of protoplasm to blink open as eyes. From there familiarity takes most of the reigns. Mental image translating into shape, just a bit sluggishly and in fits and starts as she has to keep her focus on what she wants to be a lot longer.

And it's not entirely perfect. She's kinda pale, almost a bit greenish like the sea-water. She holds up one finger and wobbles to the side of the boat and lets herself floop over it, followed by the sound of a good bit of water splashing into the ocean. She pops back up, wobbles, then finds her balance and solidity again. "Tha's better..." she mumbles, still a little green but now just from being queasy rather than too-much-sea-water.

[Ryan Foley]

Ryan, too, was a little green around the gills, though that was probably from seeing Robin go from protoplasmic fun toy to human in a decidedly unsmooth and inconsistent manner. What might be the norm in the Stanton household after a rough day for Robin or Will was quite the shock to an Irish-Italian fisherwoman.

"Good god in heaven. Are you...alright, then?" she said, trying to clutch desperately at some composure.

[Robin Stanton]

"I'm swish. Just not to the max." she musters a weak grin and a weird hand gesture of tugging her index and middle finger in with her thumb and chopping up and down twice with ring and little one extended. When she realizes this is not, in fact, her present and she probably just threw a bunch of gibberish at Ryan she adds "I'll be better once I get some water and a carton of donuts into me."

[Ryan Foley]

"Uh...yeah. Swish," Ryan says, unsure whether Robin is totally uncool, totally cool and she is uncool, or just loopy from being a blob of pink goo. "Here's some water," she says, sliding a bottle over to Robin. "I don't think I have donuts, but I'll see if I've got something in the hold," she said, awkwardly.

She walked back, unlocked the hatch, and slipped in, closing it behind her, leaving Robin to recover briefly.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin groans and tilts her head back. "She must think I'm an idiot. Scooped up in a bottle. That's not swish. That's not swish at all." It does not occur to her to wonder about what Ryan talked about on the phone or why the hold is locked. Or, for that matter, why Ryan doesn't just simply phase through the door to begin with.

[Ryan Foley]

Ryan emerged a few minutes later with four bags of cookies, maybe a little old but probably still good.

"This gonna help? Like, just some sugar and stuff?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Yeah, gimme gimme." she makes grabbing motions with her hands till Ryan is within reach and she grabs the bad outright. She tears it open and shoves three cookies into her mouth at once and finds herself struggling a little bit with how relatively hard and chewy they turn out to be. Good though and full of delicious carbohydrates She washes it down with a gulp of water that drains almost half the bottle in one go. Then she starts eating cookies one bite at a time like a normal person, small enough so she can talk around them without too much trouble.

"Thanks. Much better. Shoulda told you not to worry about this kinda thing but I didn't think it would be this hard to push a ding-dang ship." she chuckles. Instead of blue-green she's taking on a bit of a pink hue, but considering what she's made of that's probably a good sign. "You got out okay/ messed up their radio and such? Cause I sure did a number on their engine."

[Ryan Foley]

"Oh, yeah. Not much of a radio electrician, but most electronics need parts. And those parts not to be ripped out and thrown over the side of the ship. I think between the two of us, we left 'em dead in the water and stranded," Ryan grinned.

[Robin Stanton]

"Aww yeah!" she mumbles and swallows the almondy cookie, holding her hand up to high-five Ryan.

[Ryan Foley]

Ryan returned the high-five, grinning, and then looked at her hand.

"Like, um. I'm sorry about, y'know. What I said before you got on the ship. I didn't mean, like...well, like that. You're obviously very cool, so, uh, you know. Sorry."

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh." She'd almost forgotten, what with keeping a cargo ship moving for half an hour. And clearly Ryan can't have been too freaked out or she wouldn't have scooped her into a bottle with bare hands, right? "It's fine. I mean... it probably does look weird if you're not used to it, yeah?" she chuckles a bit awkwardly. She can't help but wonder if others might have felt the same way but lacked Ryan's kind of blunt directness to say anything.

"Doesn't feel messy, but maybe it looks that way. A little bit. Like minced meat." she tries to joke but it ends up sounding kind of grody even to her.

[Ryan Foley]

"Only kinda, when you're, like, halfway between things. And I mean, I'm one to talk, right?" Ryan said, reaching one hand behind her head. And then through her own head.

[Robin Stanton]

"Okay that raises many questions." Robin laughs. "You just go full ghost? No phasing your body or stepping into some halfway dimension? Just poof, no physicality? That's crazy!" she says but from her tone it's pretty obvious 'crazy' in this case is a compliment.

[Ryan Foley]

"Eh, I don't think I, like, haunt people or anything. It's just, like...I can just slip between things. Like, everything's full of holes, right? And I can just...go through them. Or close 'em up again.

Pretty freaky, right?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Okay but how come you can put your hand through your head but your pants don't fall down, huh?" she grins.

[Ryan Foley]

"I dunno, how come your pants turned into goo and still showed up when you came back to normal? Pants defy physics."

[Robin Stanton]

"Bold of you to assume I'm wearing pants." Robin blusters with her hands on her hips.

[Ryan Foley]

"What? But they're right th...that is...you mean that," Ryan said, blushing and turning away suddenly to look at the very interesting horizon.

[Robin Stanton]

Robin bursts out laughing. "I'm kidding! Wow, you blush easy for someone who casually shoved me down her shirt ten minutes ago."

[Ryan Foley]

"Well, I, uh...

I mean, you want me to throw you back in the sea? Because I can totally throw you back in the sea," Ryan said, stammering, and resorting to bluster in lieu of dealing with actual embarrassment. "Didn't seem like much of a swimmer when you were a blob of silly putty."

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh it was much appreciated." she says and almost adds a wink. "Probably woulda gotten gulped down by a fish or something otherwise."

[Ryan Foley]

"Yeah. And then when I caught the fish and served it, you'd spill out onto the plate. You know that's gonna hurt my tip."

[Robin Stanton]

"Uhm, excuse me, I asked for the seabass without the special sauce?"

[Ryan Foley]

Ryan laughed a little, trying to maintain her composure. Apparently, the street thug could be flustered when taken out of her element.

"Something that strange ever happen to ya before? Get stuck somewhere or somethin' nasty?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Hmm..." she says, pursing her lips. "I got stuck inside stuff a bunch as a kid. Wood was real tricky for a while cause it's all... sticky's not the right word but clingy? My Mum was always worried about sponges and styrofoam and stuff but those aren't as bad. And a while back I tried to stop some flooding by animating a tar roof for a barricade and that would not let go of me. I was all blotchy for, like, a week."

[Ryan Foley]

"I can relate to getting stuck," Ryan nodded. "Sometimes, when I was getting used to this, my power would cut out halfway through a wall. Left me stuck on both sides, unable to move. Still got a scar from one particularly nasty case."

[Robin Stanton]

"Yowza! That sounds nasty. How long were you stuck like that?"

[Ryan Foley]

"Oh, usually just a few minutes. Usually.

One time, though, it was three and a half hours. That's what the scar was from; Pops had to eventually kick out the fence I was stuck in. Nasty stab wound; had a bit of an infection there afterwards."

[Robin Stanton]

"You actually got something stuck inside of you? Like, full on impaled yourself!?" Robin asks, shocked at the lack of resources available for a mutant to learn their powers without potentially grievously injuring themselves. She knows this is a different reality with less advanced mutant rights, but on a gut level she always kind of assumed people would at least not have to endanger themselves to learn their own powers.

[Ryan Foley]

"Eh? Oh, it was more....well, it was a snug fit, right? Like, no air gap whatsoever. So, in the process of breaking the fence open, a shard of it went right into the gut," Ryan said, lifting up her shirt to reveal a gnarly scar on her abs.

"I don't know what happens to stuff when I'm in the same place as it at the same time. Never really thought much about it."

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh whew. And on the upside, that's one hell of a scar." she says, sitting down on her haunches to take a look at Ryan abs scar. "Prolly best not to try and see who displaced what in case your kidney gets replaced with a brick. I hear that's no bueno for most people." she adds with a gentle poke at the edge of the scar.

[Ryan Foley]

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I need those," Ryan said, flexing a little bit as Robin checked out her abs scar. "I take it you, uh, don't?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Not really, but I still got them most of the time. Gotta eat and breathe and... stuff somehow, right? And I'm sure not smart enough to make myself do that manually."

[Ryan Foley]

"I guess that makes sense. Though, like, you can be goo or whatever for longer than you can hold your breath, yeah? So...uh...

Maybe mutant powers don't make sense," Ryan shrugged.

[Robin Stanton]

"Yeah, I dunno. But if I wanna look like a person I gotta play by person rules unless I go out of my way to be something that looks like a person but isn't which is a lot harder than just being, you know, me. Or whatever the version of me that I got up here is." she says, tapping her head and looking up at Ryan. It seems to make her realize what an awkward position she's in and she almost jumps to her feet. "Shapeshifter stuff you know." she laughs a bit awkwardly.

[Ryan Foley]

"I don't, really," Ryan admitted. "That's why I was worried when you were just goo. Thought you had, I dunno, broken something. Strained a muscle? Whatever the hell you all do."

[Robin Stanton]

"Right, yeah, I guess I'm used to people knowing this kinda stuff at least enough to make a guess. Though I think it's family tradition or something to make people worry with these things." she chuckles. "Not quite a pulled muscle but just... being tired after a long workout?" she hazards a guess. The line between things that make her tired versus normal people is kind of hazy and she has no pre-mutation times to compare it to. "It's what I show people who ask what I 'really' look like too." she says, actually doing the air-quotes. "Cause it kind of is? It's what happens when I just let go and unclench. Plus it freaks out the kinda person who'd ask that for all the wrong reasons, ya know? At least where I'm from!" she quickly adds as she remembers that Ryan too had called that in-between state kind of freaky.