Lizard-on-a-stick Take-away?

[Juggers]

The Juggernaut listened to the screech of tires as they hit the runway and chuckled to himself. Sometimes fate had a funny way of dealing its hand. He had only arrived back on Genosha barely an hour ago having 'convinced' a local with a truck to drive him all the way back to the port.

Whether he had picked someone with a little more common sense, or someone who had heard the story of the street fight, there was no argument. Not even a grumble.

Gill had quizzed him as to where he had been for three days and had he got in to trouble and blah blah blah, but Cain had stopped paying attention after the second question and gone to find some food.

Now he was comfortably seated in the kitchen with his massive boots up on the protesting table sipping a cold beer and devouring a microwave pizza.

It was good, he admitted, though not nearly a spicy a lizard-on-a-stick.

Lizard-on-a-stick was awesome.

[Jane]

The ideal thing right now, Jane thought, would be to stop thinking. Or to think about something so totally mundane that it would absorb her. But she wasn't falling into any of Pyro's books the way she once could and she'd never really got into the Internet, and nothing was really on TV. And there was no one around. Angie had disappeared, Dharma always made her think harder than she wanted to, and everyone else was off gallivanting in America for some reason. She couldn't remember what it was.

God. She needed to stop freaking out. She was forgetting important things in light of a stupid interview.

He hated her. He had to.

Why was she worrying about this? He knew she was alive, she knew he was alive, he knew she was a crazy terrorist, she knew he hated her and what she'd become. And she'd completely undermined a lot of his platform. And he was going to lose the election and they were going to lynch mutants in Kentucky. Or, no, wait, the Senate wasn't just Kentucky, was it? She couldn't remember how any of that worked. No formal government education, thank the Lord.

Dwelling wasn't really helping her at all. Jane wandered through the base, jittery and slightly hungry. She always ate when she was nervous.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen in search of Easy Mac and/or an entire tub of Duncan Hines' frosting (hey, when you could photosynthesize just about anything away, your eating habits kind of fell into the gutter), Jane spotted at least one person who would be solid and mundane enough to take her mind off Isaac. And he'd been gone for three days, too, so he might have something interesting to say.

"Hey," she said, surprise evident in her tone. "Where you been?"

[Juggers]

Cain grinned and snapped another can of beer off the four-pack and waved it at Jane by way of offer.

"Dunno really," he said with a shrug, "some place in Africa, it was 'ot, started with an 'm' an 'ad lots of people drivin' around with guns."

He swigged some beer and munched another bite out of the pizza. Most of the signs he had seen that he'd assumed were place names had been written in some sort of squiggle language and those that had been in English sounded like a sneeze.

"'Ad a good time though, 'ad me some good food, an a tan," though in truth his skin looked exactly the same. Invulnerability apparently extended to sunburn.

"But I didn't get to see the onion buildin's," he shrugged and grinned again.

"Always next time though huh. 'Ow's it been around 'ere?"

[Jane]

Jane smiled back in thanks and took the beer. She didn't drink, as a general rule - hadn't ever had more than one drink at a time since she was much younger and had had many more than one drink at a time - but felt she could be excused this one time. Besides, she could hold beer fine. It was the damn sweet stuff you had to watch for.

She tried to think of African places that started with M. "Madagascar? Or Mumbai? I think that's actually a city. And in India. Or... Montenegro?"

Where the heck was Montenegro?

She didn't see a tan, but she imagined it might be visible only to someone who'd been around to see the transformation. Or something.

"And I thought the onion buildings were in Russia," she said. "Or wherever Byzantium is now. Istanbul."

She shrugged, popping the top on the can and taking a sip. Wasn't the best in the universe, but what could you expect?

"It's been pretty quiet. Dharma's got at least a bit of his temple thing up and running and Pyro and them are due back at some point, I think. Not much happens when it's just me and Angie and Gill and Dharma and Dead Man rattling around the base."

Except ew-parties and grossness.

"I think the monsoons are coming," she said optimistically. "Should be fun stuff. Locked in the building 24/7 for fear of being washed away."

[Juggers]

"Nah, none of them, stopped at Madagascar on the way though for petrol or somethin', the ferry bloke didn't say. It wasn't any of them other other places either. It was near the sea though and the city was pretty big so I could probbly find it on a map if I 'ad to."

The Juggernaut polished off another slice of pizza and looked forlornly at the half three-quarters empty box. Soon it would be a completely empty box. Empty pizza boxes were a tragic thing.

"Thought there was a big onion buildin' around 'ere somewhere," he shrugged again, "dunno though, could be thinkin' of someplace completely different. Didn't see any anyways."

He took another slug of beer and a tentative bite from the penultimate pizza slice in a futile effort to make it last.

"Pyro an 'is mates just got back I think, at least I 'eard the plane comin' down a minute ago. I s'pose Python might 'ave left 'em all in America to fight Sombrero or whatever the place was but I'll be right fucked off if 'e 'as."

Cain pondered monsoons.

"Stuck in 'ere all day with nothin' to do? 'Ow is that different to every other day?"

[Jane]

Jane tried to think of M-places near water but only came up with Michigan, which probably wasn't where he'd been. And Montenegro, but he hadn't been there. She needed to brush up on her geography at some point. Figure out exactly where they were.

"Oh," she said, "the Taj Mahal! That's in India. I saw it on the History Channel. The guy built it for his wife. There was supposed to be another one across the way from it for him, but he died first."

That might've been a bit of overkill, too. The Taj Mahal didn't need a duplicate.

Eyeing Cain's pizza briefly, Jane decided it would be better to find her own food. Something... artery-clogging. Setting her beer down and crossing to the pantry, she rifled through it, not wanting to get anything out that she'd have to either defrost or cook with anything more complicated than a microwave, looking for saturated fats. All she found were Lucky Charms and a bag of chocolate chips.

Closing the pantry again with both in hand, she got a bowl down from the cabinets and poured equal amounts of the chocolate chips and Lucky Charms into the bowl and went to the fridge for milk.

"Oh, cool," she said. "There might conceivably be something to do with them around. Specially if we're stuck inside. And the difference is in monsoon season, we can dream that there might be something to do outside, whereas in the dry season, we know very well there's nothing to do and become resigned to our fate."

She poured milk over quite possibly the sweetest and most disgusting concoction of all time.

"There inlies the rub," she said. "Where would be the power of hell if its inhabitants could not dream of heaven, and so on."

[Juggers]

Cain shrugged his massive shoulders.

"Might be somethin' to do, at least there should be some new recruits to check out." He drained the last of the beer and crushed the can into two dimensional oblivion before snapping another from the pack and beginning the process again.

"Pyro said 'e knew one of 'em from when 'e was on the streets, seemed to think 'e would be alright. Dunno about the rest though."

He looked for a long moment at Jane's bowl of sugary candy cereal beast before returning for the penultimate slice of pizza. Savoury was better than sweet.

Mostly.

"Bloody monsoon'll stop the boat commin' over ... an Python from flyin'," the big man scratched his chin thoughtfully, "I reckon I'm gonna pick up a big stash of beer'n'food next time 'e comes over, ain't gettin' stuck with that fuckin' chicken and pineapple shit again."

He shuddered slightly at the memory of having to extract all the fruit pieces from an otherwise fine pizza.

"It'll probbly stop Dharma from buildin' 'is ... buildin' or whatever it is 'e is doin' out there."

He chuckled.

"Ever seen Cabin Fever?"

[Juggers]

At that same moment, in a smoke filled office not a hundred miles away from the kitchen Gill sat in his comfortable chair, smoking and watching with interest the red and black clad figure moving up the beach toward the base.

Why he was on Genosha was anybodies guess but he was fast approaching the zone covered by the proximity alarms and with the Juggernaut back in residence any activation of the alarm was not going to end well.

Pyro was out on the beach somewhere with one of the new recruits and hadn't thought to take his new phone with him.

In the smoggy gloom, Gill hummed.

There was no way to know whether the newcomer was dangerous or not and given his rather limited options, Gill did the safest thing he could imagine. Safest for the Brotherhood anyway.

As for the newcomer, well that remained to be seen.

He flicked the switch to activate the public address system wired throughout the base, specifically targeting the kitchen where the Juggernaut was currently conversing with Jane.

"Cain? We got company on the beach mon, some guy in red and black comin' up toward the base. Pyro ain't around, so roll on down and be the friendly face o'the Brotherhood ok."

In the kitchen, the Juggernaut glared out the loud-speaker and slammed his can down on the table.

"I am 'avin' a fuckin' beer," he growled, "at least 'e 'asn't set the fuckin' alarm off."

He shook his head and rose to his feet.

"Just about 'ad enough of people showin' up at the door without no invitation and thinkin' it's fine to just use the alarm as a fuckin' doorbell."

He gave Jane a shrug and stomped off in the direction of the beach to roll out the welcome wagon.

In his own unique fashion.