"Hey, Doc." Kiania tucked the bottle away as she greeted the person on the other end, rolling her eyes as she listened to them talk. "Yeah, yeah. You say that every time though, and yet, I never actually do. Look, I called to ask if you wanted the thing." She listened some more, eyes flickering to the other hero. "Yes, the guy who calmed it down. No, I meant the lizard, genius."
Dylan smiled despite himself. "No, really, I'm quite a thing." He assured her, rubbing one hand up through his hair again.
Kiania raised an eyebrow at him as she listened to the man on the other end, before hanging up. "I'm sure. But I highly doubt you'd want to end up in an eco-maniac mad scientist's science lab."
His grin widened. "Interesting that you have friends you would call eco-maniac mad scientists. But you're correct, I have better things to do with my time." He started to turn back to the street he'd come from, but paused. "By the way, I'm Dylan Mann. Or Probe, if you do the whole hero name thing." He said casually, hiding his realization he wanted to know her name as well.
"Blaze." Kiania said, tucking her phone into her back pocket as she looked up at the lizard. "I don't typically give my name out to strangers." That, and she didn't need him knowing just who she was. The chances she'd even see him again were minimal, anyway.
Dylan dipped his head. "See you around." Then he turned and walked away, silently wondering when he would see her again. But that was a question for another day, as of now he was headed to the closest coffee shop for some caffeine.
((Skippito? Maybe he gets a hold of Doc to get like, a suit, and she's hanging out at the lab?))
(Sure)
Kiania was sitting upside down in a swiveling office chair, kicking her legs back and forth in the air to slide around. She was once again in the lab of an old friend of her's, the place she usually ended up when she was bored and Gage was busy. Placing a hand on the ground to spin the chair around, she looked up at Doc, her own mad scientist, as he placed his safety goggles on and poured a beaker of some red liquid into another and stepped back quickly to avoid the following explosion.
Dylan walked down the narrow back alley, holding a scrap of paper with an address in his hand. This was the kind of thing he hated doing- finding people in dark, crowded places. He was somewhat claustrophobic, and the darkness of the alley, despite it being midafternoon, set him on edge. As did the strange noises, like there was a science classroom experimenting next door. He finally found the door he was looking for, accented with scrawled numbers next to it. He took a deep breath and knocked, one hand resting on a hidden knife while he tried not to flinch every time a breeze lifted a small plastic bag.
Coughing and wiping at the red coloring on her face, Kiania let her legs drop and flipped into a standing position, before heading to answer the door. As she unlocked it and pulled it open, more of the red smoke billowed out into the alley, clearing the lab a bit more as she called over her shoulder. "Nice going! These shorts are designer, Doc! How can we be of servi-" She paused mid-sentence as she turned to look at the visitor, recognizing the eyes of the hero from a week ago.
Dylan coughed, the figure on the other side of the door obscured by choking smoke. He opened his eyes and it took him a split second to recognize her. Quick, say something cocky. "Blaze, right?" He said through a last fit of coughing. "I'm here to see the Doc about some specialized weapons?"
"Da Costa, where did you put the fire extinguisher?" A voice called from inside the lab, followed by the sounds of a yelp and the clatter of something hitting the floor.
"I left it where it always is, under your desk!" Kiania called back, before turning her attention to Dylan. "Yeah, that's me. C'mon in, and watch the hole in the floor."
"Will do." Dylan said with raised eyebrows, following her in and keeping his eyes moving around to catch any risks-like the apparent hole in the floor. "Is this a bad time?"
"What? Nah, this is normal." Kiania waved dismissively, shutting the door behind them before making her way deeper into the lab, casually stepping over a decent sized hole in the floor. "C'mon, Doc's down this way."
Dylan gave a nod, accepting her explanation. He followed her over the whole, looking down it absentmindedly before continuing down the hall after her. "You come here a lot?"
"Man, I pretty much live here. The couch in the corner functions as my bed most nights, on the rare occasion I remember sleep exists." Kiania said, shrugging a shoulder. She slipped into another room, this one filled with the smoke, and a cloud of white foam being blasted at what one would assume was a fire.
Dylan coughed as soon as he entered the room, even though he covered his mouth with one hand. "Don't you have an apartment or something?" He coughed out.
"Maybe." Kiania made a face for a second, before grabbing what looked like a cough mask you'd get at a walk in clinic from where it had been hanging next to the door. She handed it to him, seemingly unaffected by the smoke after her initial coughing.
He took it gratefully, his coughing finally subsiding. He looked around the room for Doc, the reason he was there in the first place.
A man who looked only a few years older than Kiania stumbled out of the smog, his long white labcoat singed and dusted with red. He shoved a fire extinguisher in her hands, and she disappeared into the smoke, grumbling.
The man turned to look at Dylan, wiping the layer of red from his safety goggles as he removed them, a lopsided grin on his face. "Well hello there. You must be Probe."
Dylan nodded, and jerked his head towards the door, away from the smoke. He was blinking, the smoke irritating his eyes. As soon as he could breathe again, he explained himself. "I'm not used to all this toxic air. Doc, you said you could help me with a few weapon ideas?"
"Right right right!" Doc swept his unruly mass of brown curls away from his face, grey eyes sparkled as he spun on his heel. His labcoat swished around his ankles dramatically as she waved for Dylan to follow him through the door. "This way! Let;s get you out of that smoke, huh? Zee has been missing you."
Dylan followed him thankfully. "I've had a few ideas, but nothing concrete." He said, avoiding the clutter and staying close behind.
"Well don't keep them to yourself! Spill, spill!" Doc slipped into another room, this one smoke free and littered with suits and weapons in various stages of completion and design. There was a rustling on one of the tables, and a lizard that resembled the one Kiania and Dylan had fought, but normal sized, poked it's head curiously out from under a pile of wiring and metal.
Dylan raised an eyebrow at the lizard. "So, first off, some kind of electric shock I could build into a glove. Just something to slow someone down enough for me to slip in and take care of them." He glanced around the room, the armory, really.
"Ah, gloves! The pinnacle of fashion, if you're emo, a germaphobe, or a hero!" Doc mused, waving vaguely at a chair, presumably an invitation to sit, as he flitted about the lab. At some point, the lizard ended up on his shoulder, still watching Dylan curiously.
Dylan watched the lizard right back, once sticking his tongue out at it to see if it would react. He made his way to the chair without breaking eye contact with it.
The lizard tilted it's head, sticking it's tongue out in response. As Doc reached for something on a table, it clambered off, skittering across the table to pause by the edge closest to the chair Dylan was sitting down in. "Ah, I see she remembers you!"
"That's the same lizard from the other day?" He raised an eyebrow at it, remember how its mind had felt. Clumpy, swampy. Not somewhere he wanted to go again.