2019-06-12 - More Man Than Beast?

Summary:

A talk with Kyle doesn't go as planned

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Wed Jun 12 05:54:29 2019
Location: Paragon Investigations

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Theme Song

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nick-gleasonisis-marikkyle-gibney

Nick Gleason has been a rather busy man. Case files do not build themselves after all. Phone calls do not make themselves. And ice cream does not eat itself. Isis does that, which is why there isn't any in Nick's freezer. He'll have to remedy that. It's getting hot.

It's a surprisingly mundane job for a man who looks as exotic as Nick does but having worked for a good chunk of the morning - with a break in there for some hijinks - he's starting to piece together a picture, albeit slowly.

Time to see if Isis or Kyle are around. Not finding either downstairs, the big brown wolfman heads UPstairs to where the bunks are. And the shower is.

"Ollie ollie oxenfree…" He calls out quietly as he opens one of the doors. Who is about?


Isis had disappeared after the morning activities. She hadn't needed to shower, she'd done that earlier. She had also had a rather large breakfast … lots of bacon and eggs and toast. With maple syrup. Thankfully that hadn't meant she'd needed shower.

When Nick opens the door, the sunlight streams through the window onto the bunk that's positioned right near it. In the middle of the bed, on top of the covers, Isis is curled there. Basking in the sunlight as she dozes.


Kyle Gibney is over in the corner, where the bunks have been moved away to give Kyle a bit of room. Given his height, he needs a lot of room. It takes a moment to locate him, even though Nick's nose would tell him that Kyle's in the room. There's the scent of the wild and wolves about the tall man now that the dirt and grime is washed off.

He's wearing some borrowed sweatpants and nothing else. His feet don't like shoes, that's for certain. He's down on the floor, or well, parallel with it, just his hands holding his weight as he planks. There's a light sheen of sweet and a faint tremble as he holds that position.


Nick's boots thump-thump on the floor as he moves closer. He sniffs the air mostly out of habit and then sits down on the edge of the bed that Isis is sleeping on.

"Wake up, Lazybones." He laughs a little bit.

Kyle has a good view down there of Nick's feet. His feet DO like shoes, despite being clawed. But for how long? That's a good question. He's changed a lot since his youth. It may be that he will again, morphing into an even more radically animal form.

"Well that explains the muscle." Nick says after a minute of watching Kyle. "Most people who take to wandering the streets don't have anywhere near that kind of dedication. You slept well, I take it?"


"Did you get more icecream?" comes the lazy reply. Isis cracks an eye open to watch as Nick sits on the bed, moving herself to flop on his lap so he'll scritch her. That puts her in a position to look, unblinkingly at Kyle with her cat slitted eyes.

"He's been doing that for a while."

Slept well? Had Kyle? Isis isn't sure. After what she saw in his dreams, she rather doubts it.

"Need more sleep …" that's generally her answer if it's not I'm hungry.


When Nick tromps into the room and spots Kyle, the tall man's gaze is tracking him, even as he holds the position. A drop of sweat rolls down his skin and then drops to the floor. When Nick asks the question, Kyle shifts position, pushing up and extending his arms while bringing his knees up to eventually set his feet down so very lightly to the floor and then pushes himself into standing. It's an incredible display of strength, endurance and control. Were he human.

Kyle's gaze shifts over to Isis as she comments, and then he shakes his head. The roots are a bit darker where sweat has soaked them. Presumably he's answering Nick's question.

Not very chatty, is he?


"No not yet." Nick says to Isis. "I've been working on our cases." Because that's what lets them buy ice cream. He'll get some soon, he hopes.

"You don't need more sleep, Isis. Get up." Poke. Poke. Poke.

The wolf man watches Kyle as he rises and then shakes his head. "Didn't sleep well, mmm? I take it Isis peeked into your dreams?" He suspects she did. He asked her to after all.

"I did some digging into Department H. They're not a real chatty bunch as it turns out. But…" He lays down a paper on the bed where both Kyle and Isis can see it. It's Kyle. Smiling. In much nicer clothing. It might be some kind of a uniform. Hard to tell.

"That was on their website."


"We need ice cream…" She knows he needs to work. As he pokes at her, flopped over his lap, she bats at his paws threatening to bite him if he keeps doing it.

"I did. I walked in his dreams and then we sat in my wood. His dream was … bad. Memories worse. People did mean things to him. People in yellow suits."

Nick can feel her shiver at those words and it might well make him shiver too. The photo gets a raised eyebrow. "On their website? What did you do there?" That's to Kyle.


Kyle Gibney walks over towards them, and even though it's clear he's not really trying, his steps are all but silent. One clawed hand reaches out to brush fingertips over the picture and he nods slowly. "Gamma Flight. When Department H found me, after the Empire. They tried to undo what they did." The pronouns get a bit muddled, but it's not too hard to make out what happened. Department H didn't rescue him, but they did find him. Isis at least, who saw him Before, knows they didn't manage to bring him all the way back from what the Secret Empire made him into.

Kyle looks up, meeting Nick's gaze, and there's that sense of the familiar that calls to the Wolf. "You wanted to see. To know if I'm a danger." Most people would have made that a question, asking why they invaded his dreams.


Nick sniffs again. There it is. That thing he hadn't been able to quite put his finger on. He cants his head slightly and glances to Isis. Can she feel that? In a way it's like dealing with her. It's not quite the same sensation of emotion from her though. More like a call.

Perhaps that's why Isis is so interested in him.

"How are you doing that?" Nick finally asks quietly. Does he even know he's doing it? Is it indeed something that he 'does' or is it just something about him?

"We wanted to see yes." Nick bats a bit more at Isis, who has caught his hand by this point.

"Give that back." His hand, he means. Yes the need more ice cream. He knows.

"And yes. I wanted to know if you were a danger. Or if you were IN danger. Most people who come as far as you have are running from something…"

And… helping people like this is what he does. Isis knows that well enough.


"The Empire. One to Nine. Yellow Suits." Isis had memorized what she'd seen in the dream. Whilst she's messing with Nicks hand, her eyes haven't left Kyle. "Department H didn't undo all of it. The Empire … " They'd made him more animal than anything.

Letting Nicks hand, Isis bats at Kyle now. "I told you. We want to help you. I had to see how we could."


Kyle Gibney stays just out of arm's reach. Isis or Nick will have to move to grab him. As the cat-girl explains herself he turns his gaze over to her. "You could have asked." He points out. But she didn't. He doesn't seem upset about it, but the statements imply he's not pleased, either. His emotions are hard to get much from at the moment as well. There isn't the slide from emotion to emotion that most humans have with a myriad of shades of happy and sad, bored and excited. His emotional state is… calm. Perhaps too calm. She'd need to dig deeper than just the surface to see what might be going on under there.

Nick's question does get a flicker through that steady state. Confusion. Kyle looks down at himself and then back over to Nick. "Do what?"


"That thing that makes me want to curl up like a golden retriever puppy." Nick IS fishing a little here. He's not entirely sure it's a thing that Kyle DOES so much as a thing that Kyle IS. He's also not the most analytical of minds. A good investigator yes but that more to his intuition and sense of smell than a keenly ordered mind and a library of obscure facts at his beck and call.

He'll let Isis explain why she didn't ask. In truth, he asked her to do that though she had volunteered a little bit. He'd wanted to know. Just as she had. Curiosity doesn't JUST kill the cat.

"Are you in danger, Kyle? Are people looking for you, that you know of?"

Nick rubs his hand now that he's gotten it back, watching Isis bat away at the next thing that catches her eye.


Isis is still draped across Nicks lap as she bats at the tall man, stretching her arm out to try and reach him. Of course, as Kyle moves, Isis does too, overbalancing and sliding to the floor, where she rolls to her knees trying to make it look like thats exactly what she meant to do.

"You were asleep…" she points out as if that's reasonable. Besides it didn't really occur to her to do so, slipping into dreams is what she does. And she's used to people being annoyed with her.

Canting her head as she reads Kyles emotions, Isis' ears are mobile. Nick will know that's a sign of confusion. Can she dig deeper? She's going to try at least.

"Didn't you like where I took you?"


As Isis tumbles to the floor, Kyle slides back a little. A fluid shift in position that hardly seems noticeable. He frowns over at Nick and shakes his head. "I'm not doing anything. My mutation…" He spreads his hands out a bit as if to say 'here you see it'. He's never been around a canine-type mutant, so the fact that wolves and dogs like him doesn't really occur to him as a power, per se.

The tall man shakes his head at Nate's question. "Why would anyone come looking for me?" He doesn't know that were the man who destroyed the Secret Empire facility to find out that Kyle is alive, that they might be inclined to kill him.

Isis' response that he was asleep gets a frown, and then there's something… pressure. Probing. His features shift, his calm mood shifting as he starts to grow agitated. His lips pull back and his fangs lengthen. A snarl and shake of his head and he steps back again. Away.


Nick stands as he sees the emotional context of the room shift. He can't feel what Isis is feeling but he can see what's going on plainly enough. He takes a step away from the bed and holds his hands up, fingers spread.

"Woah there. Calm. Calm…" Is that going to work? He has no idea.

"I don't know, Kyle. But you taken and held once. If you're in danger of it happening again I'd want to know."

That someone would kill him hasn't yet occurred to Nick either though it probably won't take him long for him to surmise that.

"After all, why would you come all the way down here from your home if not to escape something?"

He glances down at Isis. Does she have any insight? And can she help calm the man? He seems… agitated either at or by her.

"He's shifting…" The brown werewolf murmurs downward.


"You were an experiment. They … invested in you…" Isis answers simply. Nick might despair of her straight talking ways sometimes. "They would want you back for that alone." Just like A.I.M probably want her back. She's not really thinking as she tries to work Kyle out, this is something she's done a million times or more.

She stops talking though when the turmoil in Kyles mind starts, frowning a little, ears folding forward. That feline curiousity rises for the moment, causing her push a little harder to see what she can find. "I know … " It's almost a purr but she relents, pulling the probe back and sending a wave of calm and warmth out. Nick will feel that as well as Kyle - her broadcasts are just that. Broadcasts, they blanket the area around her.

"What are you doing?"


Kyle Gibney shakes his head, as though there were a fly buzzing around it. At Isis' probing or Nick's questions, it's not clear. "They made me leave. Like my parents made me leave."

The reminder of his time at the Empire doesn't calm him any, his back hunching and shoulders drawing up. When Isis digs harder, she gets to what's under that calm. That careful control. Kyle drops to all fours, the bones in his face shifting to something bestial and his eyes shift to bright gold. He leans forward and roars at them, claws digging furrows into the flooring. It looks like he's about to pounce when Isis shifts to broadcasting calm and warmth, and again, it's like he's a rock in the middle of her river. Her influence having a diminished effect on him, though it does look like it keeps him from actually jumping at them. His eyes are very wide though. Hungry, as they track the smaller cat-woman.


"Kyle." Nick's tone is firmer as he steps in front of Isis. Quickly. The feral man doesn't jump - thank goodness - but it was looking like he could at any moment. He still looks… well. He looks like Nick feels sometimes.

The brown wolfman glances over his shoulder at Isis. "Calm…" He murmurs. He knows she is calm. And she's doing well with what she's projecting though Kyle seems to have had some… anti-tampering training. Or something similar. They've encountered it before. Some folks are just hard to influence and Isis' powers aren't very direct. They're just feel good (or feel bad) broadcasts.

"They made you leave. Department H did, you mean." He frowns. "Your parents made you leave?"

That's a fairly common story for a group of people Nick knows. Isis too. Though… Nick isn't thinking they should take Kyle to the school. But it does remind him.

"What's he like?" That's to Isis and she'll know what Nick's talking about.

"Didn't you have anyone? Or any place to go? They didn't just toss you out on the street, did they?"


Isis' emotions jump, for a fraction of a second, as Kyle says he was made to leave. If she hadn't been focussing on keeping things calm, she'd be hissing. "His father threw him out, yes. I saw it. He was a beautiful boy …" The purr has changed to a low feline, her cats eyes blinking slowly as she works.

Nick stepping in front of her, just has her brushing past the big brown wolfman "Like you when you're angry a bit, more like a dog. Not much human at the moment." she murmurs, stalking over to the hungry looking, roaring man. "He's resistant…. " She doesn't move quickly, but holds his gaze, until she's close enough to touch him, another step and she'll be able to brush against him too… much a cat.

It's not a challenge though. "We won't hurt you. I won't hurt you." she says. At some point someone might need to speak to her about apologising.


Kyle Gibney pulls upright and back a bit as Isis approaches, but he doesn't give ground. His gaze tracks her, snarling and his emotions are all rage.

As neither of them attack him though, that rage stumbles a bit. He holds very still when Isis gets close to him and it doesn't look like he's even parsing their words. Slowly, slowly, that rage starts to ebb. His lips relax. His features shift back towards normal. Well. As normal as Kyle can get these days.

The big man doesn't rise and, staying down on all fours he moves forward in a slow roll of motion that has the side of his body rubbing along Isis, his head turning up to look at Kyle with those still-golden eyes.

That pull that Nick attributed to Kyle seems to bear out, as the deeper the tall man slips into a feral state, the stronger that impulse becomes.


It does have Nick next to Kyle before he quite realizes what had happened, on the opposite side of Isis. He's juuuuuust reaching down to scratch when he catches himself and blinks. Then his eyes narrow slightly. It's a very powerful impulse and finally Nick just sits down on the floor as sort of an internal compromise with himself.

"It's okay Kyle. We don't want to hurt you." He echoes Isis. "I help people like you, when I can. God knows I can't do much sometimes but…" He does what he can. Paragon gets a lot of people in trouble. And some of them are runaways. None of them ever ran away from a government program that shuttered though. Or… kicked him out.

"Do you have any friends who might want to know you're okay?" Did Isis see any friends? She's still busy calming and making nice.


As Kyle rolls, Isis presses back in a very feline way. "Come back to us, now…" she purrs gently "… we won't hurt you." Still no apologies but it's possible Kyle won't expect one. If she feels what Nick's feeling, she's not showing it. This is pure instinct for her, her feline-like nature is never far from the surface.

"He can stay stay with us …" It's almost like that's settled in Isis' mind. It's not, but she has a way of making statements.

The question in the look that Nick gives her gets a shake of her head. "I didn't look …"


Isis can feel Kyle's emotions calming, rubbing himself back against her before turning to lean in towards Kyle and sniffing delicately at the wolf-man's face. There's a low, rumbling growl that seems like a warning. Or a statement. Then he pulls back a bit. There's almost a *snap* as his thinking mind comes back online, and the tall man shivers, before curling into himself and pulling back away from the pair of them. His eyes go back to blue as he looks between them.


Nick holds Very Still (tm) when Kyle gets close to his face. Sniffing. Like an animal. At least he didn't lick. Then it's like someone threw a swtich and he's back to something a lot more normal. Or, well, something a lot more human at least.

"Welcome back… what happened?" Nick says very quietly as Kyle draws inward. Isis' declaration that Kyle can stay gets a quirk-browed look. The wolfman hadn't offered partly because he hadn't been sure Kyle wanted to stay and partly because he wasn't sure that they COULD help him.

"He's got your approval then, does he?" Nick's… teasing a little.


Isis purrs as Kyle rubs against her. There's a sense of feline satisfaction to her broadcast though she stills as well as he moves closer to Nick. At least he didn't lick. "There you are … Kyle…."

The feline-like mutant shakes herself for a moment before moving to press against Nick, sensing that closing on Kyle is probably a Bad Thing (tm) at the moment.

"He is like me. You helped me. We help him." Simple. Nick didn't technically help her, The Institute had but it had been Nick and Piotr who had found and … tamed … the feral feline.


Kyle Gibney pushes further back, pushing up sharply and suddenly to his feet, a bit of unease sliding through that calm. He brings a hand up to wipe at his face, and his mouth where some spittle has gathered from his snarling. He gives Isis a look, almost accusingly. "The Empire, they broke me. Department H helped put me back together…" But he's not fixed. Just better.

Kyle shakes his head. "This… was a mistake." He turns towards where his meagre number of things from his dirty clothes are stacked in a small pile.


Nick stands up from the ground as Kyle moves. He doesn't move himself. He DEFINITELY doesn't try to stop Kyle. If the man wants to go it's very important that he be free to do so in Nick's mind. Well, it's important for legal reasons too but that's not what Nick is thinking of right now.

"What are you afraid of?" Nick asks loud enough to hear but quietly enough that it's not forceful. Is it fear? Or is it something else?

The wolfman is fairly restrained. Isis might not be nearly so… circumspect.

Whatever she saw, it clearly reminded her of her time with AIM, which is something that even to this day Isis does not talk about much.

And she talks about EVERYTHING.


Isis rubs her ears against Nick in a reassuring way. For her, of course, not him. He might get bitten later from not scritching her when she does this. She growls at the mention of The Empire, eyes narrowing as Kyle turns.

Circumspect is not something that Isis can often be accused of. The feline-like mutant is moving even as he is, closer, encroaching on his personal space in a very big way. Not touching … yet… but close enough to. "Are you going to leave?" beat "The people who did this to you. The Empire. They're like the people who made me. They wore yellow too."

Nick will get that reference but does Kyle remember the boxy yellow suits.


One clawed hand is pushed through Kyle's shaggy hair as Nick asks Kyle what the tall man is afraid of. To which he just gestures over towards where he'd been crouched earlier. "That. Of becoming *that* again. And hurting people." Again.

As Isis approaches, he looks down at her, slitted blue eyes sharp. "No." He tells her, as though she were a child. "The Empire was a long time ago. The only thing left of it is a broken me."


"Are you sure?" That's as far as Nick is willing to push that particular line of thought. It's possible that Isis and Kyle's… problems are related. And it's possible they're not. But organizations like that tend to be connected and Nick knows from personal experience that they can be very difficult to eradicate.

Plus, they have long memories. And carry grudges to the level of an art form.

"You haven't hurt us Kyle. And I'm a bit harder to hurt than normal." Which isn't to say that he COULDN'T be hurt. Kyle may well be that strong. His claws look sharp. But Nick's tough. Isis is squishier.

He, er, doesn't mention that.

"I think, Isis, that mentioning it upsets him a bit." Nick nudges gently. "Is that why you keep wandering? Because you're afraid of hurting people?"


In many ways Isis is still a child well, young at least. Both men have about a decade on her. Add to that the way she was bought up, her behaviour can often be seen as immature.

She has to look up to meet Kyles gaze, which she does as she steps closer, finally touching her body to his. "Yes, Nick." She's sure. She can't forget those boxy yellow suits that filled her days before she was retrieved.

"Good, cause I don't want to you leave." Whether she's deliberately what Kyles 'no' was to or not, isn't clear. She's picked up the mention of The Empire is bad. She'll poke it at later, maybe. "I'll be more careful. I didn't know…"

That's as close to an apology that anyone has got from the woman.


Kyle Gibney moves back, not letting Isis touch him, even if it means giving ground to her. He's marginally more man than animal at the moment, and the man doesn't mind doing so. He cuts his gaze over to Nick and his lip lifts in a bit of a snarl, that rage that he keeps a careful lid of calm on bubbling up around the edges. "And are you going to keep me from hurting others." He nods down to Isis. "From hurting her?" Because yes, the little cat looks quite fragile.

The tall man wipes a hand down over his face, blowing out a sigh. "I don't know why I came into the city." He admits. It's safer for everyone if he's in the woods, where the only thing he's likely to kill are animals.

Isis gets frowned at when she says she doesn't want him to go. "You can't always get what you want."


"Are you going to make me?" Nick counters. "There are ways that don't involve you going into self exile or being tied up." Nick crosses the space between the bunks and sits back down. He is most decidedly not obstructing the way out, even if Isis is.

"Whatever happened to you, Kyle, it isn't going to get better out there." He gestures out the door, out the window, northward, toward the edge of the city. "And if you are still being hunted that's more dangerous. In the city you can hide, but that's not going to get you better either. Maybe you need to be around people like you."

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug. "What have you got to lose?"

Nick doesn't take in strays, generally. But he does help people. He's not sure, if Kyle stayed, how well the additional mouth to feed would work. But he is sure, at this moment, that if this man slips out into the city he will be following his trail again soon under far less happy circumstances.

"Besides…" Now he's teasing. "Who wants to disappoint Isis? You two looked so comfortable last night."


Isis pouts when Kyle moves back but gets the hint, loud and clear, stepping back to give the man room. "I'm fast and I'm not as delicate as I look." She huffs a little. She's still in the doorway though but watches Nick make his statement and moves with a sigh.

"You came to the city for a reason though. You found us, people similar to you and people who can help you." She barely remembers her first days at the Institute but it had been clear that the moment they thought she wasn't a risk, she was free to go. They'd encouraged her to stay but hadn't made her.

Disconsolately she plonks herself down next to Nick. "I usually get what I want, though."


"I'm sure you can take care of yourself." Kyle says, giving Isis a tilt of his head, not wanting to argue the point. Maybe she is faster than him and can stay safe. He's not keen on rolling those dice.

The wolf-man gets another sharp look when he says there are other alternatives. "Like what?" Kyle hasn't left, but he's standing in the door and doesn't look inclined to get any closer right now.


"The person who taught me called it 'learning how to be'. You say your broken and okay, maybe you are. Maybe you're a bit dangerous too. But you can learn how to be all of those things and not ruin anything. And maybe, just maybe, even get a bit better."

Nick pats Isis on the shoulder. She's done the right thing even though he knows she hates conceding the point and letting Kyle leave if he wants to. She can hear him chuff.

And then he leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. "But you're not going to learn that out there alone. You'd have done it by now if you could. We might be able to teach you some. Where else are you going to find people who know as much about dealing with being part animal?" Which it certainly seems Kyle is.

"We're not going to try to make you stay. But I think we know things that will help you, if you decide to. Even Isis." Beat. "Squirrely as she can be."

That was for her benefit, mostly.


Isis preens at Kyles words. She totally couldn't hold her own against him. She might be just fast enough to find somewhere safe though that's not clear.

The feline-like mutant doesn't say anything more, she doesn't even try to project empathically. She knows Kyle needs to make his own decision. Nick does get a low growl for calling a squirrel though.


Kyle Gibney drags his hand through his shaggy hair again, obviously a sign of agitation. Finally, he shakes his head. "I need to take a walk." And then he does turn around, and walk out. It didn't sound quite so final as 'I'm leaving' or 'goodbye'.


Nick watches the man go. Without taking his small pile of things, or so it seems. Maybe he'll come back. Maybe he won't. He considers the empty doorway for about a minute, then rises and leans down to whisper in Isis' ear.

"Order a pizza. A big one."

That should make her happy. And is possibly a hint as to how he thinks this is going to play out.


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