A New Leaf (Open to all)

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

After everything that happened between Sebastian Shaw and Ripper, Alisa decided to do what she had intended to do in the first place: Turn over a new leaf. She brought proof to the Guild Leaders of those who were bought out by Ripper, the attack on her, and all the chaos that was caused for the Shaw family. She was then granted the right to leave the Guild without consequence or having her "mark" removed. Or she could be granted the ability to finally become a Guild Master for the Enforcers... after she cleaned house of course. Not willing to do the Guild's dirty work anymore, she took her leave. She never thought she would ever leave the Enforcer's Guild, so it was quite the transition.

Alisa found herself unable to live in her old apartment. No matter how many times she cleaned it, there were memories of that attack there and how small she felt. She did not move out of Manhattan, though. Instead she moved into a luxury condo on the East Side and rented a studio for her business and artwork. For the first time in her life, she was going legit... and it felt wonderful. Wonderful enough that Rachel's words actually had impact on her... and she began to volunteer at the Mutant Shelter.

She donated sketchbooks and taught some of the younger residents about art and basic sketching, but that was not all she did. She would scrub the floors, toilets, serve food, take things off the donation truck... anything asked of her she did with a smile. It was perhaps one of the few times someone saw her doing something so self-less.

But that was not all that changed. Alisa was even more level headed and kinder in her art authentications. Something that stunned the elite of New York City. No longer was so arrogant, cruel, or annoying. Alisa was just more... humble. The change had come as a surprise, but a welcome one. One that even got her invited to more parties and treated a bit better by high society (not that she cared).

Today, she was doing more volunteer work at the shelter. Dressed in a T-shirt and some jeans (clothing NO one had ever seen her in), her main focus was making sure the bathrooms were clean and the soap dispensers were full.

Comments

[seismic_shockwave]

Kayla was also a regular at the Eleventh Street Shelter, having once upon a time, taken more than a few dinners there. At the current moment, she could be found taking food out of a truck. Ever since Stephanie Shaw had largely taken over the supply of the shelter, they'd had little need to solicit donations. Almost all of the food, medicine, blankets and other supplies they needed came trucked in, direct from suppliers.

It'd changed a lot of things around the Shelter. The soup kitchen had shifted somewhat, as they were able to reliably provide a much greater variety of foods. There was always soup of course, but there was always a cooked entree (Stephanie had brought in commercial kitchen equipment, which made Kayla squee inside), salad, rolls and dessert. And coffee and sandwiches at any time.

It actually made for more work sometimes, but it was more than worth it. It was then that Kayla noticed ... wasn't that the chick with that other Hellfire guy from the infirmary?

"Uh ... hey there."

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

"Huh?" Alisa turned around to see Kayla. She looked quite familiar... and then it hit her. She was one of the girls at the Xavier Institute. Of course she could be wrong as she was on quite a lot of pain killers at the time.

"Oh, 'ey! I didn' know you volunteered here, too!" Alisa offered a smile before turning back to work on one of the kitchen's soap dispensers. Her "blade" making a bit of a tapping noise as she moved to get the screwdriver needed to close up the now full dispenser. "I'm sorry, I should introduce myself. Name's Alisa LeBeau. You can call me 'lisa, Alisa, or whatever. I don' mind none."

[seismic_shockwave]

"... I'm here like every Sunday." Kayla replied for a moment, not quite sure how to regard this woman, who after all, had been placed on the 'do not trust' list at the Mansion. Did she need an adult? Probably not, but she wasn't going to drop everything and be a friendly little snugglebear or anything.

"All right, Ms. LeBeau. If you've got the bathrooms under control, we could probably use some help unloading all this food from the van. And if you've got some sort of butchery skills, Miss Shaw's given us four sides of beef that could use some cutting up."

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

"Sure t'ing." She continued to smile after making sure the dispenser was working correctly. Alisa made her way to the van of food that was parked in the "receiving" area of the shelter. She had recently absorbed some more rage and could manage carrying the heavier boxes in the van without equipment. It was funny how people could get so angry over politics at a fund raising ball! It actually gave her enough power to move faster than normal (though she did not move too fast, worried her "blade" might slip on the ground).

Within minutes, Alisa got all the boxes inside of the shelter and in the right areas of the walk in fridge. Fruits with fruits, Vegetables with Vegetables, and so on. She did not do that to show off, but to be more efficient with her time and what needed to be done in the shelter.

Alisa moved to the sink to wash her hands before grabbing an apron and a hair net to put on. She washed her hands a second time before putting on a pair of gloves and looking over towards Kayla.

"Okay, so 'ow do you want de meat cut up? Fillet, cubed, strips, ground?"

[seismic_shockwave]

Well, whatever her deficiencies may or may not have been, she certainly worked decently fast, even though that blade must have made it a little weird.

Kayla walked out with one of the sides of beef, precisely one half of a dressed cow. In this case, about two hundred fifty pounds of meat.

"I think we'd better stick with doing the prime cuts. Shaw's just gonna have to send someone from the restaurant for the fancy work. We can grind the hamburger here too. But we'd probably better leave cutting steaks to an actual butcher." Kayla took out a guide to the cuts of beef, before going to wash her hands again and get the proper knives. "My guess is that someone flubbed the order. We usually get everything all nice and cut up."

"And remember, once this one's done, we've got three others to work with. Each one nearly a thousand dollars worth of beef.

If anyone asks 'where's the beef' ..."

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

"What 'appened? Did Alistaire drive a car into a pasture an' hit four cows?" Alisa grinned at Kayla. "Sorry, a bad joke. Okay, I'll get dese t'ings cut up in no time!"

Alisa cracked her knuckles before grabbing a butcher's knife in hand. She waited for Kayla to come back with the other knives after taking a quick glance of the guide.

"You know, dis mistake is our gain, no? We'll get more meat outta dis den wit' de pre-cuts you usually get. Means we can feed more people an' 'ave more options for what we make in de kitchen."

[seismic_shockwave]

"... heh. I'll be sure to tell Ms. Shaw that one if I see her around. She'll probably have a good laugh."

Kayla didn't really share Alisa's confidence that this would take 'no time'. Those were totally four sides of beef that they'd been delivered. It was gonna be a long afternoon here. Thankfully, her superhuman strength reduced the straing of what would otherwise be an intensely physical job.

"In theory? Yeah. But neither of us are trained butchers. We'll do the primal cuts and get the ground beef done. But we're gonna need to get someone more qualified to cut the steaks and stuff, or we'll end up wasting tons of it."

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

"I 'ope she gets a good laugh at it. She could use one right now, considerin' everyt'ing dat's gone down." Alisa heard of what Stephanie was going through with her fiance and felt horrible. She wondered if she could handle such a thing with the same grace and strength that she had.

"We're in New York City, shouldn' be too hard to find a qualified butcher in de meat cuttin' district. I'll make a few calls an' see if I can find one willin' to come down here an' cut up de rest for us." She smiled as she began to cut into the slab of meat before her. She cheated a little, using her powers to increase her speed a bit. It did not make her sloppy, as each cut she made came off as clean.

"Huh, reminds me o' de first time I 'ad to prepare gator tail. Probably de only good memory I got o' back home."

[seismic_shockwave]

"Yeah. Truth is, I'd rather not bother her with something this small if I could avoid it." Kayla deflated a little bit thinking about that. She still got a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach when she thought about Vargas and all that had happened with him. "Yeah. We should call the butchers who do Languedoc's meat. Ms. Shaw and her friend's restaurant. They'll be able to do this right quick."

Kayla had no ability to really expedite work so much, though she did it quickly enough, having had some experience with cutting fairly large amounts of meat.

"Sure that's a hoot and a half." Talk about depressing, though. Your best memory of home being peeling the scaly-ass skin off of a dead dinosaur wannabe? Kayla had plenty of hard feelings towards home, but she also had a lot of very happy memories too.

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

"My home life kinda sucked. I was only adopted to replace someone who didn' need replacin' ." Alisa never really talked about her past all that much. "I don' know a t'ing about my real folks or what country I came from. Rumor says I was adopted from Russia. I never really cared to ask more questions or look further into it."

She cut off another good chunk of beef from the slab they were working on and placed it on some paper to be wrapped up when she was done.

"If I 'ad known dat a place like de Xavier Institute existed, you bet your ass I woulda run away jus' to get dere. It might've prevented me from becomin' what I was, you know? But I can' really dwell on it too much. I'm changin' my life for de better now, an' dat all dat matters, no?"

[seismic_shockwave]

Kayla nodded, not wanting to pry any more about it. In any case, they had a lot of cow to butcher. And the 'my life sucked' game was one that most of the people around here could play. What mattered in the end was whether people could transcend it or if they got caught in that bitter pain.

"Good. Might want to ditch your Hellfire Club boyfriend, though. Influences don't get much worse than the Club" Kayla observed mildly. "Unless you already have, of course."

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

"He's not my boyfriend." Alisa's lips formed a small frown. "He's a friend is all. He'd NEVER commit to any relationship an' doesn' show much affection towards others."

She nearly cleave a part of the bone in half as she thought about Alistaire. She loved him, but hated him at the same time. And something about him made it nearly impossible to leave him.

"He doesn' want to let me go for some reason or another. An' he knows all de right words to say to get me to stay at his side. Part o' me 'opes one day he'll wake up from all dat selfishness an' coldness an' you know... break de bonds dat 'is Grandpere an' Pere set in place for 'im. But de other part knows leopards don' change dere spots. Wishful t'inkin' , I guess."

"I DO 'ave a boyfriend, 'owever. His name is Ryan. He's a sweet guy, but he's been MIA for a bit. De life o' a super hero I suppose." That made her smile, thinking of Ryan. "He treats me good when he's around."

[seismic_shockwave]

Okay. That was clearly a nerve.

"... `kay." That was also a lot more than she ever cared to know about the situation. So she had a boyfriend and ... a whatever? Sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. But she was going to shut her mouth and not say anything about it.

Yep. That seemed wise. Or she might get more oversharing.

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

"Sorry, Alistaire brings out de worst in me." She sighed, cutting another piece of meat and placing it on the paper.

"Like I said, Alistaire is just a friend. Nuthin' beyond dat." At least not anymore, as she was going to cut him off from any future hanky panky. Though in truth, she knew he might try to weasel his way into getting that once more. She would have to be stronger is all. "Didn' mean to over-share, either..."

"I know 'ow dangerous de Hellfire Club is, chere. I've seen it first hand, which is why I am changin' my life around. It's a game where nobody wins, ever. Even my family used to 'ave a sayin' about dem. "You join the Hellfire Club head first, you leave de Club feet first". In otherwords, you come in alive, you leave dead."

She looked down at the slab she was working on, realizing the rest would need to be cut by a professional butcher. Alisa smiled and began to wrap up the meat she cut and bring it into the fridge, before coming back to store the rest of the meat slab in there, before taking out another to start working on.

[dazzle_daybreak]

There's a knock at the door to the kitchen. "Hello?" Josephine poked her head in. "I'm supposed to be on shift today for kitchen help."

[seismic_shockwave]

"Hey Josephine! Come on in!" Kayla waved her in as she poked her head in. "We're just carving up some massive hunks of cow. The suppliers ended up sending us whole sides of beef." She probably looked a little scary, brandishing a giant knife with two hundred fifty pounds of cow in front of her, but there was little that could be done about it.

"Maybe while we handle all this meat cutting, you could get the other stuff. We're having tortilla soup and tacos tonight. Going full Mexican in the house tonight."

[alisa_lebeau_v3]

Alisa gave Josephine a quick wave with her free hand, before cutting another chunk of meat from the slab. She gave the newcomer a smile before placing another piece of meat on paper to be wrapped up.

" 'ey, chere! We got some fresh beef cut up an' packaged in de fridge if you wanna grind dat up wit' de meat grinder for taco meat. Or you could start workin' on de soup, as dat takes longer to make!" She spoke in a cheerful manner. "Come join de party!"

[dazzle_daybreak]

Josephine wasn't squeamish about the meat. The wonder of this world having so much beef, from cows even(!), still hadn't worn off for her. She'd butchered goats and smaller animals herself, so she wasn't fazed.

"I'll work the grinder." She replies cheerfully. "Just let me wash up and grab an apron."