nextgenerationmarvel | Day at the zoo (intro and open to whoever's in the area)

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Day at the zoo (intro and open to whoever's in the area)

Mrs. Grekova had told her she was in danger of growing roots herself if she stayed in the shop any longer that day -even though it wasn't even lunchtime- and had practically shooed her out the door with her pay for a full day, and the promise of a bonus if she didn't come back the next day, just for her own health, because working all the time wasn't good for a young woman.

So she'd laughed, as she always did, since this was something that happened every few weeks, and went home to stash the money she wasn't going to use and to collect Bob -who always passed as some kind of art project or puppet if he perched on her shoulder while she was out in public- so that they could go for an outing, she figured that a trip to the zoo would do them both some good.

She debated packing a lunch, but after re-counting her day's pay, decided against it, because she could afford a lunch at the cafe, or she'd stop for a sandwich on the way home. And so it was with Bob in a small dog harness that she headed down the street to hop the bus, too warm to walk the whole way to the zoo, even though it wasn't far.

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Jay startled a bit at Boo offering a greeting. He flailed slightly pushing the top of the backpack to an upright position. He got a low grunt of annoyance from inside the backpack for his efforts.

Then his attention was torn away from Boo to the puppet. Which was making a noise remeniscent to something that happened in a horror movie when an ax murderer popped out.

Jay looked at the puppet. Then at Alexis Alex Lex. Back to the puppet. Back to her to try to figure out how the hell she made that noise.

While Lex hadn't startled at Bob's noise, she did turn a glare on him, pushing him back down flat on her shoulder with one hand while she explained: "He does that. I think the batteries in his ...voice box thing are dying."

To his credit, the next sound -now that he was deflated and draped over her shoulder again- was a pitiful warble, sounding rather as if he was under water.

"Wow. Uh. The batteries hard to change?" He put a firm hand against his backpack to keep Boo in it. The under water sound was possibly making the teddy bear-sized creature curious. The last thing he needed was a miniature giant space hamster running around the zoo chased by a horde of children.

Jay's ability to roll with things as a human was sometimes only paralleled by his ability to make large things roll as a Hulk.

"Not really." She replied, "Just finicky, takes time and a certain amount of finesse." Another underwater sound came next, sounding more mournful than the last, and Lex reached up absently to pat at the lump, it was a reflexive movement, as was scritching up under the edge of the harness.

It was the sort of movement that came from someone handling a long-time pet, knowing sore spots and favorite scratching spots, an almost muscle-memory. She shifted her weight a little, one foot to the other, "So, uh, you had a chance to see the dinosaurs yet?" It was one of Bob's favorite exhibits, so she always made sure to do at least one walk-through before they left.

Jay watched the automatic motion. One of his eyebrows raised a little. That wasn't the action for a puppet. He picked up on the connotation. Though like he had any room to talk with Boo hanging out in his backpack.

"Nope. Haven't seen them yet this visit." A slightly soft trill came from the interior of his bag on his chest.

She nodded towards the bag, "Not missing an important phone call or anything, are you?" Because while that didn't quite sound like a cell phone, it didn't quite sound like anything else, either.

Considering that she'd been the one to distract him, well, Bob had, but close enough, she wanted to make sure that she wasn't accidentally making someone think he'd been kidnapped or something.

He glanced down at the backpack. "Nah. Important things would ring my pocket."

Where his Avengers ID was.

He stuck his hand quickly inside the backpack. He gave Boo a quick scratch on its head.

"Makes sense." She replied, nodding once, "Easier to pick it up that way, let people know you're not in trouble." Because in her experience there wasn't much other reason for someone to call.

"So, uh, anything else I can do for you?" She laughed a moment later, shaking her head, "That sounds wrong, apparently I'm not good at conversations in the wild, used to dealing with people at work."

When Jay tried to take his hand out of his backpack there was a black and white furry creature clinging to it. He grimaced and tried to shove Boo right back in.

"Uh, no. Just came over to talk." He gave a slightly wider than normal grin. "Puppet and all."

Her brow creased a little, because she was pretty sure there were rules about not bringing pets to the zoo. Not that she'd ever followed them herself, there were a lot of rules that mostly just applied to other people as far as she was concerned.

She nodded all the same, giving her own too-broad smile, "Well it was good to meet you. Jay, right?"

"Jay Walters-Wingfoot. Nice to meet you, too." He nodded as he tried to shake Boo off of his hand. He got an annoyed squeaking from his miniature giant space hamster for all his effort.

She nodded once, "I'll probably see you around." She paused then, brow creasing just a little, "Unless you want to tag along to the dinos. Might be harder for two giants to knock people over than it is for one."

Not that she really knocked people over, she was good at dodging even the biggest of strollers and the fastest of screaming children. But with two of them, people might steer clear on their own.

"I can if you don't mind the company." Boo had to be getting restless. Jay eventually managed to shake his tiny, furry buddy off his hand.

"Maybe less people bouncing off me if there's another skyscraper with me." People shorter than six foot were like birds. Some of them smacked right into his windows.

"I don't mind." She said, giving a shrug, "Besides, might be a fun not-entirely-scientific experiment, just see how many people clear out of the way, you know?"

Besides that, she was curious and kind of wanted to keep an eye on him, at least for now, and that seemed to be the easiest way to do so without being suspicious about it.

"Well, Uncle Reed would like it if I did it for science, so why not?" Jay did not tend to call most of the Avengers by family terms. But the Fantastic Four were part of his family. Not that totaly strangers would pick up on that.

He settled the backpack better on his chest. If Boo tried to escape again, he didn't have to try to stuff his arm backwards into the backpack.

Though Boo had settled in low in the backpack. Jay's shadow profile looked like he was pregnant.

She nodded once, a quick, decisive movement, smile sliding into place again, easy and open, "Decided then. For science." She headed back down the walkway, she had an easy, comfortable pace, the kind that could eat up distance without wearing herself out. It was something that she'd had some practice at, the kind of pace that people who walk everywhere settled into before long.

Bob had settled as well, still just a deflated blob on her shoulder, getting a few stares, but not as many turned heads as they tended to get when he was sitting up and interacting.

Despite the slightly pregnant backpack appearance, Jay did not waddle or put his hand to the small of his back like it hurt. He was a tall, brawny guy. The couple pounds against his belly did not throw off his groove much.

"So which flavor of science will you be testing at the dino exhibit? Puppetry kinesthetics?"

"I think mostly the science was crowd migration patterns and how they pertain to having an anomaly of above-average size in their midst." She replied, smiling again, because really she couldn't help it, half of her science-talk came from science fiction, and the other half came from nature documentaries.

"And if the reaction is different from a single anomaly to a paired one." She shrugged carefully so as not to dislodge Bob from his perch, "Of course, we've just got field notes as to the singular, we'll have to compare later."

"I can tell you about reactions from being about 8 foot tall and green. There's a lot more room given until a three year old thinks you're a grown up Kermit the Frog." Jay shrugged. He remembered the utterly terrified look on the parents' faces until he gently picked up the little girl and crooned 'It Ain't Easy (Being Green)' to her.

He also mentioned being tall and green without batting an eyelash. His mother had a public identity, so he had one, too. Or so he figured out from all the fanmail from this Gina person he got.

"Oh. That's you." She kept up with the news, easiest way to tell if she was going to have to pack up and move in a hurry, after all, and she'd been having a good run so far.

"Had no idea I was talking shop with a celebrity." The smile went a little more crooked, "Might have at least tried to be impressed if I knew." She was also hoping that this turn of events wasn't going to prompt another move. She'd been lucky to be able to stay in one place as long as she'd been here and she knew it, but if there was any chance that the Program would find her, she'd have to vanish the same as she'd gotten good at.

"Yes, I'm Kermit the Frog," he admitted with a lopsided grin. He never thought of himself as famous. That was Mom's territory. Sometimes Dad's, too. Depending on whatever he did with the Fantastic Four.

"No need to be impressed. I don't think there's much call to with me. Now, if you were talking to my mom, then I'd expect you to be tongue-tied, flabbergasted, or possibly not stopping with the shaking of her hand." Not after he destroyed a bit of New York not too long ago. He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. There was a very slight sound of snoring coming from the bottom of the backpack.

"I could try." She replied, "I've never been too good at star-struck." She shrugged, "One of the problems with going to a boarding school, I guess, don't get caught up in all the who's who and all the movies we get to see are a couple decades out of date at least."

It was during her second escape that she'd learned to call the Program a boarding school, people didn't ask a whole lot of questions about it that way, which made it easier on her in general.

Her brow creased a little at the snoring, but mostly she was distracted by the fact that Bob had started humming Rainbow Connection quietly to himself at the mention of Kermit the Frog, and didn't stop until she'd poked him a couple of times, causing another one of those static-y sighs, seeming to deflate a little further.

"That sounds like hell," Jay commented on the boarding school. Then again, he holographically commuted to a rez school. What did he know?

He laughed at Bob's song choice. At least the puppet could be topical at the right moments.

"I guess." She replied, giving a shrug, "Hard to say when I don't have a huge frame of reference." The smile returned a moment later, "I do like being able to see movies when they're relevant, though, so that's one thing to say for being an 'adult'." Finger-quotes and everything. She'd caught on quickly every time she'd been well and away from the Facility, it was a sort of protective coloring, learning quickly made it easier for her to blend in.

"Well, hopefully New York is being nice to you now that you're out of there." He tried not to sound skeptical about the city that way. He didn't like cities all that much. It was a saving grace from the Avengers Mansion to be right across of Central Park.

"Catching movies in a timely manner does help with conversation with the pop culture set. Which is most people under the age of 50 nowadays."

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