dr_lauren | (no subject)

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Lauren can't help herself - she's staring. She has been staring - covertly - at the blue woman every time they're in the same room together, which thus far hasn't been that often (and is also probably why she hasn't been punched by now). It isn't that she's the strangest looking denizen of the space station - though she is, on a superficial level. It's more that she's so strange-looking she's almost comforting. A taste of home...

Of course, there is no saying the other woman is fae, or if she is that she's one of the kinds Lauren even knows about. She's an expert, for a human, but that doesn't mean she knows everything.

And then there's was the fact that even if the other woman is a fae, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. It certainly doesn't mean getting back home would be any easier, though maybe, if she had any abilities, Lauren could figure out how to turn it to their advantage...

Which means that she's still half-staring, lost in her thoughts, when the other woman gets up and approaches, obviously fed up with being the object of this particular brand of attention.

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Mystique's on her way out of the lab, after having dropped by to ask Sherlock a few questions. Surprisingly, he's not around-- instead, it's the leggy blonde in the labcoat who's been not-so-subtly scoping out the merchandise for the last few weeks. She interprets it as scientific interest rather than the more interesting kind, but she can only take so much of the startled, averted glances before she starts to get fed up with Blondie.

"Hi." She raises her eyebrows expectantly.

"Oh, um, hi," Lauren replies, coming to and realising that the blue woman is standing right there and speaking to her. She offers a nervous smile. "I don't think we've met. I'm Lauren. Lewis." Best to skip the awkward bit and get right to the introductions, right? Right.

Blondie's nervous, and it's just too precious for words.

"...Mystique," she says, not offering a hand. "Y'know, I think you'd get farther with a pair of binoculars. Maybe a field guide to rare mutants? This coy onlooker thing has got to be hampering your research."

"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stare-- did you say mutant?" Lauren asks, eyes lighting up. "That's very interesting. Is that in reference to a specific genotypic mutation? Do you know which gene is the cause? I'd love to know more."

"It's in reference to the mutation of the x-gene. It's genotypic in the broadest sense, but not always phenotypic. X-gene anomalies are almost exclusively polymorphic," she says, raising an eyebrow at Lauren, like she's just told her what color underwear she's wearing. Nerds-- can't live with 'em, can't resist fogging up their goggles. "In other words, they broke the mold with me, Blondie."

She stirs, ready to head out; she likes to brag about her DNA as much as the next girl, but she always finds this kind of enthusiasm slightly unnerving.

"Oh." The noise Lauren makes is half-interested, half-disappointed; a little sigh like something inside her has deflated a bit. Not fae then. She notices the other woman getting ready to leave at the same time as she blurts out "So what can you d-- no, sorry, that's rude." Shaking her head at her own ineptitude - seriously, have your people skills atrophied so badly in just a few weeks? - she inclines her head towards the door as if inviting Mystique to escape while she still can.

There's something hilarious about the way Lauren actually encourages her blow-off at the end, and it's enough to make Raven stay for now. She knows damn well she has nothing better to do.

"No, it's fine." She waves it off, settling on a stool across the table. "What can I do. Why don't you take a stab at it? Three guesses, but you make any smurf jokes and I can't be responsible for my actions."

Lauren's eyebrows inch up her forehead as the other woman sits down across from her, turning legitimate scientific inquiry into a guessing game. She thinks back to the '20 questions' game with Regina in the cell - at least it had passed the time.

"Okay, well... I'm assuming the skin pigmentation is an incidental phene, rather than the complete expression of this 'x-gene'. Without a chance to study it I really have no idea the array of mutations that are possible, but based on your physique and correlating to what I know from my own studies I'm going to say... some sort of manipulation ability?" She eyes the other woman for a moment, heat rising to her cheeks. "Pheromones, maybe?"

"Pheromones? You think?"

She leans in, chin balanced on her palm as she looks up at Lauren.

"Not a bad guess. But I think you're confusing my mutation with my raw animal magnetism," she suggests, arching her eyebrow way up in a parody of flirtation.

This is fun; it's like teasing a blonde Sherlock that'll actually indulge her nonsense.

Edited 2013-02-08 21:50 (UTC)

Lauren's cheeks are definitely pink now, and her eyes drop away as she flicks through a mental file of races she's familiar with. Mermaid? No, never seen her in water, unlikely she's amphibious, no gills... Banshee? She's got the eyes for one, but talks too much...

"I don't know, some kind of telepath?" she hazards, though she almost hopes she's wrong, since she knows her thoughts are pretty embarrassing sometimes.

Ooh, a blusher.

"EEHN," Raven says, lazily supplying a buzzer noise. "One more shot, better make it a good one..."

But before she can try again, there's another Lauren staring her down.

"C'mon, think!"

"Ah!" Lauren reels back, shocked, though a moment later she's leaning forward again, peering intently at the woman sitting across from her. "Wow. That is... amazing. I've never seen anyone that quick before." Her tongue darts out, wetting her lips as she scrutinises the face in front of her - her face. Are my eyebrows really that scraggly? God...

"So you're a shifter. Just humanoid forms, I assume, all the shifters I've met have been limited to one species."

Edited 2013-02-08 22:15 (UTC)

After she's done inspecting, Mystique shakes Lauren off with a hair toss.

"Thanks," she says, and the smile's genuine, but not full-power, because, well: neither is she. "Yeah, humanoid, but I can get pretty creative."

You could. Now your best monster impression is Creed.

"I'd imagine so - I mean, you can change your clothes as well. That's pretty incredible." For all her prior reservedness Lauren seems almost excited now, fidgeting a little on her stool. She wasn't alone here - Mystique was probably from her world, too. Just having that potential connection was enough to give her a small seed of hope.

"So there are others like you, where you come from?"

"Often imitated, never duplicated," she says wryly. "Well. There are hundreds of thousands of mutants, so, probably a couple other shapeshifters in there. Not one worth a plugged nickel." Raven smiles hard at her.

"Where're you from?" Her tone suggests she expects the answer to be under a rock.

Mutants? Interesting. She'd never heard fae describe themselves in that way, but then, she'd only met a small subset. It was likely that other groups elsewhere would see themselves differently, though by the woman's accent she has to be from somewhere in North America. Though accents can change...

She looks up after a long silence, flashing an embarrassed smile. "Toronto, actually. I work for the Ash?" She watches Mystique's expression for any sign of recognition.

Mystique doesn't get as far as the Ash.

"Ugh," she says, disappointed. "Canada?"

"...is there something wrong with Canada?" Lauren asks, with not a little wounded pride in her tone.

Mystique gives her a be serious kind of look, a motherly you know perfectly well what Canada did wrong.

"Ech," she mutters, with a one-shouldered shrug. She'd complain about her least favorite Canadian but if she does, they'll probably just celebrate the motherland with LaBatt and ice hockey. "Anyway. What's the Ash?"

Lauren nearly bristles enough to give the other woman a curt rebuke, but something stops her - maybe it's the feeling that it would earn her a withering glare, maybe worse.

"The Ash is the leader of the Light Fae - he arbitrates disputes, keeps the peace, that sort of thing."

"The leader of the what?" Because she's pretty sure she just heard fae, and suddenly, she's wondering if Lauren has met her newest gal pal, the one who apparently thinks she's the Wicked Witch of A-03.

"The, ah, fae. They're not all faeries, more... supernatural beings, from many different backgrounds." So probably not a member yourself, she thinks disappointedly. "You know, vampires, will o' the wisps, selkies... that sort of thing."

"Uh-huh." Mystique's not exactly an expert where magic is concerned, outside of the homework she's done on various members of high-profile super teams and Rogue's bedtime stories. "You have mutants where you come from?"

Wonder if she's ever heard of a little program called Weapon X up in Alberta.

"I don't know," Lauren says, shaking her head. "I've only dealt with fae. Though after what I've seen, I wouldn't say anything's impossible, so who knows?" She gives the blue woman another nervous smile, fiddling with the pen and pad of paper in front of her. She's been around too many predatory fae to relax entirely in this woman's presence.

"Believe me, you'd know it. Ever since the mutant population came out of the closet in the '40's, humans have been engineering robots and super-soldiers and parasites to try and annihilate us," she says crisply. "Not the kind of thing you can miss, even in Canada."

She eyes Lauren, who's looking distinctly ill-at-ease. There's a second where she considers asking her what's wrong, but she knows perfectly well, and doesn't particularly feel either like hearing it or getting lied to. She looks her over, long and hard.

"You want blood, don't you?" Raven sounds a little annoyed, sure, but she also sounds as if she's already been persuaded. She's not a fan of human-administered lab tests (or needles in general; who is?) but she's all for nanite research, and it doesn't hurt that Lauren seems to be something of a freak-groupie.

"What?" Lauren looks up quickly, blinking, the implication of Mystique's words sinking in slowly. "Oh, you mean for labwork. Well, I'm sure that would be useful, but only if you want to. I don't think we're at the point of mandatory testing." The ...yet hung in the air between them.

'Mandatory testing'-- over my dead body.

...actually, that wasn't a particularly comforting thought.

"Sherlock already stuck me," she says casually, "but I think he was just bored. You seem to have a vested interest."

"Maybe you could take a look at what those nasty little inhibitors are doing to my protective coloration," she ventures, and the tone of the conversation seems to shift, somehow. Mystique looks at Lauren, wearing a reserved smile that suggests she might make a very accommodating and charming lab rat for the right researcher.

"Well, without a sample from before the nanites it might be hard to run comparisons, but it'd be better than nothing. I'd be happy to take a look." Lauren's expression also shifts, somehow more carefree, less reserved. "Is now okay? It'll just take me a moment to prep things, if so. Or you can come back later, I don't know if you have something else to do right now..." It isn't as if much on the station is time-sensitive, really, but she doesn't want to presume anything.

Yeah, she figured as much, but at least Lauren's used to looking at unorthodox blood types; she might have a leg up on the other guys.

"Now's fine. So you've really never heard of mutants. Your world is, what, just humans and... 'fae'?"

"Well, I don't know if I'd call it 'just' fae," Lauren says as she slips off the stool and heads for a cupboard of supplies. "They're really varied, and there's a lot of them... a lot more than people would like, probably, if they knew about them. Which most people don't, obviously, or they wouldn't like it..." She realises she's babbling and shoots the other woman an apologetic smile. "Though really they're not that different, they have they same wants and needs as any human." Well, maybe not exactly the same level of need as any human, she thinks, remembering how Bo had gradually discovered her insatiable appetite - succubi weren't just oversexed, they thrived on it. Oh, and now she's blushing. Great.

"So what about you?" Mystique leans, resting her chin in her palm as she watches Lauren gather supplies. She's been assuming this whole time she's human, mostly because of the way she'd been ogled like a novelty, but it sounds like fae are underground and Lauren is most definitely in the loop, so-- maybe she was wrong.

"You have any special talents you're holding out on me?"

Lauren blinks. "Me? Unless you mean the ability to go for days without remembering to eat a proper meal when I'm distracted, I'm not special."

"So what attracted you to a job working with freaks?" she asked, curious, because Val had always been something of a mutant groupie, and it amuses her.

"It wasn't really a conscious career change," Lauren says, taking a blood pressure cuff (or at least, she thinks it's one, the symbols on it aren't like anything she's ever seen before) and wrapping it around Mystique's upper arm. "I guess you could say someone made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

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