Gimme a break, Kit-Kat!

[Freight Train]

Freight Train sat on the front steps of the Redención House tying up her shoelaces and watching the street for her best friend Taya's Celica. The last time they'd seen each other face-to-face was at Cullen's Institute, sometime before she'd run away. Since then they'd kept in touch via them world wide internets, but it wasn't at all the same. This was part of the visit to Los Santos that she'd looked forward to the most.

Train secured her laces and hopped down to the sidewalk, hefting her backpack and looking left and right with a hand shielding her eyes from the sun. She wasn't even sure what a Toyota Celica even LOOKED like, but was certain she'd know it when she saw it. It wasn't much longer to wait. Taya rounded a turn near the house and began to drive towards Train, who put her foot up on the House's overturned recycle bin and yanked up on her shorts to show some leg. Taya had barely stopped the car before Train had hauled the door open and tossed herself in just hard enough to test the suspension.

"Kit-Kat, thank you for breaking of a piece of time for me to have an actual break with you." She leaned across the small space between their seats to hug her friend. "Vacation's been kinda boring so far, to tell the truth. Glad to do something fun."

[Taya Robbins]

This wasn't the first time Taya had been to Redención House, but the last time had been strictly business. Well, okay, it had been the exciting kind of business, the sort where you got to meet amazing people and ask them questions that really mattered, the kind that made Taya feel like she was really making a difference as a reporter - but it was business just the same, and she never felt quite like herself when she was wearing a skirt.

But today was a different story. She'd already worked her tail off yesterday researching Treadstone Industries and legal precedent for ethical mutant studies, then stayed up late writing so her story would be on Angela's desk a whole day before the deadline. That meant today was wide open for lunch, a baseball game, and celebratory sushi afterwards. If, that was, she could convince a girl from podunk, Ohio that there was more to sushi than rolled-up raw fish.

Taya grinned ear to ear when she saw Freight Train posing on the curb. She couldn't even get a greeting out before the diminutive bruiser set the car rocking and seized her furry shoulders in a fierce hug.

"Hey, you!" she said, laughing, and she managed to snake out a paw to return Train's sideways hug. "God, it's so good to see you, Train! Man, graduation seems like a long time ago now. You look good! Are you taller?"

[Freight Train]

"God, I hope so," she replied, trying to check her height against Taya's in spite of being seated. "We can see about it later on. You're looking pretty good yourself." Train put her backpack in the floor between her feet as the pair began their drive. "Soooo, how's life on your own? Did you revive newspapers from the dead media yet?" Train tugged the hems of her shorts back down to her knee and settled in, turning the air-conditiong vents to hit her face and neck to save them from the heat.

[Taya Robbins]

"Hey, now, we're at the cutting edge," Taya protested as she threw the Celica back into gear. "I have a Twitter account and everything."

Banyon Street began to whiz by as Taya wound her way toward the main drag. "Feel free to turn down the AC if you want," she said. "I've always got it up because, you know, fur. Anyway, it's been great. I love my apartment, love my new roomie, and work at the Bruin is killer but it's exciting. It's a little weird being on the opposite side of the country from my folks, but I think being at Cullen's helped with that."

She rolled up to a stop sign, glanced both ways across six lanes of busy traffic, made a snap judgment, and lurched out onto the road with only a few honking complaints. The Celica slipped nimbly between a city bus and an Escalade and into the passing lane.

"So," Taya said emphatically, drumming her claws on the steering wheel, "how was your flight into LA? Anything, um... interesting happen on the way in?"

[Freight Train]

"Aw, I wanted a zombie paper," Train mock-pouted, gripping her door handle as Taya cut across the traffic. She didn't address the AC. She was comfortable, and wouldn't have asked or waited for permission to mess with all the buttons and dials on the dashboard anyway. Besides, the question about her flight in had her on edge a bit. The needling tone Taya had taken...

"Interesting?" Freight Train made a show of tilting her head to the side and slightly forward, raising her left eyebrow and setting her mouth in a puzzled frown. "No, it left and arrived on time, and I spent the whole trip reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

She took a glance at Taya; the older girl was wearing her "Oh really?" smirk. Train capitulated to it with a sigh.

"Okay, I got involved in a mutant fight with some Brotherhood goons at the airport after I landed. There was a guy in a business suit who fought on my side against them." She paused, thumbnail tracing the seam where the two components of the door's handle came together. "But you knew that, didn't you?"

[Taya Robbins]

"Well, you kinda made the news, and mutant news is kinda my job now," Taya replied. "They didn't release names, but... I don't know how many girls your size in California can run down terrorists like a Mack truck."

She chewed her lip thoughtfully with a pointed fang and gave Train a sideways glance. "So, are you doing okay? I'm not sure whether to give you a high five or to chew you out."

[Freight Train]

"High five, please." She held her hand up for Taya to five whenever she could spare time from looking at the road. "I wasn't going to get involved, but they were gonna gang up on the suit guy. What was his name? Tom! Yeah, he works at Treadstone." Freight Train fished a badly battered business card from her little wallet. Harriman's name and the Treadstone logo were just visible through the thousands of creases on it's surface.

"He promised to make me really tough shoes." Train placed the card on the console between them so Taya could check it out at the next red light. "I'mma hold him to it, too! Later on I'mma visit the company and check the progress."

[Taya Robbins]

The Celica drew up a little short at the next red light with a brief squeal from the tires on the hot asphalt. Taya swatted the now-flying business card against the dash and stared at it in mild shock.

"Tom Harriman?" she exclaimed. "I was just at his press conference yesterday! He didn't say anything about that!"

[Freight Train]

The younger girl braced herself on the dashboard as Taya screeched her car to a halt. "Jeeeez, if I'd known you'd try to kill me over it, I wouldn'a mentioned it!" She sat back and blinked with a hard shake of her head. "Whew! Yeah. I dunno why he didn't say anything. Probably doesn't want any bad press. Bee-tee-dubs, cool that you got into a big-time press conference. I didn't watch it myself. Ronnie at the House needed his butt whupped in some Street Fighter."

[Taya Robbins]

Taya winced, complete with ear-splaying action. "Sorry, catlike reflexes," she said. "But, thanks, I was really blown away when my editor told me I was going. Student reporters hardly ever go to things like that, and then it's usually seniors, I mean, I was between NPR and Time Magazine, and there was even someone from BBC with this adorable accent--"

A brash horn from the Cadillac behind them startled Taya out of her stream of consciousness, and she glanced up at the green light and goosed the Celica back into the flow of traffic.

"Anyway... I guess it was a good thing you were able to stop those guys from doing whatever they were planning to do. Things are a lot different here from what I expected. I mean, yeah, I knew Los Angeles had the biggest mutant population in the United States, but on one hand you've got people like Anna Fernandez and Redención House and the Mutant Crimes Unit, and on the other you've got mutant street gangs, and those creepy riot cops who showed up at the Rally, and some punks tagging our front door at the apartment, and... and this is the exact opposite of what I wanted us to be talking about. Sorry."

[Freight Train]

Train scoffed, resting her hands behind her head and fairly lounged now that traffic was moving at a more relaxed pace. "I don't care. We can talk about it all we like, if that's what you need to talk about. Nothing like that has really happened in my hometown. People look at me funny and give me a little extra space, but that's about it. Nobody wants to be called a bigot, but nobody wants to really treat me right, either. I saw about the Rally, thought it was weird. Glad the you and the House people came out fine."

The adorable bruiser lazily ran her fingertip along the top edge of her window. "But if you wanna talk about something else, fine. Where we going?"

[Taya Robbins]

Taya glanced at the girl kicking back in her passenger's seat and couldn't help but smile. Train had that way about her, a confidence that far outstripped the limits of her diminutive frame, like she knew where her feet were planted and didn't care who tried to shift her. She was more comfortable in her own skin than anyone else Taya had ever known, and that garnered a lot of admiration from someone who'd been forced into an entirely different skin by genetic lottery.

Taya very nearly said something about that, but fortunately Train spoke up again before she had a chance to turn the outing any more maudlin.

"Oh! Yes! I almost forgot I hadn't told you yet! So..."

She grinned broadly, inviting a comparison to felines who poached household birds, which Riley probably wouldn't approve of, and rummaged for something in the plastic tray in the driver's side door.

"Okay, so, at these major press conferences, companies like Treadstone usually put out a couple tables full of goodies for the press. You know, gift cards, coupons, sometimes even electronics. It's not exactly ethical, but it happens all the time. Well, I'm at the bottom of the totem pole, so it was already picked pretty clean when I got there, but then Rita Sutherland of the LA Times told me she couldn't use these..."

She drew out a pair of glossy blue tickets and held them aloft in her paw. Emblazoned across the top of each was the Dodgers' logo.

[Freight Train]

"Whoa! Baseball tickets!? We're going to see free baseball!?"

Train shot up in her seat, gripping her seat to keep from reaching across Taya's field of vision. "Awesome! Dodgers and who? I wanna seeeeeeee!"

Of all sports, basketball was Train's notorious favorite. But, coming from a sporting home, she had a broader appreciation than most of her old Cullen's friends realized. Baseball was a great sport to her. Instantly she was in the mood to slouch in a chair with her feet up and be surrounded by junk food. Such was her traditional method of enjoying it with her Dad, but Train figured Taya'd be good for it, too, if the prices weren't gouged too badly.

[Taya Robbins]

"Oh, just some farmboy team from Ohio called the Reds..."

Taya dropped the tickets fluttering in Train's lap with a mercurial grin. Of course, it had been quite a while since she had seen a game herself, or she might have questioned why they were so big and fancy looking, or why the seat numbers were preceded by the word Suite.

[Freight Train]

"You stop. The Reds aren't my favorite, but they're from home! Do not talk about my boys that way," she admonished with a mock finger-wag. She snatched the tickets up off her knee and scrutinized them closely, holding them mere inches from her face, then squealed and grabbed Taya's shirt, shaking her rapidly.

"KIT-KAT! KIT-KAT, THESE ARE BOX SEATS! YOU HAVE BOX SEATS! BOX SEATS! SEATS DEL BOX, KIT-KAT!"

[Taya Robbins]

If Taya had been fully human, she wouldn't have been capable of appreciating (or suffering) the full range of frequencies Freight Train's voice had just hit. If anything, that was even more distracting than the shaking. Out of reflex, her ears pasted themselves flat against her skull. It was a good thing they'd reached another stoplight.

"Gaaaahhh, what? Ow, easy on the ears!" She ground the heel of her paw into the one facing Freight Train, which had taken the brunt of it, and was now fluttering pathetically. "Box eats what now?"

[Freight Train]

"Box. Seats," she said slowly, enunciating with exaggerated clarity. "We. Have. Tickets. In. A. Big. Wig. Suite." Train had managed to control her volume, but she still had a deathclaw grip on Taya's clothes. "Didn't you read the tickets? How did you not even look at them until now?"

Train sat back, jarring the car a bit as she hit the backrest and held the tickets up to admire them. "I want my ticket stub framed. OH! I gotta tell dad!" Her phone was out in a flash, her thumbs dancing a rapid, cacophonic rhythm on the keypad as she texted, dictating with apparent relish. "Got bos seats to Dodgers vs Reds. NYYYAAAAAH heh heh!" She giggled as she sent it and dropped the phone, ignoring it as it slid off the edge of the seat and into the floorboard.

[Taya Robbins]

"Well, I looked at them, but I didn't see--"

Taya turned Train's wrist so she could get a better look at the tickets. "I thought Suite just meant like, the section... Holy crap, we've got box seats?!"

The Cadillac blared behind them again, and Taya once more lurched ahead to join the moving string of traffic. "Ack, I really need to drive. So, um..."

Taya's paws fairly danced on the steering wheel as she merged toward the onramp to the 105. "The game starts at 1:15. I was thinking of just grabbing some In-N-Out on the way in, but I think they have free food in luxury boxes, so..."

A space opened up in front of her on the onramp, and she put her foot down and let the little Toyota eat up the asphalt.

"The stadium's only about half-hour away. So, what have you been up to lately? Besides neglecting your blog?"

[Freight Train]

Excuse me," Train began, putting her hand to her chest in a defensive gesture. "But I am not neglecting anything. It's my membership that's at fault. Why aren't you posting? You got lots of fun stuff to talk about. Press conferences, rallies, riots, and--this is the best one--free box tickets to a baseball game. Also, to hell with In-N-Out. Free food always tastes the best. And free food for high-class business folk? That's gonna taste like heaven on earth." Train paused long enough that it seemed she'd finished talking, then piped back up. "Think there'll be, like, beer 'n' stuff?"

[Taya Robbins]

"I'm pretty sure the beer isn't free," Taya said. "Also, um... neither of us really looks twenty-one. I mean, maybe in cat years?"

She slid through traffic like a Frogger pro and watched for signs for the 110. "Don't tell me you actually A, drink beer and B, like it?"