Pryde & Wisdom General Junk - The characters Kitty Pryde and Pete Wisdom, and the organization the Hellfire Club are all copyrighted to Marvel Comics. Some of the others are mine, and some aren't. Some of them I haven't met, and some of them I've been stuck with living with for the last year =( Take a guess as to which ones they are... *** Important note *** This is the last chapter of Pryde & Wisdom. Yep, after hours of agonising over whether to make it an ongoing story or not, I decided to take the plunge and finish it. In-jokes can only last so long, y'know... Well, it's been fun, folks. Thanks for all the response I've got, and what can I say? I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it =) (At least now Hawk can remove that 'Note, this is a story in progress' comment from the fanfic webpage =)) Phil ******************************************************************* Chapter 8 The computer labs were almost empty. Only a couple of die-hard students with deadlines coming up were sitting in front of terminals, frantically tapping away, and occasionally screaming at the machine "Work, damn you, WORK!!!". One poor student had had enough, and was sobbing into his terminal "Why did they invent ML? Why? " All in all it was a standard Saturday afternoon at the computer labs at Sussex university. Most of the students who worked here were doing what every student does of a saturday afternoon - going down the local pub and watching whatever football/rugby match was on the TV, whether they liked football/rugby or not. However, three people huddled round a terminal were not students, or at least Jack hadn't been a student here in a long time, and they weren't trying to understand the complexities of a Prolog program. - Q: How many Prolog programmers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: No. (If you don't get it, ask a Prolog programmer to explain, and watch him burst into tears...) - "Any luck?" asked Pete, after watching both him and Kitty tap away at the terminal for over ten minutes. "Unfortunately not," Jack replied. "Yes, the files are here, sitting in the mail server and waiting for it to get itself sorted out, but no, I can't get to them. Some bastard changed all the passwords, and took me off the list with it, which means I can't get inside the mail server to get at the stuff in there." "So how long before the people here fix it and you get the mail through?" "Could be anything from three days to three weeks. They're not known for speed here." "Nothing you can do, Kitty?" "Afraid not," she replied, leaning back on her chair. "Jack knows more about this system than I do, and he can't get in, so I'm afraid we're stuck." "Not necessarily. There's a mate of mine who's often down here who does some maintenance work for this system. If he's around he should be able to help us out. Hold on a minute, I'll just find out if he's down here at the moment." Jack tapped a few more arcane phrases into the keyboard. Pete looked over, and was about to ask, but then thought he didn't really want to know what tsunb% finger christiana really meant. "Bingo." The results came up on the screen. Login name: christiana In real life: Christian Adams Directory: /tsunx/home/cog/christiana Shell:/local/bin/tsch Last login Sun Feb 11 12:55:00 on pts/1 from tx123.ctn.cogs.susx.ac.uk No unread mail Project: yeah right... Plan: Check the pub if you want to find me. Be at ES later. "Which means?" Pete asked "Means he's here, on campus, and probably down the pub." Kitty was starting to get a better idea of what English life was like. "Let me guess, we're going to the pub, again?" She asked with a sigh. "Yup." * * * Kitty thought she'd seen it all until she walked into East Slope bar. Most of the pubs she'd seen since moving to Britain were of the normal, quiet type where the youngest person there was usually herself. This was her first student bar, and as such was a new experience for her. From the outside it looked almost normal. Not at all like a pub building, more like some odd sort of large tea shop or canteen would look like - however, once you got near enough to see through the windows, that illusion was shattered. Jack explained to her that Sussex University was a campus uni, and was a large campus with it, so the various bars they had here were the center of social life for most of the students, when they couldn't be bothered to go into Brighton. The student atmosphere was apparent as soon as they got near the place. A small patio area outside with a couple of tables was filled with students, draped over the steps when there wasn't enough room on the table, draped over the floor when there wasn't enough room on the steps. What with the weather being so hot most of the drinkers at the pub were outside. Inside was cooler, and Jack found it surprisingly empty of people. The decor was strange, brickwork walls, painted seemingly randomly in various shades of white, blue, red, and something that could only be called yellow for want of a better description. There was carpet on some of the floor, the rest was tiled, and to their left as they entered was a battered old pool table and coke machine. The bar was just round a corner, as were the main two areas of the pub. The area with the bar was slightly raised, and had a section further out the back with some arcade games in, while the other section was lighter, with more windows, and the sun was streaming in on it, revealing the dust and threadbare look of the whole place. There were a few groups of students sitting at some of the tables in the lighter area. Jack looked around the bar, trying to see if Chris was there, but couldn't see him. "Right, we'll have to hang around until Chris turns up, so what's everyone drinking?" They settled themselves down around a table near one of the large windows, Jack sitting where he could see the doorway easily, once he'd got the drinks over, and began to relax. "So this was where you did your degree, then?" Kitty asked Jack. "Yup. Spent three glorious years pretty much in this bar. Along with most of the other students on campus. There are other bars here, some of which are pretty good, but for Saturday and Sunday afternoons' drinking, you can't beat East Slope." "It's a wonder you get any work done." Kitty mentioned, aimiably. "It's simple. A students life consists entirely of eating, sleeping, and when there's a deadline ahead, working. All the rest of the time is spent pretty much down the pub. Ah those were the days..." Kitty sat back. She could hear a group of lads behind them, who'd obviously been in the bar for some time, and were talking rather loudly. As she listened she realized she was having difficulty understanding what they were saying. "Yeah,man, huh, huh, yeah... it's like... y'know,man...wi'ed, ennit?" "huh..huh...ruff, tho', ennit?" "...wi'ed,man...yeah, ruff geezer, ennit?" "yeah,man, yeah... aah, geezer, yeah...'ere, Oz, gi's a fag..." "naah,man, naah... s'all got... naah" "mumble,mumble, murmer...naah...mmmnn...mumble" "ahh,man,...ahh,y'know...she's so *fit*,man...ahh" "'s ruff,man... ah'm tellin'ya,...s'ruff geezer..." Kitty turned round to see, and saw four lads sitting round a table drinking. They were all clearly students, and she sat, fascinated by their method of conversation. Apparently, they could communicate entirely by using only a few basic words, and she wasn't sure which words they were. Pete leaned over to her to explain. "It's a sub-dialect of London_English. From the accent I'd guess Hackney, one of the few places in the world where the entire language consists of about twenty-five words. Pretty amazing, really." "Ah. Do you know what they're saying?" "Haven't got a clue." One of the lads had noticed Kitty looking at them, and decided to try his luck. He turned round, slowely in case he fell off, and leaned over to her. "'ere...huh...go' a li'?...huh" His companions fell into hysterical laughter at this. Apparently this was an utterance of great humor in their language. Kitty smiled sweetly at him and replied "I'm sorry, I don't speak neanderthal." The bloke looked at her for a moment, unsure of what had happened, while his mates were rolling on the floor in hysterics. With a look of bemusement on his face he turned back to them. "huh..wha's up? huh,man...naah,man..." Jack watched them with a sad look on his face. "That biology department has got a lot to answer for..." Then, he heard a voice behind him singing quietly to itself as it walked over from the bar. "Ohhhhh myyy looove, ma darling... I hunger for your..." Without turning round he called out "Afternoon, Chris. Long time no see." The voice behind stopped singing, and moved round in front of him. "Hey, Jack. How's it going?" the blond man who owned the voice said to him, sitting down across the small table and taking a hefty mouthful of his pint. Jack turned to introduce the newcomer to Kitty and Pete. "This is Chris, the bloke I was telling you about. With any luck he should be able to get the mails out of the server for ... Kitty?" Kitty was staring at Chris with an oddly puzzled look on her face. "You're not related to a guy called Doug, are you?" she asked. * * * Grunt was enjoying himself. He'd spent a happy hour or so watching the pretty lights in the crystal display in the shop window, oblivious to the frantic bustle of people around him, and had then decided to get up. He'd spent a brief few moments looking round, to see if he could see his mistress anywhere, and had decided to go and look for her. He knew she had wanted him to do something for her, so he supposed he'd better try and find her, but he was enjoying this place quite a lot, not having had much time to just wander round streets since he'd been working for the Hellfire Club. He'd decided that the best way of finding her was to walk down an alleyway until he decided to turn off, and this had been quite enjoyable so far. He felt a sudden pang of guilt as he remembered he hadn't looked at his watch for a long time. Mistress was always telling him the importance of looking at his watch, and she'd spent so much time trying to teach him how to read it, and he was really coming along well. He could now tell the time, as long as it was on the hour, or half past the hour. He still had a little difficulty with other times the watch showed. He stopped in the middle of the street, bringing several tourists to a dead stop behind him, and looked at his watch. The big hand wasn't pointing right up or down, so he was a little confused. He stood for a moment, trying to think about the watch, but thinking wasn't something he was really cut out for, so he stopped after a while. Oh well, it probably didn't matter. He turned another corner, and stopped again. He could hear some music playing, pretty music that he liked, and he could hear someone singing, a womans voice that he thought sounded nice. A few yards away from him was a busker playing the guitar and singing, so he decided to listen for a while. Moving over towards the woman he sat down and listened. When she stopped a little while later to move onto more crowded areas he got up and followed her without thinking, little knowing that his adventures in Brighton had just begun... * * * "So," Phil said, putting the last two pints of the evening down on the table. "Chris sorted it all out for you, then?" "Yep." replied Jack, taking a big mouthful of the thick black liquid. "With a bit of work he managed to get the messages out of the system and onto a floppy. From then on things were easy. We checked out what was in the files - Kitty and me had just bunged everything we could find down the lines - and according to Pete it was more than enough to prove the connection between the Hellfire Club and Black Air. Turned out the Hellfire Club had been supplying Black Air with a whole wack of dodgy equipment - most of it probably illegal, and all nicely documented and accounted for in the files." "So what was it all about?" "Well, I'm not to sure myself, but it seems that the Dream Nails project in Black Air was some research into biological warfare - y'know, diseases, genetically bred insects that understand the difference between an open window and a brick wall, that sort of stuff. The files proved that the Hellfire club had been selling them the equipment to do it with, and a few of their own experts to help with the research. According to Pete, now that Dream Nails have been exposed, and the inquest know the experiments going on there, it'll be easy to prove that the Hellfire Club knew what the research involved, and still provided equipment and expertise to do it. There's one funny thing about it though..." "Yeah?" "According to Pete, some of the experiments being done were supposed to result in new genetic weapons that were to be used against mutants. Funny that the Hellfire Club were involved, seeing as their inner circle of leaders are all mutants themselves..." "So what happened about them lot that had a go at you here in Brighton?" Phil asked, draining his pint. "Well, last I saw of them they were in the Lanes. They'll probably turn up again come the winter time." "Alright, lads. We're closing now." The barman called over to them. Finishing his pint Jack got up and followed his brother out of the door. "So, you seeing any more of Pete and Kitty?" Phil asked when they were outside in the now-cooling night air. "Actually, yeah. Kitty mentioned a few nights ago in a pub that they'd be going back to their island soon, and she asked if I wanted to go with them and visit their lot up north." "Sounds like it could be a good holiday." "I hope so. I'm going up there tomorrow." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- And that was how it ended. Not with a bang, but the clink of an empty pint glass... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- The other chapters in this story are being archived by Hawk (along with a load of other great stuff) at http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~hawk/fanfic.html Please feel free to send comments, thoughts, abuse, money etc... // Ian Phillip Foster \\ \\ ianf@cogs.susx.ac.uk // // "Moines a pint 'a Scrumpy" \\ \\ // // A Shephard's Pie walks into a bar. \\ \\ "I'm sorry, sir," says the bartender, "We don't serve food." //