friend to friend (nate)

[HERMIONE DANGER]

No one would ever expect that some short, chubby blonde girl with a do-it-yourself choppy haircut would be putting her life on the line day after day if they'd just looked at her. As a student at Avengers Academy, that was just part of the job, and Pepper wouldn't have it any other way. The young lady enjoyed nothing more than kicking butts in the name of justice. Sure, in a school where the student population was made up of metahuman teenagers at-risk of becoming villains, not many were quite as enthusiastic as she when it came to upholding justice. However, that alone wouldn't be enough to deter her enthusiasm!

Even when the mission for that day had involved defeating a few knife masters that had cut her up pretty fierce, it wasn't too big of a problem. Pepper had seen worse. In fact, she'd done worse to herself, just to use her abilities in the first place. But, at the end of the day, one of the best parts of any mission was to come back to her dormitory and hang out with her teammate on her bed. Just relaxing the sore muscles was almost as big a blessing as justice itself. Justice!

"Did you see the look on that guy's face? Right before I punched it?" Despite the fact that Pepper was speaking between applying bandages and painful antibacterial ointment to all of the cuts on her body, she still sounded as enthusiastic as ever. "He couldn't have been expecting that. Especially not right after all that, 'don't be distracted, she's just a little girl' nonsense." The stinging from her cuts didn't seem to phase her as she dramatically mimed a few shadow-punches, bouncing slightly on her mattress. "But then I was all, wham! Bam! Thank you, ma'am!"

"Hey, do you need any first aid or whatever?" She took a moment from her vivacious reenactment to show some concern for her teammate, bless her heart. Even though he didn't seem like the type to usually agree to that thing. But whatever, it was still nice.

[KID SINISTER]

She could occasionally be wonderful to be around. Energetic, can-do attitude, and never complained about taking a few hits to the skull. Pepper definitely had the raw potential to be an Avenger out of most kids in the Academy. She was one of those in-born do-gooder types, saving the world, great responsibility and all that jazz. Nick was not. Nick was much the opposite in that his morals and ethics could easily be bent and swayed. He preferred to be called an "opportunist".

More importantly, Nick didn't have the same undying love of "justice" that Pepper had. His eye twitched at the sound of his friend's high-pitched voice imitating the various sound effects that accompanied her punching criminals in the face, specifically the ones they fought today. They had both been assigned to investigate a traveling circus that was in fact full of evil meta-humans who also operated a human trafficking ring. Deciding to bust the operation themselves, they found themselves face-to-face with a duo of master knife fighters. A few well-placed punches, roundhouse kicks and some searing hot flames courtesy of Nick and they walked away victorious.

"No, I didn't see his face. Mostly because his partner was too busy attempting to cut mine off..." The boy mumbled as he applied salve and gauze to the various cuts on his face, knowing that they wouldn't be healing easily for a good month or two. Both sat in Pepper's room as they patched themselves back up as they usually did after a mission. Nick focused on his own work, gently and skillfully dressing his wounds without a glance to Pepper even as he bounced giddily upon her bed, recounting the chop-socky adventures they embarked on.

"Most people usually take pride in avoiding being hurt. You, however? You are something different. Cool. Cool, but different." Chuckling, he wrapped the bandages around his arm one more time before sealing it off with tape. He flexed the arm gingerly, watching tight muscles flex under taut skin; they were perfectly fine, even if he didn't really expect anything different. It's not like those goons were the first knife-fighters he fought.

Hey...you got that bandage too tight..." Nick frowned as he walked over and reached out, gently loosening the bandage she had wrapped around her shoulder. "Cutting off circulation, you dork..." He mumbled as he re-adjusted the dressings, trying his best to ignore the close proximity of their bodies. He could flip across city rooftops easily, exhibit stealth greater than some of best trained assassins and break an arm in twenty-five places.

He could not handle women.

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[HERMIONE DANGER]

"What? What?" Pepper wasn't really paying attention to what Nick was saing. She was too caught up in being enthralled and bouncing on her bed like a small child. She never would have noticed that her partner-in-non-crime may be occasionally annoyed by her hyped-up antics, even when he deliberately vocalized such complaints. She was far too keen on justice to imagine that anyone else there might have felt otherwise. It was probably a habit she would have to throw off if she really wanted to be good advocate of good, though. Not everything was as black-and-white, good-and-evil as she liked to assume. In the meantime, though, her close friend's complaints of facial abuse would have to go unnoticed. Alas!

"Pf, yeah. Coolest girl in town, right here." The words were mostly muttered through clenched teeth, as her mouth had been employed in tearing yet more bandages upon accepting the quasi-compliment. "It's easy to take pride in something like this. All it means is that I worked my hardest. It's worth the sacrifice if I get to protect people." Even if that sounded preachy, it wasn't Pepper's intention. That was clear with just how casually the words slipped from her mouth. It was the most natural thing in the world to her. IT was another one of those things that should've applied to everyone, in her mind. Even if she were to die out there, hey. It would just mean that she really gave her all to help those in need. Just, you know. A bit more literally.

"Besides, stuff like this is nothing. Not to a Teagues gal." It was a little disconcerting how nonchalant a girl like Pepper could sound when talking about mutilating her own body; especially when it was for the sake of fighting people, evil or otherwise. But that may have just been the thing about Avengers Academy. Even to the brightest lights, there was always some sort of dark side. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been there in the first place.

"Whoa, whoa, okay--" Pepper's cheeks reddened as she flung her hands toward Nick's, pushing his away. She didn't need him readjusting her bandages, thanks. Dealing with cuts was her thing. Still, he had a point. "I can handle it. I just...got too excited." She hoped that the pouty defensiveness would hide her embarrassment -- not only at messing up her own dressings, something she took pride in. But also in how close the young man would have been to her breasts, had he had full access to her shoulder. Really, now. One slip and bam. No, no. Not for this teen hero. It may have been a bit far-fetched, but she wasn't going to take any chances! "'Sides, you're the dork...dork."

"I think that's the last of them for me, though." Pepper peered at herself in the mirror on the opposite wall for a moment, just to make sure that every cut in plain sight was well-covered. "Wanna sit down in front of me so I can check your back?" Those were the nasty ones. Because the back was kind of tough-skinned and hard to notice, so the cuts get all infected and -- just, blech.

[KID SINISTER]

"I swear it's like you're reading from a script on occasion. Really, they'd make you leader of the Avengers simply for the ability to deliver cheesy-ass speeches with a straight face." The devil simply rolled his eyes at Pepper, not bothering to dispute her point for this was a subject that she could rant on about for centuries on end, never pausing to take necessary breaths of air. He was actually under the assumption that if you got her talking long enough, she would literally die from lack of air.

Instead, he opted to focus on the task at hand and put up all his mental blocks to avoid noticing how dangerously close he was hovering towards her chest. He was surprised when he was suddenly pushed back, her surprisingly quick hands knocking away his own. Had she noticed how close he was? If that was the reason behind her actions, then it embarrassed Nick even further.

"Yeah, yeah. I had no idea one's family should take pride in being resistant to being cut like ribbons, Nick said with a sarcastic chuckle, adjusting his own bandages, mostly around his forearms and fingers. He found something incredibly disturbing and counter-productive about a type of magic in which one would need to practice self-mutilation in order to achieve the desired effect. Regardless of how sweet and innocent she seemed, what kind of psychological damage comes from teaching a girl to cut herself over and over without a second thought? What was it like even learning how to utilize her powers?

While deep in his thought, he was unaware that he had just been staring off into space the entire time, encased in own head. Pepper's words barely swam to the surface of his consciousness and his head suddenly jerked down towards her as he managed to comprehend the latter half of her sentence."Huh?...Oh. Oh! Right. My back. Hold on," Nick nodded as he moved to removed and unzip the pitch-black combat shirt that he usually wore in the filed. Pulling it over his head, he turned around and exposed his back to the girl.

His back was lined with various scars, some from blades and others from bullets, and he pointed to the various fresh cuts those two knife-wielding psychos dealt him. "Mostly those ones. They're the particularly deep ones. The smaller ones will heal on their own. No need for bandages."

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[HERMIONE DANGER]

That jab at her enthusiasm probably should have bothered her. But she couldn't be bothered because she was -- you guessed it -- too enthused a the implication Nick had made just before making that quip. Her hands went to her face, à la a Home Alone-aged MaCaulay Culkin. Her eyes practically twinkled. "Oh my gosh, could you imagine, though?" For some reason, Pepper could only assume that any young heroes-in-training under her tutelage would absolutely adore her; even though, in cases like mister sourpants over here, that clearly was not so. "That'd be tiiiiight." Pepper couldn't help to dwell on the fact, though, that she wouldn't look totally fabulous as a leader in the Avengers unless she lost some weight first; and also, maybe, gained some height. Either of those would be pretty fantastic. "Hey, I could be your boss someday." She laughed, but seriously. That'd be so. Sweet.

"Um, no, the rest of them aren't like that." Pepper sort of wished that she hadn't brought up her family in the first place. To be quite frank, she didn't like the way that they used magic. Hers was fine, in her eyes, but theirs was not. She preferred to keep things vague in referring to them, if she had to at all, because she felt as though their misdeeds were some sort of stain on her own character. That's not to say that this enthusiasm of hers for justice was just a matter of her trying to atone. No, she really was simply that enthusiastic about doing good. Oh, youth.

"Holy stuff, there's like a jillion!" Not exactly a jillion, but they were both pretty sliced up. Despite Nick's request, Pepper began dutifully applying dabs of painfully antibacterial ointment to each and every tiny little cut. Even though they would totally heal on their own, that didn't mean that they couldn't get little nastiness in them and be all infected and uncomfortable. Still, the two larger ones that he pointed out were the only ones to which she applied bandages. "So what are you gonna do tonight after you're patched up?" Don't say "sit in my room and sulk". Pepper did not want to spend another night looking at cat adoption listings on the internet.