Log Title:
Tanning Expedition
Characters:
Leyu Yashida, Sybil Dvorak
IC Date:
05/30/12 15:00
Location:
Rear Lawn, Xavier Estate
Brief Log Summary::
Sybil is tanning outside, Leyu finds her. The two chat.
Rating:
pg13
There is no TS in this log::
Yes
Post your log::
A beautiful day. Hot enough to coat the body with sweat after a minimal amount of physical exertion. Sunny enough to cause the body to tan. Which is exactly what Sybil Dvorak intends to do. She has been laying out for fifteen minutes now, on a blanket she liberated from her room. She has clad herself in a bikini that meets the decency standards of the mansion and a nearby bottle indicates Ms. Dvorak has taken the health of her skin into consideration. Large lensed sunglasses and a straw sunhat helps complete the outfit.
Dressed currently in shorts and a t-shirt - a newly-acquired 'X' t-shirt, probably part of the school's uniforms for the students - and flip-flops, Leyu Yashida emerges from the Mansion and starts walking down along the patio, exploring the outdoors. She has been very busy since coming here, and has not spent much time really exploring the outdoors. She is aware of it, has seen pictures, and has looked at it through windows a time or two. But this is her first time to actually be out /in/ it.
Of course, it seems to her like fate that yet again, Leyu starts exploring something, and Sybil Dvorak is there already. At least Sybil isn't undressing herself all of a sudden, like the last time they saw one another. Very well aware of the beautiful, exotic Eastern European woman, the Japanese woman walks initially in the other direction, leaving Sybil to herself while Leyu explores the vistas on her own. Eventually, of course, she will end up drifting in that direction. There are things to see everywhere, after all. "I trust I shall not need to treat you for sunburns?" she comments with gentle humor.
"Hmmm." Sybil turns her head until her sunglasses perfectly reflect Leyu's image. "I enjoy the warmth and having tanned skin. Having a sunburn isn't as much fun. I try to avoid things that are not fun." She smiles, though. her dark lips curling upwards at the corners. "If you wish to ensure that I am well protected, however, I will not object to more sunscreen from skilled hands, Doctor."
Leyu cannot help but chuckle - and blush, just slightly - at Sybil's typically suggestive comment. "Really? I imagine with your talents and a cloth, you are quite thoroughly and carefully coated already." Yes. That was Leyu, trying to tease back, just a tiny bit. "You are right, of course. Sunburns are not any fun. Or at least, they don't appear to be. I've never suffered one." She can't.
Sybil picks up the bottle and holds it out to Leyu. "We each have our own unique abilities." She notes, "I knew a man, once, who could bury someone up to his neck in the middle of the road… and somehow, when he was done, the road looked undisturbed. Except for the head sticking out. The man was amazing with a shovel. And a story."
The young Japanese smirks and walks over, kneeling down on the blanket beside Sybil and accepting the bottle. "Interesting indeed. He had a talent with earth, and specifically with asphalt." She opens the bottle, spreading the material across her palms. Then her hands glow, warmth flowing over them, and then the glow fades before she reaches out, starting with Sybil's shoulders and spreading the now very warmed lotion across the skin. "By the way, Alex Summers has accepted my request to join the X-Factor. We eve went on a mission while you were out yesterday. We brought back an agent of the United States from Iraq."
"How very interesting. I am glad to know you've got my back." Sybil smirks, just a little. While Leyu was warming up the lotion, Sybil had rolled over, so that her back was exposed to the Japanese mutant's touch. She also undid the string of her bikini top, so that the lotion could be applied uninterupted.
Leyu really just smirks a bit as the bikini top unravels itself to expose Sybil's bare, glistening back. "Really? More plays on words? But yes, I have 'got your back'. I am apparently to be the team medic. Dervish was rather the worse for wear thanks to the tender mercies of the Iraqi forces. Whatever were you doing yesterday? If I may ask." Privacy is allowed. But she cares enough to ask.
"Attending to my club." Sybil seems happy to explain. "Memorial day weekend. Big party. I invited only members of the club who are or were military. Had to make sure none of the male soldiers' flags were at half mast. That the female sailors were ready to travel through the deepest oceans. That sort of thing."
"Your club?" Leyu queries, unaware of that establishment or its nature. As such, the double-entendres mean little to her. She could make some suppositions, but she's sure Sybil is just teasing her, as usual, and that it wasn't really like that. Oh, poor and innocent Leyu. More's the pity when the poor woman learns the truth.
Sybil laughs. "Hmm. How to explain." She considers for a moment. Or perhaps she is just enjoying having sunscreen rubbed onto her back. Those warm hands are a delight, after all. "You have clubs in Japan, yes? Hostress clubs? Where the waitresses are paid to provide the customers with a certain degree of companionship?"
Leyu frowns a bit. "I have heard of such, at least." she offers, as she continues massaging the lotion into Sybil's skin. She is thorough, gentle but firm, making its application almost more massage than simple application of the oil. "You have hostess clubs here in the United States? I had always heard that most Westerners frowned on the practice and considered it tantamount to prostitution."
Sybil isn't complaining. No, ma'am. "Well, no. I was trying to be gentle. I run a sex club. Wealthy people pay me great deals of money so they can come have sex with various people in various combinations involving various conditions and sexual experimentations in a safe environment where their identities will be protected and they will not be harmed."
And cue Leyu blushing. Sybil will notice the hands on her back grow warmer. Not yet painfully so. But warmer. "Oh. I see." yep, she sees just fine now. No /wonder/ Sybil is such a suggestive individual, if she spends every day dealing with sex and sexuality in all its myriad forms as if it is just that - everyday. "I confess, that makes your … sense of humor make a great deal more sense."
"Your hands are growing warmer." Sybil notes to her new teammate. She lifts her head and lays it down once more, switching which cheek rests on the blanket. "I grew up in Romania. You had the money to go to college and medical school so I doubt you understand what it is to be Roma. We are despised. If you are Roma, the people of Europe automatically consider you a con, a thief, a cheat and, if you are a woman, a whore. We are reviled and despised. When the locals get drunk, we are their target. When we bother to go to the police, we are ignored. When things go wrong in a country, our kind are blamed as scapegoats. We are forced to move again and again and again and again. Even when we wish to settle, we are deported. Our children are stolen and forced into institutions for "their own good". People speak endlessly about how many Jews were killed in Hitler's death camps. They rarely bring up the million of my people who died at Hitler's whim."
Leyu lifts her hands, breathing deeply, in and out - audibly - as she wills her heat to dissipate. She doesn't want to burn her friend. It's not Sybil's fault that Leyu is pretty shy and very skittish about topics related to sex and sexuality. "I have heard of this. Read of it, in act. The Roma, I mean. I did not have money, as you say it. But yes, my family was very well off. And as their daughter, I was expected to get an excellent education. They would have preferred I had no powers, and stayed a protected jewel." Expectations, inside and outside the family. "I am sorry for the pain of your people, Sybil. It is not fair. But there seems little I can do about it, save to promise not to beget more of it myself."
"That is background. So you understand that when the American came… an actor… you may have seen a few of his films… I was besotted. A sixteen year old girl he decided to have for his own. He smuggled me to the United States." Sybil speaks of this without much passion. Not much anger. "I stayed in his mansion… no visa, no green card, no driver's license. Illegal. While he went out to shoot movies and attend parties I stayed in his mansion. I grew bored. Restless. I desired life not prison. So, I became the Gypsy Moth. Eventually, I turned eighteen. He married me. Then he died. I inherited his money."
Some would say Sybil was a sex slave to an American. Leyu isn't sure if she would use that term, but even she can tell it wasn't a fair or equal union. "So you discovered your powers, while you were being held by this man in his home. And you turned to a life of crime with this 'Night Shift', as a way to accumulate power and resources to free yourself? And then the man who had held you prisoner married you, and died?" Is she understanding this correctly? That seems mightily convenient to her. But she can ask, at least.
Sybil chuckles. "Oh, no. I am a rare mutant. I manifested very early. While I was still in diapers. My people are no strangers to unusual powers. They trained me. I joined the Night Shift after my husband died. The Shroud impressed me. Before that, I ran a cult. It was California, you see, and I was trying to find myself. I found this little love cult and took them over… I liked many of the ideas but the ritualism grew boring."
"My brother manifested very young. I, not as much." Leyu offers, interested in this. What is the genetic quirk that makes a mutant manifest at a much younger age, without the hormonal pull of puberty to alight the flaming embers of their powers. "You … took over … a love cult?" Somehow, Leyu can only half-visualize that. And she's not sure she wants the other half.
"Love and drugs. I wasn't very fond of the drugs. People believe they enhance pleasure but the truth is, they dull the senses… and the senses are much of what pleasure is." Sybil smiles. "My accent, my Roma background, my powers… it took me a very short time to convince those poor children I could help bring them to the light. Then it all went south, as such things do. I was captured by a madman, along with every other powered person in the area. I escaped. I joined the Night Shift… but I realized. What I liked about the cult was two things. First, being in charge. Second, being rewarded for being a hedonist. So, I combined that with capitalism and my clubs were born."
"Ah. A … hedonist." Now doesn't that just make it all make sense? Leyu finishes her work on Sybil's back and slides down, starting along her arms. Eventually, she'll make her way to the other woman's legs and feet. "So you like to be in charge. You like to make money. And you like to have fun, especially sexually. I suppose something like a hostess club makes a kind of sense for that. But it is illegal, I presume?" Hey, this isn't her country. They aren't her laws. She's guessing. "Won't that cause problems with those who sponsor X-Factor?"
"Oh, very illegal. All sorts of health violations and moral blue laws and so forth." Sybil purrs, delighting, it seems, in that as well. "The government has gotten into bed, if you will pardon the expression, with worse. After all, how many mutants live here who aren't registered? Living in the headquarters of a govenment sponsored super team?"
"I see. So your activities will be allowed to continue, in some degree, so long as they do not become a problem or disruptive to the team." Leyu offers. She is at least familiar with the concept. Things in Japan often work in similar ways. Saving face, you see. Leyu continues down Sybil's legs. "At least I better understand many of your jokes and comments, since we met." And she has to admit, Sybil is very beautiful, and exotic.
"The Japanese are always so interesting. A culture rich in hedonism hidden beneath this veil of propriety. Like this very strange version of Victorian England." Sybil laughs. "I read a lot. Another one of life's great pleasures. It helps make up for my total lack of an education."
"You certainly do not strike me as uneducated." Leyu offers. And hey, she's an MD with a PhD, so when she says that, she's saying quite a lot. Most Americans come off as rather poorly educated in her view of matters. "I know that much of what you would consider hedonistic does go on in my country. But I myself have never experienced any of it. As a daughter of a noble clan, I have admittedly led a very sheltered life. This is part of the reason for my family's outrage at my admission to them, and my unwillingness to accept their intention to arrange a marriage to a man of their choice."
"Well, most of the opportunities… in most countries… are geared towards men." Sybil notes this. Her bikini top reties itself and then she rolls over and sits up. "This is a basic truth. The double standard of our existence. A man is a stud. A woman a slut. A teenage boy sews his wild oats. A teenage girl ruins herself."
Leyu frowns a bit at this. It's not a foreign concept to her. She is a well-educated woman, and understands this sort of thing. But she isn't used to applying those thoughts to her own life, her own 'world view'. "But both a man who prefers men, and a woman who prefers women, are rejected and despised. At least in my world." She wasn't rejected for being a slut. She was very loyal, after all. Only one girlfriend.
"All over. There are degrees. Your skin color. Your religion. Your sexual partners. Your gender. Your genetics." Sybil glances across at the mansion at that last bit. "So many ways to hate. So many reasons to belittle or degrade or ignore. You are a lesbian, Japanese, mutant, woman in this country. Think about that. I am a bisexual, gypsy, mutant, woman in this country. Think about that."
Leyu nods. "I know it is so. And I despise it. It all seems so foolish, to bestow hate just because someone is different. 'Gaijin'. Foreigner. The different. My cousin fell deeply in love with a gaijin. Many reviled him and wanted to break them up. Eventually, they succeeded. But when they did, even they had to recognize that he had proven himself a man of honor, by their own code, where they had failed." Leyu respects Logan a lot, because of that.
Sybil listens and she nods. "My point is this. They will always hate you. Despise you. Try to shove you in a box to make themselves feel better. It does not matter who "they" are. Even if one comes around there is a line to take that person's place. What you are and what I am can very well get us raped and tortured and murdered in many parts of this "free" country where all men are created equal." She lays back down again, her hands behind her head. "So, I ask, why deny yourself the joys of being alive?"
Leyu sits back, her rump on her heels, and watches Sybil, listening. "I don't deny myself the joys of anything, Sybil. I am here. I walked away from my family and what they demanded of me. I am free. I am here, pursuing my life's work. I have left behind the only woman I have ever loved, because she would not have me openly. What is it you think I am denying myself, Sybil?"
Sybil smiles. The sort of smile that comes when a woman knows something that someone else does not. "That, Doctor, is something you will have to figure out for yourself." She draws up her sunglasses to show she's closed her eyes then sets them in place once more. Apparently her signal that the conversation has ended.
"Well, I'll leave you to your tanning, then. Have fun, Sybil." Leyu offers. If the conversation is over, there's not really a lot more reason to stick around. She thought Sybil wanted to talk about this. But apparently, she wants to play more games and tease. It's cute, so Leyu's not angry. But it can wait. Oooh. That looks like a large English garden over there. And maybe a hedge maze.
