Kitty:

        As stunning young women go, this one - isn't. Young, yes, early to
mid twenties or so; female, yes, with a slim and athletic build; stunning
... no. She doesn't manage anything more than a certain degree of
girl-next-door charm. Her chestnut curls are at the length best described
as 'mop' for the moment, not quite long enough to gentle the lines of her
face. Her jaw has a tendency to set with an almost predictable
stubbornness, and there are the faint beginnings of frown lines around her
mouth. Her eyes are undoubtedly her best feature, deep brown, large,
expressive. Well, sometimes expressive, and sometimes rather pointedly far
less readable. She's not that far out of her shell.
        A pale green tank-top is tucked neatly into denim cutoffs, making
her look a little taller - that is, making her look average height rather
than on the short side. A plain brown backpack is slung casually over one
shoulder, and she sports (if that's the word for it) tennis shoes on her
feet. She wears three pieces of jewelry: a silver Star of David on a chain
around her neck, an unobtrusive dulled-silver ring on one hand, and a
charm bracelet jingling on her left wrist.

Xander:

        Shaggy wavy hair hands to just about ear level, looking like it
could use a cut and a comb if not a complete deforestation. Said ears
stick out slightly, at an angle that approaches unfortunate. Dark eyebrows
hang above brown eyes, and along with his mouth seem ready to smile.
        Standing at about 6'2, Xander looks a bit taller due to lankiness,
though this is often canceled out by a tendency to slump. He's not exactly
scrawny, and has the body of someone who goes to the gym as part of their
contract to fit audience's standards of TV attractiveness.
        Bright overshirts, with t-shirts underneath, jeans, casual pants,
different outfits along this line. He doesn't quite dress cool, but, it
could conceivably be worse. In theory.



Alexander is not the most popular name of the 1970s. According to some
methods of calculating, it's not even in the top hundred. That doesn't,
unfortunately, mean it's /rare/. Kitty, in the company of her laptop and a
disturbing amount of caffeine, has spent the last two days trying to track
down one particular person in Beacon Harbor based on that name, a guess at
his age, and one known association. This is the eleventh door she's
knocked on today. The list of addresses in her backpack has sixty-some
more entries after this one, and there's no guarantee the right one is
even /on/ it - or that the right one is inhabited if it is. All of which
results in her ducking her head to frown at the door semi-covertly. She'd
really prefer not to compound the problem by getting chased by security
guards or anything.

The door opens just a bit, as much as the security chain across the door
will allow it. What will a security chain stop that Spider-Man can't
handle? Shut up and stop being so nosy! It makes him feel safe. The right
half of Alex's face, the half that's visible, is covered in an ugly
bruise. In the process of healing, it has faded to a sick and unhappy
yellow color. "Hello?" ALex looks Kitty up and down. She doesn't /seem/ to
have pizza.

What! There's a clear and simple answer. Jehovah's Witnesses. Kitty cocks
her head to the side, trying to peer back through the inch or two crack
between door and frame. "Alex?" It's an uncertain question. The bruise,
sadly, is possibly better evidence than either the glimpse of his features
or one word in his voice. And no, she doesn't have pizza.

"That all depends on who's asking," Alex says, narrowing his visible eye.
"Since I don't really recognize you, 'yes'." He lets that sit for a moment
before explaining. "Some people just call me Xander."

Kitty crooks a quick grin at that last, letting a faint bit of tension go.
Voice, recognized. Sense of humor, also recognized. "Sorry. Picked up the
name from Pete - I'll lay off of it if you like? I'm Kitty. We met
briefly, I don't know if you remember. If you've got a couple minutes - we
really need to talk."

Xander stares a moment longer, winking at her repeatedly. Though he may in
fact be blinking. The door closes without a word, the chain is slid
across, and the door reopened. "Right. The whole...destroying a building
thing, huh," Alex says, stepping back. The lights are off in the whole
apartment, curtains drawn, relatively dark. Still, he's a mess. Left side
of face is bruised. His right side has four long gashes, healed now to
just thin red lines of scab. More cuts on the backs of his hands are in a
similar state, red lines running up his hands, disappearing udner the
sleeve of his shirt. A few peek out at the neck of his shirt too. As for
the rest, hard to say. He's wearing jogging pants and a long sleeve
t-shirt, trying to cover up as much as possible.

"You've got a remarkable memory for property damage?" Kitty offers,
slipping in with one hand on her backpack and ducking out of the door's
arc. She turns to look at him, and - it's not surprise on her face,
exactly, and it's not shock. It's pretty much precisely the expression
people get when they're simultaneously distressed at how bad things are
and relieved they're not worse. "... Sorry to say the obvious, but you
look like crap."

"You should see the other guy," Alex says, his back to Kitty as he walks
towards the couch. The only place he wants to be right now. "Help yourself
to...anything. I actually bought groceries." He kicks empty pizza boxes
out of the way as he heads for the couch. "I'd be a better host but just
had the beating of a lifetime, so."

Kitty starts to lean down and reach for one of the empty boxes, but
catches herself in time. Not her place. No illicit tidying. "God. I heard
about the art museum." 'Heard' is stretching it a little, but good enough.
"Do /you/ need anything? Painkillers?" That being the obvious thing that
wouldn't be covered by groceries. Edging around the real subject, but she
wants at least to let him get off his feet first.

"Nah," Alex says. He may be acting lethargic, he may be lifeless and
hopeless and totally drained, but he still can't stop saying certain
things. "If it gets too bad, I'll just become a raging alcoholic." He
lowers himself very carefully onto the couch.

"Heh. Half the city's vice of choice." Kitty shifts her backpack on her
shoulder a little, fidgeting, then glances back toward him again. "I, uh."
Realize that this is the last topic in the universe you probably want to
talk about? "Talked to Kess."

"You can have a seat," Alex says, turning his head around to find her.
There's a few free chairs and half a couch in front of the TV, which is
currently showing a baseball game. SOmeone is soundly thrashing L.A. "I'm
guessing from the whole, I don't want to bother you thing, that it's post
mangling Kess."

At least it's not the Cubs getting thrashed. Kitty settles on one of the
unoccupied chairs, pulling the backpack into her lap. "Good guessing.
There is no good way to start these conversations, is there." 'What the
hell is going on?' is always so indelicate. She pauses, then asks, "What
the hell is going on?"

Xander takes a deep breath, and expels it between purse lips, making them
flap just a bit. "Oookay. A young woman with a bent on vengeance has
bonded with an alien symbiote that not only hates this Spider-Man, but
hates the one before it, and is out to protect innocents by killing every
sinner the pair of them can find in this city. Which, is a lot."

Kitty leans the side of her face into a hand, elbow propped on the
aforementioned backpack, and peers back at him half through spread
fingers. "... like, every inhabitant above the age of two. Great." No
wonder he looks like crap. Not just in the 'beaten up and recently
bleeding' sense.

"But it'll be settled soon," Alex says with surety. His foot raises,
brushing against a beer can sitting on the table. The beer can sticks, and
he brings it up to his hand. The webbing is for when he gets really lazy.

Okay, now that was just cool. Kitty's visible eyebrow lifts a little.
"Which definition of 'settled' are we using, here?" At least she doesn't
sound like she's /doubting/ him.

"When she comes back." Alex is avoiding using her name. Who knows? Maybe
she won't be hauled to jail when this is over, if no one knows. "I'm going
to kill the symbiote. If I'm lucky, she won't get killed too. And if I'm
really really lucky, neither will I."

Kitty lets out a soft breath, listening to him. "You know, any time a plan
involves the word 'lucky'... never mind. Symbiosis - how do you know it's
even possible to affect the symbiote without affecting the host? If it is
- I don't want her to get killed, either. And you're not the only person
looking for her." That's an admission she doesn't like making aloud, and
she doesn't look at him when she says it.

"I guess I'm not," Alex admits, opening the beer can, staring blankly at
the TV. "I don't know if it's possible. And I'm the last person to want
her dead. But I know how to stop her, and I know that we're going to meet
again. I don't know if anyone else can say that."

Kitty shakes her head, looking down again as she opens her backpack,
sorting through and finding a notebook. "No. Don't think anyone can."
There's a pencil; she scribbles briefly, her head still bent. "Just ...
try not to get yourself killed? This place has enough of a body count
already."

Xander turns his head away from the TV slowly, a miracle in and of itself.
He blinks a few times, brows drawing together. "They tell me my profile
looks better from the other side."

That would be the non-bruised one? Kitty's startled into a grin down at
the page - which she tears off. "Here." The backpack's let slump into the
chair as she eases out of it again, stepping over to offer him the piece
of paper. Just a number. "In case you need a hand. Though if you call
because you're bleeding on the floor, like everyone /else/ seems to, I
want to know your stupid blood type in advance." Joke! Really.

"Oh. Thanks," Alex says, taking the number and placing it on the table,
weighing it down with the TV remote. Alex turns back to the TV. Then looks
at the paper, and back at Kitty. "Future Alex would like to apologize for
current Alex, just in case I'm actually cool again someday."

Kitty says gravely, "I'd pat you on the shoulder, but that would probably
hurt both of us." She shrugs a little, and adds, "Besides. This needs
doing, doesn't it? Cool enough."

"Yeah, it does," Alex can only agree too easily to that. "I don't know,
who you know, that's looking for her. But if you can, you should try to
convince them to stop."

"It'd be nice," Kitty admits, "to think I had a shot at being listened to,
with some of them. I'll do what I can to try and keep anybody from getting
themselves turned into meat sculpture, though."

"I know, it's really easy to say 'this is serious'," Alex says, adopting
his deeper Spider-Man tone for that one. "But it is. Okay? I mean, you've
seen...well this." Alex holds up the back of his hands. "The fight at the
museum lasted 15 minutes. Top. Everything else came after."

Another unintentional little half-grin, at the deeper voice: even so,
Kitty stays sober for the most part. "Yeah. I've got an idea. Guess who
got to be the one who broke into the hospital so we could give Kess a
blood transfusion. And she got /away/." She glances over at the
television. L.A., thrashed. Down with California. "Hate the thought of
leaving you to deal with her by yourself again."

"She won't kill me," Alex says flatly. Not pleased or displeased, it's
just a fact. "After everything else, she won't do that till there's no
other way." Even when he asks in a screaming voice and he's perfectly fine
go away. "If anyone else is here, it's just making it worse."

Definitely staring at that television. Kitty draws a breath after a
moment; she hadn't really noticed she'd been holding it till then. "Right.
I should get out, then. Minimize risks." She steps back away, turning to
look at him as she reaches a little clumsily to close up the backpack.
"You've got our number if you need it." And are in a situation where using
a phone is actually possible. But when invoking luck already, well. Might
as well go for it all.

Xander stands up, still finding he has a trace of manners left, and his
brow furrows deeply. "I appreciate what you're doing. I'll tell you what I
can, answer any questions. I'm not going to lose sleep if someone else
puts this to rest."

Kitty actually looks faintly appalled when he stands up. "Oh, God, that
looks painful." She makes little downward gestures with her hands. Couch!
Couch! "If you know - anything besides Kess," a quick little grimace at
putting it that way, "that'll even make her blink for a moment..." She
looks up at him again, and adds more quietly, "Or how much of her is -
actually still there, in whatever the symbiosis is using for a mind right
now."

"I think that she's still there," Alex says, not sitting down. He's fine
if he doesn't move. "And that, if we get rid of the alien, that she'll get
back to normal. Eventually. And, you know, this isn't just wishful
thinking. I wore it for awhile. And the rest is total wishful thinking.
But she didn't kill me, and, that's gota be worht something?"

"Worth a lot," Kitty says quietly, picking up her backpack. Very quietly.
He wore it for a while? Oh, God. "Worth a whole lot." There's relief in
there somewhere, and a dozen other things. "Good luck. I hope whatever
you're planning works." No - she's not asking what that is.

"Dr. Hibbard recommends fire. And lots of it!" Alex calls out, not moving,
but able to see the door from his spot in front of the couch.
"It's,...worth a shot."

And she's supposed to talk people /out/ of this after he's said that? She
stops in her tracks, turning to /stare/ at him for a moment. Then blinks.
And looks almost normal, almost cheerful, except for around her eyes.
"Good to know. Thanks." Beat. "Thanks a /lot/." And she lets herself out
the door.