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Lots of people.

[Davis is actually humming to himself, and looks positively cheerful as he moves from end to end of his small kitchen. Those painkillers and a good shower worked wonders.]

C'mon, Joe. You're telling me you've never cooked for yourself before? Not even once?

[Kavinsky leaned against the counter, fingers tapping over and over again, just watching] Nope. Why would I?

What if there was a tornado and all the fast food places got leveled? You've gotta be prepared for these kinds of things, man.

[The smell of sizzling bacon soon fills the apartment. So what if it's not even close to morning, he does what he wants.]

How do you like your eggs?

If there was a tornado and shit got leveled, the last thing I'd be doing would be searching for fast food.

[It's weird to be in someone elses kitchen with them cooking for him. His mother used to a long time ago, but that feels like another life now]

I like the insides goopy.

I'd ask what you would be doing, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to know.

[Okay, so he can very easily imagine Kavinsky looting or pillaging in the event of a city emergency. That still doesn't mean he's all bad.]

Goopy, huh? Forget the technical term for those. Poached, I think.

[He's more of a scrambled eggs kind of guy, but Joe's the guest, so poached/goopy it is.]

One order of goopy eggs, coming right up.

[He leans an elbow on the counter and rests his head in it] Probably trying to see which one of my friends could drive through the thing. Imagine getting all up on the inside of one of those? That would be a thrill.

[He doesn't need to loot or pillage. Stuff is just stuff. He already has all the crap he needs]

I could just eat breakfast foods all the time. Fuck all that other shit.

[He tends to the eggs and starts serving up the bacon onto ceramic plates, silently grateful he's at least not stuck with paper for a guest.] Drive through what, a fast food place? That sounds like it'd be a pretty tight fit. Unless you were driving a 4-wheeler.

[Once the eggs are done, he ladles those onto plates too and brings them over.]

Yeah, I don't think I'd have gotten through college if it hadn't been for Waffle House. [He laughs.] I'd have probably gone there every night if I'd had the money for it back then.

The tornado, dumbass. We'd drive through the tornado.

[He looks at the food quite hungrily when it's brought over. He can't remember the last time he ate. It's not always a priority, or a concern when he usually has so much cocaine in his system. Right now though, he's hungry]

That place is fucking sweet. Didn't have it growing up though.

That's not funny. I know a guy who lost his dad in a tornado.

[He sets the plates down, figuring Kavinsky'll dig right in since the silverware's out, and goes over to the fridge to pour him some orange juice. He's not so devout that he'll make them both say grace first.]

Nope. Like I said, I've only had it a few months now. Compliments of LuthorCorp.

Boo hoo. [he mutters, picking up a fork and indeed digging right in. The eggs are pretty damn good, though he'll keep the compliments to himself]

I meant Waffle House. I grew up in Jersey, we don't have that shit there. We have fucking Wawa and Sonic and crap.

I've heard of Sonic, but what's a Wawa? [he asks, bringing over their drinks and sitting down. Nothing like a good solid meal to clear the head. And hey, every second Joe spends chewing on food is one he doesn't spend badmouthing anyone. Maybe he needs to start feeding him more often.]

I grew up in Kansas. Smallville, meteor capital of the world. And no, I didn't live on a farm.

It's a convenience store kinda place. They have those powdered donuts that are fucking awesome. My friends used to snort the powder off of them to see if they could get a better sugar rush. Fucking idiots. [He pokes the eggs with his bacon, making the yolk spill out]

Kansas? Jesus christ, I'm surprised you didn't kill yourself. Is it as boring as people say it is?

Like those kids that sniff glue? [He laughs, and feels guilty at once for laughing because it's no laughing matter. Or at least it shouldn't be.] I thought that's what they made sugar straws for.

[Popping a piece of bacon in his mouth, he chews thoughtfully before answering.] Ah, it's not that bad. Or at least it wasn't where I grew up. All that meteor rock kept things from ever getting too quiet, I guess. I hear it's mostly been cleaned up now though.

Yeah, probably exactly like that. The powder was white so they thought they were being super cool or some shit. [Kavinsky stuck actual drugs up his nose, so he would always just watch them, amused at their stupidity]

Meteor rock? [he asks, scooping up his eggs with his bacon]

Sounds your friends were a lot more interesting than mine [Though, saying Davis had 'friends' was being generous in the extreme. He'd put a kid in the hospital before he was ten years old, and in a small town, that was the kind of thing that got around.]

Yeah, hence the whole 'meteor capital of the world' thing, [he explains, taking a swig of his orange juice.] There was this huge meteor shower in 1989 that left chunks of meteor rock all over the town, and the thing was, the rocks emitted some kind of radiation, but no one realized it for years. [He smiles, a bit mirthlessly, as he cuts off a careful bite of eggs.] People that were exposed tended to suffer psychotic breakdowns. The radiation mutated their bodies in ways their minds couldn't handle.

[His friends were never really friends either. Just people who followed him around because he was cool, and they were mostly too scared not to do what he said. But he'll call them friends all the same] Damn right they were. They still are.

Sounds fucking awesome. [He takes another bite of his food, smirking around his fork] Did they grow extra limbs and all that shit?

[He lets that go without comment, just chewing on his eggs as Kavinsky brags. Privately, he's pretty sure that most of Kavinsky's 'friends' are just users of one stripe or another, hanging off of him either because of his money or because of his drugs. Or both.]

Not usually. The mutations were less obvious. [He looks down in his cup.] The first one I ever heard of was a guy who could control bugs with his mind. Usually that's how it went, some kind of mutation in the brain. You'd hear about people who could light things on fire with their minds, or people who could actually read minds, you know, like telepaths. A few of them had physical mutations, like the beauty queen who turned out to be shedding her skin like a snake, but those were the exception, not the rule.

I know one of those telepath people. That's a mutation, though? This guy acts like he's gods fucking gift. [He considers telling Davis more about his thing. It's not like he doesn't like to brag about it] Man, I would kill to be able to light shit on fire with my mind. Those all sound pretty cool. Aside from the shedding one. That's just fucking gross.

Are all things like that mutations? Like, what if some people can just do things. Not everyone is a freak, just cause they can control things with their brains.

You're talking about metahumans. People who don't get their abilities from external sources, but are born with them instead. [He licks his spoon clean, then starts stirring his drink with it. He can tell Joe's interested now, and what the hell, it's a safe subject. It's not like they're talking about aliens.] Their biology tends to be more stable, but they wind up having the same problems.

See, it sounds cool. Being able to read minds? Think of all the times that'd come in handy. But the problem all these people have, whether they're metahumans or meteor types, is that their powers tend to affect their sanity. Like your telepath friend. If he was born with it, then he's spent his whole life being able to read minds. He might not even be able to function without it. These abilities, they tend to seriously mess with people's heads. Telepathy's one of the worst for that.

What kind of problems. [Yeah, he's interested. It's relevant] How do you know if you're born with it or not?

[he purses his lips] Doesn't sound all that bad to me. He can explode people's heads. That's fucking cool. People are crazy either way. [He finishes up his food, licking hos fork] Ever met anyone who could pull things out of dreams?

Psychosis is the big one, but a lot of times these people have weakened immune systems too. The body's got to compensate for those powers somewhere, you know? [Now he's starting to wonder if Kavinsky might have a close friend with abilities. That Lynch guy, maybe.] There's a few tests you can take, but they're all mega-expensive. Mainly it's just wealthy families having their kids take them right now, since the adults worry they'll end up on someone's tracking list if they take them.

[He keeps stirring his drink, his own plate picked clean by now.] Pull things? You're gonna have to elaborate on that one for me, Joe. Saw a guy who could manipulate dreams once, kind of like a real life Freddy Kreuger. He ended up being so dangerous they put him in experimental meds to keep him awake 24/7, that way he couldn't dream. But I don't think I've ever met anyone who could project dreams, if that's what you're talking about.

So parents would rather put their kids on someone's tracking list? [he snorts] Typical parents shit.

Now that sounds like a fucking kickass power. You'd have so much control. Sleeping, dreaming, that can make or break a person. [He shakes his head] No, no. Not project them. Take things from them. Go into their own dreams and bring something physical back with them. Like cars and pills and shit.

[He smiles, but its without humor this time.] Parents just don't want to hear it. It's like finding out their kid's got autism or something.

'Make or break' a person... yeah, you're dead right about that one. {quietly:] I saw this guy once, years ago, when they took us out to Belle Reve. He's mid 30s, but you wouldn't know it by looking at him. He looked older than God. His teeth were gone, his hair was gone, his eyes were so sunken in his head they looked like little marbles. Without his dreaming power, he just... wasted away. He didn't say a word the whole time we were there, just made these little mewling noises and drooled on himself. No power's worth that.

[He has to stop a minute and catch his breath. That's one memory he'd rather forget.]

Okay. Transferring things from dreams, then. That's... no, that's not like Dee, that's something totally different. [his brow furrows as he considers it.] Yeah, I can't say I've met anyone like that before. That's a new one. Someone with a power like that, they could be in a lot of danger from themselves it sounds like.

Guess it depends on the level of freak their kids are.

[That story makes Kavinsky sober up for a moment. It's a scary thought that someone with a dream power could end up like that. He doesn't say anything about it, because he tends to stay quiet when something provokes any kind of deeper emotion in him]

A new one, huh. And here that psycho mind reader guy said he had seen it before. I knew he was bullshitting. [He also wonders how dense Davis is. Pursing his lips, he rests his elbows on the table, letting his arms fall open in a sort of shrug] It's never given me any trouble before.

Most of the time they can't even tell at that age. Mutation doesn't tend to manifest until puberty in natural cases.

[He's... glad, in a weird kind of way. It's so rare to see anything actually affect Joe. If he had any pictures of John Dee to show the kid, he would have, just because it feels so necessary to hammer the point home. He's not sure Kavinsky wouldn't volunteer for some shady scientist's procedure to enhance his abilities otherwise.]

Ah. [No, he's not as dense as he lets on sometimes. Though he's not the genius Tess Mercer is, the possibility didn't complete elude him. He'd just been hoping for one of the alternatives. Lifting his eyes, he sizes Joe up, as if seeing him in a new light.] I was starting to wonder. How long have you had this ability, do you know?

[Now that he knows, it's hard for him to not get flashbacks to Bette Sans Souci. But at least Joe's not killing anybody with his ability yet, he thinks. Hopes.]

The tests are expensive and they can't even tell? Sounds like a hack job to me.

[Well, Davis is right about that one. Kavinsky would probably do a whole lot of things to enhance his ability. The bigger, the better. And if he died before the worst effects settled in, he wouldn't even care]

Like hell you were. You had no idea. [he snorts] I don't know. A couple years? [he says casually, as if he doesn't think it's one of the main things in his life that he could never do without. As for killing, there are other ways of going about doing just that, than using his ability]

Heh. Maybe it is, but right now that's the best they've come up with.

[More than ever, he's glad that Joe hasn't pushed him out of his life entirely, the way common sense would say a high-flying guy like him would do with a relative stick-in-the-mud like himself. Maybe, just maybe, he can keep the kid grounded. That way, he'll never have to see the insides of Belle Reve.]

[He laughs a little] Okay, you're right. I had no way of knowing for sure. [He nods at Joe's explanation, like it makes sense.] Hm. Your abilities might be native, not something that came from kryptonite exposure. That's around the time they say natural mutations tend to manifest. And, just so we're clear, you've never come across any weird glowing green rocks before, right?

Kinda pathetic if you ask me.

[Davis's saving grace is that no matter what he's doing, Kavinsky doesn't like to be alone. And while that doesn't always bring him to the best kind of company, he'd rather have something than nothing]

No green rocks. Well... I aside from drugs. But you can't snort that shit, can you?