ArchivedLogs:Touchy Subjects

Touchy Subjects
Dramatis Personae Anole, Claire, Kisha, Rasa
In Absentia	2014-04-05 '
Location <XS> Foyer
Xavier's foyer provides a suitable introduction to the opulent mansion. Teak-paneled, wood floors immaculately polished, vaulted ceiling ribbed with dark wood boning, there is no doubt this school was built with no expense spared. The hallways branch off to the separate wings, with the grand staircase spiraling upwards to the residential dorms above. Rasa is heading out of the lunch room after eating -- well, after they started serving lunch anyway. Ze is still in the middle of eating, a sandwich in one hand, periodically applied to hir mouth for bites. Ze has a backpack over one shoulder, a wing wrapped around it, keeping it from sliding off one shoulder. The other rests more comfortably against hir body. Ze has a tail too, one with a triangular tip that dances along behind hir, curled up and lolling backwards. The whole of hir is covered in a brindle of blue and blackishbrown velveteen fur, with two amber eyes peeking out. Hir hair is wavy and matches her coat. Hir torso is covered in a spring green tee, one that has be cut carefully to fit hir body, what with the different body parts, and standard denim jeans below, with a hole for hir tail. Despite the early spring, hir feet are bare. Rasa moves into foyer to settle down on one of the couches, not the surface itself, but as more of a perch on the arm, sliding hir bag off onto the cushion as ze continues to eat. Ze unzips hir bag and produces an apple, which ze begins to rub against hir side to polish. Claire is doing something quite similar to Rasa, grabbing a quick lunch from the lunch room and then ducking into the foyer to actually eat it. She looks like she's trying not to draw attention to herself, but she's got her looks working against her. Not only do her fingertips appear to be on fire, but so does her head. Where hair is supposed to be, there's only flame. She doesn't greet Rasa, and basically avoids looking at Rasa after a single curious glance. Anole does much better at the not-drawing-attention; he's creeping, veeeery slowly, along the ceiling, both bare feet and his sole hand pressed to the surface as he practices scooting along. It helps in the not-drawing-attention realm that the lizardy teenager is, currently, blended in to the same pattern and hue /as/ the ceiling, skin and clothes shifted into dark wood tones to match his background. It's not /invisibility/, of course; he can be seen easily enough moving across the ceiling, but it's /unobtrusive/ enough to likely go without notice. He's dressed in jeans and a Xavier's tee, though both of these are at the moment colour-shifted to his background as well. From beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt the scarred stump of his missing left arm sticks out, thicker and scalier than his right. A few sharp spikes similar to the ones on his head dot the top of the oddly muscular stump. Unobtrusive only lasts while he's being /quiet/, though. In contrast to Claire he /does/ offer greeting, soft but warm as he slowly-slowly-slowly inches his way down along the wall. "HiRasa." It tumbles out as one word as he scoots headfirst down the wall towards hir couch, stopping a few feet above it. "What's the sandwich is it good I haven't looked at lunch yet /woah/ hello," now his head (still wood-paneled in shade) turns towards Claire curiously, "are you new? I'm Anole. /Hi/." Stomping in through the front door comes Kisha. She's dressed for /science/ in one of her less fire damaged labcoats, high tech aviator goggles and is followed by a buzzing little quadcopter drone. "Results indicate the battery technology is capable of supporting the requirements and I should in theory be able to scale it up for the early stage of Project Thunderchild." "Oh. Um, build your own. I went for barbeque potato chip and ham. There's some cheddar in there, too." Rasa doesn't bother to look for Anole at first, but turns hir head in the direction of his voice. "Can you build sandwiches with your tongue?" There is a very curious look in hir eyes as ze tries to focus in on the correct part of that wood style head of his. It's only when Anole turns his attention to the other girl does ze realize she is there. Ze was apparently pretty zoned out before. "Oh. Hey. Hi." After Anole's introduction, ze adds, "I'm Rasa." All of this is interrupted when Kisha comes storming in. Rasa's eyebrows dart upward and hir entire body (not hir clothes) turns a shade of banana yellow. "Oh? Um. Thunderchild? Is that what you call the mobile charging unit you gave B?" Ze just blinks when ze runs out of things to say. Claire is a bit startled by Anole, and this makes her headflame grow an inch. "Uh. Yeah. I'm new." She looks around skittishly, "I'm Claire. I didn't mean to interrupt anything." She looks even more startled when Kisha comes in, and looks towards the elevator, "Maybe..." She does not finish that thought. "Oh /wow/ that's pretty." Anole's wood-coloured eyes widen large at the growing of the flames on Claire's head. "I mean, really pretty. Hi. You're not interrupting I think it's just lunchtime have you lunched yet?" He scoots down another few cautious inches, and slowly his clothes fade back into denim-blue and the grey-blue-black of his Xavier's tee; the /rest/ of him shifts back into the very /green/ shade that is normal for his scaley skin. Creepcreep. Creepcreep, just a little closer to Rasa's couch, though he doesn't get off the wall just yet. "I -- I haven't /tried/, but I can do a lot with my tongue I /probably/ -- could maybe but. Nobody else'd want to eat it. Do you want my tongue? What's a Thunderchild?" He tilts his head in curious questioning at Kisha at this last question. "-- That's /so cool/." This addition comes as he looks at the drone. Kisha pauses, then adjusts a dial on her goggles. "It's... not. The blimp drone that is. It's something in the very early stages.. far too soon to go into any details yet," she coughs. "So yeah moving swiftly on. The drone isn't cool. It's just something I threw together which I'm using as a test bed for some tiny cameras." There is a long pause before she adds "Is that girls head on fire?" "Nope, you're not interrupting anything. Also, we were all new once. So, uh, don't worry about all the new and different stuff for a while." Rasa bites hir lip and looks to Anole, nodding along with his invitation to food. Then, she responds to him, "Well, it's the 'your own' part of 'build your own.' Granted, I'm not sure how people would feel about you not using tongs." Rasa considers the offer and sighs. "Maybe. Soon. I think your tongue is awesome, I'm just getting used to wings right now. Brain's a bit taxed." Kisha's description causes hir to blink again. "Tiny cameras. I see. And yes, I think so, but I haven't asked her yet. It could just look like fire." Claire calms down a little but, and the fire returns back to its normal length. "Oh. Uh..." And then Kisha asks that question, and she looks like she wants to disappear on the spot. "Yes it is, it's fine... well, it isn't, but it doesn't hurt me..." Deep breaths, "I'm Claire." She extends one hand nervously, the fingertips are all on fire too, where her fingernails should be. "I /still/ feel like I'm new and I've been here for --" Anole blushes, cheeks tinting a darker shade of green. "Well, I guess I kind of didn't even finish my semester last time because zombies. So maybe I still /am/ new, a little." Another inch or two down the wall, and then he climbs off it to carefully perch himself on the couch's back. "Most people think my tongue is pretty disgusting, I don't think anyone'd want it -- I mean, I don't think anyone would want /anyone's/ tongue near the food so there is that too. Oh! Was there tomatoes? I really want a tomato sandwich." His hand curls against his toes, gripping there as he crouches on the couch-back. "Spy-drone? There's like a whole /flock/ of dragonflies that -- wait. Dragonflies aren't a flock are they. What would that be?" "That would be a cluster or flight rather than a flock," Kisha explains, tapping her goggles. "I've got the internet. It's not actually a spy drone though. It's just something I had handy to fit the cameras onto. They're not much bigger than the tip of a pencil." She tilts her head. "That is fascinating. The fire I mean, the tongue is a bit perculiar and might be very interesting from a biology point of view. Will the fire burn other people?" "If you went based of the dragon half, I'd say they'd be a brood or a ... um, clan." Rasa shrugs. Ze then turns to finishing hir sandwich while other people speak. Well, that is, until ze has something to say. "There're plenty of reasons to have cameras on things that are remotely mobile. Or at least one, that I can think of. GPS is useful and all, but you still have to see where you're going so you don't bump the remote into anything. I don't know why we need cameras on the tips of pencils though." Ze rests hir elbows on hir knees. "All mutations have some sort of benefit, I've found. Your tongue is neat, Anole. Reaching things with it must be convenient. It's not ... very slobbery, is it?" Ze clears hir throat and turns to Claire. "Apologies. I've known Anole a while. I promise I won't ask about your mutation like this if you don't want me to." "Yes, it will burn, it's fire." Claire answers Kisha, burying her face in her hands. Clearly it doesn't burn her, because she sticks her fingers in her headflame like it's nothing. She sighs and adds, "Can we talk about something that isn't me?" "I can swing from things with it too but, um, then I have to put my tongue on stuff and sometimes that tastes gross. And it's a tongue," Anole sticks the very tip of his tongue out of his mouth, then pulls it back in. "It's a slobbery as any tongue, I guess. It lives in my mouth. Spit lives there too. What about a swarm? I like clan, though. Clan sounds -- familial." A small smile curls his lips. "Pencil-tip cameras /definitely/ sound like a spy thing." Kisha shrugs. "They're just efficient in terms of weight and size," she points out. "And saving weight means it's nice and energy efficient. But I'm not going to use them to spy on /anyone/ because there isn't anyone interesting to spy on. I'm not sure every mutation has a benefit, some are likely entirely pointless or harmful to the person with the power." "Sure." Rasa replies simply to Claire, nodding, before turning to Kisha. "Fine. Crush optimism." Ze stuffs hir sandwich in hir mouth to chew, looking over at Anole, and hurrying up to swallow so ze can speak again. "Bah. If I were using your tongue, it'd be my tongue. I totally get the whole bad taste thing. There are very many things I would like to never have to lick." Claire doesn't seem upset by Kisha's words, she just confirms it. "You're right." She sounds just a bit bitter. and changes to the other subject almost immediately after. "I guess being a human chameleon can be kinda cool." Anole's brows rumple, one shoulder twitching upwards a little self-consciously. "It's -- sort of. I mean there's -- cool things about it, I guess." He doesn't sound /entirely/ certain, to be honest. "Mostly people just try to kill me a lot though." He frowns down at his feet, teetering slowly back and forth where he perches on the couch. Eventually he tips his head up to squint over towards Kisha. "There's /loads/ of interesting people. But -- spying on people is -- probably not very /nice/." "In the world, sure. But the kind of things I find interesting aren't usually found at a school," Kisha points out. "There are people who are socially interesting but I have no great need to spy on them. Finding things out here is simply a matter of sitting in a public place. Gossip is cheaper than spy cameras." She shrugs. "People tried to kill you? That sounds unfortunate. I hope you're feeling okay now." "Yeah, people trying to kill you is not... good." Rasa replies, hir body turning a dark blue. Ze exhales and slips hir apple back into hir bag, looking at hir sandwich as if ze no longer knows what to do with it. "But Kisha's right about the gossip. It's generally pretty easy to find out about people just from sitting back and listening." Ze shrugs and finally finishes hir sandwich, lapsing into silence. Claire shudders at the thought of people trying to kill Anole. ... or maybe at a related thought, the fire on her head growing a bit again, "... can we talk about something else?" She asks, her voice is very small. "What are classes like around here?" Anole shrugs -- this time with the hacked-off stump of his left arm. He watches as Rasa finishes hir sandwich, and hops off the back of the couch to land on the floor, toes curling down against it. "You can talk about anything. I'm getting lunch. /Hopefully/," he says with a very small twitch of smile, "with tomatoes. And I won't even use my tongue to make the sandwiches." He bobs his head in a nod to the others, turning to scamper off towards the Great Hall and /food/. "Classes are whatever you make of them. They offer the range you'd expect at an upmarket boarding school and the standard of teaching is acceptable," Kisha assures. "If you are dilligent in your studies then you could do almost anything you set your mind to. It's strange really, our powers have allowed us all a far better future than we'd likely have had without them." "What did you take in your old school, you know, before? I mean, all the basics are here, so you can pick up with math, English, science, and all the usual. There's stuff that will be specific to your personal mutation and a teacher to talk to about any problems you have, but... yeah. Kind of the basic high school experience and then some." Rasa gives a small smile and stands up to stretch. Ze takes up a lot of room when ze stretches, especially with hir new wing span. "You'll be okay here." "Just regular stuff. I guess..." Claire pauses to think, about something, "... are those specific classes hard? I didn't ask for this..." She seems worried about it, and glances towards Kisha, and says, "Better is subjective." Kisha smiles. "Of course better is subjective. But on balance I'd say a world class education beats a little minor trouble with mutations, no?" she counters. "My power almost got me killed once. But in time they'll teach you to master it so don't worry. Some classes here are very difficult but the power related stuff tends to be as complex as you can cope with. They won't put you under a huge amount of stress if they aren't sure that you are ready for it." "Aahhh," Rasa falters as Kisha starts talking about being pushed and stress, hir brow furrowing. "Actually, a lot of the specific classes start off being about taking care of yourself and getting what you can do under control. I mainly spend time trying to stick to one form when I work with my advisor. But he's a gym teacher and I like gym, so I also do other stuff with him, so... yeah. You probably don't want my advisor. Not that the professor would give him to the unprepared. The Professor knows what he is doing." Ze clears hir throat again. "They'll probably assign you to Ms. Winthrop, the librarian and English teacher. She's British but actually really nice. Like really nice. You know, if you don't yell in the library." Claire listens a bit longer, "Librarian? ... I'm not sure I like that idea." She glances at her fingernails, or the flames she has that replaced her fingernails. "Do you really think so?" "She might well understand what you're going through," Kisha notes, adjusting something on her goggles and motioning at the drone. The drone seems to understand either the adjustment or the hand gesture and zips in closer. "She has a fire based ability and is likely best placed to teach you control. After all she's been able to master her ability well enough to work with books and they are notoriously easy to burn." "She's young, if that helps. Scary librarians are usually super old. She's young and hot, with horns and a tail, so... um. I'm probably not helping." Rasa crooks a thumb in Kisha's direction. "She's right. Ms. Winthrop is a good person to talk to when it comes to fire control." Something Kisha just said draws a response, a response Claire is trying to fight down, but doing a fairly poor job at fighting down. Her fingerflames grow to a full inch away from her fingers, and her headflame grows to be a bit over a foot away from her head. The room temperature is probably rising, and the girl is taking deep breaths while pointedly /not/ looking at Kisha. Kisha raises an eyebrow. "It seems I may have offended you," she ventures. "I better get back to my work. It's been nice meeting you both." And with a motion to the drone she's off in the direction of the dining hall. "Oh, Hey, whoa." Rasa holds up hir hands defensively, looking between Kisha and Claire, hir coloration paling. "It's okay. Um. It's going to be okay, Claire. Just take a deep breath, okay?" "Don't leave. It's just..." Claire takes a couple more deep breaths, and the fire slowly goes back down again, "You kind of said something that hurt, I'm sure you didn't mean to. I'm sorry, I don't... have a good grip on ... you know." Kisha pauses. "You're right in that I wasn't intending to cause offense," she agrees. "But I am not especially good at gauging when a topic might prove distressing for people. So it's probably best for me to resume my studies. It's nothing personal I assure you. I should also probably get something to eat as I may have forgotten to get anything substantial yesterday." Rasa inhales deeply and moves closer to Claire. "Hey, good job on the recovery. I know everything's kind of overwhelming to start. You just gotta take things one day at a time. One conversation at a time." Ze shrugs and watches Kisha go. "She's not really a talker, mostly into the tech. I bet if you wanted, you two could talk about heat resistant surfaces for a electronic reader or computer. She could possibly help design it." Ze frowns a little. "I know I'm probably not helping. I'd like to try, if you were open to it." Claire shakes her head, slowly. "I'm just..." She looks down at her hands, "Not used to being like this. Maybe I'll get used to it someday." She forces herself to smile, "I'm not very good with people either, and this... whole business doesn't help." "Oh. yeah. Well, the first however long just getting used to yourself is kind of the most disorienting. We've all done something... similar, if you will, so... we'll be more than happy to talk things out with you, or give you space, or whatever combination of those things you need. It's definitely not easy, but support is available. I'm sure there's some safe place on campus where you can just scream it out, if that helps too." Rasa's wings wrap around hirself, the little finger claws on the corners clasping together in front of hir chest as hir arms relax against hir sides. "Whatever you need." Claire smiles faintly. "Thanks. Sorry for being such a bummer." Flames are back to normal now, and Claire takes a bite from her sandwich, then chokes and spits it back out. Catching the blackened bite in her hand "Ew. Ash." She frowns as she looks at her sandwich, which has gotten quite charred. "Heh. Come on, let's go get you something else. Maybe with some practice, you could eat a hot pocket that isn't frozen in the middle." Rasa jokes quietly and raises a hand, pointing back to the dining hall. "You'd be one of the chosen few. It'd be amazing." "Yeah, sure." Claire doesn't seem to think that all that funny, but she throws away her ruined sandwich and follows Rasa along. "What was your name again? Sorry, I suck at names..." "Rasa." Ze resupplies, snagging hir bag and heading on back to the food.