Logs:SPQX

SPQX
Dramatis Personae Bryce, Emilia, Naomi
In Absentia	2024-03-04 "Everything in this workshop is scary if you use it wrong, right?"
Location <XAV> Workshop - Xs Grounds
A large barn-like building situated at the far end of the gardens from the mansion proper, this makerspace functions as a classroom for many of the more hands-on classes. An expanse of workshop space, it is subdivided into smaller segments for the different types of activities: Woodshop, Welding shop, Machine shop, Electronics, Bike shop, Screen Printing and Photography, Fabric Arts, and the Rapid Prototyping Lab with a trio of 3D printers. The space comes complete with a large host of tools available for use, although many of the more dangerous require prior clearance from administration to use -- students with appropriate clearance to use them can gain access to locked equipment with their student IDs. From sanders to MIG/TIG welders to soldering stations to industrial sewing machines to its own darkroom, though, this space is well equipped for teaching students how to make. Classes have ended for the day, and it'll be a bit yet until dinner. There's a reasonable amount of bustle in the workshop. Over in the fabric shop a pair of students are arguing over a pattern for attempting to recreate Jackson Holland's Gates of Lassiter armor for Purim. A cluster of kids over by the screen printing press are making a considerable mess of what was meant to be tee shirts to sell and maybe one day the cause they are trying to raise funds for will actually be legible in their work. An older student at one side is extremely patiently attempting to talk a much younger one through aligning the derailleur on the battered bike in the bike stand. In the woodshop, Bryce is humming quietly to himself as he goes through the simple but tedious process of sanding a number of wooden planks; he's been at this for a while and might be at it a while more. Even among X-Kids he's eye catching -- a vivid crown of bold red and purple feathers in place of hair on his head; where the hairline would end it shifts to brindled fur with darker patches around his eyes large and dark and with no visible whites, today, and oddly magnified behind his safety goggles. Where his arms are bare beyond his neat green button-down he has a marbling of orange-red-black scales. His phone nearby is playing YouTube and he is intermittently scrunching up his face as he watches the woman on the video pretend to interview a series of animals with a very tiny microphone. Ah, the woodshop. Well, that was what she mainly spent her time in, anyhow. Though, she looks up from the bow she's working on refining to do a double-take at the mutant before her, albeit unintentionally. She isn't sure she saw what she thought she did. Feathers??? There's also the fact that she is whittling the bow with her claws, in and of themselves a tool that would require clearance to use. However, she needs no such clearance, so long as she doesn't do anything violent. Or at least, she doesn't believe so. Emilia is tall, around six feet or so, and if you look at her feet, can spot three, four, claws out of her feet, and three in her hands, which she's using like a whittling knife, examining the wood with a retracting every once in a while. It's quick, and hurts for only a split second. Her buzzed hair is a bit longer, bit thicker, but she hasn't decided if she's going to let it grow out or not, like she used to have it. This was who she was now. Emilia, the clawed monster. The woman who ate animals in front of two X-Men. She would never live that down. Emilia the animal hunter. She didn't like hunting unless it was humane, the animal didn't suffer. It was so important that they didn't suffer. Her jaw clenches, and she examines the bow, setting it down to grab an unused piece of sanding paper, and she too begins to sand, almost religiously, her focus solely on the sanding, though a woman interviewing animals catching her attention. What the hell is that? "What are you watching?" She asks the mutant nearby, questioningly. <<Don't stare, Emilia.>> The door swings open, admitting One More Mutant Like Bryce. Well, kind of. Naomi is far less furry, less feathered, than the other Monster Kid in this room. But she’s scaled — gleaming, fresh polished jet black snake scales cover her forehead, cascading down her temples to her cover her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose as well before exposing light brown skin. She’s in an oversized Xavier’s hoodie, a purple razor-back tank top with the letters SPQR surrounded by laurels printed on in golden yellow, and skinny black jeans. Her eyes are scanning the woodshop — maybe she’s looking for someone but what her eyes are catching on is Bone Claw Whittling. "-- don’t that hurt?" she’s asking immediately in lieu of greeting to the other girl. Bryce gets a much more normal headnod and "'Sup." "Oh! Oh this person does a lot of wildlife rehab, she's got this sanctuary where she does a lot of conservation education but these are just for fun, I think, I love the cockatoo he's always trying to eat the mic Hi Naomi!" This all comes out as one bright spill of words. Bryce is just now glancing up, the mechanical sander stopping its whirring. A smile lights his face as he looks at Naomi's shirt. "Oh! I'm just reading that book, Mr. Tessier recommended it, it feels so much more personal than some histories, you know?" Considering that her claws are Adamantium, Emilia at first misunderstands the question from Bryce-Like Mutant. "Well, no, they're Adamantium- oh. You mean the... not really? It does, but after a while you just get... used to it." Her claws are, in fact, metal, not bone, but Emilia realizes she's referring to abrasion. Which, yes, it does hurt. She turns to display them a bit, retracting and extending them to prove her point, the wounds healed nearly instantly, so that it's not a more... disastrous result. She doesn't really flinch, though there's a not-so-subtle twitch of her jaw, indicating that yes, it does hurt. A lot. Her poor nerves. But, much as the wounds are closed, any damage is repaired, so on. Maybe she'll get further desensitized to it as she goes. She ignores it for the most part. "So in essence..." The Ukrainian woman speaks, her accent rather obvious, but not unintelligible. "Yes, it does hurt. But when you also have a healing factor, you don't really... feel it?" She remembers the pain of the first time. "But none of them hurt more than the first time. It's a lot... slower." Her face indicates that may be too much detail. She's dressed in simple workwear, forgoing her usual field jacket for a black work jacket, more meant for this kind of thing. Under that, she's got a simple t-shirt, and then work pants and boots, worn but well taken care of. She seems to have A Certain Style. "Right." She says simply to Bryce, absorbing his words after some difficulty. "That is interesting." She says, earnestly. She'd always been a fan of animals. ... Usually. Those poor deer. Anyhow, she seems to snap out of her remembrance. "I feel as though I should introduce myself." She says, retracting her claws to provide a less harmful hand to shake. "I'm Emilia. Judging from the one over there, you're Naomi." Comically, she is holding one hand in either direction, so that both may shake her hand at once if they so choose. Naomi’s eyes dart between Emilia and Bryce, lips pulled into a tight line. "Uhhhhhhh." She is not going to shake the offered hand, though she’s staring at the place the claws disappeared for a beat too long to be simply considering a handshake. Some internal decision is reached — Naomi shucks off her hoodie and pushes up to sit on top of an empty worktable. With the hoodie off, more scales are visible, covering her shoulders down the tops of her arms towards her elbows, and across her upper back. "… and you don’t get splinters? Inside?" This is the end of her curiosity — now Bryce is drawing her confusion, sharp and judgy — "History? Boy Percy Jackson is fiction -- wayment can y'all even read them books?" "The what?" Bryce is looking down in some confusion at Emilia's outstretched hands. He's slow to take one but eventually does reach up, looking a little unsure which of the two he should shake. "I know who you are," he offers lightly once he's shifted back to his own planks of wood. "What's adamantium, is that --" but he's distracted by Naomi's question. The tilt of his head is only made more birdlike by the bright plume of feathers atop it. "Huh? Oh! Oh, is that -- I didn't --" He lifts a hand, rubbing a little sheepishly at the side of his face. "There's a book," he's explaining, self-consciously, "it's called SPQR, it's -- I thought -- um, anyway, are those books good? The Percy Jackson ones?" His forehead rumples and he's only a little defensive when he adds: "Of course I can read." "Ohhhh. Like a Roman Empire book." Naomi looks down at her shirt and frowns, perhaps displeased that it is giving the Wrong Genre of Nerd. About those books Naomi says "They’re okay," with the offhand casualness of someone who is very into something but also deeply aware being earnest is Not Cool. "Nah, I meant it’s got other gods, the Olympians, in them books. They ain’t Jesus, is that allowed?" She leans forward, eyes wide. "Yeah! It's a history book. That," Bryce is nodding towards Naomi's shirt (earnestly), "was on a lot of ancient Roman monuments and currency and --" He stops with a small uncertain scrunch of his forehead. "Wait, aren't the Olympians Greek?" His wait shifts, one foot rolling to the side and then back up. "I mean," he's saying this slower and less certain, "it's not real, I don't think it's forbidden. Probably." "Romans stole their pantheon from Greece," Naomi is stating, "and there are a lot of Percy Jackson books." She leans back onto the worktop, palms pressed flat against its surface, watching Bryce steadily. "Probably," she repeats. "Well, yeah the story ain’t real, but lots o' folks thought the Greek gods were. If they were real, would it be allowed then?" Bryce just looks blank, like this question simply does not computer. "But they're not real." He's returning to his sanding, but less intently, most of his attention still on Naomi. "Have you read all of them? Which one's your favorite?" Just in case there's any ambiguity he's tacking on, "Book, um, not -- other god." Naomi frowns — is she disappointed Bryce didn’t fall for the bait, or is she just thinking? "I didn’t finish the Norse ones. The first series is the best for sure." She swings her legs back and forth. "…Titan’s Curse, it’s in the middle. The books are all supposed to be about messy families but that’s the first one with main character siblings in it." Her mouth scrunches up to the side. "I liked those characters a lot. They had scary powers but folks still ended up liking and trusting them." Naomi glances at Bryce's scaled arms, then up to the feathers. "Kinda like your brother's? Ionno if Dallen can talk to dead people though." "Dallen's power isn't scary," Bryce is saying with a reflexive defensiveness that mellows in his follow up: "... but a lot of people think it is. I just mean --" He lifts his sander, buzzing it briefly in the air. "Everything in this workshop is scary if you use it wrong, right?" He's looking back down at the wood under his hands, and then slowly back up at Naomi. There's a noticeable pause before he speaks again. "Do people -- are people --" But this shifts halfway through, no longer a question, but just kind of thoughtful. "Some people are scared of your thing, too." "I said it was scary, not that scary was bad." Naomi’s eyes narrow a touch at Bryce’s immediate reply, her legs swinging slower. "Most people scared of me," is not so much an agreement as a correction. "Just how it is." She rolls one scaled shoulder backwards in its socket, studying the sander. Then she gaze flicks up to Bryce, sharp and focused, before sliding over to Emilia as well. "—Y'all done heard what I can do, are you scared of me?" "Huh." Bryce seems to be giving serious consideration to these corrections, his face scrunching in thought behind his large goggles. He's reflexively starting to shake his head at the question but then hesitates. His sander has stopped its spinning again, and he's brushing a hand lightly against the wood plank. "I don't know," he answers finally, and he sounds a little apologetic with this uncertain consideration. "Maybe? When I think about it it's pretty creepy but I don't feel scared of you. Not because of that anyway." Emilia considers. Really considers. Is she scared of Naomi? What she can do? You hear all kinds of rumors walking around the campus. She's heard quite a few about herself, not all pleasant. Not all true. She wonders if it's the same with Naomi. People make up things just to make up things. "Not to downsell what you can do, but no. I've seen far scarier things in Weapon Plus." She adds, unaware if they even know what Weapon Plus is. Even the name makes her skin crawl, makes her slightly flinch to say out loud. She's careful not to break the bow by setting it down, too much work would've been wasted. "What they did to me, I could fill a thousand nightmares." "And what I've done, I could fill a thousand more." "But it's only slightly fear inducing. Anything with the mind is. Whether a mutation or not. Our minds are the one thing we hold dear. To have that messed with, thrown into chaos... If we have sense, it should scare all of us. No amount of metal claws or healing factors or laser eyes compare to those. At least with those, it's over quickly. Mind powers? It could happen, and you'd never know it." "So in short, yes, but only slightly, due to my own experiences. The concept scares me more than the execution. But I'm not scared of you, only what you can do. There's a difference. I don't have anything against you. I'm sure you're fun to hang out with." Naomi sucks her cheeks in, considering each answer in turn — if her fingers are curling a little harder into the work surface at Emilia’s answer, who’s to say that means anything? "Being scared or creeped out by what I can do don't seem much different from being scared of me. Just cuz I don't use it don't mean it ain't me, too." She shrugs, harder. "Being scary ain't a good or bad thing. It just -- is." Her gaze is landing on Bryce now, in all his colorful plumage, mouth scrunched up to the side. "Scarier things in what?" Bryce is looking over at Emilia with a deeper scrunch of brows, a kind of baffled curiosity in his voice. "You've done -- what?" The bright feathers on his head are fluffing up higher as Naomi looks at him, and he fidgets just a little uncomfortably with the board he's been sanding. "I guess so," he's finally saying, but it's slow and still not very certain. "But you didn't ask if you were scary, just if I'm scared of you. A lot of things are scary when I imagine them, but it doesn't mean I think it's going to happen. I guess if you wanted to hurt me then I'd be scared of you." He chews, briefly, at the inside of his lip, the fur on his cheek twitching with the motion. "... do you?" "I was part of... some really bad Canadian program. Real top secret stuff, to most of the people in the population. From what I've seen of the news, and heard from people around campus, it's not as bad as the Prometheus labs, but... still terrible." Emilia doesn't like that she's sharing this among people she doesn't know. This isn't for them to know, she believes. But someone has to know that isn't her therapist. "I don't want to talk about the things I've done, but... I hurt a lot of bad people. I'll leave it at that. I'm not comfortable sharing more than I already have." She seems guarded, reserved. She doesn't like this. But she also doesn't want to abruptly leave. Something in her is rubbed the wrong way by Naomi, just a little bit, but that could just be something she needs to work on. Not everyone is out to get her. "I agree with what both of you said. It isn't good or bad. It just is. Just because I might be scared of you, or what you can do, doesn't mean I think you're a bad person, or that I'm going to hurt you, or you're going to hurt me. We're all in this fucked up situation together, learning how to do the best we can with what we have. Some people have it worse than others, but that doesn't make any one person less valid in their struggle than the other. Basically, what I mean is... We shouldn't be defined by what we can do. We should be defined by who we are. Maybe that's too optimistic, to be treated similar to everyone else, mutant or not, but I hope one day we can actually coexist. I'm not holding my breath, but... It's always been a dream of mine." Naomi is shaking her head vehemently at Bryce’s question. "I don’t wanna hurt anyone ever again. Specially not another monster." What she means by 'monster', she isn’t explaining during Emilia’s monologue, but it rolls off her tongue with too much ease and too little malice to be a clear pejorative. Her legs stop swinging entirely as the other girl talks. "Nah." That’s all she says after Emilia finishes, before pushing off the table and standing up. "You can go coexist all you want, white girl, you have the power. I’mma hang out with people who accept all of me, right now. See y’all later." She puts her hoodie back on before offering, a little kinder (but so specifically to Bryce, not even looking at Emilia) — "You should swing by math club sometime, if you wanna. I’ll lend you The Lightning Thief." And then she’s walking out the workshop door. "Oh -- oh, woah, that's -- I'm sorry that you went through that." Bryce's puzzled look is not really fading, but he sounds sincere in this, anyway. "You don't, um, have to -- share, I didn't mean to -- bring up --" This is fumbling just a little as he tries to think back over the recent exchange, and he doesn't finish the sentence. His brows lift, and at first his -- "Oh! Math club? Yeah!" sounds reflexively excited just to be invited. It's only as Naomi is walking away that this invitation is catching up to him. The goggles make his blinkblinkblink look even more puzzled, and then he's darting after Naomi with a confused: "-- wait, math club?"