Logs:Markov Process

Markov Process
Dramatis Personae Holden, Roscoe
In Absentia Kyinha	2024-12-07 "I had a free day."
Location <XAV> Library - Xs First Floor
Xavier's librarian might hope the library is a quiet place to sit and study, but with a school full of teenagers that is not always the case. Nevertheless, it is certainly a treasure trove of knowledge, well-stocked with a wealth of books on its high shelves. Its reference section is vast, though its fiction is as well (much to the delight of many of its students.) The wide octagonal tables and smaller armchairs are often crowded with students, though the whispered conversations that often take place leave some doubt as to how much work is getting done at any given hour. On a Saturday afternoon, this early in the term, the library is fairly empty, its inviting warmth and cozy furniture failing to entice students even when compared against the encroaching December cold outside, where it's grey and windy and quiet. Probably eating in the library is sternly discouraged if not strictly forbidden, but Roscoe has brought a Maruchan cup noodle with him today, which is steaming fragrantly beside his textbook. He's bundled comfortably in a peacock-blue hoodie and dark gray joggers, a warm black beanie pulled low over his face, scratching away at some math homework with a sharp Ticonderoga pencil. Holden is thankful for the library's sparce occupation. It's simply the nature of people to look her way when she comes by. She's far from stealthy. Heralded by the staggered, stamping klaks and kliks of her crutch, and the occasional creak from her leg brace if she'd procrastinated its maintenance for long enough-- Which she had. A breath hisses from between clenched teeth as Holden draws to a stop. The cold is rolling in, and with it has come a whole slew of fresh hell. It's a bad pain day, not that any day spent in constant discomfort is any good. The cold has crept into her joints, and the ache pulses up her leg with every beat of her heart. Pausing, she reaches down, bony fingers white-knuckling the crutch as she reaches down to her leg. Adjusting the straps of her leg brace with practiced familiarity, Holden tightens the strap across the calf before loosening the one just above the back of her knee. She places weight on the leg, letting out a low tsk as familiar pain lances up from the point of impact. But the brace is sitting better, now. So that's one of her myriad problems abated for now... Onward she thumps, shouldering her bookbag as she does. There's only one person in her usual haunt, today. Holden passes them, eying them from her periphery. When she sees the face, she makes a noise in the back of her throat. Something half-way between a huff and a grunt, and what passes for a greeting in Holden-world when she's feeling particularly sour. Her book bag comes down heavily, though not intentionally. She just doesn't have the strength to hold it up for long. Her own fault, really; Checking out so many books, and ones of such heft at that. She reaches in, flipping over covers until she finds the book she needs, then hauls it up, setting it down on the table with a thud. Roscoe, indeed, looks her way -- flicks his eyes up to track Holden's entrance into the library, though when she pauses to adjust her brace his eyes drop back to his spread of math homework. He doesn't return the grunt of greeting, just hitches his shoulders up a little higher, then higher still at the thud on the table, dropping the pencil to pick up his cup noodle, though he's already had enough of the broth that it was in no danger of spilling. He rearranges his legs in the chair beneath him to push himself up a little taller, peering curiously across the table at her stack of books -- "It would probably be easier to read those one at a time," he says. She hefts another book out of the bag. She two-hands this one, setting it down more gently. The books are textbook-sized, with long, complex titles. Books on genetics, and gene-therapy. Medical textbooks she'd had to have ordered by the librarian. The type of books you only studied if you were set on a complicated, hyper-specific field. Or, y'know, if you were dying. "Too much work to do," she replies at last. Holden has a voice like rock-salt; course and ragged, drawn up through a throat that's been torn up by whatever afflicts her. One such fit strikes her, and she tucks her face into the crook of her elbow. It sounds like she's about to hack up a chunk of lung, and judging by the way her face screws up, it feels like it, too. "Homework?" She tilts her head towards the paper he's working on, opening her pair of textbooks. The notebook she lifts from her bag is stuffed with additional paper, covered from top to bottom in scrawling notes. Complex formulas that stretch from one end of the page to the next, filled with the sorts of things that shouldn't be in math; like letters and weird, esoteric symbols. Roscoe grimaces at the rough cough, his front teeth pressing into his lower lip. "Uh, should you... maybe... wear a mask, or something? If you're sick?" he suggests, though he isn't wearing one and evidently does not have any on offer. He glances down, his gaze trailing a little lackadaisically over his shoulder, then, his head snapping back up, "Dr. McCoy has some in the lab," he adds. He's not craning his neck at her books anymore -- quite the opposite, in fact, his head has crunched low between his shoulders -- but he's glancing at her notebook with a perplexed frown. "Uh, yeah, precalc. What is that, please please please say it's not calculus." "Not that kinda sick," she says, thumbing through her notes. She looks them over when Roscoe points them out. She huffs a laugh, shaking her head. "No, not calculus. Advanced Statistics." Holden flips the notebook around to offer Roscoe a look. She may not be sociable, not always, but Holden takes a great deal of pride in her work. That notebook is the culmination of years of self-instructed research... Even if it's been a dead end so far. "I'm using a Markov Process to map genomic data. Combine that with linear regression, and analysis of variance, and... Well, I'm getting nowhere right now..." Her lips press into a thin line, and she turns her notes back to herself. Retrieving a pen from her pocket, Holden begins to check over her math, scribbling out several long chains of math and scratching in a replacement just as quickly. "Who've you got for Pre-Calc?" Though he doesn't seem wholly reassured that Holden isn't contagious, Roscoe dutifully looks at the notebook, head dropping into a tilt, though how much of the math itself or Holden's explanation he can actually understand is anybody's guess, his eyes are glazing over a little. "Huh," he says, "Okay," his voice has taken on an if-you-say-so indifference, though his eyebrows are pinching over his eyes sort of distastefully. He readjusts his legs in the chair to sit back again. "Uh, da Costa," he says. "He's not that bad," in the Roscoe Vo school of giving praise this is all but a ringing endorsement, "but I kind of screwed myself trying to get my transcript to look normal. But it's okay! I only have to deal with it for like, six more months." (Roscoe is sociable; all of this comes out in a friendly chattering spill, even as he's picking up his pencil to get back to work.) "Are you gonna take the AP test?" "Mmh." She's listening, but focused on her notes at that moment. Holden flips a few pages over, then back to the earlier page. Checking something over that must have correlated with the earlier, not etched-out formula, as she scratches that one out as well. "Already did. I had a free day," Holden says, as if casually taking an AP exam was something everyone did. She leans back, biting down on the inside of her cheek as discomfort rushes up her leg. The joint has locked, and she braces herself for a moment before moving it. It elicits a sharp, crackling pop!, and Holden lets out a long, weary breath. "Sorry," she offers, working her jaw back at forth. Leaning back over her books and beginning to read, eyes darting to and fro so quickly as to become a blur. She flips to a fresh page, and her pen gets to work. It's like watching a printer; entire formulas and complex strings of mathematics appearing in the blink of an eye. She may have been denied her true, full potential as a Speedster... But Holden has found her own way to excel with her Mutation. "Oh. Okay." This is in a tone of rote agreement, too. Roscoe stares across the table for another long second, eyebrows pinching together -- "What are you sorry for?" he says, confused, but as she gets to work he is just turning his attention back to his own math. (Much more slowly.)