Sunday - Yvette and Sarah

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

Yvette meets the other new student.





It hadn't taken long for Yvette to talk her way out ofher room to the communal room of the suite, and from there to the rec room for her recovery. She could, she'd proposed, rest just as well on the couch in the rec room as in a bed or the suit couch, with the added bonus that there would always be someone around - when Kevin needed a break - to keep an eye on her. And who, after the drama, would actually let her do anything stressful, if she were crazy enough to contemplate it?

In the face of such logic and reasonableness, it would have been hard to argue, even if Kevin had been so inclined. And so it was that the small Albanian girl (the inhibitor hadn't done much about her height, she was chagrined to realise) was tucked up on the couch, a blanket over her legs, snacks, water, books and remote within reach without stretching and enough pillows propping her up to suspect there wasn't a bed left with a pillow on it.

Laptop in tow, Sarah made her way through the mansion halls - without the use of any map and sans any wrong turn - to the rec room. The school had been a bit more alive since the return of many of the students from Bosnia and the young technopath was anxious to meet them. Afterall, she'd be spending quite a bit of time with them and learning their names and faces? That would take time... even with the pictures in the journals, she was sure. Especially the girl on the couch she couldn't immediately place.

"Hello," Sarah said softly as she poked her head in, offering a small and slightly nervous grin to her. "I'm not interrupting anything am I?"

Yvette looked up from her book and smiled. Yay, company. Not that she was wanting for it, but it was always welcome. “No, you are fine,” she replied in her accented, slightly stilted still, English. “I am liking the company, actually. You would be Sarah, the new girl, yes? I am Yvette. I was saying hello to you on the journals before… when you are arriving.” She gestured at the couch and the blanket. “I am sorry if I do not get up. The doctors are very strict about me having the rest this week.”

Yvette. The girl who... "Oh, hi! Yeah, I'm Sarah and don't worry about not getting up," she said, waving off the apology. "How are you feeling? I heard about what happened in the journals." Putting her laptop on a nearby table, the technopath plugged it in as she spoke then plopped down on the floor, facing Yvette.

Yvette blushed. “Yes, that is me. I am doing much better, thank you. It is, how you say? A little embarrassing, to worry everyone so much.” Without her powers, when she ducked her head, a screen of long brown hair covered her reddening cheeks. “How are you finding the school? Not to full of the drama, I hope?”

"Nope," the younger girl replied, popping the P at the end of the word. "Pretty quiet around here, actually." She continued to smile at her schoolmate while skimming the journals. Yvette. Yvette... I am Yvette, the small, red, spiky one. Brown eyes flickered from the screen back to the recuperating mutant who looked neither red nor spiky - beyond her blushing, that was. "Sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you. But, uh, it's good to know you're feeling better and you know, hanging around in the rec room."

“The room, it does get boring, and here there are people to be talking to. I have become, how you say, the social moth?” Yvette giggled at herself. “It is easier to be meeting people when you are not so worried that you will hurt them by accident.”

Sarah opened her mouth to correct the phrase but stopped when the other mutant spoke of accidentally injuring people. "I'm sorry, what?" she asked with her brow furrowing. "I'm not sure I'm following what you mean. Hurting them?"

“My powers… They make my skin very hard and sharp, and my hands and feet like the knives, yes?” Somehow it was easier to talk about when she wasn’t actually powered. “For the operation, after the mine, they had to use the inhibitor on me.” She held up her wrist to display the chunky metal device. “It is the short term thing only, but while it is on, my powers do not work and so I do not have to be afraid someone will touch me by accident and hurt themselves. Do you see?”

She nodded dumbly for a moment before saying simply, "There are machines that can do that? Take away your powers?" The very idea of what she could control and what those machines in turn could do had never occurred to Sarah. It was... frightening. And it meant she had to be careful not to touch Yvette's inhibitor while she was still learning to control her powers.

“Well, Forge is making such the machine. And it cannot be used for very long, because it is making a person sick to not have the powers.” A hint of regret entered her face and voice. “But that is not for the happy conversation. Your powers… you are talking to the machines, yes? I remember reading so on the journals.”

"Um, yeah. I can talk to machines and sometimes tell them what to do if it's like my computer or my phone or something like that," Sarah explained, fiddling with the touch pad of her laptop. "It's hard to make other people's stuff listen to me with out it kind of getting to know me is the best way to explain it." Like the toaster in the kitchen; she had a bad feeling about that appliance's initial reaction to her. Anything that translated 'lightly browned' to 'burnt to dust' was going to cause problems for the technopath. "It's not all that great, really. More like a magic trick you'd see on tv."

Yvette considered Sarah’s words and then smiled. “You have to be introducing yourself before the machine will listen?” she suggested, somewhat impishly.

Dark curls bounced over her shoulders again as Sarah nodded with a grin of her own. "Yeah. Apparently, it's not only people who don't like listening to what fifteen year old girls have to say."

The Albanian girl giggled at that, a happy, girlish sound. “So they are like the computer boys? The ones who think the girls are only good for looking pretty and making the kissy faces?”

"Well, if there are any computer boys around here who think that, they haven't met this computer girl," the technopath declared, sitting up a little straighter. "I'll beat them at any game or challenge they chose. Once I start training, I mean," she said, deflating some. "The game part I can do; I'm good at computer and video games."

“Well, I do not think any of the boys here are like that, except perhaps Julian,” Yvette admitted. “But we still like to be showing them that the girls are as good at the training as the boys. You are to be joining the New Mutants, I think? It is very much good for the powers training, and for the being a team – we are good at helping each other.” She gave the younger girl a friendly smile. “I think you will be fitting in very well.”

"I hope to join," Sarah replied with genuine interest. "I was supposed to talk to Mr. Summers but I never got around to it. It's fun though? I mean, it's obviously something good to do to get more involved in and stuff and while I do like just playing on my computer, I figure I'm going to be here for a little while so it wouldn't hurt to actually do stuff with the other students." She would have to remember to email him about it, maybe make things official - if there was any paper work or parental permission involved. "It's new to be, being around other mutants."

“Well, for the new students, the program is, how you say? Compulsory? But only for the first year. It is combining the powers training and the self defence training with the activities for the team building, yes? But Mr. Summers or the Professor can be helping with that.” Yvette nodded at the last. “I was the same, when I was coming here. Now it is new to be, well, normal, yes? For the short time, any way.” She looked down at the inhibitor. “I had forgotten what it was to be like, to not have the powers. You are manifesting not so long ago, then?”

"January." Six months; a time that felt both so short and so long. "My parents took me out of school when they found out so it's just been me and Mom on the learning front. Dad and Jessie, my twin sister were around too but it wasn't like a real school." And certainly not one with people who had fur and tails and claws and any other number of physical mutation. "I'm still getting used to my powers, and you know, everyone else's here."

"You have the twin?" Yvette looked surprised and then sympathetic. "It must be very strange for you. To be a mutant, to be in the school again, to be away from the family?"

Sarah's shoulders lifted in a small shrug. Yes, it was all very strange; all the changes and differences in her life that had been shaped over the last few months. The wish to be an individual tossed into a funhouse mirror and distorted beyond belief. Not that the younger mutant would complain out loud to the girl who'd been blown up the week before. "It's okay. It's just taking some getting used to."

“It will happen.” Yvette shifted a little and then decided to change the subject – not everyone was into the kind of soul searching she’d been doing since her close call with death. “Perhaps you could be teaching me the xBox game? I am not so good, but I think I will be needing the distraction while I am recovering, yes? Kyle is saying I should play the Sonic the Hedgehog, since there is the character who is red and spiky like I am normally.”

"Sure," the technopath chirped, stroking her laptop's keyboard the way other would a cat; giving the creature some attention while focus was really directed elsewhere. "We can definitely do that. I can even bring it in here and maybe, you could invite more of your friends if you'd like after you pick it up some. And the red spiky one is Knuckles. He's an Echidna from Angel Island," Sarah supplied with a warmer, more comfortable smile.

“That is the one, yes.” Yvette grinned. “You can be teaching me to be the sneaky person and beat Kyle, yes?”

"Oh, absolutely."