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xp_logsAmanda drops by the mansion to do the rounds and winds up meeting two new people.
Amanda pulled the Broomstick into the garage, slotting it into its usual parking space well away from everyone else's precious shiny vehicles. While she was dropping in to see her slightly estranged boyfriend, she also had plenty of other people to visit. Like her brother, who she hadn't seen since the day of the art exhibit disaster. She could always check the wards too, make it a working visit. Humming 'Anarchy in the UK' softly - and not terribly tunefully but it was the Pistols, so it didn't matter - under her breath, she climbed out of the car and moved around to the trunk, having to struggle as usual with the lock, which had tended to jam ever since Day Zero.
Lex opened the door to the garage, looking for Forge. He scanned the interior and saw a blond haired woman fiddling with the trunk of a beaten old car. It was a pathetic looking thing, and Lex tried to figure out how it could even run. When nothing came to mind he decided to approach. He smiled, wondering if all women took such poor care of their cars, and asked, "Having trouble, miss?"
Amanda looked up, ready to disabuse him of calling her 'miss' and then blinked a couple of times. Yum, came the thought, followed by, Bugger, given her 'in a relationship' status. Still, nothing wrong with looking. "You must be one of the new arrivals," she said with a smile. She gave the trunk hood a well-practiced thump with her fist and the lock finally turned. "It just needs to know who's boss, is all," she continued, pulling a bag out and slamming the trunk down again. It took a couple of goes to catch. "The Broomstick's been a bit cranky ever since Apocalypse stomped on New York. Poor thing." She patted the car affectionally. "Sorry, here I am being rude. Amanda Sefton. I work over with the Snow Valley crew." She held out her hand for him to shake.
"I've been there. Don't plan on going back any time soon." He shook his head for a moment, taking the opportunity to give the woman before him a thorough, if secretive, look-over. "Oh, and I'm Lex." He said, extending his hand. He wandered over to the car and began examining it. It seemed to be dented in many places, and the paint job was somewhat atrocious. He thought about saying something, but decided he'd ease his way into it.
"Oh, right, Morgan mentioned you. Something about being scared of her motorbike?" Amanda leaned on the trunk of her car, watching him as he walked around it. "Ex-army, paroled off to the X geezer, not really comfy with the whole powers thing, right?" She grinned at the look her gave her. "We're a think tank. We deal in information."
"I'm gonna plead extenuating circumstances on that one. She'd just interrogated me." He gave her a half-hearted wink, and then turned back to the car. "So you seem to know the basics, what about you?" He ran his hand along the surface of her car and decided he couldn't hold in his disdain any longer. "And what have you done to this car, it looks like it's been sitting in the desert..."
"It might look like a pile of crap, but it does me," Amanda replied mildly - she saved her real ire for people who should know better, like Jake. "Let's see... I used to be a student here a few years ago, before I got myself expelled. I've got a brother and sister living here now, as well as my boyfriend. Oh, and I'm a witch." The last was said in a tone that almost dared him to react.
Lex felt himself about to laugh and tried to turn away. He failed completely. "Wait, so you're telling me that you can get expelled from here... and that you're a witch. Or is it that they accept mutants here, but not witches?" He felt like an asshole, but between the car and the attitude he knew she was pulling his leg.
"Oh, I didn't get expelled for the witch thing." Amanda shrugged. "Well, not exactly. They don't really care about where your powers come from as long as you don't use them on other people without asking."
Lex couldn't tell if she was making fun of him for being new, or just plain weird. He blew out a deep sigh, remembering that in the past week he'd learned things he never thought possible, and tried to calm himself. He was still on the edge of hysterical laughter, but he was able to maintain some semblance of composure. "So you bewitched people?"
"Once, but that was sort of an accident and they didn't expell me for that. More I made a really dumb decision and made a deal from one of the bad guys." Amanda's expression was sharp, almost brittle. "Luckily it all got sorted out in the end, but I was done with the school after that." She shrugged a little. "Ancient history. So, are you completely weirded out yet?"
"You could say that. Though after this week I'm beginning to just accept it as part of the world I just don't understand." Lex leaned back and smiled, "I hope you didn't take offense to what I said, it's just that I am unused to all of this and when you say you're a witch I think of all the fantasy novels I read in high school."
He looked at her inquisitively. "If you're done here, then you just popped in for a visit?" he said, wondering if he was supposed to escort guests or if they could wander freely. He realized he still didn't know much about security protocol at the mansion and decided he'd keep talking to her, till he could figure out if he needed to keep track of her.
"It's my version of hazing - I like to keep people on their toes," Amanda replied unapologetically. "And yeah, I'm done, but I've got family here still. You might have met them? Kurt Sefton's a teacher here, and Meggan Szardos, one of the students. I'm dating Angelo too, so I have plenty of excuses to drop by."
"Ah," was all he could manage to get out. He felt a little out of his depth wondering what to say next. He hadn't met Kurt, nor Meggan, as far as he could remember, so he decided that he'd do what he always did, and go with the flow. "So, is this particular one a family or fun call?"
"A mixed bag. I've got a couple of people to call on, should probably drag Kurt out of hiding for a bit, and I need to check the protection wards I put on this place." She tilted her head a little at him, considering. "After all that, of course, I could do with a drink. You been introduced to Harry's yet?"
"I'm familiar with it." Lex's smile was broad as he spoke, "I wouldn't mind heading up that way this evening." He shook his head and kept the laugh within his head, it never failed to amaze him how outgoing he had become since coming to the mansion. It wasn't more than a month ago he'd only drink with ten people, and now it seemed he was inviting every attractive woman out for a drink, even the ones he knew were already taken.
"Meet you here around eight and I'll give you a lift." Amanda's grin turned wicked. "If you trust me and the Broomstick to get you there, that is."
Lex looked at her and the car, "Sure. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?" He shook his head and chuckled.
Curled up in the corner of Forge's work room that she claimed for her own by building a nest of blankets and pillows, Sarah sat cross-legged with her laptop perched in her lap. One hand rested on the keyboard and with the other, the young technopath held a sandwich while composing an email to her sister.
"I didn't think I could do it just because it's all military grade and advanced but apparently my powers work differently so the shielding didn't really do anything effective to keep me out. Just made the laptop pissy."
She paused in her dictation to take a bite of the sandwich before continuing.
"Anyway, yeah, I'm liking it here. And - no. H-E-R-E not H-E-A-R. H-E- wait. You're not supposed to be adding this to the email!"
There was a slight snort from the doorway, coming from the short blonde standing there, hand raised as if to knock on the doorframe. She was dressed in knee-length denim cut-offs and a black t-shirt with an anarchy symbol on the front, a book bag slung over her shoulder. "You're not Forge," she informed the girl. "So you must be this new apprentice of his. Sarah, right?"
"Huh?" The younger mutant's head lifted, her fingers pausing in their rapid backspacing. "Oh, hi. Yeah, I'm Sarah but Mr. Forge is... Um, I think he's in the garage?" She couldn't remember where he'd said he was heading off to. "Can I help you with something. Or take a message for him?"
"Nah, 's a personal thing. Just felt like dropping by." Amanda put on her best "I'm harmless and cute, really!" face. "Sorry to interrupt you. I'd be Amanda, over at Snow Valley. The one who talks to cities?"
Sarah nodded and folded down her laptop's lid before getting to her feet. "Oh, yeah. Hi. How do you talk to cities? And you didn't interrupt. Not really. My computer was just acting up." She would have to check if for viruses later; even quarentined ones made the machine testy.
"I heard you giving it what for." Amanda came in and helped herself to a stool by the workbench. Forge's work room wasn't one of her usual places - too much technology for her - but she was feeling social. Giving up the bus run had made sense, but she missed the chance it gave her to talk to the kids, even if she was trying to keep her distance most of the time. She'd always been a contradiction. "I draw power off cities," she explained, having gotten comfortable. "Not like Nori with the actual electricity, more a... vibe, I guess? If a city was a person, I'd be absorbing their personal energy, I s'pose. The other side of it means I tend to react to them like they're personalities. Each city has a different feel, and I can pick that up." She nodded to the laptop. "You talk to machines, right?"
Again, the girl's dark head bobbed and even though she felt silly after just standing, sat back down in her spot. "Yup. And they have their own 'vibe' too. Like, I get along with my laptop and my iPod and phone because I've spent a lot fo time with them but unfamiliar machines are harder to work with. Are cities like that?" Sarah asked with a curious frown. "If you haven't been there before, is it harder to draw power off them?"
"A bit. Sometime's it's more trying to work out what the energy will let me do. Different cities do different things. New York and London're most flexible, since they know me better." Amanda gave a slightly embarrassed grin. "They trust me more, I s'pose. A bit like people - the better you know them, the more you know what they can handle, yeah?"
"Exactly!" Sarah agreed with a bright smile. "And the more they listen. No one's going to take orders from a fifteen year old girl and it's the same with a lot of the machines I've encountered. Especially here. They don't know me; I'm just a new student and that makes it harder to get reactions and responses to my requests and commands. You don't know how awesome it is to talk to someone who gets it."
"Oh, I think I have an idea. Back when I was a student here, I wasn't doing the city thing so much, but my powers were kind of... unique." Amanda didn't really want to mess up the rapport with the inevitable weirding out people got when she mentioned magic, so she skimmed over it. "And even now, the people I work with look at me funny sometimes if I start talking about New York being cranky or something. You go balmy once and suddenly they question your sanity all the time." She grinned again, to show she was joking. "Working with Forge must help, tho'? He's good with machines."
"I get a few looks when I talk about how the toaster hates me," the younger mutant admitted, still grinning even as she took another bite of her sandwich. "And yeah, Mister Forge is great with the machines. He's teaching me a lot of stuff that I didn't know. Like what the actual parts are and how they work so that I'll hopefully be able to understand better and then have better control with my powers and not have to worry about making his heart stop and causing airplanes to fall out of the sky."
"I'd say since he stopped mine once, you'd be fully entitled to stop his, only I'd be joking and it's not the sort of joke people appreciate," the witch replied. "It's good you're working with him, tho' - he might be as mad as a boxful of badgers, but he knows his stuff."
Sarah chuckled at the badgers comment, imagining the scientist trying to take a box of them and harness the proclaimed maddness into some useful power source. "It's going well so far. I haven't blown anything up or broken anything, either, so yeah, I'm glad he offered to help me with all this stuff."
"If there's anywhere that can handle explosions and the like, it's here. Back in my day..." Amanda snorted and shook her head. "I can't believe I'm saying that. I feel old. But yeah, back when I was a student here, we kept the teachers right on their toes. Like the time Jubilee and I got into a fight in the main hall and trashed the place with our powers."
"That sounds kind of frightening, actually," the technopath admitted. Confrontation was something she avoided at all costs and a powers battle in the middle of the school? No thank you. "Did you like it when you went here?"
"It was over a boy. Powers and teenage girl hormones and attitude don't mix." Amanda paused before answering the question. "I did most of the time, yeah. I had a lot of problems, but most of those weren't the school's fault - I didn't know when to pull my head in and accept help." She gave the younger girl a reassuring grin. "You look much more sensible than me, so you'll be fine."
Sarah's nose wrinkled in distaste. "Yeah, I can see how that would be a bad combination. Some of the girls at my old school were really crazy and bitchy and that was without powers." A cat fight between mutants wasn't something the student ever wanted to see. She blushed a little when Amanda called her sensible. "I don't know about that. Right now, I'm still kind of lost with everything so it's more 'terrified' than 'sensible' I think."
"Luckily, most of the time people get their issues fought out over the journals. There's less property damage that way. Or at least that's what I tell myself when I see someone going at it." Amanda was amused by the blush. "I prefer to call it 'being cautious' rather than 'terrified', personally."
"Cautious sounds a lot better," the student agreed, fiddling with her watch. "I'm just still learning a lot about my powers. And well, I haven't been in a school since Christmas break so this is all very, very, very weird for me and is causing a lot of problems for me with adjusting. Mister Forge is helping a lot though."
"Home schooled after you manifested?" Amanda asked, taking in the mannerism. She'd lay odds the watch had been a gift from someone close.
"Yup. My mom was afraid that something would go wrong or I'd become a target," she explained. "My sister, Jessie, kept going though while I stayed home with Mom so I still got all the gossip and stuff but it wasn't anywhere near as fun."
"So you got the double whammy - manifesting and then getting yanked out of school before being sent here." The witch nodded, her tone sympathetic. "Talk about culture shock. Your sister isn't a mutant, then?"
Dark eyes went a touch sadder. "No, she's not. Which is kind of weird because we're twins," Sarah went on; her fingers twitching along the surface of the steampunk watch, fingering the wings and gears and filigree lovingly. "Jessie's norm- I mean, she's not a mutant so I spent a lot of time online after I found out about my powers, doing to research to see if there are any studies about pairs where one twin manifested and one didn't."
"Or maybe she's just a slow starter." The blonde shrugged a little. "Genetics is funny like that, tho' - I've got two brothers and two sisters. Both the blood relatives are norms, as you put it, and both the adopted ones - and me - are mutants. They're here, actually, the mutant sibs. Kurt's the dance teacher and Meg's one of the students."
Sarah's face went a little redder at the mention of Kurt, the memories of him surprising her by climbing up the wall near her window. "I met Kurt, yeah. And Meg's my suitemate. Her and Catseye." Another shade of scarlet stained her cheeks. "But, um, the whole genetics of it is really weird. I'm going to do some more research but I've found only a few cases where one twin was a mutant and one wasn't."
The blonde raised her eyebrows at the blush. "I'd ask what Blue did, but you look like your head's about to catch fire as it is, so I'll spare you the interrogation. If you're interested in mutant genetics and the like, try chatting to Paige. She's one of the other science brains, besides coming from a big mutant family herself. Three of them so far, all with different powers. If I was better at science, I might even be interested in looking into that myself." There was a muffled beep from her pocket, and Amanda pulled out her phone. "And speak of the devil, looks like Kurt's sibling sense has tingled and he knows I'm here. I'd better go say hi before he makes pouty faces at me. It was nice meeting you, tho', Sarah. Next time you're in New York, come by and visit the office - I might be able to dig up some more of those studies for you."
"It was nice meeting you, too and thanks. I'd really appreciate it, the files and stuff," the girl said as the smile came back to her face, soft but honest. Science was good and all be she enjoyed doing research. "And I'll make sure to tell Forge that you stopped by."
Amanda pulled the Broomstick into the garage, slotting it into its usual parking space well away from everyone else's precious shiny vehicles. While she was dropping in to see her slightly estranged boyfriend, she also had plenty of other people to visit. Like her brother, who she hadn't seen since the day of the art exhibit disaster. She could always check the wards too, make it a working visit. Humming 'Anarchy in the UK' softly - and not terribly tunefully but it was the Pistols, so it didn't matter - under her breath, she climbed out of the car and moved around to the trunk, having to struggle as usual with the lock, which had tended to jam ever since Day Zero.
Lex opened the door to the garage, looking for Forge. He scanned the interior and saw a blond haired woman fiddling with the trunk of a beaten old car. It was a pathetic looking thing, and Lex tried to figure out how it could even run. When nothing came to mind he decided to approach. He smiled, wondering if all women took such poor care of their cars, and asked, "Having trouble, miss?"
Amanda looked up, ready to disabuse him of calling her 'miss' and then blinked a couple of times. Yum, came the thought, followed by, Bugger, given her 'in a relationship' status. Still, nothing wrong with looking. "You must be one of the new arrivals," she said with a smile. She gave the trunk hood a well-practiced thump with her fist and the lock finally turned. "It just needs to know who's boss, is all," she continued, pulling a bag out and slamming the trunk down again. It took a couple of goes to catch. "The Broomstick's been a bit cranky ever since Apocalypse stomped on New York. Poor thing." She patted the car affectionally. "Sorry, here I am being rude. Amanda Sefton. I work over with the Snow Valley crew." She held out her hand for him to shake.
"I've been there. Don't plan on going back any time soon." He shook his head for a moment, taking the opportunity to give the woman before him a thorough, if secretive, look-over. "Oh, and I'm Lex." He said, extending his hand. He wandered over to the car and began examining it. It seemed to be dented in many places, and the paint job was somewhat atrocious. He thought about saying something, but decided he'd ease his way into it.
"Oh, right, Morgan mentioned you. Something about being scared of her motorbike?" Amanda leaned on the trunk of her car, watching him as he walked around it. "Ex-army, paroled off to the X geezer, not really comfy with the whole powers thing, right?" She grinned at the look her gave her. "We're a think tank. We deal in information."
"I'm gonna plead extenuating circumstances on that one. She'd just interrogated me." He gave her a half-hearted wink, and then turned back to the car. "So you seem to know the basics, what about you?" He ran his hand along the surface of her car and decided he couldn't hold in his disdain any longer. "And what have you done to this car, it looks like it's been sitting in the desert..."
"It might look like a pile of crap, but it does me," Amanda replied mildly - she saved her real ire for people who should know better, like Jake. "Let's see... I used to be a student here a few years ago, before I got myself expelled. I've got a brother and sister living here now, as well as my boyfriend. Oh, and I'm a witch." The last was said in a tone that almost dared him to react.
Lex felt himself about to laugh and tried to turn away. He failed completely. "Wait, so you're telling me that you can get expelled from here... and that you're a witch. Or is it that they accept mutants here, but not witches?" He felt like an asshole, but between the car and the attitude he knew she was pulling his leg.
"Oh, I didn't get expelled for the witch thing." Amanda shrugged. "Well, not exactly. They don't really care about where your powers come from as long as you don't use them on other people without asking."
Lex couldn't tell if she was making fun of him for being new, or just plain weird. He blew out a deep sigh, remembering that in the past week he'd learned things he never thought possible, and tried to calm himself. He was still on the edge of hysterical laughter, but he was able to maintain some semblance of composure. "So you bewitched people?"
"Once, but that was sort of an accident and they didn't expell me for that. More I made a really dumb decision and made a deal from one of the bad guys." Amanda's expression was sharp, almost brittle. "Luckily it all got sorted out in the end, but I was done with the school after that." She shrugged a little. "Ancient history. So, are you completely weirded out yet?"
"You could say that. Though after this week I'm beginning to just accept it as part of the world I just don't understand." Lex leaned back and smiled, "I hope you didn't take offense to what I said, it's just that I am unused to all of this and when you say you're a witch I think of all the fantasy novels I read in high school."
He looked at her inquisitively. "If you're done here, then you just popped in for a visit?" he said, wondering if he was supposed to escort guests or if they could wander freely. He realized he still didn't know much about security protocol at the mansion and decided he'd keep talking to her, till he could figure out if he needed to keep track of her.
"It's my version of hazing - I like to keep people on their toes," Amanda replied unapologetically. "And yeah, I'm done, but I've got family here still. You might have met them? Kurt Sefton's a teacher here, and Meggan Szardos, one of the students. I'm dating Angelo too, so I have plenty of excuses to drop by."
"Ah," was all he could manage to get out. He felt a little out of his depth wondering what to say next. He hadn't met Kurt, nor Meggan, as far as he could remember, so he decided that he'd do what he always did, and go with the flow. "So, is this particular one a family or fun call?"
"A mixed bag. I've got a couple of people to call on, should probably drag Kurt out of hiding for a bit, and I need to check the protection wards I put on this place." She tilted her head a little at him, considering. "After all that, of course, I could do with a drink. You been introduced to Harry's yet?"
"I'm familiar with it." Lex's smile was broad as he spoke, "I wouldn't mind heading up that way this evening." He shook his head and kept the laugh within his head, it never failed to amaze him how outgoing he had become since coming to the mansion. It wasn't more than a month ago he'd only drink with ten people, and now it seemed he was inviting every attractive woman out for a drink, even the ones he knew were already taken.
"Meet you here around eight and I'll give you a lift." Amanda's grin turned wicked. "If you trust me and the Broomstick to get you there, that is."
Lex looked at her and the car, "Sure. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?" He shook his head and chuckled.
Curled up in the corner of Forge's work room that she claimed for her own by building a nest of blankets and pillows, Sarah sat cross-legged with her laptop perched in her lap. One hand rested on the keyboard and with the other, the young technopath held a sandwich while composing an email to her sister.
"I didn't think I could do it just because it's all military grade and advanced but apparently my powers work differently so the shielding didn't really do anything effective to keep me out. Just made the laptop pissy."
She paused in her dictation to take a bite of the sandwich before continuing.
"Anyway, yeah, I'm liking it here. And - no. H-E-R-E not H-E-A-R. H-E- wait. You're not supposed to be adding this to the email!"
There was a slight snort from the doorway, coming from the short blonde standing there, hand raised as if to knock on the doorframe. She was dressed in knee-length denim cut-offs and a black t-shirt with an anarchy symbol on the front, a book bag slung over her shoulder. "You're not Forge," she informed the girl. "So you must be this new apprentice of his. Sarah, right?"
"Huh?" The younger mutant's head lifted, her fingers pausing in their rapid backspacing. "Oh, hi. Yeah, I'm Sarah but Mr. Forge is... Um, I think he's in the garage?" She couldn't remember where he'd said he was heading off to. "Can I help you with something. Or take a message for him?"
"Nah, 's a personal thing. Just felt like dropping by." Amanda put on her best "I'm harmless and cute, really!" face. "Sorry to interrupt you. I'd be Amanda, over at Snow Valley. The one who talks to cities?"
Sarah nodded and folded down her laptop's lid before getting to her feet. "Oh, yeah. Hi. How do you talk to cities? And you didn't interrupt. Not really. My computer was just acting up." She would have to check if for viruses later; even quarentined ones made the machine testy.
"I heard you giving it what for." Amanda came in and helped herself to a stool by the workbench. Forge's work room wasn't one of her usual places - too much technology for her - but she was feeling social. Giving up the bus run had made sense, but she missed the chance it gave her to talk to the kids, even if she was trying to keep her distance most of the time. She'd always been a contradiction. "I draw power off cities," she explained, having gotten comfortable. "Not like Nori with the actual electricity, more a... vibe, I guess? If a city was a person, I'd be absorbing their personal energy, I s'pose. The other side of it means I tend to react to them like they're personalities. Each city has a different feel, and I can pick that up." She nodded to the laptop. "You talk to machines, right?"
Again, the girl's dark head bobbed and even though she felt silly after just standing, sat back down in her spot. "Yup. And they have their own 'vibe' too. Like, I get along with my laptop and my iPod and phone because I've spent a lot fo time with them but unfamiliar machines are harder to work with. Are cities like that?" Sarah asked with a curious frown. "If you haven't been there before, is it harder to draw power off them?"
"A bit. Sometime's it's more trying to work out what the energy will let me do. Different cities do different things. New York and London're most flexible, since they know me better." Amanda gave a slightly embarrassed grin. "They trust me more, I s'pose. A bit like people - the better you know them, the more you know what they can handle, yeah?"
"Exactly!" Sarah agreed with a bright smile. "And the more they listen. No one's going to take orders from a fifteen year old girl and it's the same with a lot of the machines I've encountered. Especially here. They don't know me; I'm just a new student and that makes it harder to get reactions and responses to my requests and commands. You don't know how awesome it is to talk to someone who gets it."
"Oh, I think I have an idea. Back when I was a student here, I wasn't doing the city thing so much, but my powers were kind of... unique." Amanda didn't really want to mess up the rapport with the inevitable weirding out people got when she mentioned magic, so she skimmed over it. "And even now, the people I work with look at me funny sometimes if I start talking about New York being cranky or something. You go balmy once and suddenly they question your sanity all the time." She grinned again, to show she was joking. "Working with Forge must help, tho'? He's good with machines."
"I get a few looks when I talk about how the toaster hates me," the younger mutant admitted, still grinning even as she took another bite of her sandwich. "And yeah, Mister Forge is great with the machines. He's teaching me a lot of stuff that I didn't know. Like what the actual parts are and how they work so that I'll hopefully be able to understand better and then have better control with my powers and not have to worry about making his heart stop and causing airplanes to fall out of the sky."
"I'd say since he stopped mine once, you'd be fully entitled to stop his, only I'd be joking and it's not the sort of joke people appreciate," the witch replied. "It's good you're working with him, tho' - he might be as mad as a boxful of badgers, but he knows his stuff."
Sarah chuckled at the badgers comment, imagining the scientist trying to take a box of them and harness the proclaimed maddness into some useful power source. "It's going well so far. I haven't blown anything up or broken anything, either, so yeah, I'm glad he offered to help me with all this stuff."
"If there's anywhere that can handle explosions and the like, it's here. Back in my day..." Amanda snorted and shook her head. "I can't believe I'm saying that. I feel old. But yeah, back when I was a student here, we kept the teachers right on their toes. Like the time Jubilee and I got into a fight in the main hall and trashed the place with our powers."
"That sounds kind of frightening, actually," the technopath admitted. Confrontation was something she avoided at all costs and a powers battle in the middle of the school? No thank you. "Did you like it when you went here?"
"It was over a boy. Powers and teenage girl hormones and attitude don't mix." Amanda paused before answering the question. "I did most of the time, yeah. I had a lot of problems, but most of those weren't the school's fault - I didn't know when to pull my head in and accept help." She gave the younger girl a reassuring grin. "You look much more sensible than me, so you'll be fine."
Sarah's nose wrinkled in distaste. "Yeah, I can see how that would be a bad combination. Some of the girls at my old school were really crazy and bitchy and that was without powers." A cat fight between mutants wasn't something the student ever wanted to see. She blushed a little when Amanda called her sensible. "I don't know about that. Right now, I'm still kind of lost with everything so it's more 'terrified' than 'sensible' I think."
"Luckily, most of the time people get their issues fought out over the journals. There's less property damage that way. Or at least that's what I tell myself when I see someone going at it." Amanda was amused by the blush. "I prefer to call it 'being cautious' rather than 'terrified', personally."
"Cautious sounds a lot better," the student agreed, fiddling with her watch. "I'm just still learning a lot about my powers. And well, I haven't been in a school since Christmas break so this is all very, very, very weird for me and is causing a lot of problems for me with adjusting. Mister Forge is helping a lot though."
"Home schooled after you manifested?" Amanda asked, taking in the mannerism. She'd lay odds the watch had been a gift from someone close.
"Yup. My mom was afraid that something would go wrong or I'd become a target," she explained. "My sister, Jessie, kept going though while I stayed home with Mom so I still got all the gossip and stuff but it wasn't anywhere near as fun."
"So you got the double whammy - manifesting and then getting yanked out of school before being sent here." The witch nodded, her tone sympathetic. "Talk about culture shock. Your sister isn't a mutant, then?"
Dark eyes went a touch sadder. "No, she's not. Which is kind of weird because we're twins," Sarah went on; her fingers twitching along the surface of the steampunk watch, fingering the wings and gears and filigree lovingly. "Jessie's norm- I mean, she's not a mutant so I spent a lot of time online after I found out about my powers, doing to research to see if there are any studies about pairs where one twin manifested and one didn't."
"Or maybe she's just a slow starter." The blonde shrugged a little. "Genetics is funny like that, tho' - I've got two brothers and two sisters. Both the blood relatives are norms, as you put it, and both the adopted ones - and me - are mutants. They're here, actually, the mutant sibs. Kurt's the dance teacher and Meg's one of the students."
Sarah's face went a little redder at the mention of Kurt, the memories of him surprising her by climbing up the wall near her window. "I met Kurt, yeah. And Meg's my suitemate. Her and Catseye." Another shade of scarlet stained her cheeks. "But, um, the whole genetics of it is really weird. I'm going to do some more research but I've found only a few cases where one twin was a mutant and one wasn't."
The blonde raised her eyebrows at the blush. "I'd ask what Blue did, but you look like your head's about to catch fire as it is, so I'll spare you the interrogation. If you're interested in mutant genetics and the like, try chatting to Paige. She's one of the other science brains, besides coming from a big mutant family herself. Three of them so far, all with different powers. If I was better at science, I might even be interested in looking into that myself." There was a muffled beep from her pocket, and Amanda pulled out her phone. "And speak of the devil, looks like Kurt's sibling sense has tingled and he knows I'm here. I'd better go say hi before he makes pouty faces at me. It was nice meeting you, tho', Sarah. Next time you're in New York, come by and visit the office - I might be able to dig up some more of those studies for you."
"It was nice meeting you, too and thanks. I'd really appreciate it, the files and stuff," the girl said as the smile came back to her face, soft but honest. Science was good and all be she enjoyed doing research. "And I'll make sure to tell Forge that you stopped by."
