Tabitha & Kyle: In the toolshed

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Even though that sounds dirty... Tabitha seeks Kyle's advice regarding the New Mutants program.



After her conversations with Callie and Inez, Tabitha wanted one more
opinion before she made any firm moves. So she sought out someone who
had recently been a student himself, and still had frequent contact
with them.

Kyle would give her honesty, if nothing else.

The toolshed was rapidly becoming Kyle's hiding place from everyone.
And by everyone he meant people who had broken things, hit things and
broken things, hit things and not broken them but wanted to tell him
anyway, and loud people. Mostly loud people.

But Tabs was cool. She mostly only blew stuff up in the Danger Room
these days, was good with quiet, and seemed to get that Kyle plus loud
sometimes equaled hiding in the library with earplugs and whatever
crappy airport Real Crime novel he found in a used bookstore. "Yo,
please tell me you didn't blow anything up. I mean, you're like good
about not doing that."

"Nothing today, but if that was a request..." She trailed off with a
wink. "No, I actually have questions completely unrelated to mansion
maintenance. There should be no bad smells or tastes involved."

"Don't tempt me, book lady. We're both down for DR sessions this
week." Kyle said, with a grin. "So, seriously, whatsup? Wait, is
this about a DR thing? Because there totally was this spacial
coordinating thing I wanted to run, with the listening for kabooms and
all that." It made sense in his head. It may have even made sense out
loud.

"I'm always up for more boom, it means I can have double servings at
dinner." Tabs rubbed her belly at the thought. "But no, this is about
the professor's student brainchild, the New Mutants."

"'sup with them? Are they being crazy again? I thought we lost most of
the crazy with Karo going on home?" Not that Karolina was a bad kid,
just really really naive sometimes. "I mean, we've collected like 52
trillion new kids in all sorts of colors, but they mostly seem like
good kids.."

She hesitated, unsure. "I was thinking of asking the professor if I
could take over as a sort of mentor for the program," she confessed.
"I think some of them feel a bit lost without *some* sort of permanent
face attached."

"What like Cain was?" Kyle asked, scratching his head a little.
"You'd probably need someone grouchier than you to play bad cop.
That's why Cain and Garrison worked so good. Cain was like the best
Bad Cop ever, and Gar's totally like, Good Mountie." Kyle even liked
the Canadian and Kyle was generally not a fan of law enforcement at
all. "But you'd be a good good cop mention. You're the nice badass
librarian, and you've got a kaboom power, so you can even talk about
control and stuff, plus wacky metabolism woes."

"Actually, I thought those roles could be filled by the more
experienced students" she explained. "I'd just be sort of a go-to
person. The one they run training ideas past, the one who arranges
outings, or specialized training, or invites people in who know
something they want to learn." She waved her hands around, not sure
she was making sense.

"They're teenagers. They're not always gonna listen to their peers,
even if their peers wanna lead." Kyle knew so well from experience.
"I mean, look at how well anyone listens to Laurie. There's gonna be
kids who just decide not to listen just cause they think whichever one
of them is in charge of something is being a giant suckup." He pulled
a pad of paper and an oversized charcoal pencil out of a drawer.
"Okay, so peer leaders isn't a bad idea, but they're gonna need
someone on staff in charge, who can basically tell them to sit the
fuck down and shut the fuck up."

Tabitha thought about that for a moment. "So I need to find someone
intimidating to stand behind me and look angry?"

"To be the stick. You're the carrot." Kyle said. "Or you know,
whatever. Donut. Burger. Whatever makes them go. You need someone to
yell or at least be all stern. That's why Cain was awesome at it. He
was big and scary and everyone knew he hated everybody." Logan
would've been perfect, if he hadn't had that crazy-go-nuts moment with
Crystal years before.

"I can be scary if I have to be!" she protested weakly, brain racing
to figure out WHO she could ask.

"That's the whole thing. If you -have- to be on purpose, instead of
being scary naturally, then you can't be the Bad Cop. You have to be
good at being grouchy all the time, and you're like, nice librarian
lady." At least, that's how it worked on TV, and what Cain had been
like, and what Logan was like, and what Nate was like sometimes.

Tapping two fingers against lips pursed in concentration. "Thanks,
Kyle. There's a lot to think about I hadn't thought before." A very
distracted look clouded her eyes as she turned to leave. "Let me know
if you want to blow anything up. You know where to find me."