Megan and Nico: Roommates

[x-welshpixie.livejournal.com]

Megan bounced up to her dorm room and unlocked the door, darting inside. She had a lot of studying to do, but she wasn't going to worry about it quite yet. Besides, she did better when she felt some of that last-minute pressure. She tossed her book bag gently to her bed and flopped down beside it. Her desk was too cluttered with magazines, makeup and art supplies to do any homework on it anyway, and she hoped Nico didn't mind the small mess that was forming.

"Hey Pix." Nico was on her bed, focusing entirely on her nail polish -black obviously- and on the task of getting her nails done perfectly; just like Megan, Nico's desk was getting more and more messy, homework, fabric and unfinished clothes filling most of the empty space, although after some minutes of careful examination one would notice everything had an apparent order of sorts on the desk. Looking up, Nico took a couple of seconds to compare the desks, nodding in approval. She was glad of sharing rooms with someone with several similar tastes, and those that weren't similar were pretty cool.
"How's homework going?"

"Hey Nico! Ah, homework, don't remind me. It's sort of grim town, you know? Have you decided what to do your final speech on for Speech class?" Megan's nails could use a redo. The alternating black and purple paint from Halloween was worn down to little ragged flecks, which looked sort of cool in that punk kind of way. But Nico always looked smashing in her custom outfits and goth sensibilities.

Nico was lying on her bed, back to the ceiling, feet waving as the nail polish dried there as well, turning to see Megan, Nico made an attempt of a shrug.
"Still thinking about it, I'm not sure of what we are being expected to talk about. If anything, I'll just talk about a movie or something." Giving a look at her finger nails, the goth nodded.
"Hey, you should totally let me do your nails, and we can try to do some actual productive studying, or at least, you know, pretend."

"Yeah, productive studying," Megan agreed with a smile. Maybe if she arranged some of her books around her, she could sort of glance at the text while her nails dried.
"Anyway, that would be cool. What colors should we do? Fall colors? I just got day-glo orange and dark plum." Giving a half-guilty look at her unopened book bag, she went to her desk and dug around for the buried nail polish remover.

"Well, we can took out time and make some creative combinations with both." Of course, taking their time pretty much meant they would be hours polishing the girl's nails; nothing wrong with Nico, of course.
"I've always wanted to make little designs on nails individually, but it's almost impossible to do it to yourself." Drawing herself closer, Nico took a look at Megan's nails, which needed a lot of help, apparently. "Hmmm...decisions, decisions...hey, what kind of color are your wings, exactly? Maybe we can make them match?"

"They're sort of prismatic..." Megan explained, pulling off her baggy black hoodie with the stenciled designs that she had spray-painted herself. She unfolded her semi-translucent wings and they glittered in the light with a rainbow prism effect. They were like shards of summer.

Nico considered herself a person of rational ideas, probably more mature than most of her age, and certainly more serious on her every day activities, but watching Megan's wings really put her back on her teenager mindset.
"Duuuuuuude....", said under her breath for a while. "I think we can make that effect with nail polish, I know we can. It would be a lot cooler if we could use that pixie dust without getting high." Nico hadn't used LSD ever, but the idea of having a trip with nail polish was both amusing and tempting.


"I don't know how to... make the pixie dust on purpose," Megan admitted. "Usually it appears when I get really upset."
She thought for a minute and then felt around inside her discarded hoodie. Her fingers emerged with a few delicate scales from her wings. Her wings probably got damaged from being confined so much, and the chipped pieces would always shed to make room for new ones. Normally she thought of the wing scales in her clothes as being like skin flakes or bits of hair or something else gross, but they actually did look kind of cool. They weren't flaky or weird--they just looked like glittery dragonfly wings.


"Okay, that's seriously cool", mentioned Nico as she looked at what first looked like a shiny translucent scale.
"Well, one more reason for not upsetting you or anything, right? Unless I want to have some serious acid trip experience...and I would ask nicely, I assure you", added with a grin as she turned to get her entire batch of nail polish; while Nico's favorite would always be black, she had more colors than one girl might need on her entire life, which made combinations very simple, or at least quite fun to try.
"Well, we won't know if we can make it if we don't try." Along with the little pots, Nico had brought some small cups where she pretended to do the combinations; she really had though about everything.
"Hey, you never told me how did you like Halloween; I hope you didn't get too freaked out with my decorations."

"Do you think my powers would be... fun?" Megan hadn't really thought about it before. She was terrified of releasing her pixie dust after the incident at the subway station back in September.
"In Powers Training class I've mostly been focusing on flying. But I am supposed to be working on the pixie dust, too. I was supposed to sign up for private tutoring on controlling it but I haven't gotten around to it."
"Oh, and the Halloween decorations were brilliant! I nicked one of the cardboard skeletons from Walgreens when they were tossing out their displays so I can use it next year. This year I just ended up helping pass out candy to the few kids that came to the door for candy."


"Well, fun is quite subjective, but interesting? Totally, and I'm sure they should be useful for escaping or distracting people." Nico didn't want Megan to feel awkward with her powers, so giving her support was the only thing she could come up with. "Might I see the scale from closer?" She tentatively extended her hand then, wondering if that was the right thing to ask.


"My dust did distract a lot of people in the subway," she said, thinking back to that strange day. "Most people weren't even really... 'freaking out' until after it was over and the press was covering what happened. Well, one lady was trying to rescue kittens that were apparently running loose and she seemed pretty upset about that." She hadn't seen any hallucinations from her own dust, so she wasn't quite sure what it was like, but the press had run wild with the story and it had been awful to hear about, day after day until the public finally lost interest. "When I met Yvette, she said that she was part of a group called Red X that uses their mutant powers to help in natural disasters. I couldn't think of a way that my dust could help people, but sometimes... maybe distraction could help?" she wondered aloud, encouraged, as she handed the delicate wing scale to Nico.


Grabbing it with care, Nico moved the scale to see how it changed colors on the light. "Well maybe if Red X needs to move someone who is panicking, you could go and calm that person, or several persons. And you can fly as well, so maybe moving small children away from danger?" Grinning at Megan, Nico put the scale down. "Don't think so lowly of yourself, alright?"


"I'll try not to think bad of myself," Megan replied, smiling. "Look at these guns," she added, flexing a skinny arm. "I could probably carry a couple of infants. And maybe calm them down too."
"So, what's it like to have your powers?" she asked as she explored the array of nail polish pots.

"Ridiculously boring, actually." Nico smiled at Megan, but the smile didn't seem to reach her eyes. "It's like: alright, you have a weapon of mass destruction attached to yourself, so for the love of God, keep it quiet. And that's it." She started to separate some pots that might be useful to make the ever changing quality of Megan's wings.
"The Staff of One is...how to put it, blocking my magic? I can't do much of anything without it, when every person is supposed to have at least a modicum of magical power, you know?" But not her, since apparently having an evil magical artifact attached to her soul put her on Santa's naughty list of magic powers.

"So yeah, being me means I have to be as normal as I can, and have a normal life and stuff normal people do while being surrounded by awesome people that do awesome stuff...eh, sorry." She was ranting, wasn't she? Nico sighed; even if she would've wanted to live a more exciting life, she knew Amanda was right; that didn't make things easier at all though.

"You came to Professor X's school to have a normal life, more normal than living out there?" Megan asked curiously. "I guess things are pretty normal here," she added after a moment. "Do you really think all people have a tiny bit of magic?" She examined the pots Nico selected, deciding that that iridescent pink wouldn't be too girly when combined with the other colors to simulate her prismatic wings.

Nico grinned, showing disbelief as she gave a long look at Megan. "You think things are pretty normal in a house filled with mutants? Girl, you have my respect." Still, Nico had to accept it was taking her less than she had thought to get used to living there; the fact she felt safe did help a lot.
"I think? I mean, there are always exceptions, but not as much as the ones that define mutants and...well, non mutants. But as I said, the average magic potential of a regular person is...limited. It can be trained and expanded though, but still, those with big magical abilities are odd." And then there were the ones without a single drop of magic, be it because they were unlucky or due to a magical staff stuck on their chests.
"Anyway, let's get to work on those nails, and then we might actually have some time to study a little."

Megan agreed, and as the two girls set to work she felt felt very lucky that she had ended up with such a cool roommate and understanding friend.