xp_logs | Catseye & Jean-Paul, Friday Afternoon

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Catseye spots Jean-Paul in District X and pounces. Discussion of his broken head ensues.

With a notebook in hand and a pen in tail, Catseye rambled down the streets of District X looking curiously at the buildings and the people, stopping by certain buildings, circling them, making notes. Angelo had sent her to do investigating work, because everyone knew that cats had investigating feet and were the best ones for the job. He had sent her out to check out a few buildings in District X bought by a company called Mars. Catseye wasn't entirely sure why she was looking at the buildings, but she knew what she was looking for and was resolved to be the best investigator ever.

Her investigating feet took her towards the next location on the list Angelo had given her, but they had her stopping short when she spotted a familiar figure crossing a streetcorner. "Mister Beaubier?" she said aloud, stunned. After a moment her tail twitched, breaking her out of her shock, and she darted into an alley, turning corners to get downwind of him so she could tell by the scent whether she was really looking at Mister Beaubier. His hair was gone except now it was on his face, and he looked thinner. But his posture, movements, expressions, height... she could recognize him instantly.

And the scent had her eyes widening and her jaw dropping as she had her hope confirmed. "Mister Beaubier! Mister Beaubier!" she shrieked, and launched all six feet, one hundred fifty-five pounds of herself at Jean-Paul.

There was most certainly adequate warning that the hit was coming, considering the decibel the girl's voice reached before she launched herself at him. He could have dodged. He could have ducked. There was nothing that would have stopped him from just shooting straight up in the air. He didn't, though, because he froze. Purple hair - there was a tail involved, he was sure, and he briefly caught sight of a pen that he was worried might take out one of his eyes.

And then he was on the ground. Six feet worth of purple-haired girl landed on his stomach. The pen was nowhere near his eyes, at least, though it was rather difficult to be thankful for that when he was attempting to suck air back into his lungs and managing nothing more than a weak wheeze.

"Mister Beaubier you came back!" Catseye squealed, arms wrapped tightly around him. Her head rested on his shoulder and she sniffed in his scent deeply, rubbing her cheek against his shirt. "You came back Mister Beaubier," she repeated, reverently this time, a little surprised by the fact her voice caught in her throat. What was this? Why was she going to cry? At least it was happy crying, though. "Mister Beaubier are you coming back to the mansion now?" she asked without moving. "Are you feeling better?"

Knowledge was a valuable thing and something that Jean-Paul found himself lacking in that moment. There were flashes of purple streaked through the ribbons of his memory, the bits and pieces that had been sewn back together, knitted and ironed out to make some sort of sense. Not all of them fit properly. Not all of them had any of the context necessary to make sense of them. But somewhere, out of context, he found the memory of a small purple cat and a sense of impropriety. Mon Dieu, he thought, sitting stiffly for a moment before reaching out to pat the girl's elbow awkwardly, still trying to convince his lungs that air - air was a wonderful thing.

"Bonjour?" He managed. "Hello - I am not going to the mansion right now, non." Who was this girl? There was context somewhere in his mind, there had to be. The impropriety couldn't have been anything sexual - he liked neither cats nor women that way, after all. He was so confused.

"Mister Beaubier? Did you hurt your head when I knocked you down? I am veryverysorry about that," she added, squirming off his lap and holding out a hand to help him to his feet. "I was just so happy to see you! I have sosososososo much to tell you!" Not much of an emailer, and very much a being that refused to live in the past and did not dwell on personal losses, Catseye hadn't kept in touch with her favourite teacher and authority figure. She had put him out of her mind so that it wouldn't hurt as much thinking about how he had left. "I understand about privacy now and I understand about grammar and my French is getting veryverygood and I have my own suite now with Angel and Amanda taught me about sex so I can practice it and Nick and I are a couple and I got my driving license and I am an X-Man trainee now and I was in another play!" Realizing that he hadn't answered her question about feeling better, she posed it again. "Are you back from Muir for good because you are all better?"

Jean-Paul looked at the hand she offered him, rubbed at his stomach, and then pushed himself up to a standing position without her help. A sudden bout of anxiety hit him as he realised he might have hurt her if he'd sent off a wave of energy or... force. Or whatever it was he sent off at unexpected times. He might have hurt her and he would have had no way to stop it. "Non, not... exactly," he said, not even bothering to try to dust himself off. He just tucked his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and tried not to hunch his shoulders in too much.

There was an overload of information going on here and Jean-Paul could recognise that. He could process it, if he worked hard enough at it. "It is... good that you have learned these things, oui?" Context - context was key here. Find the right context in his mixed up, sliced and diced mind and he might be able to make sense of all this.

Catseye cocked her head in confusion. "Oh Mister Beaubier I am sorry I broke your head when I hugged you!" she wailed, assuming she had caused him to act so strangely. "Do you forget who I am? Should I take you to see Doctor Hank?"

"I am waiting to hear from Professor Xavier," Jean-Paul said. "And you did not break my head." There were no negative memories associated with this girl, just that bit of impropriety. "But if you could remind me of your name, please?"

"But someone broke your head? At Muir? And now you do not remember me?" Catseye reached out to pet his arm, worried.

"Not at Muir," Jean-Paul said, raising a hand to rub at the back of his neck. "I remember things, but not your name."

"That is strange," Catseye mused, trying not to sound disappointed, "because you are the person who taught me how important names are, and now you cannot remember mine." But she knew it wasn't his fault if his head was broken, so she wasn't upset. Just determined to help him. "My name is Sharon Smith. You used to call me Miss Smith. But the name I like best is Catseye, so you can call me Catseye if you want to. Do you remember that you were the person who read me Shakespeare for the first time and told me I should try out for the school play?" she asked, trying to see if he remembered just how important he was to her, and how much she had come to love him. "And you were the person who made me understand privacy and that I should always tell people I am a cat and a girl and do you remember you taught me that I should be proud to be a girl and not to be sad about not being a real cat?"

Some of those things struck chords for Jean-Paul, seemed familiar. The problem was, they seemed familiar and he still had no context. "Miss Smith," he muttered, frowning. Then the name clicked into place, aligning with another, and he had his context. Brows rising a bit, he nodded slowly. "I remember some of them." He was disappointing her. He had to be. Then something else clicked for him and his brows rose. "A Midsummer Night's Dream, oui?"

"Yes!" the catgirl answered happily, clapping her hands together and forgetting she had her notebook in one of them, causing her to stare down at it strangely. "You read the play with me and helped me understand the words! And I got to be Snug and do a scary roar!" She demonstrated said roar now, just in case he'd forgotten it. It was a splended, full-lung-capacity roar, one of her best. "Mister Beaubier how come you cannot come back to the mansion with me and have to wait to hear from Professor Xavier?"

Jean-Paul was somewhat chagrined by the fact that he did, indeed, remember that roar. It was fairly distinctive, after all. How to answer her question, though. "I need to know that it is alright with him for me to go back to the mansion." He didn't know how else to say that he'd had to apprise the professor of these new development, that he was worried he would hurt people and that he wanted to put as few of them at risk as possible.

"Oh it will be alright! Yesyesyes! The Professor will not say no to letting you come back just because your head is broken!" Catseye answered enthusiastically, no doubt in her mind whatsoever. "And then you can teach lit-rat-oor again and I will read to you and hunt deer for you and you can read to me and cook deer and go flying and we can play Chase!"

She was so... enthusiastic. Jean-Paul cleared his throat. "Well, it is still polite to wait for the Professor to tell me it is okay." Lit-rat-oor? Raising one hand, Jean-Paul rubbed at his temple. He did not want to teach the students. He wanted to be left alone. That was not likely to happen now - his morning with Morgan was still fresh in his mind. "Would you mind, please, not telling others that I am here? Some know, and that is enough." She wanted him to cook. Jean-Paul couldn't remember half of the recipes he'd once known by heart. "Once my head is... not broken, we will see about these other things, yes?"

Catseye nodded enthusiastically and darted close for another quick hug and a quick cheek-on-cheek rub, then darted back to her former spot. "I will not tell Mister Beaubier. I understand that it is good to hide until you know what you want to do and say. Hiding when you are waiting is okay. It is only hiding because you are afraid that is not okay or running away. But you are not running away and you are only hiding because you do not know what to do or say because your head is broken so that is okay." She didn't give him a chance to dispute his reasons for 'hiding'. "And I will help fix your head when you come back if you want me to! I am veryveryhappy that you are back Mister Beaubier but I promise I will not tell anybody. If it is a long time before you can come back to the mansion though could I come here and read with you maybe?"

"It is maybe not such a good idea to read with me until my head is not broken," Jean-Paul said, his resolve to stay in the hostel faltering now that Catseye knew he was in District X. He hadn't considered the fact that former students might frequent this area. Or not even frequent, just be here.

"Okay, I will wait until your head is fixed," Catseye agreed. "Mister Beaubier before I go because you are one of my colony I will tell you that Elpis is investigating buildings in District X so more people from the mansion might come by here and also Mister Bishop comes to District X sometimes and I can smell Jubilee's smell around here so if you want to hide you should stay inside your house." Colony members protected each other, especially when it came to the necessity to hide.

Jean-Paul blinked, then let a reluctant smile quirk the corners of his lips upward. "Thank you. I will be careful of others from the mansion."

Recognizing the familiar smile even through the uncharacteristic fur on Jean-Paul's face, Catseye mirrored his grin. "That is a good thing Mister Beaubier. If you need me to help you I will help you no matter what." She couldn't resist, she leapt forward to give him another hug, ecstatic that he had returned to the city and would soon be returning to her life.

He needed to move away before she could knock him to the ground again. Or before all her hugging triggered whatever it was in his mutation that had changed. Jean-Paul didn't want to accidentally damage her or anyone else. "I will go now, then. You finish your work. You are doing important things, yes?" He nodded toward the pad in her hand. "And hopefully I will see you when my head is no longer broken."

"Yesyes very important I think but I do not really know why but that is okay because if I was not doing these things I would not have found you!" she grinned happily. Almost reluctantly, she took a step backwards, as if having to physically tear herself away from him a little at a time. "Yesyes I will see you Mister Beaubier I am happy you are here and I will go look at books I want to show you and pick some out for us to read!"