xp_logs | Artie and Tabitha

Artie seeks Tabitha out for a quick chat about the New Mutants.

Artie paused outside Tabitha's office and shifted from foot to foot, nervously, before knocking on her door.

Tabs looked up from her cataloging, curious about who would be knocking. "Come on in," she called. "Please, rescue me from the tedium."

He smiled and waved, leaning against her desk. Taking a moment to think about what he wanted to say, he flashed a series of pictures at her: the new mutants, as a group, followed by cartoon Artie and Tabs, with speech bubbles coming out of their mouths, followed by an image of Yvette cutting through a heavy object, Nico with her staff and Julian levitating rocks. After that, he gave her another cartooned image of himself, projecting a hologram, and paired it with a question mark.

She watched the hologram with a small sense of delight. She'd always been thrilled with Artie's holograms. "You want to rejoin the New Mutants?" She translated.

Almost. He showed her a picture of the other team, the ex-team, the amazingly crap team, because that was what happened when you had half the team functionally without powers (so, okay, Miriam, had had powers but they'd basically been the amazing power of not having eyes and how lame was that?) and the rest of the people with powers consisting of him and the Stepfords; a moment later, he showed the team splitting and walking away while he shrugged. Fair enough, really. Artie looked over at Tabitha and sighed. She couldn't sign and that made this so much harder because projecting words always felt... wrong, like his powers didn't want to do it. He did it anyway, white text on a black background, two or three words at a time.Want to rejoin but and he paused for a moment, flicking back to that first image of Yvette's team, with their powers. how much use are my powers going to be compared to them? He should have emailed. But, at the same time, the thought of missing out on another trip to India or something just because he wasn't with them sucked. It was one thing to be kept home sick (again, like this time) and this was another. Not being involved was increasingly boring.

Tabitha nodded in slow understanding. "Well, part of the purpose of New Mutants is to have other brains to think about ways to stretch your powers. Find new ways to use them, or find new things you can do."

so i can rejoin + then find out what i can do? Artie asked. It seemed like a lot of work and he still wasn't sure how much use his powers could be with the New Mutants, much as he wanted to rejoin. "how do I find out what theyre good for in a team?" He wasn't knocking his powers - he loved almost every aspect of them (and that other aspect was a large and frustrating one) but, when it came to the team thing, he was coming up with a whole lot of nothing.

"Trial and error, young man." She leaned back in her chair to ponder a moment. "Right away, I can imagine you could provide all sorts of distractions."

She'd called him "young man". Seriously. Was she some kind of secret old lady? It didn't seem that implausible, given that, as far as Artie knew, all she did was hang out in the library. He nodded though, and gave a thumbs up, having not thought of that idea. He showed her a picture of the New Mutants doing pushups and then flicked a calender, followed by clock up in the air in front of Tabitha and stuck a question mark over them. When was training?

"Training? Most of the students have set a schedule up amongst themselves. The program is mostly self-governed, I'm mostly just a guidance counselor and the person to go to if you want something different." She grinned. "But we can put up a notice on the journal community and I'm sure they'll be jumping on the opportunity to train with you."

ok. so i tell them ive rejoined + then ask what training theyre doing and if i can join in? That sounded doable, even through the slight headache Artie was getting. and i keep doing my normal powers stuff along side right?

"In a nutshell. And if you have any ideas for new ways to train or activities that might help the team, just let me know. I'm always looking for new ways to tort-" She coughed, and started over. "New ways to help my students." Hah. Artie gave a small smile and looked at his hands for a moment, thinking it through. It was clear enough, right now - as long as he wasn't on the team, he didn't get to do things like oh, go to India. That alone was enough to make up for the fact that he'd not really tried all that hard to get back into things earlier. Besides, there was only so much sulking anyone could do about the fact that they'd been on the crap team back in the day and hey, it wasn't like he'd been with Tatiana and Karolina, both of whom had driven him mad. cool. ill do that now ok?

Tabitha smiled happily. "Excellent. Quite happy to have you, Artie. Welcome back to the team."