xp_logs | Kevin & Derek | Friday evening

After finding out from Jean where his mutation may have gone Kevin tries to find the teenager said to be the recipient.

Kevin was still pretty medicated, but he'd heard they'd found someone, a kid really, and he had all these mutations. He had Yvette's mutation, which meant he had Kevin's too. More importantly for the kid, Kevin guessed, he had Jared's mutation as well. At least that would keep everything from getting cut up and decaying around him. When Kevin had gone down to the medlab he'd been told the kid was outside and his name was Derek. Apparently you couldn't miss him and not just because he was new. Medicated state and all, Kevin went hobbling up the stairs and outside through the kitchen in his search for Derek. Maybe the guy would find the treehouse. Hopefully, though, he stayed out of the part of the woods that was for hunting. No one needed an arrow or a bullet in them by accident.

Derek was attempting to see if his pincers could cut a stick in half. More appropriately, he was seeing how big a stick they could manage that on. He'd started out with grass, but that'd been easy and he'd decided pretty quickly that the life of a living lawnmower wasn't really for him. He could be an ax, though. At least for kindling.

Shifting a little so he was almost sitting down, he picked up another stick and very slowly began closing his pincer over the thickest part of it.

Once he'd actually found Derek it was easy to see why Kevin was told he'd know him when he found him. The long wings were the first thing he noticed, then the longer set of legs followed by the shorter set of legs. Somehow that wasn't as weird as the pinchers, though. Maybe Kevin was just used to the insect thing from being in the same place as Jan for so long. Jan and Jay and Warren fitting clothes over their wings had always been impressive, but somehow Derek had fit clothes over his body.

He approached the young man who was trying hard to chop wood, apparently, from an angle off to the side so his approach could be heard. Kevin didn't think sneaking up on a guy with legs that long and claws was a great idea. "Can they fly," he asked. Kevin and his preoccupation with fliers, right?

"Huh?" Derek looked up from where he was trying to chop the stick in half, then he glanced back over his shoulder before looking at the guy approaching him. People were really friendly here - he wasn't entirely sure what to do with that. "Can what fly?"

The question made Kevin smile a little. "Your wings. You've got them, can they carry you or are they too weak?" He stopped a polite distance away from the amateur wood chopper, not wanting to violate someone else's personal space. Kevin's own ideas about personal space had decreased over time and apparently all but vanished along with his mutation, but he could understand not wanting people too close. "Always figured bein' able to fly probably made a generally miserable day alright after enough time up there. Seemed to work for Jay and Jean-Paul."

Derek twitched the wings a bit, not trying to move them very much, since his shirt covered a good deal of them. "I dunno. I've never tried." He quirked an almost rueful smile as he finished, "Got stuck in a basement right after I got 'em, so I never really had the chance."

"A basement?" His eyebrows went up at that and Kevin thought of Cessily. She'd been in Attilan for a while now, but he was pretty sure he remembered her parents doing that to her more or less. "Ah knew someone whose parents freaked out and locked her up when she manifested. She was made of mercury. But not toxic." Kevin glanced at the wings again then back up to the guy's face. "If you wanted to try to see if you could fly there's people 'round who'd probably help you. The girl with pink hair and the freaky black eyes has dragonfly wings. And Jan's got sorta miscellaneous insect wings. She tries to be helpful a lot so she'd probably be cool with trying to teach you to use them. If you wanted anyway."

"That'd be cool," Derek said, looking over his shoulder at the wings and twitching them again. "I don't think Haven meant to get me stuck in the basement. I mean, it kind of makes sense." He clicked his free pincer at the other young man. "Since it'd be weird for one guy who looked like a grasshopper to lose the mutation and another guy with the same mutation to turn up. But I think she just thought I'd be able to get up the steps, maybe. I couldn't. So I got stuck. And then the pincers and stuff. They make it difficult to do stuff that's not like this." He squeezed a bit harder and the stick broke in half. Glancing back up, he gave the stranger an almost shy smile and said, "I'm Derek."

"Ah'm Kevin," the Southerner replied with a small bowing of his head. "You got my mutation under there, hidden under the forcefield thing Jared had. Probably can't make noise 'cause of his but it wouldn't mean you couldn't fly. Ah'll see if Jan's around and wants to try givin' flyin' lessons." The basement part, though, that really did suck. How did you not intend for someone to get stuck down there? How did you not help them out when they did end up stuck?

"Y'know, you could probably use your feet to grab stuff way better. Grasshoppers are cool, and if you balance on the shorter legs then you can use the longer ones sorta like arms. Your feet kinda curl and you could grab onto stuff that way. And they can reach your mouth so you could eat that way." Kevin had spent a day at an insect house once studying grasshoppers for a drawing he'd been working on.

Derek looked at his feet almost curiously. "Never tried that." He promptly settled onto his middle feet and tried reaching with one of his back legs for half of the broken stick. He was a little wobbly, but he managed it without actually falling over. "Hey, cool." Grinning he looked back toward Kevin. "Thanks."

After waving the stick about for a moment, enjoying the new mobility, Derek tipped his head to the side and asked, "So're you the one with the spikes or the exploding? Or the black skin or the clear skin? Or the cat thing? I can talk to cats - it's weird, but there was one around here earlier, I think she was a stray. Never knew I could do that."

Derek actually seemed to be happy to figure out how to grab something with his foot and that was enough to make Kevin smile a little. Having a crappy lot in life was all about figuring out the ways to get around it. Helping Derek find one of those was sort of cool. "Um, Ah'm none of them. The spiky one's Yvette. She's why you're all red, too. When you get stressed or mad or upset you'll get spikier. When you're happier and calmer you'll sorta smooth out. Her hair would end up in ringlets. But she was sharp, too. Ah dunno any of those other ones." He pointed to the crab pincher that was a darkened greenish-red hue at the tip with the greenish bit fading as it went up his arm. "That's Cammie. It's poison. Gettin' near her made people sick and she could release all the toxins at once and people would die. Ah'm 'ssuming Jared's forcefield is what's keepin' you from realizin' those. All our mutations disappeared overnight so you probably got 'em all at once. Mine," Kevin frowned a little, "mine decays anything organic. So unless it's a rock or metal or a mineral, basically, it decomposed real quick if it touched me anywhere there was skin or hair exposed."

"Huh," Derek said, tilting his head to the side a bit. "And I thought the explosions were bad enough. I'm kind of glad I've got this other one, then. The force field one, I mean. At least I'm not hurting people by accident." He put the bit of stick he'd been holding down and gingerly shifted his leg backward again so he was standing as he usually did - on four feet. Tilting his head to the side, Derek asked, "You like not having your mutation?"

Kevin shrugged and it somehow off balanced him a little. He wavered, then wobbled and then got himself centered enough to stand still again. That was fun in a not sort of way. "Yeah, but Ah don't think anyone would like to have that mutation. Ain't no one's place to take someone's mutation, though. God only gives you what you can handle. She wasn't God and she don't know why people were given what they were. Just 'cause something sucks don't mean you're not meant to learn somethin' from it. Sayin' you're helpin' people by givin' 'em what they want...sometimes you only get helped by not gettin' what you want."

Derek tilted his head to the side when Kevin seemed to wobble, half reaching out with one pincer before drawing it back. "But are you happy without it? And maybe you should sit. Are you okay?"

"Ah'm fine," Kevin replied in a bit of a mumble. "Just on a lotta Percocet." He pulled his shirt up, exposing the extensive bruising on his stomach and chest. "Accidentally got flung into a wall by someone's concussive blast. Cracked a bunch of ribs. Percocet means Ah can breathe without it hurtin' and questioning Dr Grey-Summers' sanity when she tells me to lay on my stomach." Man, that pincher was huge. It also looked nice and stable to hold onto. Too bad it already went away.

"And it doesn't matter. Ah knew how to live with it. Ah learned to get 'round it and live mostly normally. Ah was a danger to people and had to get permission from the FBI to leave the country, but Ah figured it out. And it was mine to bear. It ain't yours and it ain't right what was done. Ah'd undo it if Ah could."

Kevin still looked a little tipsy. "Um..." He extended the pincer again, very careful to keep the halves away from one another in case the other young man decided to take him up on his nonverbal offer. He really didn't want to be responsible for cutting someone's fingers off. Especially someone who was already as banged up as Kevin. "You sure you're alright? Seriously, sit. It's not like you won't see my legs coming if I try to step on your or something."

Snorting softly at the leg comment, Kevin nodded. "Sitting...good plan." He reached out and took the offered claw without any hesitation and carefully lowered himself to the ground until he could put his hands out behind himself to help keep upright. "Doctor lady'll be around in a couple hours to make sure Ah'm doped up. Seems like overkill, don't it? 'Oh, he's purple, things are cracked, let's keep him doped up outta his mind!"

Derek smiled a little. "Yeah, but think how much nicer it is to be doped up than feeling all those cracks in your ribs as they try really, really hard to heal. I mean. Calcification and stuff. I saw a program on it on Discovery Health once. You should drink more milk."

Kevin squinted at him and pointed a finger up at Derek. "Are you secretly some uber smart teenage doctor undercover? Did doctor lady send you to milkify me?" He was obviously kidding, but trying really hard to sound serious. How anything could sound serious coming from Kevin with that thick, hazy tone of voice was something of a miracle. There were no miracles in town today.

Nodding solemnly, Derek said, "Yes. Yes, that's what my job was for today. Let you sneak up on me and then educate you about the general health benefits inherent in milk drinking." He paused, letting his eyes widen a bit and his tone turn almost anxious as he asked, "Did it work? Did I educate you?"

The finger which had been pointed at Derek a moment ago now turned and traced an X over Kevin's heart, or at least somewhere in the general area. "Ah'll drink more milk. Cross my heart, mini doctor man. Cross. My. Heart."

Derek grinned. "Cool." Then he tipped his head back so he could feel the sunshine on his face and said, tone almost contemplative, "Maybe God knew you'd feel the way you do about it. And maybe you were supposed to learn something during this time when you didn't have it. I dunno. I'm not really all that smart about religion and stuff. It just seems like, y'know, if you think everybody's got what they've got for a reason, then Haven's got her mutation for a reason, too. So if God knew you'd feel like you do, then maybe there's something else going on, you know? Like, a deeper purpose or something."

Glancing back down at Kevin, Derek shrugged. "Like I said, I'm not really all that smart with religion. And you sound... really, really out of it, man. Just saying. It's kinda funny. Can you say 'my heart' again?"

"My heart? Do Ah say it funny or somethin'?" Now he was mildly self-conscious but that fled him a moment later. Kevin just wasn't coherent enough to worry about it for very long. "You might be right on the other stuff, too. Ah dunno. Ain't meant to know His plan. Just gotta hope Ah'm goin' in the right direction and that Ah don't mess it up too much while Ah do."

"You say everything funny, but it's a good kind of funny," Derek answered Kevin's initial question, then settled on his feet again and looked back up at the clouds. "I kind of miss my thumbs." He clicked his pincers together. "They were convenient. And useful. And I'm pretty sure you'd know if you were heading in the wrong direction. A lightning bolt or something would hit the ground in front of you and make you turn around. Metaphorically or... I dunno. Theoretically?"

"Or literally?" That was the last one, right? Metaphorically, theoretically and literally. They were a happy little family together. "Thumbs are useful. Especially for opening jars. Mm...peanut butter. You want a peanut butter sammich? God, Ah'm starvin' now. Where's Laura when Ah need someone to feed me?"

"But literally'd mean the lightning bolt actually came out of the sky. And we wouldn't want that. You'd end up all singed and stuff. And yeah, I could eat a peanut butter sandwich. How come you call it a sammich?" Derek tipped his head to the side and looked at Kevin, smiling a little. "You sure you wanna stand up and walk around to get the peanut butter and stuff? I have a button on my wrist that I can push if I need something. I dunno who'd come to see what I need, but I bet I could get us some sandwiches..."

"'Cause 'sammich' is quicker 'n easier to say than 'sandwich' when your lazy and don't wanna articulate. But you totally just ruined that whole purpose makin' me explain it." He did his best to look horribly put out and petulant about it. Like most of Kevin's attempts at expressions lately the effort failed and veered off toward something different entirely. "'Sides," he began while he started the process of standing up and making it there in one piece, "Ah don't like askin' people for stuff Ah can do on my own. Someone offers it's one thing, but it's just lazy makin' people do what Ah can do. Even if Ah do it slower'n usual."

"Okay," Derek said, standing up as properly as he could and then offering Kevin his claw again so he could help the other young man up. "I don't really know my way around the mansion yet, just back to the medlab, so... you know. So you're going to need to lead the way."

Kevin took the offered claw and that helped with the standing a lot. He uttered a quick thanks and nodded in the vague direction of the kitchen. "S'all good, Ah can lead. Ah can even find the peanut butter and the bread and the knife and get it all together. Without the knife. That'd suck to bite into. Peanut butter with side of cracked tooth. Got 'nuff cracked stuff, thanks." As he rambled on Kevin had begun to lead the way at a slow hobbling pace.

"Okay," Derek repeated, staying just a little behind Kevin as he followed the Southerner. He wasn't entirely sure that Kevin would manage to make it all the way to the mansion without falling over and that would be sort of awkward. Of course, Derek also didn't know what he'd be able to do to help if Kevin did fall over, but at least he could try something. Maybe. Catching with crab claws was difficult, especially if you couldn't open them to do the catching.