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xp_logs2012-02-07 09:03 pm
x-gambit.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2012-02-07 09:03 pm
From London to Ladysmith via Pretoria: Understanding the Dream
Kyle and Angelo take over the second part of the tour.
After a couple of days in the mansion, Jenny and Phillip were settling into a routine. In the morning, they’d join the other residents who took breakfast in the main dining room, and usually get hooked by one or two of them to see some other part of the mansion or discuss some program at Xavier’s. The only place that they hadn’t been was the basement, although it had been explained that they were mostly labs and research areas, and out of bounds to most people. In the afternoon, Jenny would spend some time with Doctor McCoy, and via video link, Doctor MacTaggart at the Muir Institute regarding her powers. Phillip would usually find himself with Xavier, answering the man’s questions about Genosha and the people; how the mutant were found and used, and the role of the commission. He had an almost impenetrable serenity, never judging or growing angry extremely deft at teasing out every last bit of information. Jenny had finished early, and Xavier suggested that they might enjoy seeing the grounds, making a call for Kyle to meet them in the lobby.
Kyle's student teaching wasn't taking more than a few hours a day yet, but it did already mean he was doing important things like wearing shoes and not wearing slightly dingy t-shirts for bands no one had heard of. So despite the title of groundskeeper, and he'd be happy enough to hand that off to Fred eventually, he was in khakis, a button-down and a unbuttoned vest - he figured it was that or ties and he just didn't have the patience to deal with ties. Regardless, he was also sporting hair that looked decidedly windblown, showing the points to his ears, and the hand he stuck out after his "Hi, I'm Kyle." had inch-long claws. "I have to admit, I actually had to look up where Genosha is on the map. You guys don't make the news a lot."
"Hi Kyle," Jenny said in a friendly tone, her gaze momentarily taking in the pointed ears and claws, before flicking back to his face, her smile not wavering. She shook his hand firmly, before shrugging a little in response to his comment. "We're a little isolated, it happens."
"Doesn't help that the borders are tightly controlled." Phillip said a bit sourly. "The government doesn't allow a lot of immigration, and since all of the major broadcasters are state owned, there's not a lot that gets out or noticed unless we want it to. Add on to that our whole country has about the population of Norway, well... not a lot Americans would be interested in." His accent was slightly nasal, tinged like a Brit but sharper and with different twangs.
"Wow, so like, way less evil North Korea without all the famine and cult of personality?" Kyle asked. Politics wasn't quite his thing, but he at least knew a little bit. Sort of. "Anyway. So, Professor Xavier said you guys might wanna see the grounds some, is there anything you guys are like, real interested in? I mean, there's "the generic tour" and then there's the "show off all the cool stuf we do with powers sometimes" tour. Which kinda overlap. And there's the "Hey, we have horses. And a moose!" tour, but that's pretty short."
Jenny frowned at the comparison - while she didn't completely agree with some of the things her country was doing at the moment, she didn't think the comparison to a regime like North Korea was particularly valid. But she didn't want to get into an argument about it, particularly when it seemed to be such a flippant comment.
"Not exactly," she replied tactfully, and then continued with the change of topic. "Could we have a combination of all three?" She asked with a sweet smile. "I'd love to see what you can do with your powers. And I must admit, I've never heard of anyone keeping a moose."
The door opened at that, from the outside, and a grey-skinned young man stepped in, keeping tight rein on a very wet dog. "Kyle, you got any dog towels around?" he asked without looking up. "She got in the lake again... hi." As he finally realized Kyle wasn't alone in the hallway.
"Hi," Jenny replied with a bright smile, though for the moment she was more interested in the dog than Angelo. She knelt down in front of it, offering it her hand. "Hello beautiful," she said to the dog, still smiling as it sniffed her hand.
Kyle shook his head. "Sorry man. I just got back from two hours of being Mister Gibney Teacher Guy and the Prof was all 'Hey, mind giving a tour." and dude, I still have -shoes- on even, so I dunno. Might be some in one of the cubbyholes still." He jerked a thumb towards one of the side areas where umbrellas and wet coats and boots could be stored easily. "Seriously, man, you should just give up and just bring one with you all the time." He grinned at Angelo, and then turned towards Jenny and Philip. "Jenny and Philip... Phillip, right, not like, Phil?, Angelo Espinoza. Ange, this is Jenny and Philip. They're from Genosha."
"Hi." Phillip stuck out his hand, a little put off by Angelo's grey hue. He let Jenny fuss over the dog. Phillip never liked dogs that much; something he attributed to his father's succession of foul tempered German Shepards that had scared him as a child, and mellowed to deep apathy as a teen.
Angelo stepped in to shake Phillip's hand, looking interested. "Nice to meet you both. I never actually met anyone from Genosha before."
Jenny stood up after scratching the dog between the ears, smiling to Angelo. "I'd never met anyone from America before we arrived here. Nice to meet you as well." Jenny didn't share her boyfriend's discomfort, though the variations in mutant appearances never failed to surprise her.
"That's kind of a roll of the dice here, though." Kyle said. "I mean, okay, like, in the last five years half my roommates haven't been American. I've lived with a dude from Mexico, a dude from Australia, a dude from Samoa, and a dude from Spain." He shrugged. "We're pretty global, which is why I was kinda surprised I had to look up Genosha. I mean, we had people from Attilan, if you want freaky obscure."
"Population of Norway on an island less than half the size of Iceland. I'm really not surprised." Phillip shrugged. "There's also pretty strict restriction on travel for Genoshan born mutants, so you wouldn't get one as a student or anything."
"Guess not", Angelo said with a nod. "Wouldn't mind hearing more about that travel restriction and life as a mutant there - I work for Elpis, don't know how much you hear from the outside but we're a mutant rights NGO - if you'd let me buy you a drink or a meal an' pick your brains sometime."
Jenny glanced at Phillip, hesitating for a moment. "I think we're supposed to stick pretty close to here while they're assessing our claim, but I'd love to hear more about Elpis."
"I don't think we'd ever get a chance to hear about Elpis on Genosha. Outside mutant groups don't get a lot of support inside Genosha. Most think that you're looking to destroy our way of life, or that you'll push for the same kinds of policies that leave other nations open to terrorists like Magneto or Apocalypse."
"Huh." Kyle tilted his head a bit. "So, you guys don't get anything like the disaster support stuff, or even the stuff Canada's doing either? No Red X or like, crap, Ange, what's the Canadian thing?" He shrugged. "It's one of those greek letters and I swear either I get it wrong every time, or people are trying to mess with me." He explained.
"Beta", Angelo supplied. "Alpha's for the higher-level powers. Canada's got probably the best set-up for mutants I know, actually - testing, support, training and an official team for the ones that want to join it."
Jenny was about to reply when she was distracted by the dog again, the still damp animal jumping up to get her attention again. She laughed and complied, though not before dodging back to avoid getting dirty paws on her clothes. She moved to pet her again, scratching between the dog's ears before rubbing her hands through the dog's fur.
Phillip shook his head. "Unbelievable. How do they handle all the power accidents?"
"Damn if I know." Kyle shrugged. "Most of the time -here- we just patch up the walls and I get overtime pay." He grinned easily, and chuckled. "You know we can bring the dog on the tour, it's not like she hasn't already jumped into every lake, pond or puddle here." He bent down to scritch Joyita's ears. "Ange'll just have to keep her away from the moose. The horses are used to weird, but the moose not so much yet."
"The moose gets a hyperactive 13-year-old visiting every day", Angelo protested, laughing. "How is she not used to weird? But I'll keep her out of the stables anyway."
" -- you have a moose here?" Jenny blinked a couple of times. Horses made a little bit of sense. But a moose?
"Yep." Kyle answered. "And it's not so much the dog, it's the dog and new people, Ange. All I know is that Gar and the moose people said not to overwhelm the moose." He was fine with that. Moose was too much like deer, and deer were food. It was the same reason he didn't like hanging out with Laurie's pig, and why Monkey Joe gave him the willies a little bit. Animals he liked to eat should not be pets. "Hi, welcome to Xavier's, nothing we do here is normal. I recommend just going with it, cause it doesn't get any less weird."
Phillip just goggled for a moment, trying to imagine how this place could be a school and so odd at the same time. "So, really, how many students do you have all together here?"
"Not that many", Angelo said with a shrug. "People come, people go but really it's never been that big. Right now... ten at most, I think?"
"Only ten?" Jenny blinked, looking up at the school. It seemed like a pretty big place to hold a school that small. She would have thought the student base to be a lot larger than that.
"It goes up and down, depends on like, situations and stuff. Sometimes we have more, sometimes less." Kyle explained. "We do a lot of distance learning stuff too, so a lot of the kids who're worse off, or need like medical care at Muir take classes but with webcams and stuff."
"Still..." It was more impressive than anything Genosha had, and their younger mutant population was in the hundreds. "So people stay here for a while and then just leave?"
"If they've got somewhere else to go, yeah", Angelo confirmed. "Some people take a job at the school - like Kyle, he's been the handyman for a while - and stay, some go away but come back later, and some get themselves a new life started somewhere else and never come back. It's a place to start more than anything, wherever you end up."
"It sounds nice," Jenny said quietly. And it was so different to what she'd experienced in Genosha so far. The tests to see what her powers were - or weren't - doing. The wary looks. The stories of how the mutant workers were treated. This might just be a school, but it was also a community. A family.
"It's home anyway." Kyle said, with a shrug. "Meant I could actually go to college, instead of being stuck in a crap-end job or worse, not being able to get one. There's not like, a whole lotta choices for college for most of us, some schools are actually trying to go the 'no mutant students' thing, but there's a couple local that are pretty not-asshats about it. They're decent with the international student thing too. By now, the Prof's got the whole student visa thing eleven kinds of figured out. You guys are, what, a year or two away from college?"
"We were. I have a feeling that might not be in the cards for the next few years, at least." Phillip said, a trifle darkly. After all, it could be years before their situation was sorted out, and if they ended up being sent back to Genosha, neither of them would have any choice as to what happened next.
"They're sending you off to Muir, right?" Angelo asked. "The woman
who runs things there was on staff here for a while, she's really good
people. She'll help you keep the studies up."
"That seems to be the plan," Jenny replied with a shrug. "In the end, it will depend on whether they decide to give us asylum or not. But I'd like to go to college some day." Which would have been unlikely if she'd stayed in Genosha. She took a deep breath, and then flashed a smile at the three boys.
"Anyway. Shall we get started on that tour? I'd still love to see the grounds."
After a couple of days in the mansion, Jenny and Phillip were settling into a routine. In the morning, they’d join the other residents who took breakfast in the main dining room, and usually get hooked by one or two of them to see some other part of the mansion or discuss some program at Xavier’s. The only place that they hadn’t been was the basement, although it had been explained that they were mostly labs and research areas, and out of bounds to most people. In the afternoon, Jenny would spend some time with Doctor McCoy, and via video link, Doctor MacTaggart at the Muir Institute regarding her powers. Phillip would usually find himself with Xavier, answering the man’s questions about Genosha and the people; how the mutant were found and used, and the role of the commission. He had an almost impenetrable serenity, never judging or growing angry extremely deft at teasing out every last bit of information. Jenny had finished early, and Xavier suggested that they might enjoy seeing the grounds, making a call for Kyle to meet them in the lobby.
Kyle's student teaching wasn't taking more than a few hours a day yet, but it did already mean he was doing important things like wearing shoes and not wearing slightly dingy t-shirts for bands no one had heard of. So despite the title of groundskeeper, and he'd be happy enough to hand that off to Fred eventually, he was in khakis, a button-down and a unbuttoned vest - he figured it was that or ties and he just didn't have the patience to deal with ties. Regardless, he was also sporting hair that looked decidedly windblown, showing the points to his ears, and the hand he stuck out after his "Hi, I'm Kyle." had inch-long claws. "I have to admit, I actually had to look up where Genosha is on the map. You guys don't make the news a lot."
"Hi Kyle," Jenny said in a friendly tone, her gaze momentarily taking in the pointed ears and claws, before flicking back to his face, her smile not wavering. She shook his hand firmly, before shrugging a little in response to his comment. "We're a little isolated, it happens."
"Doesn't help that the borders are tightly controlled." Phillip said a bit sourly. "The government doesn't allow a lot of immigration, and since all of the major broadcasters are state owned, there's not a lot that gets out or noticed unless we want it to. Add on to that our whole country has about the population of Norway, well... not a lot Americans would be interested in." His accent was slightly nasal, tinged like a Brit but sharper and with different twangs.
"Wow, so like, way less evil North Korea without all the famine and cult of personality?" Kyle asked. Politics wasn't quite his thing, but he at least knew a little bit. Sort of. "Anyway. So, Professor Xavier said you guys might wanna see the grounds some, is there anything you guys are like, real interested in? I mean, there's "the generic tour" and then there's the "show off all the cool stuf we do with powers sometimes" tour. Which kinda overlap. And there's the "Hey, we have horses. And a moose!" tour, but that's pretty short."
Jenny frowned at the comparison - while she didn't completely agree with some of the things her country was doing at the moment, she didn't think the comparison to a regime like North Korea was particularly valid. But she didn't want to get into an argument about it, particularly when it seemed to be such a flippant comment.
"Not exactly," she replied tactfully, and then continued with the change of topic. "Could we have a combination of all three?" She asked with a sweet smile. "I'd love to see what you can do with your powers. And I must admit, I've never heard of anyone keeping a moose."
The door opened at that, from the outside, and a grey-skinned young man stepped in, keeping tight rein on a very wet dog. "Kyle, you got any dog towels around?" he asked without looking up. "She got in the lake again... hi." As he finally realized Kyle wasn't alone in the hallway.
"Hi," Jenny replied with a bright smile, though for the moment she was more interested in the dog than Angelo. She knelt down in front of it, offering it her hand. "Hello beautiful," she said to the dog, still smiling as it sniffed her hand.
Kyle shook his head. "Sorry man. I just got back from two hours of being Mister Gibney Teacher Guy and the Prof was all 'Hey, mind giving a tour." and dude, I still have -shoes- on even, so I dunno. Might be some in one of the cubbyholes still." He jerked a thumb towards one of the side areas where umbrellas and wet coats and boots could be stored easily. "Seriously, man, you should just give up and just bring one with you all the time." He grinned at Angelo, and then turned towards Jenny and Philip. "Jenny and Philip... Phillip, right, not like, Phil?, Angelo Espinoza. Ange, this is Jenny and Philip. They're from Genosha."
"Hi." Phillip stuck out his hand, a little put off by Angelo's grey hue. He let Jenny fuss over the dog. Phillip never liked dogs that much; something he attributed to his father's succession of foul tempered German Shepards that had scared him as a child, and mellowed to deep apathy as a teen.
Angelo stepped in to shake Phillip's hand, looking interested. "Nice to meet you both. I never actually met anyone from Genosha before."
Jenny stood up after scratching the dog between the ears, smiling to Angelo. "I'd never met anyone from America before we arrived here. Nice to meet you as well." Jenny didn't share her boyfriend's discomfort, though the variations in mutant appearances never failed to surprise her.
"That's kind of a roll of the dice here, though." Kyle said. "I mean, okay, like, in the last five years half my roommates haven't been American. I've lived with a dude from Mexico, a dude from Australia, a dude from Samoa, and a dude from Spain." He shrugged. "We're pretty global, which is why I was kinda surprised I had to look up Genosha. I mean, we had people from Attilan, if you want freaky obscure."
"Population of Norway on an island less than half the size of Iceland. I'm really not surprised." Phillip shrugged. "There's also pretty strict restriction on travel for Genoshan born mutants, so you wouldn't get one as a student or anything."
"Guess not", Angelo said with a nod. "Wouldn't mind hearing more about that travel restriction and life as a mutant there - I work for Elpis, don't know how much you hear from the outside but we're a mutant rights NGO - if you'd let me buy you a drink or a meal an' pick your brains sometime."
Jenny glanced at Phillip, hesitating for a moment. "I think we're supposed to stick pretty close to here while they're assessing our claim, but I'd love to hear more about Elpis."
"I don't think we'd ever get a chance to hear about Elpis on Genosha. Outside mutant groups don't get a lot of support inside Genosha. Most think that you're looking to destroy our way of life, or that you'll push for the same kinds of policies that leave other nations open to terrorists like Magneto or Apocalypse."
"Huh." Kyle tilted his head a bit. "So, you guys don't get anything like the disaster support stuff, or even the stuff Canada's doing either? No Red X or like, crap, Ange, what's the Canadian thing?" He shrugged. "It's one of those greek letters and I swear either I get it wrong every time, or people are trying to mess with me." He explained.
"Beta", Angelo supplied. "Alpha's for the higher-level powers. Canada's got probably the best set-up for mutants I know, actually - testing, support, training and an official team for the ones that want to join it."
Jenny was about to reply when she was distracted by the dog again, the still damp animal jumping up to get her attention again. She laughed and complied, though not before dodging back to avoid getting dirty paws on her clothes. She moved to pet her again, scratching between the dog's ears before rubbing her hands through the dog's fur.
Phillip shook his head. "Unbelievable. How do they handle all the power accidents?"
"Damn if I know." Kyle shrugged. "Most of the time -here- we just patch up the walls and I get overtime pay." He grinned easily, and chuckled. "You know we can bring the dog on the tour, it's not like she hasn't already jumped into every lake, pond or puddle here." He bent down to scritch Joyita's ears. "Ange'll just have to keep her away from the moose. The horses are used to weird, but the moose not so much yet."
"The moose gets a hyperactive 13-year-old visiting every day", Angelo protested, laughing. "How is she not used to weird? But I'll keep her out of the stables anyway."
" -- you have a moose here?" Jenny blinked a couple of times. Horses made a little bit of sense. But a moose?
"Yep." Kyle answered. "And it's not so much the dog, it's the dog and new people, Ange. All I know is that Gar and the moose people said not to overwhelm the moose." He was fine with that. Moose was too much like deer, and deer were food. It was the same reason he didn't like hanging out with Laurie's pig, and why Monkey Joe gave him the willies a little bit. Animals he liked to eat should not be pets. "Hi, welcome to Xavier's, nothing we do here is normal. I recommend just going with it, cause it doesn't get any less weird."
Phillip just goggled for a moment, trying to imagine how this place could be a school and so odd at the same time. "So, really, how many students do you have all together here?"
"Not that many", Angelo said with a shrug. "People come, people go but really it's never been that big. Right now... ten at most, I think?"
"Only ten?" Jenny blinked, looking up at the school. It seemed like a pretty big place to hold a school that small. She would have thought the student base to be a lot larger than that.
"It goes up and down, depends on like, situations and stuff. Sometimes we have more, sometimes less." Kyle explained. "We do a lot of distance learning stuff too, so a lot of the kids who're worse off, or need like medical care at Muir take classes but with webcams and stuff."
"Still..." It was more impressive than anything Genosha had, and their younger mutant population was in the hundreds. "So people stay here for a while and then just leave?"
"If they've got somewhere else to go, yeah", Angelo confirmed. "Some people take a job at the school - like Kyle, he's been the handyman for a while - and stay, some go away but come back later, and some get themselves a new life started somewhere else and never come back. It's a place to start more than anything, wherever you end up."
"It sounds nice," Jenny said quietly. And it was so different to what she'd experienced in Genosha so far. The tests to see what her powers were - or weren't - doing. The wary looks. The stories of how the mutant workers were treated. This might just be a school, but it was also a community. A family.
"It's home anyway." Kyle said, with a shrug. "Meant I could actually go to college, instead of being stuck in a crap-end job or worse, not being able to get one. There's not like, a whole lotta choices for college for most of us, some schools are actually trying to go the 'no mutant students' thing, but there's a couple local that are pretty not-asshats about it. They're decent with the international student thing too. By now, the Prof's got the whole student visa thing eleven kinds of figured out. You guys are, what, a year or two away from college?"
"We were. I have a feeling that might not be in the cards for the next few years, at least." Phillip said, a trifle darkly. After all, it could be years before their situation was sorted out, and if they ended up being sent back to Genosha, neither of them would have any choice as to what happened next.
"They're sending you off to Muir, right?" Angelo asked. "The woman
who runs things there was on staff here for a while, she's really good
people. She'll help you keep the studies up."
"That seems to be the plan," Jenny replied with a shrug. "In the end, it will depend on whether they decide to give us asylum or not. But I'd like to go to college some day." Which would have been unlikely if she'd stayed in Genosha. She took a deep breath, and then flashed a smile at the three boys.
"Anyway. Shall we get started on that tour? I'd still love to see the grounds."