Angel and Roxy - Powers Control Eee!

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Roxy catches up with Angel now that they're both back at the mansion and lets her fledgling powers mentor in on some good news.

The vacation with her family had done Roxy a world of good. Not only was the private cabin with their own stretch of beach in Fiji relaxing, but the travails of getting to and from the island had succeeded in reminding Roxy exactly why she was living at Xavier's School.

Over the weeks she'd been there, she'd started to feel more and more frustrated with the place, with the fact that she could no longer do the things she'd always done to fill her days thanks to her stupid powers. Sure, the people were nice and not all of them were creepy like that Worthington dude. She thought of all the other students as her friends. The GenX thing was fun. She didn't even have to go to school yet. But the strangeness of it all, of her own powers, of the lack of routine, had begun to overwhelm her.

Well, there was nothing like a trip through six airports with her parents to give a person some perspective. The paparazzi were as humiliating and determined as ever, swarming her parents like locusts during their entire trip. Only the ferry out to the remote resort had finally quashed their efforts. It made Roxy realize how important her being at Xavier's was for now. She couldn't stay at home in that environment anymore.

It had also made her realize that, despite only having been at the mutant school for a few weeks, being there was actually helping. She'd only had a few powers malfunctions during the trip, which gave her a great sense of pride. The exercises she was learning from Angel were helping immensely. Of course, a majority of them consisted of Angel jumping out in front of her to scare her at odd moments, or deliberately putting her in stressful situations like the locker room or a cafe through simulations in that Danger Room thing to see how she'd react, to teach her how to control her emotions and, as a result, control her powers. And Roxy now knew that there was method to what had seemed like madness. She wanted to thank Angel for that.

She knocked on he door of the woman she was now beginning to consider her mentor with a large gift bag in hand. "Angel?" she called out, "it's Roxy. Are you there?"

There was a shuffle on the other side of the door, the faint sound of, "No, back Donut back - c'mere you - ow! you little brat, go sit in your condo, go on--" And then another moment of shuffling before the door finally flew open, and Angel grinned around the finger she was sucking on. "Roxy, hey!" She pulled her finger out of her mouth to examine it. A little bloody but not bad. "Welcome back. How's it going? Oh, come in." She stepped aside to let Roxy into the suite. Across the room, a tiny kitty head was popping itself out of a kitty condo to examine what was going on. "How are you?"

"Kitten!" Roxy gushed, momentarily forgetting everything- and everyone- else and striding across the room to the kitty condo. "Hello cutie! Ohmigawd you are just the cutest thing, aren't you? Yes you are! I missed you! You got so big since I left!" She pulled the kitten out of the condo and snuggled it, beaming. Now that that important task was completed, she turned back to Angel. "I'm good. I'm glad to be back. And man, I never thought I'd say that. I guess I needed to be away to see that being here's been really good for me," she confessed with a shrug. "So maybe now that I know that, and know I'm gonna stick around, I can go get those cats we saw at the shelter when we went with Rogue..."

Donut gave a loud, happy purr as Roxy cuddled him. He nuzzled against her, energized by the attention. Never one to hold still for long he wiggled out of Roxy's arms to hop onto her shoulder, headbutting the side of her head, her ear, her neck, anywhere he could get to. Angel laughed. "He missed you too. It's good you're glad to be back." She knew Roxy had been hesitant about being here to begin with, and seeing her so happy about it now made Angel feel pretty good. "So you going to go adopt all the cats now?"

"No," Roxy giggled, "just two. My parents already put their foot down about that. I'm not allowed to have more cats than they have kids. Otherwise, apparently I'm a crazy cat lady, or something. But I don't see why I'm getting punished with fewer cats just because they decided to only have two kids," she whined with a joking grin. "Oh! Hey. I brought you something from Fiji." Angel had mentioned to her once that she enjoyed scuba diving, and summer was coming up, so Roxy had bought her a locally made Elei caftan in a purple and blue La Siapo pattern, in addition to some Pure Fiji body lotion. Juggling Donut to keep him from falling off her shoulders, she handed the bag to Angel.

"Crazy cat lady is a perfectly acceptable aspiration," Angel said seriously. "Your parents should support you in all your goals. Ooooooh, present!" She bounced as she took the bag and Donut settled on Roxy's shoulder, clearly prepared to stay there. "Oh my god." Angel breathed as she pulled out the caftan. "It's beautiful. Your taste is awesome."

"Well, my mom helped," Roxy admitted. "She actually paid for it, too, cuz I only had enough with my allowance for the body lotion. She's real grateful to you for helping me. I think there's a card she wrote for you in there somewhere, or maybe it's in with my luggage," she muttered, brow furrowed in thought as she skritched Donut under the chin. "Either way, she's real thankful. I barely spewed diamonds at all, the whole trip!" she told Angel proudly. "My parents pretended to be all 'well of course, we knew you could get control of it super fast', but I could tell they were pretty impressed, and that's thanks to you. So I wanted to say, y'know. Thanks. With presents."

Angel couldn't have been grinning any wider if she tried. It was great absolutely great to hear that Roxy had been so in control the entire time she was out. "C'mere," she said happily, pulling Roxy into a tight hug. Donut mewed as he hopped back to his condo, upset by the sudden embrace. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't just a little overwhelmed (in a good way) - this was the first time she'd helped a kid from the beginning of her powers training and seen the full results. It was a wonderful feeling.

Roxy was extremely pleased that the surprise hug, which might have triggered her powers even a month ago, didn't trigger them now. As soon as she'd seen Angel move towards her, she'd started the repeated mental recitation of 'don't explode' Angel had encouraged her to do, and it had worked. Soon, she would hopefully not even need to think about saying the words, but for now she was just happy that mentally telling herself not to shoot diamonds had actually worked. "Lookit that! Nothing!" she said proudly, hugging Angel back. "I know it's not perfect yet- and I did have a couple accidents in couple of the airports- but it's sooo much better than when I first got here. Do you think I'll be able to go to Bayville soon?"

"Awesome!" Angel said happily, hugging her tight before pulling back to look Roxy up and down. "Dude if all you did was slip a couple times in the airport then that's great. Airports are huge and stressful-" And they certainly couldn't be easy to navigate when you and your parents were big and famous, "so I think you can excuse yourself for that." She grinned. "We'll have to evaluate properly but honestly? I'm sure you're just about ready for Bayville."

"Cool! I mean, not that I have to go to school, but, y'know." Roxy shrugged. "But it'll be nice not to have to stay cooped up in here getting tutored. So how do we evaluate properly?" she asked excitedly.

"We get a second opinion that isn't mine," Angel said with a smile. It was good to see Roxy so excited about this. "I'll talk to Julian and Jess, and we'll figure something out. It'll probably just be the same thing we've been doing - put you simulations, see how you react, etc."

"When?! Can we start now? Can you and I like, go to that Danger Room place and do the simulations and record it for Keller and Jess to see?" Roxy suggested with wide eyes.

Angel grinned. Roxy's enthusiasm was contagious. "We definitely can. Want to head down right now or do you have something else you need to do first?"

Roxy unslung her guitar from her back and set it down against Angel's sofa. "Nope! I'm good! Let's go!" She bounded out of Angel's suite and led the way down the hallway towards the Danger Room. "So I hear there are a couple more students here since I've been away?" she asked Angel curiously.

Angel laughed as she hurried after Roxy. "A couple new, a couple old," she said as she caught up to the girl, walking along with her. "We found some people we thought we lost during M-Day so that was pretty cool."

"I ran into one during that snowball fight Keller organized," Roxy told Angel as they walked. "She's cute," the teen grinned. "So you were on a trip too, right? Vegas? How was it?"

"I heard about that." Angel laughed. "Did he actually faint? God I wish I'd seen that." Regrets that would forever haunt her. "I was there, yeah. It was pretty fun until the whole frost giant destroying our hotel thing."

"He totally fainted. I think Monet got a pick on her pho- wait, what? A giant destroyed your hotel room?!" the teenager asked with wide eyes, walking backwards to talk with Angel face-to-face. "What?! I didn't hear that part!"

"Oh I'll need to speak to Monet about that," Angel murmured with a small smirk before refocusing on the conversation. "Oh, yeah." Somehow the frost giants weren't as big of a deal to her as they were to everyone else. "Ever seen Frozen? Kinda like the big old snow giant Elsa made but pointier and meaner."

"Course!" Roxy responded with a grin. "Hopefully by the time it goes to Broadway people won't hate mutants as much and I'll be able to play Elsa. Diamonds aren't ice, but I bet they'd look pretty similar from the orchestra at the Gershwin. Too bad the frost giant was all Destructomatic or maybe it could play that part on the Great White Way."

"I can see the programs now." Angel laughed. "Frozen, with up and coming actress Roxanne Washington and actor Frost Giant of Asgard. You guys would be a hit."

Still walking backwards, Roxy hit a wall but managed to avoid expelling any diamonds. Instead, she struck a pose and gave Angel a cheeky grin. "You know it! And when it happens you'd better be in the front row!"

"Every single night," Angel promised with a big grin. "And I'll annoy everyone around me during intermission by going on about how I know the star."