xp_logs | Amanda, and Marie-Ange, backdated to last Tuesday

In art class, last Tuesday, Amanda and Marie-Ange talk, about Manny, about art, about Amanda's powers.

As if Art class couldn't possibly get any stranger after a week of Abstract Art, the second week of Logan substituting was themed around controversy. Marie-Ange idly noted that she probably shouldn't have been surprised. It fit. It fit entirely too well, and she suspected that perhaps, they were not quite following Piotr's lesson plans anymore. Regardless, it was fascinating, even if she had no idea at all whatsoever in even the slightest way of what to turn in as a project.

"Heh. I know some people wanderin' 'round Brighton that would be classified as 'controversial art'," muttered Amanda, sitting beside her. Logan glanced sharply in their direction and Amanda shut up - having a teacher with heightened sense was a pain in the arse. However, Logan wasn't a talker, more of a doer, and he quickly wrapped up the explanation and told them to get together in pairs and work on their own controversial art projects. Amanda and Marie-Ange automatically paired up - they sat together, and Marie-Ange's knowledge worked well with Amanda's unusual world perspectives.

"So, any idea of what yer doin' with this?" Amanda asked.

"I have no idea." Marie-Ange shook her head and tapped her pen against her notebook. "I wonder if I could just turn in a blank canvas and say it was a statement about apathy in youth?" she said, half-grinning. The idea did have some merit, she decided. Piotr probably would have fallen for it.

"If you do that, I'll take photos of Logan's reaction," Amanda replied, snickering. Then she winced and held her hand to her forehead. "Fuck."

"Or, I could simply suggest it in jest and let you use the photos... Amanda? Are you ... " The profanity from Amanda wasn't unusual - the expression of pain on her face, and in her voice -was-. Marie-Ange shot a quick glance around the room, just in case someone had walked in, or something odd had happened, and then looked to Amanda with concern. "Are you going to be okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. Eventually." Amanda groped in the pocket of her jacket, slung over the chair back, for the bottle of aspirin she'd taken to carrying around for moments such as these. "Serves me right for fuckin' around with Manuel's powers, or so people have been tellin' me. Ain't my fault his power thought a healin' spell was another bloody link." She dry-swallowed a couple of aspirin, making a face at the taste.

"Vouz avez faites quoi?" For a moment, Marie-Ange reverted back to her native language, asking the question in a surprised tone. She caught herself, and in a -far- calmer tone, asked again.. "You tried to heal Manuel's power?", she said, shaking her head. "I do not think it is his power that is broken, Amanda. At the least, it is not just his power.."

"Not his power. We had a link, an' it got broken, when Rom did that cleansin' ritual. It... hurt him. I could see it. So stupid me thought I'd try an' fix what I'd done." Amanda hadn't missed Marie-Ange's slip into her own language, but at the moment her head pounded too much to think why that might be. "Managed t' link us again - only for a bit, thank Christ - an' overload me own power. Don't think I could even float a pencil at the moment."

"You could see it?" Marie-Ange asked, the hint of a dark scowl starting to cross her features. "Amanda, what did he do to you that you could see it? Did you tell Professor Xavier? Or Ms. Frost? Or .. anyone?" She shook her head furiously "That boy is going to hurt someone badly someday, in a way that cannot be fixed with time and aspirin... if he has not already."

"He didn't do nothin', 's something Rom taught me - she thought it would help me figure out people better. I can see people's auras - 's not the same as what Manuel does, an' I can't change nothin', but I can see when someone's upset or in pain - the strong things. An' I saw Ms Frost last week, an' I'm seein' the Prof today - he's gunna see if takin' Psionics would be a good idea or not, an' check there ain't any permanent damage."

Amanda took a deep breath and tried to order her thoughts. Not easy with her head pounding again, but this was important. Dimly she remembered Marie-Ange getting upset about Manuel and links on her journal, and suddenly there was only one reason. "You linked with him, didn't you?" she said quietly. "That's why you're so freaked out about him, ain't it?"

Marie-Ange looked away from Amanda, looking everywhere -but- at the other girl. "I am not sure. I talked to Nathan, and Professor Xavier, and ... " She gripped the pencil in her hand. Just when she'd thought she could manage to -not- think about it for a day, just when she felt like maybe it wouldn't be necessary to spend the better part of the day distracting herself - just when the prospect of Speech class was unpleasant, instead of stomach-knottingly terrifying, it came up again.

"He tried to force me - to make me try to see more of a vision I had, and something he did was terribly wrong, because he ran away, and I saw colours for hours after. He refuses to talk to me about it, he whines on the journals about how much he hurts and how miserable he is, and he does nothing to try to fix the problems he caused!" Angie said, struggling to keep her voice from carrying to the rest of the room.

"'M sorry - tact ain't exactly me strong point." Amanda lay her hand on Marie-Ange's arm, feeling the tension caused by her deathgrip on the pencil. "What did the Prof say? You gunna be all right?" She left aside the second part of the French girl's outburst for now - anything she said would only make things worse, and with her head still aching from the disaster of the day before, she wasn't feeling entirely charitable about Manuel in relation to how he went about doing things sometimes.

"I should be, yes. If I have not had any side effects now, he says I should not likely have any in the future. He was not certain it was a link though. Just an odd reaction to Manuel's power. " Marie-Ange frowned down at her desk. Link or not, Manuel was going to have to be dealt with sooner or later. "And Ms. Frost said she would speak to him about it. I wish I had not made that promise to Shinobi." She scowled. That promise was going to drive her mad. Manuel refused to talk to her, and she couldn't ask him about what happened.

"Shinobi's like that - he weasels things like promises out of you," said Amanda, rolling her eyes a little at the memory of Shinobi's stubbornness. This not-link explained a lot of things - Marie-Ange's hostility towards Manuel, Doug's strange reaction whenever his name was mentioned... Manuel himself hadn't mentioned it, which was odd - he'd been pretty open about everything else. "Which promise was that? If you don't mind me askin', that is."

"That I would leave Manuel alone about it, and would not talk to him if I wanted him to leave me alone." she answered, eyes firmly locked on the desk, and nowhere near Amanda. "I am surprised he did not mention it. Manuel, that is. He was very up front with Doug about it. He said he never wanted to talk about it and was having nightmares." Though, if anyone believed that in its entirely, Angie would be surprised. On top of everything else, she had no illusions that Manuel might be telling the -truth- about anything.

"Sounds like one of Shinobi's promises - only loophole I can see is if you say you don't want him t' leave you alone an' talk t' him. But if Manuel won't talk 'bout it, there's not much t' be done." Amanda chewed on the end of her pencil, wishing for a cigarette - her power levels were nearly back up to 'functioning', but there was still a vague gnawing feeling inside as her system demanded more than it was getting.

"Manuel ain't said a word t' me 'bout it, but then again, we ain't exactly been thick as thieves. I've only really seen him twice, an' both times he only wanted t' talk about the link, an'... us." The witch shifted uncomfortably as that came out sounding a lot more relationship-y than she intended. "An' it ain't like I been there while he was sleepin' t' know he was havin' nightmares."

"I know. It is.. " Marie-Ange sighed, and leaned back heavily in her chair. "It is just so frustrating. " She paused for a moment, blinking. "us? You.. and Manuel are still? Non. No, that is probably not any of my business."

"Like everythin' else in my life, an' in this place, it's insanely complicated," Amanda said with a sigh. "I don't do relationships. A quick shag, a bit of fun, that's the limit of it. But this link... he needs me, an' I don't have it in me to piss him off like I would any other bloke who wanted more 'n I could give 'im. Don't help that we're so fuckin' alike it ain't funny." Amanda stabbed her pencil into an innocent lump of modeling clay. "You ain't the only one frustrated."

"If it was not Manuel, I might suggest you do a relationship." Marie-Ange responded, putting the same emphasis on the word 'do' that Amanda had used. "They have .. benefits." She shook her head, unable to -not- smile at Amanda's mutilation of the greyish blob. "That helps more if you make it look like a little person, you know. It does for me, at the least."

"Well, it's this or go through the X geezer's antique collection again t' see if I missed any mystic objects the last five times," Amanda replied sourly, but she picked up the clay and started fashioning it into to small, vaguely human-shaped figure. "An' don't
you start with the relationship counsellin'. New rule, I don't give you shite 'bout you an' Doug bein' all lovey dovey, an' you don't try t' tell me that all I need is the love of a good man, all right?"

For a few moments, the only response Amanda got from the other girl was stammered protests and blushing. Marie-Ange had really been trying not to be syrupy over Doug. It just wasn't working very well. She kept finding herself bringing it up at inappropriate moments. In an attempt to recover at least -some- of her dignity, or something like dignity, she shrugged and nodded acceptance of the request.

"The Professor has magic objects in his antique collection?" she asked, in an attempt to change the subject, away from Manuel, Doug, relationships, and possibly anatomically correct clay figurines.

"Nope, not a bloody thing. Went through the place top t' bottom the last time I needed a fix." Amanda finished shaping the head. "I dub thee... Rack," she said, 'knighting' the figure with the pencil before ramming it through its abdomen.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire - the bad fire where she was going to avoid even more subjects that were touchy. Marie-Ange decided that her conversational safe topics were rapidly getting consumed by chance events. It was really starting to suck. A lot. "That.. isn't going to actually work, right?" she asked cautiously, deciding that if trying to ask safe questions led her to the scary topic of Amanda's addiction, than maybe unsafe questions might do the opposite. Or something. She hoped.

"No, unfortunately. Need somethin' from him - a hair, or fingernails, or blood, somethin' like that." Amanda looked up, realizing she was freaking Marie-Ange out. "Sorry, been a tough few days. Me power levels are a bit wonky, an' it makes me tetchy."

"I .. am as well. Tetchy, that is. It makes it hard to not just say the first thing that comes to my mind." Marie-Ange peered at the little clay man, starting to relax a bit, just knowing that she wasn't the only one stressed. Even if it was different stress. Even if it was strange magic-related stress. "One of these days, I should ask you what you really can and cannot do. I .. had been joking about it really working, and .. well, if you do not mind anyway..."

"Sure. You know, yer the first person who's actually asked that? 'Side from Romany, who don't count on account of her being able t' read me aura an' find out any way." Amanda looked oddly pleased. "I get the feelin' most of the people here prefer t' just think of it as some kind of weird reality manipulation, instead of believin' in magic. And even those that believe don't realise it's more 'n healing spells an' werelights an' such. No-one batted an eyelid at the stuff I was doin' in that demon dimension, or even said anythin' 'bout me 'portin' them there, but they don't realise how fuckin' hard it was. Like I bleed from the eyes every time I cast a spell." She stabbed the figure a few more times, mangling it. "I really hate you for gettin' me into all this," she told it.

Marie-Ange watched silently as Amanda poked holes in the figure until it resembled grey, lumpy, person-shaped swiss cheese. So, actually, not swiss cheese at all. "No one .. else has asked? That's .. " she shrugged. "It is a little hard to believe sometimes, that magic exists. Even with mutant powers, and people who can fly and are blue, magic is magic. Most of us have been told all our lives that it just does not exist."

"Yeah, well, it does," Amanda said a touch grumpily. "Wish I had the same luxury t' pretend it didn't. But instead I get the addiction an' the migraines an' the nosebleeds."
"How.. how are you doing with that?" Angie rubbed the back of her neck nervously. "If it is.. okay to ask?"

"I'll live. Just got t' remember t' keep me brain out of other people's heads, is all," Amanda said with a wry grin. "So, controversial art. Any clues at all?"