xp_logs | Log: Xavin and Maya. Sunday night powers malfunction

So it turns out that Xavin hasn't quite figured out all their powers yet...

Xavin was sitting cross-legged at end of their bed, half working on homework and half watching TV, pausing every now to stop and shake out arms and shoulders that were filed with a restless energy that was fizzing just under the skin. There was a test tomorrow and Spanish verbs didn't memorise themselves but it was so. hard. to focus.

Maya for her part was hanging half off her bed, attempting to see if her perspective of the world changed given an over sufficient supply of blood to the head. In other words, she was bored.

She held her two hands up in a framing gesture of Xavin's head.

"Mind if I draw you?"

"What?" Xavin turned to look at Maya. "Uh, sure. I guess." Xavin settled back on the other bed and posed nicely, knees together, hands clasped. It looked like the kid was posing for a school photo.

"You keep doing that and I'm drawing you wearing a rabbit onesie," Maya noted, rolling over as she reached for pencils. "Just pretend I'm not here."

Xavin waited until Maya was lookiing back over again before saying "it's a bit hard when you're looking at me. Buuuut I'll try." Xavin cured up into a more comfortable position, and going back to staring at the Spanish textbook, trying not to fidget.

"Why you so fidgety anyway?" Maya asked, flopping down on her stomach as she roughed out a quick outline of Xavin and their room. She had her implants in, and it was quiet - so no need to read lips.

"I don't know!" Xavin snapped and moved again.

"Uhha," Maya noted, continuing to stretch. "How can you not know why you're fidgety? What does it feel like?"

Xavin shrugged. "It's weird. Like - similar to the feeling I get when I haven't shifted for a while, like my skin is too small - but I've been shifting all day. It's just - " the teen paused and said eventually, "itchy. Like, I can't even explain it."

"Can you, I don't know, scratch?"

"It's inside my skin, okay?" Xavin snapped before stopping. Focus in, like in shifting and the world stretched and tore and for a moment everything was silent and everything was pain and then there was screaming.

Maya was off the bed and across the room before her brain could catch up but when she got there, she had no idea what to do.

"Xavin!" She yelled, panicking.

Xavin took a deep breath, throat scraped raw and let it out, slowly, whimpering. "Get one of the adults?" Xavin asked, voice a whisper and eyes clamped shut. "It hurts."

"Right - I can do that."

Maya backed away slightly and then pulled her phone out of her back pocket, hitting the speed dial for Wade Wilson. It rang once, and was answered by a weary voice, as though expecting bad news.

"Wade! You need to come right away, I think Xavin's dying, or - being attacked. Just get over here!"

Maya paced as Wade instructed her to hang up and call Medlab while he was on his way.

"Okay - okay, done."

Xavin whimpered, curling over and shaking, whispering "hurts. It hurts." Shadows rippled across the teen's exposed skin, as their arms and legs began to swell. For a long, long moment, rocklike patterns covered Xavin's skin, clothing alternately torn or binding too tightly where the teen's body had grown.

Maya got off the phone to Medlab, having warned them that Xavin needed help. She now reached for him, trying to remove clothes where she could get them off without hurting him. She could feel the panic still bubbling around the edges of her control but she pushed it down. There was no time to feel it right now.

Another moment and Xavin shrank again to lie gasping on the bed, the rocky skin vanishing, leaving behind raw-looking green skin, streaked with red blood. Xavin tried to bat her away, sobbing and gasping as the pain started to recede. There was a bang as the suite door slammed open and the thud of footsteps on the floor as the suite door opened.

Help was here.