LOG: depranked

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Clarice stalked down the hall, her newly black hair in her face. “Damn Jono and his fucking black fetish,” she muttered, not watching where she was going. Without warning, she hit something. “Move,” she demanded, not really caring who, or what, was in her way.

Nathan looked down at the little purple girl - who had black hair, which was definitely different from the last time he'd caught a glimpse of her - and raised an eyebrow. "I beg your pardon?" he inquired, putting a hand out to steady himself against the wall.

“What?” she asked, stepping back to see who was blocking her way, “Fuck.”

"Try sentences of more than one word, Clarice," Nathan suggested, eyeing her with a mixture of amusement and irritation. "And what happened to you?" She was projecting, very loudly. The words 'Jono' and 'death' figured most prominently in her thoughts.

“Duh!” she rolled her eyes, adults, “Jono dyed my hair black!”

"Moderate the attitude a little, kiddo," Nathan advised her, folding his arms across his chest. "This is revenge, I trust?" She nodded, still looking disgusted, and he felt a smile tug at his lips, almost despite himself. "Not that I should really be getting in the middle of a prank war, but... want me to fix it for you?"

“You can fix it?” Clarice was a little dubious, but at Xavier’s anything was possible. “Without chemicals?”

Nathan gave it a little more thought. "Since he didn't bleach it, probably," he said, narrowing his eyes as he studied her hair. "I could strip the pigment molecules right out telekinetically." Not all that much different than what he did with the virus, really. "If it's semi-permanent dye, it'll be even easier."

With a wicked gleam in her eye, Clarice smiled. Jono still had glitter everywhere. “Let’s try it!”

Nathan snorted softly. Oh, he really had no business doing this, but he had a soft spot for unhappy little girls. "Let's find someplace to sit down," he suggested. "This is going to take a fair amount of concentration on my part."

Clarice led him back to her room and sat on her bed. “Don’t sit on that chair,” she pointed to a desk chair with a blob of damp clothes on it, “it’s wet and nasty.”

Finding another, Nathan sat down, thinking a little harder about what would be involved. "You need to be over here," he said. "Get another chair. And I need... a glass of water. That should work."

Obediently, Clarice brought a cup of water from the bathroom and sat in another empty chair. With four girls living in the room it was cluttered and sometimes messy, but there was never a lack of places to sit. “Anything else?”

"If I pass out afterwards, don't tell Moira I was trying to un-dye your hair," Nathan joked.

“Um…I’d rather not have Moira mad at me,” Clarice bit her lip, “And I don’t want you to pass out, either. We don’t have to do this.”

"Don't worry," Nathan said with a chuckle. "I was kidding. Oh, it might leave me with a headache, but I'm used to it." He eyed her for a minute, reaching out with his telekinesis to get a sense of the structure of her hair. "So was glittering Jono worth it?" he murmured, beginning to concentrate. "He, at least, could get rid of the glitter fairly quickly."

“Yeah, it was. He shouldn’t’ve been to surprised, he asked for it in a post! ‘Does this worry list include glitter?’” she mimicked in a bad British accent.

"May have been a rhetorical question," Nathan pointed out. "Try not to move around too much." She had rather thick hair, he thought, fanning it outwards telekinetically, focusing on each individual hair.

Clarice tried not to fidget as Nathan worked,“It tingles,” she explained at his dirty look.

"If you want hair when I'm done, don't move around," he growled. Exaggerating a bit, of course, but it really did help if she stayed still. This couldn't be permanent dye, he thought; it was like a film, covering each individual hair. Carefully, he stripped it off, a dark mist filling the air around Clarice's head. He started to pull it towards the glass in his hand, barely noting how the water gradually darkened. Didn't want to make a mess of her carpet, after all.

Clarice watched, sitting as still as she could, fascinated as the dye collected in the glass growing darker and darker. “Wow…” she breathed, “Cool!”

"He didn't use permanent dye," Nathan explained. "It would have washed out completely in a few weeks, I imagine, but this way you don't have to be reminded that he got you every time you look in the mirror." It was interesting, the way her hair color was changing as he pulled out the dye. There could be practical uses for a trick like this, he mused. Drawing out the rest of the dye, he slouched a little in the chair, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead as he 'let go' of her hair and it fell around her shoulders, purple again. The water in the glass, on the other hand, was pitch-black. "There," he said a bit breathlessly. "All better."

Clarice grabbed a lock of hair and examined it critically, making sure that all the black was, in fact, gone. “Thank you,” she said, taking the cup back to the bathroom. “Want some drinkable water or anything?”
"Actually, yeah. That'd be good." His head was starting to throb, just a little, and Nathan rubbed at his eyes, a little disgusted at himself. Clearly, he wasn't back to full strength yet, but he wasn't going to get that way by not pushing. "So," he said as Clarice came back in, "am I liable to get pranked in return for undoing someone else's? Not sure how that all works around here."

“Maybe,” she allowed, bringing him more water, “but I doubt it. You’re an adult, you’re a visitor, you’re scary sometimes and if nothing else, Moira will protect you,” she ticked each point off on her fingers, obviously giving the idea of a mad Moira extra worth.

Nathan couldn't help a grin. "Well, I do try," he said. "The scary thing, I mean. Although I'm sure I'm letting myself in for all kinds of hairdressing jokes, doing this." He gave her hair a critical look. "You probably want to use extra conditioner or something for a while, by the way. I was as gentle as I could be but that couldn't hurt."

Clarice nodded, “You’re not scary anymore. You were, all big and narcoleptic, but anyone who helps with pranks like this can’t be bad!”

"Don't tell anyone," Nathan said wryly. "I'd hate to ruin what's left of my reputation."