xp_logs | Sharon, Meggan: Lakeside

xp_catseye posting in

After multiple aquatic assaults, Sharon opts to train in pursuit of becoming master of her environment. She is immediately caught in the act.

Sharon huddled in the bush as she contemplated her next move. She looked one way, then the other, scanning the lakeshore for the slightest hint of movement -- especially from below. It was crucial she be unobserved, but it was the haughty one with the impossible wings she wanted to avoid at all costs. However, she had been lurking for nearly ten minutes now, and the surface of the lake had yet to reveal any currents or flashes of movement that might indicate the presence of an aquatic intruder. The coast was clear.

The ailuromorph padded into the open with a silence that would have done her wild brethren proud. She approached the lake with the caution of a bomb disposal specialist approaching an unexploded IED, choosing a particularly large slab of rock as her perch. Liam's fishing lessons had acclimated her to the shallows, of course, but this was something different. Something far more shameful.

For a few long moments Sharon just stood on the edge of the stone, all four feet gathered beneath her. Uncertainly, she rocked forward once, then twice, and finally took the plunge.

Time to swim.

Meggan was further down in the depths of the lake, doing one last figure eight. She had been underwater for about half an hour, and hadn’t realized anyone else was wandering about. It was awfully warm out, and she had wanted to get some relief from the heat, and simultaneously hang out for a little while below the surface with gills. In the past, she had startled some by doing that in the pool, and she didn’t want to scare anyone that was new to the mansion by just not coming up for air.

The serenity of the lake would always be lovely and inviting, but she still had to come back up. Meggan rose to the surface of the lake at approximately the same time as the other girl entered; the empathic shapeshifter gave a cry, momentarily startled. She hadn’t been paying attention, and hadn’t thought there would be anything up there in need of sensing, aside from some fish.

She tried to take stock of the situation, shaking her wet hair from her face, and swimming backwards so that she would get to a better position. “Oh! I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was up here!”

As a cat, Sharon's first instinct upon being startled was to jump approximately six vertical feet. She quickly discovered this was not a viable strategy while swimming in the lake. Whatever noise she'd been about to make turned into a glup.

A second later the cat's head breached the surface again, thrashing water around her. Clumps of wet fur were braving the aquatic environment to stand on end. Automatically, Sharon started to move her arms back and forth in a way she'd seen people tread water in movies. Kicking with her back paws was not giving her the kind of propulsion she'd hoped they would.

"I am here!" she complained to the other woman, equal parts adrenaline and embarrassment.

Meggan only just resisted the urge to help buoy her up once she saw that she was doing as well as could be expected given the whole circumstance of being startled like that. Also, there was always the chance of getting scratched from the natural instincts of a cat greeting water. She wasn’t sure if that would happen or not, but best not press her luck.

“Yes, you definitely are!” she agreed, with what she hoped was an encouraging smile, now that it seemed like things were relatively calmer. She wasn’t about to critique the way someone swam, whether they had paws or hands or maybe even tentacles giving the roulette of mutations that could crop up when one least expected.

“You can have one of my towels if you think you need one,” she offered, even as she gestured to where they had been deposited on one of the larger stones closest to the shore. She had simply plunked them down there, and flown into the water before. "I’m Meggan."

"Sharon," the cat grumbled, wetly. The shower of water created by a brisk fur-shake concealed her embarrassment at being discovered during an elicit swim. Still, she'd been about to take Meggan up on her offer when she noticed the gills at the woman's neck. She froze, then flattened herself against the ground.

"You have branchiae also?" Sharon said, suddenly suspicious. Her eyes flicked back and forth as she scanned the sky for any hint of Atlantean presence. "Are you ally of the rude one? I shall not be trapped."

“The rude one? Oh, then you’ve met Namor,” Meggan quickly realized. With the mention of branchiae, who else could it have been? So it was going to be damage control for water breathers everywhere, then? She raised her hands, the picture of innocence in the face of the understandable concern. “I swear, there will be no trapping or ulterior motives of any kind, and you’re free to come and go and walk and swim all willy nilly, and be as dry or as wet as you want to be. No proclamations from me!”

She allowed the gills to fade away since she was sticking around land more than being underwater, and gestured to the lack of them even as she climbed up out of the water. “Look, see? If it helps, I’m an empathic shapeshifter. For me, they can come and go, and things are just dependent on my environment. I’m not Atlantean. He is an ally, in that he’s a teammate, but we’re not doing conspiracies.”

Sharon studied her, still suspicious, but no condescending presence was descending upon them from the sky. It didn't appear to be a trap. Besides, the woman had caught her interest.

"All right. I shall trust." Sharon unflattened, her damp stomach now smeared with mud. She claimed a towel and began to rub at her fur half-heartedly. "Explain 'empathic shapeshifter' more, please. I have never heard of this."

Meggan nodded, relieved she was willing to listen and not get scared off from the similarities. She moved to claim one of the extra towels. “It basically means that I feel emotions and various things from people and trees from the environment around me, and can react by changing myself for my surroundings or the feelings. To the point of the gills like you’ve seen, so I can breathe underwater. I could go all leafy, or have bark coloring with my skin in the trees.”

With a grin, she briefly demonstrated how her skin could take on the pattern of the stone she was seated on. “I do fly, but there’s no manifesting of tiny ankle wings like Namor, or feathers of any kind.” To prevent her from getting the wrong impression about empathy, too, she was quick to give some clarification about her version. “There are empaths that do the projection of emotions, but I’m just a receiver and filter for it all. I couldn’t do any fiddling of any sort.”

Sharon paused with the towel still draped over one ear, head cocking curiously. "So you can alter anatomy depending on environment?" she asked, intrigued. "Gills for water, leaves to avail yourself of photosynthesis? Capable of other adaptations? Fur, for example?"

Meggan shook her head. “It’s not really for photosynthesis, since I’m not getting everything I need from sunlight. It’s more just blending in visually, even when I’m sensing how the trees are doing.”

As for the fur? “Oh, I’ve done fur!” she assured her “Both unintentionally, when I was smaller, fuzzier and more bat-eared, and intentionally. If I specifically wanted more layers on a really cold day, yes, fur’s great for retaining that heat.” She wasn’t sure if complimenting Sharon’s fur might be a bridge too far when it was currently wet and previously muddy or not.

Sharon's ear twitched, flicking the towel from her head. It slid down her back until it was absently caught with a prehensile tail. "So, not just to compliment environment, but camouflage," she mused. "And you change yourself for the feelings of others? Explain this also, please."

“That’s part of being a colander for emotions,” Meggan began to explain as best as she was able. “It’s an instinctive thing to react to the person’s feelings in my appearance, since I’ve always been able to do that, for as far back as I can remember. I mostly don’t do it if I’m paying attention to it these days, even if there was that moment with a traffic cone rubbing off in my hair a long while ago.”

She tilted her head, trying to put it better than that. “When I was tinier, though, you’d get an amalgamation of stuff piled on, like webbing and the ears, in reflection of—I have to call it a cauldron of bad vibes was simmering all around me from some very bad people. Okay, so take away the bad feelings and put me somewhere better, in a good environment. We’ve got progress, and I have better control over how I want to look for me.”

Meggan paused, contemplating what else she might need to explain about it. “If there was the complete absence of emotion from someone, if they just don’t have anything in them and they aren’t just blocked by a dampener or something, I would feel physically cold. Does all that help, or did I go too far afield?” She asked with a small smile.

"Undecided. Processing." Sharon flicked a contemplative tail. The cat seemed thoughtful. "Challenging to be so influenced by external factors," she ventured. "Other people especially. But also you know what they expect of you, maybe. There is not that anxiety of the unknown."

“A bit? Or at least I can tell when things are going south, and react accordingly,” Meggan found herself agreeing. She had almost added that when it was missing during the power swap, it had felt like a vital thing was gone; instead, she held her tongue. She didn’t want to scare Sharon with the thought of that happening when she was still so new to being here!

"Seems a useful thing. People difficult to predict. That is why I watch." Sharon gave her damp fur another shake. "I am always watching."

Meggan felt like that had to be exhausting, whether or not it was a cat trait or a Sharon trait. “Well, if you ever need a break from all the watching, I’m around,” she offered. “My metaphorical door’s always open.” Because it would get weird if it always was in a literal sense.

"Speaking to you is more enlightening than speaking to the rude one. I shall keep this in mind." At the invocation of Namor Sharon gave the woman a wary look. "Tell no one I swam. I must preserve my tactical advantage."

Meggan was pleased to hear that; she also didn't see a problem with that request. “In that case, not one single solitary person will hear about your swimming preferences from me,” she promised her. If Sharon wanted it to be a secret for any length of time, then she would keep it to herself.