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Kevin Sydney ([personal profile] xp_changeling) wrote in [community profile] xp_logs2025-06-19 09:33 pm

NOT ANOTHER TEEN DIMENSION - Outcasts

Artie and Kurt go to meet the Outcasts.



Even first thing in the morning, a grey fug rose over the smoking pit, an area between the student parking lot and the backdoors for the west wing of the school.

The boy standing outside it looked to be about 13, but a young 13. Puberty clearly hadn't hit yet. He bounced on his feet for a moment and settled the straps to his backpack before looking over at his companion.

"You ready to go talk to them?" Artie's words were slurred and barely audible, his teenage speech therapy giving him the idea about how to speak if not the practice in using baseline human mouth parts.

The older boy standing nearby nodded, shifting on his feet in somewhere between nerves and discomfort. "There is no time like the present."

He grimaced and walked into the smoking shed, 13 and scrawny and a full head shorter than Raven and nearly two feet and 50 pounds under Eddie Brock. Holding out a hand, Artie pulled a cigarette from the packet still open on a ledge to one side of the shed and lit it, inhaling and coughing comically and tragically. Stupid body apparently had baseline human mouth parts and couldn't smoke, in addition to not quite having hit puberty yet.

Brock towered over Artie for a second, pausing only because he couldn't believe someone as small as him would come and just brazenly steal one of his cigarettes. "Raven, this some new boytoy or did kindergarden let out early?"

"Eat shit, Ed." The young woman with the bright red dyed hair replied. It was the voice and face of a teenager, but also clearly that of Kurt's mother, Mystique. "Hey, if this is some kind of dare or some shit, it's not funny. That kid looks like he's about to throw up." She said to Kurt.

"Not my fault!" Kurt insisted quickly. "He thought it would be easy. Now he has learned." Artie got a very brief apologetic look for that truthful but misleading comment.

Artie took another drag of the cigarette, purposefully fucking up his stupid pre-pubescent lungs. He'd relied too much on his synthesisers the last few years and it showed now. He hacked again and said, hoarsely, between coughs, "It's not a dare. Did you hear that we're doing Grease this year? I'm going to be a T-Bird." He tipped an invisible hat and winked, before spoiling the effect with a coughing fit that left him doubled over where he said, "Did you all hear about the news? There's some - hurk, hurk ugh - crazy shit going down. Heard the science lab got - hurk - robbed maybe. If we're a for real crime school, I've got to learn the part."

"What the fuck would I know about the science lab?" Eddie said, a bit too quickly. Raven rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, the jocks stole some kind of lab animal. Everyone knows that."

"But what would the jocks want with a lab animal?" Kurt asked, confused.

Artie shrugged. Out of patience with the situation, with having to talk, with this body that reminded him of things better left forgotten, he mimed stabbing something. "Maybe the new swim team members were being hazed." He eyed Raven, taking the near to last drag on the cigarette and said "but sure, it was absolutely the jocks."

"Look, Macaulay Culkin, it was the jocks. They bragged about it." Raven said.

"Also, it wasn't the swim team. It was those mean bitches."

"Eddie, your mouth is moving. You should correct that."

"The... cheerleaders?" Kurt guessed hesitantly, not sure who else would come under both mean bitches and jocks.

Artie nodded. "Betcha it's them."

"The cheerleaders aren't even part of this." Raven rolled her eyes. "Janet and Yelena were bragging how they were going to sneak in and steal the answers for the science final in the cafeteria. We heard and waited. Because busting them stealing answers means no grad. No diploma. No European backpacking tour paid for by Daddy. We figured shots of them doing it would be worth five hundred from each of them."

"Or something else worth five hundred."

"Eddie, don't be gross. He's a kid." Raven said, turning back. "We already let them know. If they don't pay up, the pictures go to Old Man Xavier. Look." Eddie showed the pictures, which had them taking pictures of the test, but more importantly, showed the device still on the shelf.

"Very interesting, and I am sure they will pay", Kurt said sincerely, looking at the pictures. "When was all of this?"

Artie nodded and pointed emphatically at the pictures, giving the two a thumbs up. Good on the little weasles, going to blackmail. He eyed Kurt and signed "It's not them."

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