xp_logs | Anika and Kyle, Tuesday morning

Nathan takes a newly arrived Anika to meet Kyle. They get along very, very well.

Jump. duck. Shoot, shoot, shoot, switch guns, shoot some more, smash boxes. Smash more boxes, run around in a big circle collecting bolts. After spending the better part of the morning taking tests, which were boring, mindless destruction was right up Kyle's alley.

Even if it was silly cartoon mindless destruction, the game was -fun-, once he'd figured out how to turn the sounds down. Besides, the hero was a little furry guy with a smart mouth and Kyle just felt a kinship. Not that he'd admit it.

Nathan paused in the door of the rec room, watching Kyle play. He seemed fixated enough on the game that he hadn't noticed the addition of two new scents to his immediate vicinity, and Nathan looked at his companion, smiling, before he looked back at Kyle.

"Mind if we interrupt?" he called.

Kyle paused his game with a quick button-press and looked over his shoulder. "Um. Sure." He very, very -very- intently did not give the woman with Nate a careful once-over look, because it would be assy, and also because she was -hot- and Kyle had the sneaking suspicion this was the woman Nate had mentioned before that has a mutation like his. He set down the game controller and turned around completely. "What's up?"

"Figured you'd want to meet someone," Nathan said, stepping aside to let Anika move past him and into the room. "Kyle, this is Anika--"

"Ani," the blonde woman corrected him, her voice low and amused. "You can call me Ani, Kyle." She glided forward with a boneless grace, crouching down a few steps away from him, her body language somehow managing to convey curiosity and good humor and invitation all at once. She sniffed delicately, her dark eyes locked on Kyle's face. "I've been looking forward to meeting you. You don't mind, do you? I know I don't like it when people crowd me, but you and I have some things in common and have you been eating chocolate? That's probably not good for you."

Kyle's eyes went wide. What was he going to say to such an incredibly awesome woman? ~okay, Kyle. Brain first. Answer her questions... ~ He thought, clinging to not-saying-anything-stupid by his toenails. "Um. Yeah, not.. really into being crowded. And I know about the chocolate.." He made a face at this. Being sick all Sunday night and Monday morning had -sucked-. "Got sicker than hell yesterday. I kinda ate most of a bag of Snickers...."

"That's very sad. I always hated not being able to eat chocolate, and coffee is a definite no-no for me, too. Which is not quite so big a detail, because it doesn't taste anything like it smells and what fun is that?" Anika tilted her head, then grinned at him and stretched, blonde hair falling into her eyes. "I have terrible jetlag. Are you really all that interested in that game? We could go outside."

"Not -trying- coffee. Dr. Moira said that the same stuff in chocolate was in coffee and sofa and it'd make me more sick." Kyle said, entirely displeased by the soda part. He -missed- soda. Sort of. And he was definitely not paying a bit of attention to the video game. Nope, not at all. "Outside is good. The game saves so I can come back to it later." He grinned. "Sides, its better right after tests. Breaking stuff always feels better after two hours of questions about stupid books I've never read."

Nathan smiled at the two of them. Yeah, she was having just about the impact he'd expected. "Have fun," he said softly, departing with a wave.

Anika chuckled, then looked back at Kyle. "Window?" she asked with a wide grin, indicating it. "We're on the first floor and all. And why go tromping through the house when you can jump out a window?"

Kyle's mouth twitched. He honestly hadn't considered that. He'd been using the doors all weekend, and it occured to him that he'd landed on his feet after leaping off a tree branch, so there really wasn't any reason to worry about it. And he half-wondered if he could manage leaping from his own window. Though it might make closing it difficult and the roommate was cranky enough as it was. "Window. Out the.. " Kyle broke into a grin. "Window would be fun... "

"There's the spirit!" Anika said brightly and bounced to her feet. She glided over to the window and opened it, looking back over her shoulder at him. "Now this," she said very brightly, "is calling making an exit." And with that she dove out the window, her laugh lingering in the air.

Kyle wondered if Nate would kill him if he proposed to Ani. Except he was fourteen. Maybe she'd wait until he got older. Because she was -so- cool. And pretty and she'd leapt out the window. ~God, that was so -cool-~

Grinning, and still utterly baffled, he walked over to the window, took a half-look out, and then shrugged, vaulting the windowsill and landing in a crouch on the balls of his feet. Oh, that -had- been fun, Kyle decided. No more doors for this boy. Oh no.

Anika giggled, rolling back to her feet and picking dead leaf-bits out of her hair. "Ohh," she said rapturously, looking around her at the grounds. "So much better. Planes smell ridiculous, all chemicals and metal and I just about went crazy and started sniffing the silly woman beside me just because her perfume smelled like roses." She beamed at him. "Do you climb trees?"

Kyle stared. "I missed the plane. Slept right through it. But it can't be -better- than cars and those - stink-. Climbing... Um.. . Duh?" He wiggled his toes and unsheathed the claws - once he'd figured out how to get them in, as uncomfortalble as it was, it made it a hell of a lot easier walking around in the house. Getting stuck in the carpet had been -really- goddamn embarassing. "Climbing's fun, and I'm good at it."

"Then come on," Ani coaxed him, bouncing over to the closest tree. She took a look upwards and then lept, grabbing onto a branch a good ten feet up and swinging herself up and around to crouch on it in a startling display of agility. "If I start chasing birds, you have to forgive me, though," she called down to him mischievously. "I was getting very, very bored on the plane. The stewardess made me stop throwing peanuts."

Kyle was -right- behind her, though not with the impressive gymnastics. He'd actually had to do a running leap, and pull himself up onto the branch. His new natural agility only went so far to correct the instinct that no, there was no way he could leap that high, or do those awesome things without thinking. He grinned openly. "I have a suitemate with feathers. Its really distracting. Have one
with a fake leg too, and that's not -half- as weird. Though that might be because he made my keyboard not sound like a box of jackhammers."

"Feathers? You room with an avian mutant?" Anika's nose twitched as she considered this. "I don't think I could room with a bird. Instinct and all."

"Jay's got a room of his own. Big wings, so I guess he needs the space." Kyle shook his head. "So I'm not really rooming with him, but we've got common space in the same place, so I see a lot of him." He frowned. "A whole lot. Jay doesn't wear shirts much." Not that Kyle -did- but he wasn't distractingly winged-and-feathered.

Anika gave a dismissive wave, as if to brush off Jay, and her eyes flickered upwards, settling with sudden intensity on a sparrow which had just landed on a branch above them. "Speaking of birds...." Her eyes narrowed and she propelled herself upwards in a blur. A moment later she was landing back on the branch, the frantically tweeting sparrow held in a firm yet gentle grip. "It's a good thing for you that I don't actually eat what I hunt," she told the bird, giving it a grin as it chirped indignantly at her. "Because you are saying all kinds of bad words to me, aren't you, little bird?"
"Holy crap." Kyle whispered. "You just kind of grabbed it out of the air... " His eyes were wide - not with fear, but instead in total awe. Okay, she wasn't going to eat the bird, which Kyle thought might, maybe, have weirded him out. If anything did. So far, he hadn't been bothered by the sheer amount of fucked-up-shit he'd seen and -that- was starting to bother him.

Anika kissed the bird on its little head and then let it go. "How much did Nate tell you about me?" she asked. "I know he must have told you that you and I have the same sort of mutation." She raised her hands. "Not so much visible, of mine," she said. "They're a little sharper than normal nails would be. But most of my mutation is internal. Bone and muscle structure. My senses. How's your sense of smell?"

"Crazy insane?" Kyle said, hoping she didn't want him to try to repeat that really long explanation he'd gotten from Dr. Moira earlier. "Stuff I could -never- smell before I can now, and some stuff just is rank now that I never noticed before, like cars and the garbage and the bathroom. And sometimes its just distracting, cause I think half this school's favorite pasttime is -sex-." And then he covered his eyes with his hand.

Anika managed not to laugh at him. "You're all teenagers! Of course it is." She tilted her head, regarding him thoughtfully. "You need to find candles you like. Not incense - it'll drive you crazy and you'll wind up climbing the walls, probably literally, but candles. Scented. I'd say strawberries, just at a guess, but sometimes you might want to swap that out with oranges. Fruit smells are good, they'll calm you down."

"Candles? My mom has a ton of those." Kyle made a face. That didn't sound entirely like a good idea. One, it meant setting something on fire. He wasn't even sure that was allowed, and two, it was - candles- and that was just silly. And girl stuff. "Oranges. . " he laughed. "Rahne said on my journal thing that they're good for making it so people can eat livers and brains... or something like that..."

"Rahne? Oh, the little wolf-girl. Nate's told me about her. You and she should spent some time together," Anika said wisely. "She would get things that probably no one else in the house would get about what you smell and sense and how you think." She shifted so that she was dangling upside- down from the branch. "Plants, then, if not candles," she suggested. "Really not as good as fruit- smells, although it depends on what sort of plants you get."

Plants were almost as bad as candles, Kyle thought. "I don't suppose there's stuff to make my room not smell like burning metal that isn't, you know..." He lay back on the branch long-ways and let his legs dangle on either side of it. "Um. .. girl-stuff..."

"Nothing that springs to mind, kiddo. Unless you wanted to go the cologne route? Which I think means that the cure is actually worse than the disease."

Kyle snorted. "God, no. -No-. That's just nasty. The crap people put in their hair is bad enough." He suppressed the urge to claw at his nose. Hairspray, smelly hair gel stuff, and all the -dye-... "It makes the bathroom smell like ... I dunno, like Dr. Moira's classroom or something. Its gross."

"Then I suggest you find a manly-smelling candle," Anika said, smiling brilliantly at him. "Of course, candles are sort of phallic symbols already so aren't they already manly?"

Kyle snickered. He couldn't help it. "Maybe they make ones that smell like hamburger. That'd be cool. Or like, I dunno, just stuff that smells like trees. " Making his room smell like trees would be a hell of a lot better than it smelling like Forge's metal parts. And Kyle was -so- not saying anything about candles being phallic. Hell, the only reason he -knew- that word was because of giggling silly girls in his freshman health class.

"Trees would work, but they'd just mask... it'd probably make you feel a little restless. Depends on whether you'd rather have that, or the bird and metal stink." Anika settled back against the trunk of the tree, looking at him speculatively. "Nate tells me you were in one of the white cells."

"I can live with the bird smells. Its the burning metal that's the pain." Kyle said, before completly flopping against the branch and sighing. "Yeah. Couple of months, even if it doesn't feel like it. It pretty much sucked. A lot."

"You're lucky," Anika said, then gave him a sad little smile when he blinked at her. "You would've been in there for six months, all in all, if you hadn't been rescued. And it would have gotten a lot worse."

Worse? That was -possible-? Kyle startled, only managing to not fall of the branch by virtue of grabbing it tightly. "Fuck." And Nate had said that Ani had been through that.. . and Nate had too... Kyle snarled unconsciously. "Goddammit, that just -sucks-. Why the hell does anyone do that?"

"Because they're sick in the head," Anika said coolly, and for a moment the bubbly kitten-act was gone, replaced by the expression and demeanor of a hardened soldier. "There's no logic to it, Kyle. They see people like us as less than human, just things to be used, and so they do it."

Kyle snarled again, unconsciously extending his claws and baring his teeth. He -was- not a thing, even if he didn't know quite what he was, 'thing' wasn't it. And the whole idea just offended him to his core. "Nate said he was trying to shut them down, but that it would take a while..." He dug his claws into the branch. "'s not -fair-. They could just keep trying to capture people and use them while he's being careful and patient!"

Nathan had told the boy he was trying to shut Mistra down? Anika blinked, reminding herself to have a long talk with Nate on the subject and see just what he thought he was doing. "Worse things could happen, if he isn't," she told Kyle, her body language and tone shifting to something more soothing. "Don't be angry at him, Kyle. Going after them is very dangerous and he has to be careful. The ones like you are who's most important."

"I'm not angry at -Nate-." Kyle was, actually. Sort of. "I'm pissed that he has to wait. That I have to wait, that anyone else they capture has to wait." He flung out an arm, pointing at the mansion. "All those people with powers and they can't do something? Five people came to get me, and there's more than five people with powers teaching here!"

Nathan had warned her to step gently around the subject of Mistra if Kyle brought it up. But he deserved answers of some sort, Anika thought pensively. "I don't know what to tell you, Kyle," she sighed. "Just that it's complicated, and dangerous, and people like you could get hurt if Nathan and people like him move too fast."

"I guess." Kyle said listlessly . Dammit, why was it always wait, wait, wait and be careful and complicated and dangerous? It was supposed to be go in, save everyone, arrest the bad guys and go home and be a hero! And he knew it wasn't like in the movies, but real life didn't have white cells or claws where toenails should be or pointy ears -either- and if he got all the bad parts.. Kyle tensed his fingers, baring his teeth. "This -sucks-. I don't want to wait."

Anika reached out and brushed a hand over his gently. "I had to wait for six months," she said thoughtfully. "When I--when I started to realize that I wanted out, and I couldn't do it on my own. It took Nate that long to be able to get to me."

The contact made Kyle tense, very briefly and then his muscles automatically relaxed, his joints returning to their normal loose state, and his fnigers unclenching. "It still sucks." He said petulantly. He -really- didn't want to be patient or much of anything about this, even if he knew there wasn't much he could do to help.

"I know. I really do. But," Anika said more briskly, "you're in a much better place now. You need to be taking advantage of that and having a little fun! To make up for all the time in the cell." She grinned at him and then did a backflip off the branch, landing lightly on the ground. "You know how they say cats always land on their feet?"

Kyle didn't so much leap off the branch as just go limp, let himself fall out of the tree twisting in mid-air to land in a crouch. "Ayup." he said, unable to stop a grin. "It's like this balance thing. I dunno, I just know what's up and down and where my feet are going to go. It's kinda cool." Cool enough that he'd spent the better part of an hour falling out of trees to test it. Not that he was going to admit -that- to anyone.

"Do you want to try and see just how much else you just know?" Anika said, invitingly.

Lesee. Totally hot woman, wanting to spend time with him. Kyle's brain and libedo were, for once, in total agreement. Even if he knew there was -no chance in hell-. The libido didn't care, and his brain said "Dude, even so, she's -cool-." He nodded gleefully and stood up, stretching a bit. The crouch felt natural, but too long and his calves started to cramp.

"Then let's go chase some squirrels!" Anika said happily, and darted off, leaving Kyle to follow.