xp_logs | Saturday afternoon, a shopping mall different than the one Alison destroyed.

Clarice and Terry go shopping. Terry runs into a familiar face and runs over to say hi. However, Mike is somewhat less than happy to see her and things go very badly indeed.

Terry cut her roommate off mid-jabber to point out a shirt that just screamed “Clarice”, a black t-shirt with striped arms and a pirate Hello Kitty with red letters that proclaimed it was "all about the booty". “You have to own that,” she said with great conviction. Beyond the stand, Terry caught sight of a familiar face. “I’ll be right back.”

“Uh huh,” Clarice nodded, entranced by the shirt. Hot Topic, who would have guessed? She headed into the store, with a determination rarely seen outside of the medlab. Hello Kitty. Pirate. Must have.

Dashing through the crowd, Terry raised her voice just a bit, “Mike!” The boy turned his head just slightly but didn’t seem to recognize her. He continued out the door onto the street. Frowning, Terry followed, wondering if he just hadn’t seen her. It wasn’t like the red hair was easy to miss. “Mike, wait!”

Outside the air was cold enough to be a slap in the face and Terry reeled for a moment from the shock. But it was all right, Mike was waiting, leaning against the building with his hands shoved in his pockets. Terry hurried over to him and smiled. “I thought yeh hadn’t heard me.” Slipping back into her accent was automatic, he liked it and she didn’t have anything to prove. “Yeh didn’t return my call.” She pushed her hair away from her face, still smiling and a bit breathless from the cold and the run.

“I was busy. Trying to find a job.” His voice was hard and Terry could see how tense he was even beneath his heavy coat. Was this why he had been avoiding her? Had he been avoiding her?

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong. “Are they not going to open yer store again, then?”

“Cut the crap, freak. You don’t give a fuck. You’re the reason I don’t have a job anymore.” The anger in his voice was like a lash and Terry stepped back involuntarily from it, suddenly realizing exactly how wrong this whole situation was. He shoved off from the wall and closed the step she’d taken.

“I didn’t do anything to yeh,” she stammered, her mind tripping over that word ‘freak’.

“Shut up. You lied to me.” His hands came out of his pockets in fists. Terry’s eyes went wide and she backed up further, not really thinking that he’d hurt her but wary nevertheless.

“I never did!” she protested, “I would never!” He was still moving toward her. She forced herself to stop, knowing running would only encourage him and weaken her.

“You let me think you were normal!” He shoved her hard so she stumbled over her own feet. Catching her by the shoulder, he put her back up against the wall and leaned hard. She could feel the bricks under her shoulder blades. “You came in my store like you had a right to be there!”

“I told yeh!” Terry gave her surrounding a quick scan. For all that the stores were packed there was little in the way of people on the streets, a woman hurrying along with hunched shoulders that Terry would have normally identified as an easy mark, a man with a briefcase and a phone, too absorbed to notice anything in his way. No one to notice a young man leaning over an equally young girl. She may as well have been alone. “I never hid what I am!”

“You told me you went to private school.” He was viciously angry, hurt, pride, fear and embarrassment all fuelling his rage. He loomed over her, inches away. “You never said you were a mutie freak! You think you can just play with people, freak?”

Terry fought to control her breathing, her heart pounding rabbit like in her chest. The way he was leaning over her, she didn’t have much in the way of recourse to get away if she didn’t want to hurt him. And she didn’t. She was scared but she was fairly certain she could get out of this if she stayed calm. “Mike, I didn’t mean to make yeh think I was anything other than what I am. I didn’t think it was important.”

That earned her another slam against the bricks, her head striking this time, making her vision blur momentarily. “Didn’t think lying to me was important, freak?” Releasing her shoulder, he grabbed her chin, fingers digging roughly into her jaw, dragging her head back so she had nowhere to look but at him.

“No! I didn’t mean that!” She sounded panicked to her own ears, her voice high and thin. “Being a mutant. It’s not important.” This was way out of hand. He was hurting her. “Let me go. Please.”

“What’s wrong, freak? Isn’t this what you wanted?” He shifted a bit closer, still not touching her with more than his hands but close enough to make her cringe further into the wall. She couldn’t move very far with his hand on her face.

Past time she did something about that. She’d erred in letting him touch her at all. Reaching up, she gripped his wrist in her hand and dug her fingers viciously into the tendons. “I said, let me go.” She felt his grip slacken and mentally thanked her unconventional self-defense teachers. She pulled her head away and shoved him back with her other hand. She couldn’t get much strength behind it as close as he was and he only backed up an inch or two.

Not far enough and she wasn’t strong enough to hold onto his wrist. He jerked away and hit her, just a glancing blow on her cheek enough to make her realize he had no kind of notion on how to fight. Not necessarily an advantage. Even an untrained idiot could do serious damage with the height and strength he had on her. Her ears rang slightly. She shook her head to clear it and finally noticed she was crying.

Terry knocked his hands way from her, infuriated by her own tears and even more upset when he grabbed her wrists. She was still reluctant to hurt him even though the opposite clearly wasn’t true. “Mike, please,” she begged, not caring how she sounded. If she hurt him there would be all kinds of hell to pay.

“Please what, freak?” He transferred both of her wrists to one hand and seized her face again, his hand easily covered her mouth and nose, “Look at me. Isn’t this what you wanted? Pretend to be human? He slid his hand off her mouth and into her hair, drawing the curls through his fingers in an incongruously gentle caress. She shuddered as he dropped his voice suggestively. “Get a human to fuck you?”

“No!” The word—powered to judge by the way he flinched—exploded from her before she could stop it. Terry tore her hands away, shoved him back. She trembled from head to toe and knew the next words out of her mouth would ring with power if she didn’t get some control now. She shoved him again, forcing him further away from her while her scream still dazzled him.

Control came and terror finally gave way to true anger. "Don’t yeh touch me! Sure yeh’re a big man, pushing around a harmless girl. I never did yeh harm. I liked yeh, fair enough. It’s none of my concern if yeh thought I was something other than I am. I never lied to yeh!" Terry shoved away from the wall and made him back up just from the sheer rage in her voice. She kept a tight rein on her powers and not a quaver reached his ears. “Do yeh think yeh scare me? Yeh don’t know what that means. Scary is every normal I meet might hate me for being born. It’s wondering if my school will be there tomorrow or if tonight is the night that selfish blind bigoted fools come to burn us out. It’s being shot in me bed and waking up in fucking Alaska!” She tugged at the collar of her high-necked sweater so he could see the faint remnants of her fight. “I could have died and yeh have the balls to bluster at me about how I lied to yeh?”

“You should have died. You deserve it. All of it!” Terry cut him off with a non-powered shriek, her singer’s lungs giving her plenty of volume without it. He actually stopped, totally dumbfounded. He looked much less intimidating now, backing off from her as fast as she’d run from him before.

“We’re just people, yeh cretin! We’ve never done anything to deserve yer hate! I’ve never done anything!” The shouting was drawing the attention of even the most self-absorbed passersby. “I’m not ashamed of being what I am. I’m as human as yeh are!” Freed now from the wall, Terry whirled and ran back into the store, not willing to trust her luck any further.

“Terry?” Clarice ran out of the store, hearing the scream. It wasn’t sonic, but she knew her roommates voice anywhere. “Terry!”

Terry looked back over her shoulder, reflexively checking to see if he’d followed her inside. She was still shaking with rage, tears glistening on her cheeks. “Get us out of here.”

The purple girl glared at the teen's retreating back, muttered a curse under her breath, “Terry, are you okay?” Terry half-nodded and checked over her shoulder again. Satisfied that she hadn’t been physically hurt, Clarice opened a portal back to their room, blinking them away without caring about who saw.