xp_logs | Anika and Kyle, late Thursday afternoon

The return of the 'hot tutor lady'. Anika, once she arrives at the mansion, goes to surprise Kyle. The two of them wind up sitting in a tree talking about their shared mutation, Mistra, and Jackie Chan.

Smiling, Anika poked her head around the doorframe, her eyes twinkling as she spotted Kyle at work on his computer. "Boo!" she exclaimed loudly.

Kyle yelped, and spun his chair around. People weren't supposed to be able to sneak up on him. Even with music playing. They all walked too loud and smelled like their lunches. He broke into a grin as he recognized who it was, and why he'd actually been successfully snuck up on. "I thought you were in ... whereever you were that wasn't here!"

Anika spread her hands wide, giving him a helpless grin as she came into. "I was. Now I'm here. Funny how things like that happen. Give me a hug?"

Kyle was halfway to the hug before she was done asking, though he and his shower were going to have to have a very long, very cold talk later. "No one tells me -anything-" He grumbled. "Course, might be because I'm grounded... "

"Grounded?" Ani gave him a very wise look, tucking blonde hair back behind one ear as she went over and flopped down on his couch. "This would be because of the fight, yes? I told you it was going to be trouble, rooming with a bird..."

"Its not the bird thing. He said I was a bigot, cause..." The whole thing was just -stupid-, Kyle thought. And he really needed to talk to Jay about it. "Cause he joked that he and Forge were, um, you know, and they're not, but I just didn't want to know about it." He shrugged. "Bad enough I can tell when people are, I don't wanna have to hear about it."

"Huh." Anika tilted her head, regarding him curiously, and a bit sadly. "You're having trouble controlling your temper, aren't you?"

He'd guessed a question like that was going to come up. "Kinda. Its hard, I just get mad at people and ... " Kyle shrugged. "I don't even remember hitting Jay. I remember him calling me names, and then he was hitting me with a chair and he was all bloody, so I guess I did something, but its fuzzy, like I wasn't paying attention."

"I told you once that our mutation can cause us to do things like that," Anika said, pulling her legs up under her. "Rational thought goes away. You just do, you don't think. And it happens most often when you're angry."

Kyle leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling. "I'm trying not to get angry. Nate said I should do some self-defense stuff, maybe wear myself out, and Dr. McCoy tried to help, but now he's sick, but I dunno how much just getting tired is gonna help. Sometimes when I'm -tired- I'm pissed off, and then its just harder to not go hit someone."

"Mmm." Anika sighed. "Wish I had more helpful suggestions. Ask Nate to teach you how to meditate? I got control over my temper because I had to - they'd have killed me if I hadn't." She smiled fondly at Kyle. "You don't have pressure like that to worry about, thank goodness. Because that would suck."

"I'm working on it." Kyle said flatly. "And yeah, being killed would totally bite. Not into dying. Sides, if I die, who'd keep Forge from turning into a total anti-social dork?"

Anika gave him a long, thoughtful look - and then, in a flash, whipped one of the pillows off the couch right at his head.

Kyle had just enough time to wonder what the hell Ani was doing before catching the pillow and chucking it back at her. It was only after he threw it that he had time to think about whether or not he'd remember to catch it claws-in. Having to replace yet another pillow would really not be fun.

Ani wasn't on the couch by the time the pillow came back at her. She launched herself across the room in a blur, giving Kyle's chair a quick spin as she ran past. "Last one to the oak tree is a rotten egg!" she sang out, and dove right through the open window.

Kyle forced the chair to a halt, the claws in his toes gripping the carpet tightly and followed immediatily behind Ani, grabbing his Broncos sweatshirt and pulling it over his head halfway between the chair and the windowsil, and then down the rest of the way as he was going out the window itself. It was a choice. Cold feet or cold arms, and if he was climbing, it had to be chilly toes.

Anika had enough of a lead that she made it to the oak tree well ahead of Kyle, leaping straight up onto one of the larger branches. The cool air was nice, very nice. "I can smell spring coming," she said as Kyle approached. "Can you?"

Kyle shook his head. "I dunno. The air's smelled different, but I couldn't tell why." It wasn't like before thunderstorms or snowstorms at all, but he hadn't been able to tell what it was. "I guess I can, but I didn't know what I was smelling. Kinda like when Lorna's making something random and new in the kitchen. I can smell it, but until someone tells me, I dunno what it is."

"It's spring," Ani said simply. "You'll smell more and more, over the next few weeks. The ground changing. Things starting to grow. You'll hear more, too. You have to make sure you stop to appreciate it all, Kyle."

Kyle flopped back against the trunk of the tree and let his feet dangle over the branch he'd perched on. "Stop and smell the roses?" He asked, a little skeptically. "I'm happy enough knowing it'll be -warm- and not snowing. I'm so tired of snow." Snow made his toes ache and got ice under his claws.

Ani rolled her eyes at him. "Yes, stop and smell the roses. And everything else. You're right - just wearing yourself out isn't going to magically give you control over your temper. But has it maybe occurred to you that part of the problem is that you're still not used to the fact that the way you think is different now?" she asked pointedly. "It sneaks up on you, takes you by surprise. Because you don't know it like you knew the way you thought and reacted before your mutation kicked in."

Kyle sat quietly for a moment, trying to think about what Ani had said. "I guess. Its a lot to try to get used to, and.. I dunno, maybe it'dve been easier if I had been at home or had come here right away." He shrugged, sounding frustrated. "I keep finding stuff I have to do differently. Brushing my -teeth-, writing. My handwriting totally changed and it wasn't great before at all, so you can imagine its kinda really bad now."

Anika stretched out on the branch, regarding him pensively. "I know," she said quietly. "I might not have as much in the way of outward physical mutation as you do, but I still get it. But you're not going to feel comfortable in your own skin again until you start believing that you can be. There's no changing yourself back, kiddo." She gave him a wan little smile. "I know, I'm not being all that encouraging."

"It's not just you.." Kyle said. "My folks -suck-. They're so far beyond not cool with this that I think they'd have been happier if I said I was gay, or wanted to be a girl or something." He shook his head. "I like parts of this. I like climbing, I like knowing when Lorna is making bread, I like that I heal fast. But the rest of its a giant pain in my butt." He wasn't trying to whine, exactly, but the whole thing was really frustrating.

Anika shifted around until she was lying flat on her back on the branch, staring up through the tree at the sky. "Most mutations are like that," she said after a moment. "The world around you changes. Telepaths can't find any silence in their own minds anymore. Energy-manipulators sense the forces around them, or feel them pushing inside their own bodies. And people that are physically enhanced, like us... we have whole new levels of perception open up to us." She looked up at him, upside down. "If you'd been blind all your life, would you expect to adjust really fast to being able to see?"

"I guess not." Kyle answered. "But if I was blind, people would have treated me different. This is like adding tomatoes on a burger, not like not having the beef in the first place." Talking about food was making him hungry. Or maybe he'd been hungry and was talking about food because of it. Kyle wasn't sure. "I dunno, maybe I just have to get used to it, but it feels like its taking forever..."

"You have all the time in the world," Anika said very softly, a shadow crossing her face, her eyes going very faraway. "You're free and you don't have anything pulling you back in. You have time to work your way through it."

Kyle frowned. "What's going on?" He asked. "You even -smell- sad, like dried leaves." He sat up, all thoughts of eating a snack completly gone. "You're not going somewhere, are you?" Not back to the people with the room. That Kyle was sure of. Nate wouldn't have -let- her.

Ani sighed and sat up, turning around on the branch to face him and folding her legs under her. "Mick and I are going off to work with the other people trying to stop Mistra," she said forthrightly. Screw secrecy. This was Kyle, and this was his business. It wasn't as if she was going to give him any of the details. "I don't know how it's all going to go. I'm a little scared."

Kyle let out a short growl at the mention of Mistra. "You guys have a plan, or ... I dunno, guns, or .." He shrugged. "I have no fucking idea what you guys have to go do to stop them. Bombs or whatever." It was like the Army. Had to be like the Army. They went, they did whatever, and they came home,and he wasn't thinking about the rest. "Nate too?" He asked.

"Nate's not coming with us right now. He'll be working on things from here," she said. "For something like this, you don't have to all be in the same place for it to work." She smiled wanly again. "And plans? Well, I'm not big on plans, so I don't know if there's some grand plan behind it all. I hope so. Although to me it seems more like hitting them every way we can until they fall down. Which has its pluses."

Maybe Nate had the plan. That made a kind of sense, Kyle thought. "I'm all for hitting Mistra people until they fall down." He agreed. "Don't suppose you guys can bring me one, maybe a small one? Cause I have these temper issues..."

"Probably not," Ani said, her expression more whimsical suddenly. "But I could hit a few in your honor, if you like."

Oh good. Ani was a little less worried. Sometimes, Kyle thought, the trying to be funny to get rid of a bad conversation topic worked. "That works. Or you could take pictures and I can put them on the heavy bag?" He offered. "Nate showed me how to hit it right, which, it turns out, doesn't involve my knuckles going all purple and blue."

"Pictures could work. And what else is he teaching you?"

Kyle thought for a minute. "Oh. And if I kick with my toes? Ow. Ow. Ow. Pain. Pain. Pain." He pointed down at the toes in question. "So apparantly? Its kicking with the heel or the ball of the foot, and not the toes. Um, and that getting hit with a chair pretty much sucks no matter what, though he's not hitting me with a chair. He just mentioned it." Kyle sighed. "And that fighting in movies and on tv is pretty much bullshit."

"Sad. Because it's always more pretty than the real kind," Ani mentioned thoughtfully. "Like the Matrix? Or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... have you seen those?"

"The Matrix, yeah, all of them, but the last one sucked. Tried to watch the other one but... " Kyle frowned, a little embarassed. "I fell asleep. Too much talking, too much flying. Not enough hitting."

"Jackie Chan. You'd like Jackie Chan," Ani said wisely.

Kyle beamed. "I -love- Jackie. How can anyone not love a guy who does his own stunts and hits people with everything. He's got like, ladder fu and tablejitsu and like, lamp kwon do."

Ani tilted her head at him. "I wonder if there are any Jackie Chan DVDs around the school," she said wistfully. "We could watch one? I don't have anything I have to do tonight. Mick's all busy." And Tim and that bastard MacInnis wouldn't be here until tomorrow.

"If there aren't, we get about a billion channels of tv. I bet at least one has a Jackie Chan movie on it, or someone's used the Tivo to record them." Kyle said enthuastically. "But we probably have DVD's. We have DVD's of everything. Weirder stuff than Jackie Chan." And he had the idea that Dr. Hank was a Jackie fan. It just seemed to fit.

"Then let's go back inside." Ani flipped backwards off the branch, landing lightly on the ground. "And find a movie. And popcorn. Hot buttered popcorn makes everything better."

Kyle followed right behind, dropping to the ground in a crouch. "But not buttered popcorn jellybeans. Those? Are icky." He said, following Ani to the front door. "Movie. Popcorn. No icky beans. Sounds like a plan. See? You do plans."