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Dramatis Personae Peter, Rasa
In Absentia	2013-04-23 Peter and Rasa discuss changing over Bioshock Infinite (Warning: DESCRIPTION OF DIGITAL VIOLENCE).
Location <XS> Rec Room - FL2
School this may be, but life for Xavier's students certainly isn't all studying. Outside classes, this is a popular spot to find students in their downtime. An enormous tribute to slacking off, this room is a wealth of fun and relaxation. Comfortable armchairs, couches, and beanbags offer plentiful seating scattered throughout the room, and the cushioned windowseats by the high windows offer a cozy nook to curl up and look out on the grounds. The room is often filled with the noises of gaming -- whether it comes from the big-screen television (tall racks of DVDs beside it, if nothing can be found on the multitude of cable channels), tricked out with consoles from retro to the latest releases, or the less electronic clatter and thump of the pool table, air hockey, or foosball. For those a little more subdued in their gaming, the cabinets hold stacks and stacks of board and card games, ranging as classic as chess and go to as esoteric as Dixit, Catan, and Gloom. For once, Peter is not bouncing around the rec room like a pinball trapped inside of a rubber factory. Peter is actually staying very still. He is currently plopped - sternly - in front of one of the video game systems, playing what is - apparently - a first-person shooter. It's vividly colorful, and set in some sort of bizarre 1920s sky-city with sky-rails you ride with these weird hand-hooks, and giant handyman robots and--it's just /weird/, okay? Anyway, Peter's clad in his usual black hoodie and blue jeans - his big redonkular glasses on his nose, with his crutches propped up nearby. He's playing quite intently, but there's something off about it; /usually/ when he plays video-games he is oomfing and wiggling in his seat, leaning in the direction he moves, as if he cannot bare to be restrained to a chair for too long. Right now, though, he's sunken back into his seat and playing almost with /clinical/ precision - scarcely moving at all! He's also got an intentful little Peterscowl on his face. Rasa enters at the end of the normal class time, having opted not to go into the city to see all the things at the Expo. Ze is a cool, cool blue today with darker blue hair and the lyrics to Rick Astly's most popular song scrolling down hir cheek. Ze is dressed in baggy jeans with a belt that has been drawn in to the last notch, with the tail dropping down hir thigh, the belt still looking to loose. It must be santa's belt, given how wide it can be. Hir shirt is a knit hoody, with horizontal stripes of color, composing rainbows over and over again. Ze is wearing fluffy socks, but not really much else. When ze spots crutches, hir interest is piqued. Ze moves around the side of the chair to get a better look at the face of the crutch having, chair bound individual. When ze spies Peter, hir brows climb hir forehead. "Oh my." Ze speaks, getting hirself in a position where Peter will be able to see hir without looking away from his game too much. "Did you fall and break something?" Peter briefly glances Rasa's way - eyebrows crumpling and folding together in that curious, familiare /peer/ - but his eyes quickly drift back to the video-game, where he is in the process of... GOOD GRIEF WHAT DID HE JUST DO TO THAT GUY'S HEAD WITH THAT CHAINSAW-HOOK. OH MY GO -- oh, wow. That's a lot of... blood. Digital blood, but, still... "Got stabbed," Peter mumbles, distractedly. But then, as if realizing that this is a bit rude - he immediately follows it up: "It was - uh there was some fight and I was helping some lady get away and they started throwing knives at me. I caught one," he adds, as if this is, indeed, a very important thing to note, "but not the other one." In the video game, he just set a guy on fire. He just set a guy on fire then /electrocuted/ him and now there are /crows/ pecking at the poor bugger and ohGod what kind of game are you PLAYING Peter?! Rasa glances between Peter and the tv and then turns and puts hir back to Peter and starts watching the video game. It's... weird. "Oh. Well. I'm glad you are... not dead." Congratulations on not being dead. "What is this called?" Ze lifts a hand to gesture to the tv quietly. Glances are snuck in Peter's direction from time to time. "You okay? You don't seem like yourself." At the mention of not being himself, Peter /squirms/. Just a little. "Bioshock Infinite. It's weird," Peter clarifies, as if he were, indeed, reading Rasa's thoughts. As to his mood: "It's just, um... I guess... not being able to run around for a while." LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE. He soon glances Rasa's way - while simultaneously fighting a guy with a coffin on his back and a black hood on his head who turns into /crows/ and slashes with a sword - and mentions: "...um, do you mind if I ask you something - about, uh, your skin?" "Well, no, not really. I mean, I know you pretty well, so it's okay," Rasa adds more information to hir initial acceptance of Peter's request for information. Ze settles into a seated position near Peter's chair and wraps hir arms hir knees and draws them close to hir chest. "Why exactly do they have coffins? I mean, the over all look is kind of cool, but is it plot relevant, or does it just look cool?" "I dunno," Peter says, looking back to the screen - he's managed to dodge the sword slashes /and/ set coffin dude on fire /despite/ having barely been paying attention. "They're supposed to be some sort of - like, proto Klu Klux Klan? And the Klu Klux Klan were like, supposed to be dressed up as the ghosts of Confederate soldiers, so - I guess it's /kinda/ relevant, though it seems kind of a stretch..." FWOOM. Up into fire goes Mr. Crow KKK. "...um, like - did your skin /always/ do that or did it start happening later on? And... did it happen all at once, or a little at a time?" /NOW/ Peter is jumping off the edge of a building, catching a long metal rail that snakes between floating buildings like some manner of serpent, and riding it - among sparks at breakneck speed - toward /another/ platform. "oh." Rasa considers this for a while, watching things go up in flames with blinking eyes. When the character goes flying and catches the rail and riiides it, there might be a hint of a smile on hir lips. "Well, my body started changing first, being weird with my emotions, changing shape with how I felt, well, how I felt physically first, when I was sick, but then when I was emotional. The words only came later, I guess, along with the telepathy. There was some time in between, but not that much. Maybe a year?" Ze glances over hir shoulder at Peter. Ze says nothing. "A year," Peter says, mostly to himself - he releases the rail and OHGOD now the character is flying, /flinging/ themselves into the air and managing to land right on top of another guy - who gets /smacked/ off the platform with a yelp. And now... Game-Person is on an airship, charging headlong inside. Peter is notably /not/ looking at Rasa right now; he seems very focused on the game. "I guess this is, um - I mean it's /rude/ to ask, but... did a lot of people around you - freak out?" "Umm..." Rasa glances back at Peter and then looks at the television for a while longer, letting the action carry the conversation for a while. "Yes, a bit. People handle things which are different in very loud ways a lot of the time. My parents took me to doctors a lot and everyone scratched their heads at me. That was very uncomfortable. There were other kids that made fun of me. My parents eventually hid me away from the world for everyone's sake." Ze's shoulders rise and fall, eyes mesmerized by the video gaming. "Do you remember what happened when we first met?" Ze asks at length. "I embarassed you until you melted into a puddle," Peter mumbles, rather self-consciously. A hint of a blush hits his cheeks; the character on the screen is talking, now. To an NPC? A girl who seems to have been following him around. A cutscene; something about flying to Paris or New York. "Well, yes. But, you weren't bad. You were just excited. It ended up being a good thing and we're friends now, so it's really okay. So, it depends on your definition of 'freak out.' If you only meant 'people reacting negatively,' then no. Not everyone does." Rasa shifts hir weight and turns to watch Peter quietly. "It's also okay because I am here now. I am surrounded by people who have mutations and some of them have physical mutations too. I am safe here to be me and to whatever color I happen to be." Hands slide up and rub at hir upper arms. "I guess, yeah. React negatively. Um." Peter's only half-paying attention to the game, now; he seems to be simultaneously giving Rasa side-glances, now and then - there's a cutscene, something to do with the girl in the airship hitting the player with a wrench, then... rebels? It's confusing. Very confusing. "...yeah you're right. Most of the people here - I mean, I don't know if anyone gives you a lot of trouble here. You probably get /less/ trouble here than elsewhere, though. I hope nobody gives you trouble," he adds, frowning a little at the thought. And then, quite suddenly -- out of the blue -- and rather quietly: "Don't tell anyone but I might be turning into a bug." "I won't tell anyone," Rasa replies immediately, gaze steady and tone honest. "The problem with being nonstandard is that people will generally make remarks and those remarks will likely catch a person off guard when least expected. I... got a few comments when I was stuck without my powers." Rasa lowers hir head, skin darkening and taking on a bit of a bronze sheen. "No real trouble, but it didn't feel good, being different in my body than before - different I wanted to be." Ze gives a typical teenage shrug, as if the motion would dismiss all the stuff ze is feeling. "But I still have my friends and I know they care about me regardless of appearance and how I feel about that appearance." "Comments?" Peter asks, and now his eyebrows crumple /again/; he tries to remember what Rasa looked like when hir powers were on the fritz. "I remember - oh, you looked - different, yeah," Peter adds, and then he's flushing a bit more heavily. "...but you /always/ look a little different, I mean. I guess it was odd 'cuz you looked the /same/ sort of different for a while... but, uh. I dunno I always thought you /didn't/ want to do the... changey thing? You do. I mean, /I/ think it's cool but I always got the vibe from you that you'd rather not do the changey thing if you could." "I've gotten used to changing," Rasa admits, chewing on the side of hir lip. "The funny thing about it is that it's all very based on what I'm thinking, so I pretty much look how I want to look at all times." Again, another teenage shrug. "But I would like to be better at it it. I would like some privacy to my thoughts, rather than a billboard for everyone to read." YET ANOTHER SHRUG. "I'd also like to be able to stay a thing for a while, yes. Being in flux is weird, but it's also very much... normal." "Yeah I could see how after a while you'd just get so - used to it. Then it's gone and it's like, maybe you'd even /miss/ it, or something? I think it'd be totally cool if you got it under control, I mean - you could make yourself /gills/," Peter says. "You could do all sorts of crazy stuff you might even be able to do my wall-clingy thing I mean it's kind of... biological... -ish!" Then, he glances to Rasa, thinking. "You might even be able to like, /combine/ our things. Gills /and/ wall-clinging." "And hang out on walls underwater?" Rasa smiles brightly and nods. "Yeah, perhaps. I get an entirely different breathing system when I have gills. It's so weird." Ze draws in a deep breath. "The twins, their appearance doesn't bother you, does it? It certainly has advantages, in strength, speed, and teeth. Also they are amphibious. That is amazing. Yes, lots of people give them hell, but they have people who care about them and support them. I will support you no matter what happens to you physically." "It doesn't bother me, I actually think - it looks /cool/ - but it kinda scares me, I guess. I was - reading about it, after I talked to Dr. McCoy - about the bug-thing. And, y'know, he didn't tell me some of this stuff, 'cuz I guess he didn't want to freak me out, but... the way mutations work - a lot of drastic ones - people don't /survive/ them. Like, the mutations don't take the stuff we need to live into consideration. Apparently some mutants end up with really bad medical problems - some even just outright /die/ cuz their powers screw them up. And," Peter adds, now /fully/ ignoring the videogame - which has deposited him on some platform overlooking cloud-wrapped buildings, swaying ever-so-gently in the breeze. "/And/, y'know, don't /tell/ them I said this," Peter says, with just an edge of /grr/ to it. "...but, you know, I don't think I could deal with the stuff Shane and Sebastian deal with all the time. Like, I don't even know /half/ of it and man it sounds like way more than I know how to deal with." "Oh." Rasa needs a moment to digest this Peter Possibly Dying scenario, hir gaze going a little vacant for a while. Luckily, Peter keeps talking and the transition goes smoothly into something else. "Yeah. It's bullshit. It... is also why I don't really leave the school. I feel like a coward sometimes because I don't go anywhere that could possibly hurt me, but that stuff - it's bad." "Ohmy/God/no Rasa, it is totally not -- cowardly -- I mean it is totally /not/ cowardly," Peter says, repeating this twice, as if for emphasis. He reaches out - carefully! to touch the back of one of hir gloves. "If some people want to yell at you or punch you just cuz how you /look/, I mean, not wanting to deal with them is totally reasonable. Wanting to not get punched doesn't make you a coward, I mean--" His hand quickly retracts. "Sorry, uh." He shifts his focus back to the videogame. Eyebrows crumpled together once again. "Just, like, I don't know how you deal with that and it might not even be a /thing/ I might not turn into a bug /anyway/ it's just - a weird scab." All out in one rush. "I'm just kinda, uh, fretting." "Fretting is normal too, Peter. Please, don't apologize. I'm just glad I can be here, you know, to talk." Rasa doesn't mind the hand, but Pete better hope Ivan doesn't see it. "And I know, I am not a coward, but sometimes, it does feel like it. We can't help how we feel - well, those of us without a mutation to do so. Wouldn't that be weird? I can't imagine. It'd be like vulcan, but with the power to be what you wanted too, so totally happy all the time if you liked." "That would be pretty cool," Peter agrees, "being able to control how you feel about things, I mean." BACK TO THE VIDEO GAME. He is now once again /electrocuting/ people, occasionally sending them /flying/ up into the air - and shooting them with what appears to be some sort of red-barreled machine gun. "...don't tell Ivan about this," Peter adds, apparently oblivious to the fact that he already asked Rasa not to tell /anyone/. "I'm gonna tell him but, I guess I want to wait until - I mean, see if it's even gonna be a /thing/ cuz maybe it won't be. And maybe if it is, he'll be able to talk to me like I'm a bug." The idea of Ivan. Bug-controlling Peter. May God have mercy on everyone here. "Huh. I wonder if he'll just be able to tell if you start getting buggy." That is a thought to consider. "It's your news," Rasa reassures Peter. "You get to tell everyone you like when you like - you know, barring it's sudden appearance on your face." Ze turns to look at the game once more. "So, why does he do all this stuff? Does he just hate racists a lot?" "Huh? Oh, no," Peter says. "It's cuz everybody in the city thinks he's evil so they're attacking him and he's basically got to wade through 'em to /save the day/. But, yeah, there are a lot of racists. Like professional ones. Like, I think it's their /job/," he adds. And then: "Yeah he might be able to tell. That would be - kinda helpful actually. But it might not be - I don't know, it depends on how he parses bugs, I guess we'll find out." Eyebrow crumple. Like Peter is not sure he /wants/ to find out. Peter adds, quite suddenly, still watching the videogame: "You're really cool Rasa. I'm glad you and Ivan are - um - hand-holding." He emphasizes this by SHOVING HIS CHARACTER'S CHAINSAW-CLAW HAND into someone's face and DECAPITATING them in a spray of vicious, spurting crimson. *RRRRRRRRRRR* *SPLRT!* "Just because he will have telepathy with you doesn't mean he'll use it to make you do stuff..." Rasa points out. "Generally, he's a really great guy." Ze blushes crimson when Peter brings up hir and Ivan's situation. "Yeah... It's weird, you know, but it's nice." "Holy shit that's weird too. Chainsawclaw hands, What? What's the point saving the whole place if you gotta kill everyone to do it?" "Yyyyyeeeeeah, I think this guy has deep-seated issues," Peter agrees, even as he proceeds to light another dude on fire. And another dude. And now there's just dudes on fire everywhere, screaming as Peter mows them down with the machine gun. "Oh and yeah I know Ivan would never /control/ me, I mean, I just - bees eat his brains, sometimes, y'know? What if /I/ ate his brains? But, buh it probably won't even /happen/ so..." One Peter is enough, though. "I dunno. I guess I always figured that bee brains are just so different that it really messes with his ability to remember how to be human. If you were in his brain, it would be conversational, not alien." Rasa's face contorts a little as ze watches, head tilting when EVERYONE IS ON FIRE. "Can you burn yourself with the flames, or is that not programmed in?" "I don't /think/ you can, no. Because you are, like, on fire when you are lighting people on fire. But other people who are on fire can light /you/ on fire and good /grief/ I just realized that makes no sense," Peter says, suddenly scowling. Like this game has suddenly /betrayed/ his sense of reality. "And yeah, you are probably right. Do you want to try this game?" Peter asks, suddenly. "I can send you back to the beginning it's really, uh, pretty. And violent. But pretty. And you can basically /fly/ on the rails it's /pretty cool/, Rasa." 'pretty cool' is announced as if this is something Rasa wouldn't otherwise be aware of. "Nah. I'm totally okay. It's nice to watch someone else play sometimes." Rasa's hands come up as ze shakes hir head. "I'll try it some time, I'm sure. Just... this is kind of a trippy thing to just watch."