ArchivedLogs:Freaks and -- freaks.

Freaks and -- freaks.
Dramatis Personae Arline, Shane	2012-12-10 '
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. It is Monday, the bane of all schoolchildren and officeworkers. Although the weekend is decidedly over, though, it is also Monday at /lunchtime/, and so classes are, at least, not in session. Lunchtime has just /started/, though, and Shane looks like he's been settled here a /while/, curled up in a beanbag with his legs tucked up under him and a laptop on his lap. Barefoot, in a crisp-neat button down shirt (black, with subtle blue pinstripes) and a pair of khaki courduroys, he is a strange blend of casual and presentable. His attention is focused on the computer on his lap, which he is currently scowling at -- "/shit/, no, gorram /scumbag/," he is complaining at his screen as, beside him, his mouse hand works quickly. Noises of combat come from the laptop's small speakers. Arline is meanwhile wandering the halls out of curiosity. She's a fresh arrival, just over the weekend, and hasn't really had time to get familiar with her surroundings. The rec room though? That looks nice and friendly to her. And safe. And slightly less populated than she was expecting at this time of day. She actually leans from the hallway, peeking around the entryway to the room,"That's, like... Firefly-talk... S' the only people that say 'gorram'." Those needle-like teeth provide a slight 'lisp' to her otherwise southern accent. "Ya'll got TV in he- Oh, wow-" Upon seeing the large television,"- Ya'll got major TV in here." "Fffuuu," Shane's own razorteeth click together once, hard, and he closes his laptop screen in irritation. The annoyed scowl he had for his video game fades into curiosity for the newcomer, black eyes shifting towards her as he looks up. "You like Firefly?" He lacks eyebrows, but his forehead wrinkles up as the ridges of his brow lift. "Mmm, yeah, we've got a lot of shit in here. It's nice. For hanging out. But they come by and check once each period, you gotta be careful about hanging out while class is on. The attic's better for ditching, really, but it's /cold/ right now. You new?" He is watching her with an appraising sort of interest. Arline nods to the boy,"Yeah. I got off ta a bad start, this morning already though. Overachiever. I slept in. Thanks to Ego, I didn't miss class, but she did mouth off to the teacher, so she's spendin' the night in detention." Whatever that means. "I'll have to be here a few more days before I'm anything but useless as tits on a boarhog." She scratches at her nose a little bit, then points at the boy,"Those teeth fer show? Mine are. Feckin' useless." She shuffles over to where the TV sits, and begins poking at it,"Yeah. My best friend back home, Lisa, thought it was stupid geeky shit, but I like it." "Thanks to what now?" Shane tracks Arline's path across the room with a kind of reflexive attentiveness to movement; lacking pupils, it's hard to track the shift of his eyes, but his head turns to follow her. He nestles back into his beanbag chair, hand resting atop his closed laptop lid. His lips peel back, curling into a wide and toothy grin. "Try and hurt me sometime and you'll find out. -- It is geeky shit. But s'pretty awesome geeky shit. We don't have a TV at home, but I've been finding out all sorts of awesome shows /here/. What's your name, NewKid? M'Shane." Arline smacks her forehead with a hand, then says,"Hurtcha? Why'd I do that?" She doesn't answer his first question right away though. She's too busy fiddling with TV buttons,"Ego. It's.... Uh... Ego is what I call my... other self. When I'm not awake, she is. She's kind of an asshole." Suddenly, she blushes (though it's hard to tell with her skin),"I'm not crazy! It's a powers-thing." Because she's totally worried about her social rep with a shark-toothed boy. "It's incredibly geeky. But... I was pretty geeky too... Which sucked. Because cheerleaders aren't supposed to be geeky, but I was, and Lisa was always telling me I Shouldn't be talkin' 'bout that stuff." She kind of seems to... babble. "So you're not crazy. Your powers are crazy? What do they do, 'sides being batshit?" Shane looks a little amused at that, bobbing his head in a nod. "You were a cheerleader?" This draws a skeptical look from him, and a skeptical tone to his voice as well. "What utopia did you go to school at? I got the impression most high schools only let pretty girls on the squads." Possibly Shane is now giving an answer to her /first/ question. Arline frowns a little bit,"No. It's... a defense mechanism. I got another who usually only shows up when I'm injured. She's no fun." Then she just sort of tilts her head at the boy,"Wow. You are kind of an jerk, you know that? You usually go around callin' girls ugly to their face? I didn't always look like this, and dammit, it was the only thing I was good at. I miss it." But the blush on her face looks more humiliated than it does angry. "Yeah, I've been told," Shane admits, his smile a little crooked but not very apologetic. "I didn't mean it like that, though. I just mean I don't know many schools that'd accept the whole, y'know." He waves a webbed hand towards Arline. "You're kind of see through and those claws stand out. I guess if you looked normal before that'd explain it. You could start a squad here," he suggests, easy-casual as if he had not just called her ugly. "We don't have one right now but I bet there's girls that'd love to join. Or boys. Whatever." Arline seems mollified by the apologetic manner,"Mom's North Indian, dad's Nihon... er Japanese American. So I got a lot of 'you're so exotic' an' shit in lil' ol' Southeast Texas. The Port Arthur Bulldogs. But yeah, after the claws an' shit, life got harder. Hard to pick anything up with them, and they can't actually cut anything." Still, at the mention of a cheer squad, she seems... curious anyway,"We got a sports team? Enough kids to organize a couple? 'Cause what's a squad without anyone to cheer for? You look like a shoo-in for the swim-team." Then suddenly she smiles,"People seem, with a few exceptions, to be really nice here. Ain't had nooone doubletake me or anythin'." Shane grins bright and broad at Arline's telling of her heritage. "Shit, I feel you. My birth-parents were Vietnamese in the middle of freaking Montana. Would've gotten shit piled on me even if I /wasn't/ blue. Haven't been to Texas. Uh, yeah, we have teams. Small. No football right now. Swim, soccer, softball, basketball. It's hard to --" He frowns, and shrugs. "I don't think any league would let me play. They haven't started genetic testing in high schools yet but I bet they /would/ if they were worried a bunch of superhuman freaks were dominating all the wins. I do fencing and I'm not even allowed to compete with the others, even though I'm not, uh, actually that good." Her last comment draws a laugh from him, and he shakes his head. "Kinda awesome, isn't it? It's nice not to have to worry whose just waiting to deck you. And you're hardly the freakiest freak around. You seen Taylor yet? Big black kid -- uh, I don't mean like race, I mean like his whole body's just jet-dark. His tentacles could reach from one end of this room to the other and still not be flexed all the way." Arline nods at Shane emphatically,"I used to call my white friends back home 'fish eyes'. I was always kinda irritated by 'em, 'cause, there's like, three billion asians in the world. We're not exotic, ya know? We're... what's the word... statistically average." She actually snickers at this, but eventually adopts a more sober expression,"Maybe one day, there'll be a national mutant league? If everybody's got powers, then it don't matter, right? I bet it'd even be more popular than the non-powered leagues. More jazzy, ya know?" And then there's the mention of Taylor and she blushes AGAIN,"Yeah. I tried to shake his hand on reflex. I was so mortified. But he seems nice. Oh, I never did give you my name. Arline." "Yeah. Worldwide, shit, there's billions of us. But plunk one in Texas --" Shane snorts, head shaking once. "Man, a mutant league'd be killer, but shit, it'd be hard to work out the --" His hand waves, vague. "I mean, you put me in the water I'm going to out/strip/ someone who can hit really hard but if we're wrestling? And there's plenty enough people whose powers don't help them one bit in sports. People still flip the fuck /out/ if they join up, though." He grins again at the mention of Taylor. "Oh, he's sweet as hell. Gets even more shit than I do out in public, though. That's hard to /hide/. He tries. Huge bulky coats right through summer." He clicks his tongue against his teeth, regretfully. "Arline. Cool. You'll like it here, I think. So uh. What /do/ you do, besides look all horror-movie-like." Not like the clawed razor-toothed sharkboy is much to talk. And yet. Arline winces at the question of 'horror-movie-like'. Still, she takes her time with answering. Instead, she plops into a spare been bag, and seems to focus her gaze on the television, using her mind to change channels from a distance,"I'm betting you breath in the water real easy, huh? Still, sports... I think that'd go a long way, the spectacle, to making people accept us. Hard to hate someone when they're on your favorite team." She actually wiggles a bit, trying to get more comfortable,"I... uh... A lot actually. Normally it's just really weak telekinesis, but... I feed off the psionic energy of /places/ that people live. Lets me do a lot of crazy stuff once I've been living in a place long enough. Come Thursday... Warp distance and space, create illusions, and animate objects, to name a few. But only within the bounds of the mansion's grounds. Places, see... the people that live there give their grounds a specific psychic... uh... resonance. And I can hooke myself up to the energy of a place and use it to do things. Problem is, it doesn't work outside places I'm hooked to and that takes a while." "Yeah, a bit easier than I do on land, honestly. You -- /huh/." Now Shane looks intrigued. leaning forward slightly to watch -- first the channel-changing and then just Arline as she talks. "That's /neat/." His teeth flash bright once more. "-- So it /is/ kinda horror-movieish. I mean, you sound like a freaking /poltergeist/." Though the tone in his voice seems like he thinks this is /awesome/ rather than appalling. "Shit, if I could do that I'd give my kid brother a heart attack every day." Arline purses her lips as she concentrates on the tv for a time until she finds something she likes,"I can lift, like... five pounds maybe, with my t-k. But it's really precise." Then she's getting a rather enthusiastic look,"I... think that's gotta be the first time I ever got THAT reaction before. Geist. Maybe that oughta be my nickname, then. Heh. I guess there really is a theme to all this." Still, she seems intrigued by this idea,"Well, if you want... I could leave a note for Ego on Friday morning to make the walls in his room bleed and breath. Does he go here? That one usually seems to kill. So does 'the hallway that never ends'." Shane laughs, waving his hand in cheerful dismissal of this offer. "Nahh, he's only seven. He might get here one day. Though probably too late to freak him out, we might all be graduated by then." He frowns, glancing towards the door at the sound of footsteps racing down the halls. "Y'know, if I ever go to class. I hear that helps if you want to graduate. Shit, though. You should totally not tell people if they ask, now. Make it a /surprise/. For folks trying to get to the bathroom at midnight. Geist would be an awesome name, by the way." Arline covers her face with her hands,"Aaagh. You are going to get me in soooo much trouble. They'll know it was me. But it sounds like SOOOO much fun. When I was homeless for a while, I was living in this warehouse, and sometimes the cops would come to rouse the other squatters, so I'd make the ground look and feel like some kind of weird breathing bloody sponge-thing. That would be PERFECT for a midnight bathroom trip." She actually titters. "Geist. I like it. Thanks. That's me from now on!" She titters again,"You'll do fine, either way. Look at you, you're practically BUILT for a career in underwater salvage, building, repair, and rescue. You just add 'underwater' to a job description and it instantly comes with like, triple pay." "Scaring cops pretty much sounds to me like the best possible use of powers." Shane smirks, tipping his head slightly to one side, as if listening to something far away. "Eh, well, if anyone can look past the whole being /blue/ thing, maybe I'll land myself a plush diving job. Bell's gonna ring soon," he notes, pushing himself out of his beanbag and unplugging his laptop cord. He rolls the cord neatly, tucking the laptop beneath an arm. "You, uh. Hitting up class?" He says this in the tone he might ask if Arline was getting particularly unpleasant dental surgery. Arline seems to consider this, until finally, she notes,"Actually, I think... that you just need to find a REALLY greedy employer. Because then, the only color that'll matter is green. You could make someone with good infrastructure a LOT of money if they let you." Still, on the note about the bell, she mentally taps the power button ont he TV and stands,"I'm plannin' on it. Seem's kind of a dick move to... I dunno... skip classes before I've been to them even once. Who knows, I might even like 'em. According to Ego, Music Theory was fun." "Music's nice," Shane will allow, but reluctantly. "Mm. Alright. I just gotta find myself a properly greedy capitalist once I graduate." The bell rings, clearly heard in the room though a lot less harsh than many school bells; even so, Shane winces slightly at the sound. "More fun than math, that's where /I'm/ due now. I'll see you 'round, yeah?" Arline chuckles,"Sure thing. I got gym. So I'm eager to see what sport they stick me with. I'll probably hide out on the bench if I can." She waves one clawed hand,"Good luck. An' if ya figger out what the hell a 'trinomial' is, you gotta promise to tell me." Math is like a foreign language to her, the way she talks about it. "See ya around. You need to find me, I'm roomin' with Rahne." "My room has a fishing lure stuck on the door. I didn't put it there. Someone thought it was funny and we never took it down." Judging by Shane's quick smile, he thinks it was funny too. "If I figure it out, I'll let you know. I think I missed /out/ on the Asian math genes, though," he laments. His own clawed hand lifts, waving back, and then he ducks out of the rec room hurriedly. Possibly to go to class. Possibly just to not be in the rec room when it is inspected for kids playing hookie.