First Meal, Kinda Feels like the Last (Open)

[Alex Monroe]

It had been almost thirty-six hours since Alex had arrived at the school and it seemed everything was moving at a breakneck speed. In that time she had been orientated, given her class schedule, assigned a room, slept and attend her first set of classes with barley enough time to process it all. Until now that is, finally her eat lunch she had a time to take everything in and process breathe and process it all. And now with the weight of the situation finally dawning on her she couldn't help but feel as if like some poor soul clinging to a plank of wood in the middle of the ocean.

She moved slowly and deliberately between rows of tables dining hall holding a her tray who's contents, no matter how tasty it was she doubted she would even touch. Her stomach was too full of knots and butterfly to leave room for something like her lunch. Why am I even here? She wonder clenching the tray even tighter, if she wasn't going to eat she shouldn't' even be here.

The prospect of just going back to her dorm and spending the rest of the time there did look tempting to her. She wouldn't have all these people’s minds pressing down on hers right now making it ache so much. That sure would be more enjoyable than this. Plus she could get out of this embarrassingly girly uniform she had to wear to class. Had no one at this school ever heard of unisex uniforms before? Clearly not.

Yes that's what she was going to do, she resolved to herself as she turned slowly around to face the door. She'd go back to her room and stay out here. Her room was she belonged, not out here showing off to the world how much of a freak she was. Alone and isolated in her own small room... just like that cell. She stopped dead in her tracks with that realization and sighed, no she wasn't going to go back to her dorm and cower and prove that monster right that she would never fit not society again, she was going to stay if only to spite her own personal demons, and a man who would never know of this small defeat.

Of course that obstacle overcame there was one more left to overcome where to sit? She scanned the school as she slowly walked through the dining hall, her tail swaying behind her with every step. It must be like this for all new students on the first day school, worrying about where to sit. If she chose poorly and was rejected that would look bad, if she chose some outsiders she risked permanently being associated with them. It was a daunting prospect. One she really didn't care about she decided. Just because she could hear what people think, doesn't mean she has to care what they actually think.

And yet here she was standing there like a bump on a log, her tail lashing back and forth unable to decide where to go.

[Atlas]

Being in the school for weeks on end was driving him a little bit stir-crazy but Andrei still had no chances of leaving anytime soon. There was work to be done and hardly any breathing time between jobs, even now, his stomach grumbled at the prospect of eating after he’d starved since lunch the last day. Even now, in the midst of chatting students he could still hear the rustling of paper; it was like a constant reminder that he could never have any peace. Flashes of the school’s expense records, student lists, as well as images of his father were running through his mind at an alarming rate. Many students at the school had the ability to move in super speed, but unfortunately Atlas’s ability was to think in super speed.

As much as he would’ve liked to sit and enjoy his food with some nice side entertainment of glaring at freshman’s until they nearly wet themselves; he had more important things to do. It seemed like the wave of people almost parted in his presence, something he hardly seemed to notice as Atlas went to retrieve his food. He barely noticed the people around him, pictures in his mind fuelling his never-ending headache that not even the strongest of painkillers could cure. Finally, managing to shift his attentions back to the real world, the senior glared at some of his underlings. Specifically at their ties, which were pulled down and unpresentable.

The freshman rushed to fix their uniform, eying Atlas’s perfectly ironed blazer and shirt. It was a wonder how he kept it perfectly neat during every activity he had to do. For a moment he almost felt sorry for the masses; some had blue skin, fur, cat eyes, all traits that would’ve caused them to get beaten to a pulp outside of the school. If he got beaten to a pulp for his mind… No, he didn’t want to think about it. But it was too late; the images were already rushing through his mind at an alarming rate. Fists flying, blood running down his skin like tears of red, bruises, infected wounds, broken bones that never quite healed properly.

There was a reason normal humans could never particularly remember what pain felt like, because if they could, then there was no choice but for their brains to make them relive it. That’s what kept him knowing that he was at least partially human, the fact that every memory, every thought, he relived. Even now, he could feel his skin tingling and his ribs aching, his brain immediately processed the pain into reality. Despite the fact that his skin hadn’t broken, there was no blood or bruises, he could still feel the pain, but he kept walking (with a look of obvious pain plastered on his face).

After finally getting his food and drink Atlas nearly ran to the exit, for once finding the mass of freaks uncomforting. His vision went from real life to images of his mother laughing at the blood leaking out of his mouth, so of course he didn’t notice when there was a girl standing in the doorway. He crashed into her, his red cordial crashing into his shirt and staining it red. All the images in his mind came to a halt, now he was just standing with a damp shirt, looking at whoever he’d run into. Of course, he knew it was his fault, but there was a much larger chance of pigs flying than there was a chance of him admitting defeat.

Atlas’s left eye twitched ever so slightly, then looked at the girl in front of him with a sarcastic smirk, ‘Well,’ he sighed, licking a drop of cordial that splashed onto his lip, ‘What a wonderful start to the school year.’ He couldn’t help but twitch again when he heard some of the freshman’s laughing behind him, and other students making comments about how his uniform for once, wasn’t perfect. Fortunately for these students, Andrei had ignored those comments and instead focused his attention to the still unmoving meat-suit in front of him.

[Alex Monroe]

Stay, or go, stay or go. Alex was stuck pondering to herself from the doorway, and if stay with whom would she sit? The catgirl shaped boy knew she couldn’t stand here much longer, she was already pretty conspicuous looking so just standing around looking like the obviously new rube that she was really wasn’t going to help her case. still hadn’t come up with a single answer and all she was doing was growing hungrier and hungrier with each passing moment. She’d have to make a decision soon anyways if only so she would not starve.

However she came smashing out of her mental introspectiveness as she felt something smash into her from the side and send her staggering, it was only from her feline grace that she did not drop her food or fall on her face. It was a person; some guy walked into her and almost humiliated her. She growled and turned to confront him saying “Would you watch where-” before trailing off when she saw both how much taller they were and the bright red splotch that was quickly beginning to stain his uniform, her ears went flat and her tail sunk low. “-crap.” She added sounding a little worried.

Without giving it much thought Alex put her tray down at a table a few steps away and grabbed a few napkins and began dabbing at his shirt. This wasn’t going to help, she told herself as the feeling of complete mortification began to wash over her. She was sure that if it wasn’t for herculean effort in keeping their thoughts out (mostly by reciting showtunes in her mind over and over again) that she would be hearing how much the entire school seems to think she is a spaz. She should have left when she had the chance, hell she should have never come to lunch, or this school Alex told herself, she just hadn’t tried hard enough to make adjusting to life like this work at home.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.” She realized she had been saying as she tried to clean him offand froze with a one of the napkins pressed against his chest soaking up the liquid like it was a bullet wound that she was applying pressure on. This was violating so many different personal boundary issues, she realized and let go and backed away, telekinetically holding it in place incase her collider wanted to pick up where she left off.

“I didn’t mean to get in your way, I was just standing here.” She was sounding obviously nervous that one of her first meaningful interactions with someone roughly her age at this school was such a wreck, however even still there was a hint of reproach in her voice as if behind her words was the implication that he was a blind idiot for walking into her and this is all his fault. “I guess you just didn’t see me there because you are so you’re so tall and I’m so….” She trailed off as she realized that she was rambling really still having to crane her neck up so much to actually look him in the eye just sucked, she felt so small now.

[Atlas]

New kid, Andrei reflected as she began to snap at him, but finally turned to see who he was and began to regret her words. It was unclear whether or not she’d cut off mid-sentence because of his status, or his size. Usually if it wasn’t one thing that frightened people, it was the other or maybe just his arrogant nature in general. The chatter continued he knew they were all laughing at him; not that he cared the slightest, with a simple raise of an eyebrow he could send them running with their tails between their legs. Speaking of tails… She had a long cat-like tail and ears protruding from her hair, physical traits of a mutant human. He looked down on her, and then sighed incredibly loudly, rolling his eyes to the roof as she stumbled back up to her feet. Atlas took this opportunity to spin his head around, staring at the group of boys behind him who quickly turned their backs to him and changed the subject.

‘What a wonderful start to the school year,’ he wasn’t sure if he was saying this to the girl, or himself. The drink began soaking to his skin and when Atlas felt the coldness touch his skin, goosebumps erupted over his body. Sighing, he stared into his half-empty cup. ‘Half empty, you never really were the optimist, were you Andrei?’ he tsk’ed at himself. He was about to continue walking out the door until once again his path was blocked, by the same person. The girl was face to face with his chest and was soaking up the liquid with a handful of napkins. He was about to open his mouth to comment, until her hand flew up to his face. He flinched back, but then relaxed as she dabbed at his face. After that, there was no stopping the images running through his mind, fists flying at his face, the memory of blood clouding his vision.

As an attempt to shift his thoughts, he started thinking of something else, more specifically, he started thinking about taking his half-empty cup and emptying its contents on the mutant girl’s head. If he were anywhere but the school, that’s probably what would have happened, then he would have walked away and not given it a second thought, but here the only thing he could think about was his father’s words, ‘Andrei, you’ve spent so long protecting yourself because you were different. My one wish for you is that you open yourself to the others that are like you. Learn from them. Maybe even one day learn how you’ve come to be the way you are.’ At the time, Atlas thought this was just a cheesy comment from a jaded father figure, but now that the man had disappeared for several weeks, he begun to reflect on these words.

‘I didn’t mean to get in your way, I was just standing here,’ she said, with a slight feline sort of accent, ‘I guess you didn’t see me there because you are so tall and I’m so…’ she looked up at him, which was enough of an explanation to the end of that sentence.

‘Whatever kitten, follow me.’ Atlas (is a jerk, lol) nodded towards the entryway and then began walking outside. He didn’t bother looking back to see if she was following him, he wouldn’t be surprised if the first thing she did was run in the opposite direction. People never really did like him; in return he shared the same opinion.

(Sorry kinda crap reply. On another note, I see cordial shots in their near future. THUG LYF!)

[Alex Monroe]

Alex stood there; slightly frozen in place for a second as for the first time she noticed how people were giving this guy a rather wide berth. She was however ignorant to who he was or anything about him really so she was not entirely sure why they we reacting like that. The way he shut the onlookers up though did send a slight chill down her spine to the tip of her tail. People who are nice and understanding and generally mellow are not typically known for being able to do that, Alex told herself. She was starting to suspect that the person who had bumped into her was not the person one would want to just run into.

This was only confirmed when her telepathy picked up on that spur of the moment urge to dump the rest of the drink on her head and instinctively tensed up. Try as she might to keep peoples thoughts out of her head all the time it wasn’t easy, however Alex had gotten mildly used to the general background buzz she of thought-noise she got in public but occasionally one specifically powerful thought from one person tended to pierce that static like a person yelling in a crowded, bustling restaurant. That is what this was, that is what that thought was, just a brief flicker that she had no idea how much, or how little, consideration he was giving to it.

Either way, just in case he was, she had taken a step back and casually and clenched her fist in a rather useless gesture. If he was going to she would simply telekinetically fling it out of his hand. It had never occurred to her to simply shrug and walk away letting this whole matter slide and that would be that, but no she had to stand here and fight if he had challenged her. She would like to have tried to justify that attitude as something involving all her feline traits, that it was out of her control and there was nothing she could do about it, it was just a primal urge. That wasn’t true though, she was just kind of a stubborn bitch sometime.


Alex’s eyes went wide in surprise and the fur on her tail bristled and swished behind her in surprise as she realized he called kitten. Was he trying to be cute? Or funny? Or did he think she would be okay with being called that. If that was the case he had made a serious error in judgment. Her eyes narrowed as he compounded things by barking orders at her to follow him. She didn’t follow at first out of a mix of spite allowing him to get several feet ahead of her. She wanted to just say screw it and let him wander off and just go eat outside or something instead but he had gotten under her skin with the kitten comment and she wanted to at least have a chance to give as good as she got. So with a frustrated noise that was one part sigh and one part growl Alex stomped off after the tall boy with an overly important sense of himself.

"Where are we going?" She asked him.

Today was really turning out to be a great first day of school for Alex.

[Atlas]

It seemed that the girl was slowly putting things together, as she looked around the room at the staring boys. So she didn’t know him. The girl begun to tense up and distanced herself a bit more, seemingly noticing something. That’s when he noticed it; it was something about her eyes, about the way she held herself. She was trying to keep herself distracted from something, she seemed to possess a lot of the traits Atlas did when he was trying to keep his mind focused on one thing. Could she have the same thing? Despite the fact the school was filled with unique humans and humans with strange abilities, he’d never thought to see if any of them had shared the same powers as he did. It’d been a long time since he’d had any time to think about these things in the first place; his mind was so set on hiding his powers that he never thought to find someone who shared them.


Andrei kept walking, then after a few seconds started to hear footsteps other than his, so she’d followed. For once, he heard her say something except for apologies and muttering, where are we going? Obviously she hadn’t been subject to any of the school gossip, was she anti-social or something? Now that he thought about it she did seem kind of weird (well as weird as a supernatural human could get), standing in the middle of the doorway staring into space and all. ‘Haven’t you heard? We’re going to the pit of doom, it’s where I take the unknowing students and feed off their souls.’ He chuckled, almost sounding like a mad scientist. ‘The student council; we’re going to the student council offices.’ If the plan really was to feed off people’s souls then he’d be horrible at luring in the victims. Luckily for him, his power source was coffee and cordial shots, as well as the occasional energy drink.


‘Well you passed the first test, you didn’t run. Most kids would be half-way across the campus cowering in their dorm rooms by now,’ He smiled much alike a Cheshire cat, thinking of all the ‘tough boys’ reduced to tears, ‘Anyway, who are you?’ he queried. Atlas turned to look at her for a moment, admiring the lime grass and cobblestone paths. It really was a work of art, the school, that is, the modern buildings, the dorms, the technology. It was his first safe haven, the first time he actually had a task to set his mind to, the first time he could walk more than ten metres without immediately trying to find an emergency escape route… just in case. Although these moments weren’t common; it was the first time in a long time that Andrei felt a little bit of pleasure because of other’s good fortune. That fortune being the fact that they could live without fear, for a little while, at least.

It wasn’t long until the door was a few steps away, it was mahogany with steel-framed windows, with an oddly-shaped steel handle. On one of the windows, there was black text that clearly spelled out, ‘Student Council’, his fingers wrapped around the handle, and he swung it open. The first then you notice when you walk into the student council room; the air-conditioning that felt like it was set to Antarctica mode. He held the door open for a moment, gesturing for her to step in. After a moment the sound of a television began to drift outside, the news; he never bothered to turn it off. Andrei could never help but relax a little bit whenever he got to the council room; the stark white walls, the stacks of paper on the desk and the smell of old books drifting around in the air. Sometimes he’d even just… sleep there, when he didn’t want to go back to his dorm room and deal with sharing a room with PB.

[Alex Monroe]

She didn’t have to be a telepath to know that he was pulling her leg about this alleged doom-pit or whatever it was he was talking about, but she was and she just expressed her doubt through an eye roll and a doubtful grin. Though she was a telepath so she immediately knew that was not the truth. However she was kind of confused as to rather or not he meant for her to know that, the laugh didn’t help much either. The cat eared girl couldn’t quite figure out if he was punctuating his joke with a cheesy laugh or if he was actually trying to sound sinister… and failing in a gloriously awkward way that seemed to diffuse just about everything intimidating about him. “Oh…” She said as he finally told her they were going to the student council room, briefly accepting the answer as satisfactory before realizing it still didn’t’ answer a thing. “Waitaminute… Why are we going there?” All things considered it seemed like a pretty reasonable question to her.

“I’m not easily scared off,” she told him as he commended her on apparently following him. It may have been a weird thing to say form someone who had almost peed herself trying to build up the courage to find a spot to sit at a table but it was true. Really as nervous as she was about today and uncomfortable she was walking around in front of people looking like this she wasn’t intimidated, and after the year she had had someone would have to try very hard to actually intimidate her enough to cause her to run away. “Who am I?” Alex repeated the question back to him; it was a surprisingly complicated question to answer. She barely knew who she was anymore; it was a strange sensation to not recognize the person in the mirror in the morning and yet it had been Alex’s lot in life now. In her shoes what kind of person would care about what some giant of a boy was saying and doing? “, Not named kitten that’s for sure.” She said glibly before adding, “I’m Alex didn’t you read the badge.” She pointed at her vest placing her finger right under her name.

It was just after that that they arrived at the council room and the boy opened the door for her, gesturing her in. She looked at him wearily for a second. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about having some boy hold a door open for, no matter how innocuous his reasons were. That’s something you do for a girl when you are trying to be gentlemanly and she already had the cold air emanating form the room reminding her that she was anatomically female at the least, she didn’t need him treating her that way. Still after a couple of seconds of hesitation she stepped through the door and shudder, it was even colder in here and for a brief second she zoned out as she was reminded of her time locked up naked in that cell for all those weeks. She never thought that she would be glad that she actually wearing her uniform, and actually regretting skimping on the panty hose. “Soooooooo we’re here.” Alex snapped herself back to reality and turned to look at the freakishly tall freak-boy. “It’s your turn, who are you and why are we here again?” She cocked her head in an inquisitive and cat like manner at him as she waited for an answer, her ears fully perked up and tail swaying rhythmically behind her.

[Atlas]

Alex, Alex... 'I like kitten better, it suits you,' Andrei finally decided, stepping into the room and letting the door close behind him. 'Andrei Lavrov, they call me Atlas. I'm the...' he cleared his throat, 'one of the student prefects, we've been instructed to welcome any of the new students.' his Russian accent seemed more apparent when he mentioned his name. He smiled at her; but it didn't quite reach his eyes. Actually, he'd dumped the introductions onto Paige, so Andrei wasn't really the type of person to exchange niceties. There was something about this girl that made him want to find out more, she reminded him of himself in an eerie way. ¬ Atlas pointed to the couch and sat down at his desk, which was covered in neat piles with different labels.

Waiting for her to sit down, he turned his laptop on and opened up the student database. His fingers tapped lightly on the keys, fast enough that a person would almost get a bit dizzy if they concentrated for a second too long. Finally, he found her name, she was indeed a new student, she hailed from the US, a sophomore, but this wasn't quite the things that Atlas was looking for. Finally he found it; Telepathy and Telekinesis. Spinning around on his chair to face the lounge chair, he couldn't help but feel a little bit disappointed. What had he even been expecting? Now he wasn't exactly too sure about that. 'How are your classes?' he asked (more like sighed, he might as well be getting something out of this experience. Unfortunately for him, a part of his job was to evaluate student comments on teachers, classes, boarding issues, etc. 'And your room? If you have any special requests you can just ask your boarding mistress.' he added, some of the students had been sent to his office in a state of tears.

That was one thing that seemed to always been an issue; homesickness. As a person who'd basically raised himself his entire life; Andrei never really understood it. Every time a teacher didn't want to deal with an emotionally unstable student, they somehow ended up on his couch. His response to these things were often; this isn't a therapy couch, get over it, which caused more than a few students to leave the school, so after that the other prefect had taken over most matters involving boarding students. He somehow one way or another makes every student he comes in contact with hate him... Except for one, but it was more of a love-hate kind of thing. Atlas rose from his chair, his eyes scanning the room, finally his eyes locked onto the stark white shirt that was thrown over another couch.

Walking over to the shirt, he suddenly got an idea, 'So, my dear. Tell me about your gifted class, and your power, tell me about your power,' you could hear the tone of mischievousness in his voice, he wasn't really one to hide his tone unless it was necessary. His fingers started to unbutton his shirt and he pulled it off, then grabbed the other shirt and pulled it on. Turning around, he began walking towards the couch and buttoning up the new shirt; throwing the old one over the wheelie chair. When he got to the leather couch, he sat next to the cat-girl, crossing one leg over the other and staring at her intently. Obviously he didn't seem fazed by the fact that he just changed in front of a girl, he was never the kind of person to understand social limits and such.(Oh god Andrei, you creepy, creepy child.)

[Alex Monroe]

Alex’s ears twitched with displeasure as he told her he preferred to call her kitten. It was tempting to fulfill that urge to give this guy a Vader style choke with just his mind, or maybe make his mind forget that it needs to blink. No, she shook her head, she was reasonably sure that kind of thing would get her kicked out of school, and where would she go then? She would just have to endure it if he insists on calling her kitten, besides it was a reasonably big school anyways after today she could do her best to simply avoid him. Or, in an unlikely scenario Alex could just develop a thick skin and learn to ignore it, but that was likely to happen as learning to accept being a girl.

Still she listened to him as he introduced himself and explained why he was here. So this just wasn’t him trying to annoy her or anything he was just acting as a glorified welcome wagon to her. She had to admit though at first she was stunned to hear him explain that he was one of the prefects. Maybe it was just the way they met, with him carelessly smashing into her and staining his shirt and whatever but she had a hard time seeing him as a prefect, or really anyone in a position requiring much responsibility. However as he gestured to her to sit down she started to pick up the slight air of authority that exuded from him. She complied, sitting down in a strangely cat-like manner, shifting her weight around to get comfortable and accommodating for her tail and absently mindedly forgetting that when wearing a skirt a lady should always keep her legs together.

Still she sat there wondering what to do now while Andrei sat there at his desk on his computer. Did he forget she was here? Was he checking his email or something? She frowned at the fact that she as being so easily ignored after being dragged here just too casually sit around while he plays words with friends. She did notice the hint of disappointment creep across his face, and ping through his mind and her interest was piqued for a brief second about that, what had disappointed him so much she wondered and her curiosity was practically screaming for her to give his mind a little poke to find out, but she forced herself not to though there was still that nagging little temptation. Fortunately for Andrei’s privacy and Alex’s ethics he seemed to finally remember she was there and started asking her a bunch of questions.

“Well mister…” She cleared her throat in a mockingly similar manner to what he did earlier; it was her way to needle him back for the kitten remarks. “Classes are… classes,” She shrugged to him, she only had a couple classes so far today and they were perfectly fine nothing truly remarkable in them or anything. Then again they were not offensively bad either so that’s at the very least fine. “They’re fine and everything. My room is nice too.” Alex did have to admit to herself if they were having this conversation this day a year ago she would have probably had something to complain about, wrong kind fo sheets, not having all her stuff in it and so on, it was just the hazard of being filthy stinking rich that you get a bit pampered. However now after the kind of year she had had the fact that her dormates are not a bunch of cockroaches that she tried very hard not to name because she knew eventually she was going to have to eat them, and the fact she didn’t have to poop in a hole in the floor made her dorm not just four stars to her but like four hundred stars.

Then things got weird, Andrei took his shirt off and Alex’s eyes went wide and seemed to get locked to his surprisingly in shape torso and felt a blush creep across her face and a strange fluttery feeling in her stomach. It felt weird, very weird. She coughed and shifted uncomfortably again in on the couch doing her best to pay attention to everything else in anything else in the room but his strangely taught torso. She counted the paneling on the ceiling, the pains of the window, tried to figure out what wood Andrei’s desk was made out of played with the little ribbon-tie thing. Oh god she realized was she attracted to this boy? This was an epiphany that made Alex want to swan dive out the window.

As he sat down next to her, with this weird expression that almost made Alex think that he was the mind reader, not her and she could not bring herself to make eye contact with him. “Da-uh-a-buh-da-uh-uh.” Her tongue was thoroughly tied. “He-they’re fine, fine, never had a class like that before, it was very interesting.” Well she sort of the god mad doctor that gave her these powers was constantly testing them and her limits with them but this was a bit more casual and a tad more constructive than feeding Alex drugs and withholding food for her. “I’m a psychic.” She told him and that was all she really mentioned at this point, because she was feeling a little too uncomfortable right now with herself and this whole situation. That and it seemed in her experience the moment she mentions specifically they can read their minds they immediately think about all the things one would never want to think about. Amount of times she has seen people imagining her naked…

[Atlas]

She seemed a bit uncomfortable with his closeness, but then began to answer his drilling. She obviously wasn’t a motor mouth; everything she said was kept to the bare minimum. Of course he couldn’t talk, Atlas wasn’t exactly mute, he talked, he just chose not to most of the time. Even from a young age, he’d prefer to sit in the back of the classroom and read books about romance and adventure rather than go play with the other kids. Not that the other kids would let him; they always thought he was weird. He never understood social limits from the day he was born; people would rather cast him out of their social group instead of trying to understand him. Maybe it was because he never tried to seem normal in the first place, but it’s not like he minded. Books and comic books were all he needed. When he was young he used to think that one day he’d save the world like all the superheroes in the books. Then he learned that all of these powers were more of a curse than anything else. People were more likely to hail him with bullets rather than cheer him on for saving people’s lives using a supernatural ability.

Andrei looked closely at the girl; wondering if she’d ever experienced anything like that. He was doubtful; it was rare any kid at the school ever had been doubted. If they did; they’d just end up murdering their parents. Some of the students did seem a bit dark at time, there was no doubt that every Nakaumi kid had a story to tell, whether it be a sob story, a happy story, or a dark story. But most of them had understanding parents which just thought their children were geniuses and such. She began to speak, then noticing how close he’d leaned into her, he pulled away, facing forward. The leather squeaked underneath him as he made himself comfortable. He-they’re fine… her voice seemed to quiver a bit at the start of her sentence. He raised an eyebrow at her, but made no move to comment on her tone. I’m a psychic, she said, without giving any other detail. Andrei turned his head and smiled at her, inspecting her expression and body language. It was subtle; but you could tell that her body was ready to leap out of her seat at any second, like a cat ready to pounce.

‘Oh? A psychic?’ he repeated, turning his head away from her and inspecting his nails, ‘So am I…’ he replied. Of course it wasn’t a lie, but it just left out a lot of information. Andrei’s eyes danced around the room; that was his one feature he couldn’t help be extremely vain about… his eyes. Most people thought they were contacts, and called him a liar if he denied it. The colour was divided in half, on the top was a pink colour, and on the bottom two shades of blue. They used to be plain blue when he was younger, but as his powers developed, his eyes did too. With every blink he could feel his long eyelashes brushing against his cheeks; they felt heavy. Insomnia didn’t exactly have a positive effect on people’s everyday life. It seemed that even when he did asleep all he did was relive unwanted memories from the past, memories that were best left in the depths of the far corners of his mind. ‘Sometimes I wish I wasn’t,’ he mumbled under his breath. He didn’t really mean to say it, but the thought kind of slipped out of his mouth.

It was rare that he’d ever let anyone know anything this personal about him; anything that he truly thought. He didn’t know why he chose this girl, at this time to open his mouth to. Even with his parents, Andrei had never been open, it was just the way he was. It was a part of his curse, everything he thought, everything he saw, felt, was just filed away in his mind, ready to be opened for a later date or just left gathering dust. But sometimes it was like his mind was a computer that had been taken over by a virus, files would pop up without his consent, he would be forced to view them. Other times it could work to his advantage, being able to access things with great ease... for the most part it had a negative impact. His mind worked too fast to let him sleep; he laid awake at night with his mind calculating possible outcomes of… everything and anything. It was like it wasn’t even his mind; like a demon had possessed him and decided to wreak havoc from the inside out, ‘Why do we exist?’ his eye twitched again, which was either the result of sleep deprivation, frustration, or excessive caffeine and sugar intake. Knowing Andrei; it was probably D), all of the above.

[Alex Monroe]

Alex stared at Andrei for a moment trying to gauge his reaction to her telling him she was a psychic. Whether or not he was pleased, excited, put off, intimidated, impressed, or fascinated by this revelation she was not sure. She was just happy that he wasn’t immediately trying not to think about his deepest, darkest, dirtiest sexual fetishes, and invariably doing just that. However he didn’t do that, which was nice and refreshing, it always happened no matter if she vaguely alluded to being able to read their minds. If he wasn’t doing that though what was he thinking right now? It was completely tempting to just take a little poke in his mind to get all her answers that way. But she wouldn’t, she knew that it would be way too easy to do more that way, find out more about him, find out what is really up with him and everything yet she knew that was a terrible invasion of his privacy. So she just bit her lip and forced the urge down. There would be no going the easy way out with this sort of thing, if she did it to him then what would stop her for doing that to other people pretty soon she would be poking around in anyone’s mind and that just had a twinge of megalomania to it that Alex wanted to try and avoid.

“Oh really?” Alex said raising an interested eyebrow at Andrei as he revealed he was psychic too. She was pretty surprised by that, she had yet to meet another student at this school with the same power set as her, though she had up until this point exchanged maybe three dozen words with an amount of people that could just barley not be counted on one hand. So for all she knew this school could be overran with telepathic people, then again she would have probably picked up on that with her own mind or something right? Alex had no idea this was all unfamiliar territory for her. Perhaps she should ask someone, someone that was not a Russian prefect who had no qualms about getting half naked in front of new girls.

Then he vocalized what she was always thinking, that she wished she wasn’t a psychic. She just stared at him for a moment, initially with a blank awkward expression unsure how to really react before it evolved into a more sympathetic expression. She felt that way almost all the time, she hated the constant pounding headaches, and always hearing about other people’s self-absorbed-self-reflection all the damn time. But it was more than that, she hated her body too, she hated how she looked, she was a boob man before but now that she had her own impressive pair they just seemed far more trouble than they are worth. It was all so demystifying. “Tell me about it.” She added rather lamely to him, “I hate always hearing what people are thinking. And pants… you ever try and buy pants with a tail?” It wasn’t fun that was for sure.

It was a feeble attempt to relate to him, she knew that, buts he had always been really bad at this sort s of things. The irony wasn’t lost to her though, the girl that always knew how people felts, what they were thinking and everything have no idea how to relate sympathetically with someone and even now rather or not it was working she had no idea. But Andrei did have to go and get existential on her asking why they were here. She was a freaking sophomore at a high school; those questions were way above her pay grade. Then again she did know why she was here, at the school specifically. Because a mad man wanted to play god and make her pay for her fathers’ slights of him, she wasn’t going to tell him that however. For one it was none of his business and would just lead to more questions than she was willing to answer, and another it probably wasn’t’ applicable to him in anyway.

“I… don’t know,” Alex shrugged. “I guess we are just here because we are here and it is no use worrying about anything more than that.”

[Atlas]

The prefect smiled, sensing the slight curiosity in her tone of voice. Andrei continued listening to her, it was a familiar concept; not being able to shut things out. ‘Well being a man is kind of like having a tail too? If you think about it,’ the second he said it, he realised how offensive that must be to a woman. He was too used to hanging around other men, talking to a woman for him was unfamiliar territory; his mother kind of ruined women for him for all eternity. Plus he’d never really had a conversation with a female for this long amount of time since before his father had left him. And what was he? Like five when that happened? He tapped on his leg out of habit, staring at nothing in particular. Despite the fact that he was nearly completely socially retarded, he could still sense the slight awkwardness in the air between the two.


‘I guess we are just here because we are here and it is no use worrying about anything more than that.’ The girl answered his question, despite the fact he wasn’t really expecting much of an answer. No use worrying about it? He’d been spending almost his entire life asking himself why it was him, and not somebody else that had to deal with this. Somewhere deep inside him he believed that there was a God that had some kind of master plan for him but that might just be wishful thinking on his behalf. Her words seemed like a final statement to end the subject, but somehow he couldn’t let it go. Now that he was in his philosophical state of what is life, he wouldn’t get out of it for a while.


‘Do you believe in God?’ he couldn’t help but ask her, ‘Do you believe that everything we are He intended, or do you believe we’re creations of the devil and He hates us?’ he honestly thought it was the first one, if they were the creations of evil the population of supernatural humans would’ve wiped out the human population by now. Shaking the idea out of his head, he quickly amended the question, ‘Never mind, okay, read my mind,’ he turned his entire body towards her, causing intense leather squeaking. Despite the fact he tried not to think about something weird, he could tell that it was coming soon. His eyes darted around the room, but there was no doubt that everything would lead to this thought in the end.


It was the result of Alex’s skimpy uniform and his deep shrouded sexuality, but somehow he managed to start thinking about the other prefect posing sexually in the girl’s school uniform. Well, that escalated quickly, he couldn’t help but think. At attempt to forget thinking about that slightly disturbing (yet satisfactory) mental image he started to chant in his mind, dead babies, dead babies, dead babies. ‘If you ever were tapping in, now would be a good time to zone out,’ he told her, blood rushing to his cheeks as he avoided eye contact. ‘Let’s just pretend that never happened,’ he added. Putting his hand over his mouth, he coughed to hide his smile, for once a smile that reached his eyes. He was working on his next prank to play on PB, something to do with a girl’s dress, maybe?


‘Hey, do you have any spare uniforms?’ Andrei laughed under his breath, silently wondering if she would get the joke. Okay, maybe it was a joke, somewhere deep inside himself he was silently serious about playing this out. Which made him kind of think that he was an act of evil instead of holiness; there was no way in hell (oh, the irony) that any man of God would want to play out such an act (of sin?). ‘I’m going to hell, there’s no doubt about it,’ he laughed, throwing his head to the sky. A lifetime of fun and an eternity of pain; or was it the other way around for his kind? If only there was some kind of dimension machine he could use to find the answers to all of these questions; unfortunately life was never that simple.

[PB]

(A wild PB suddenly appears to ruin things by turning this RP into a three-way! What!? Damn it PB!)

Paige rushed down the empty hall of the offices, hands, and mouth, full of various things; books, coffee, paper bags. He struggled to rearrange everything to allow himself to grab his phone which was currently buzzing harshly against the back pocket against his pants. He grabbed the phone and answered the call, pressing the device to his ear as he gripped the handle to the door labelled ‘student council’.

“Hewo?” He answered to the phone, the bag still in his mouth as he swung the door open and walked in, not even noticing that there was another person in the room. Paige hurried over to one of the large wooden desks and dropped the back out of his mouth.

“Yes I was going to go check that out later today, I’d do it sooner but I don’t really have time…Yeah I guess I could go talk to him… Really? At that hour, that’s a little late don’t you think?” He placed the rest of the papers down onto the desk and rested his hand on his hip, taking the phone back into his other hand again. “Okay fine I’ll see what I can do, look I gotta go, I’ll call you later.”

Paige ended the call and shoved the phone back into his pocket. He grabbed a bunch of papers he had placed messily on the desk and began filing through them, grabbing a few sheets he needed before placing the pile back onto the desk and walking over to a filing cabinet, opening the draw and placing the paper into a file.

“Andrei it would help if you answered my calls, surely you aren’t too busy, or was your phone on silent again…” The prefect spoke without bothering to look at his partner, “I’ve been rushing around all morning, it would have been nice to have some help. Anyway I got some coffee, and, Im not too sure, I think it’s a bunch of pastries, I wasn’t really looking when I grabbed them.” He waved his hand over towards the carton of drinks and the paper bag.
“Did you get the spare T-shirt? I came in earlier and put it on the chair over there.”

He looked over at the chair he was referring to, noticing the clean shirt he had dropped off was missing, the stained one across on one of the computer chairs, walking over, he grabbed the shirt and pulled it up, looking at the stain and giving a giggle, “Wow! So who’s the dipshit who did this? You or- HOLY CRAP!”
Paige turned to around to speak to Andrei, only to be harshly greeted with a foreign face. Paige clutched the shirt against his chest, gripping tightly onto the chair behind him, breathing heavily from shock. “Andrei…It really would have been nice of your to Tell me there was someone else here! Geez I have to watch my tongue around you, Who’s this? I didn’t see you as one to pick up girls, especially in the student council room, wait I haven’t seen this young girl before, is she-?” He looked at Andrei and then to the girl, his eyes lit up and he rushed over to her, sitting down on one of the seats next to her and reaching his hand out towards her, “Hi! Im Paige Bellemare! You must be new!”