The New York division of the Audubon X Society meet every Tuesday night, on the second floor of Java Jimmy's.

"We used to meet at the Full Circle bookstore. Good bird watching, you know? But the Feds seized the place a few weeks back. Total racist BS. Want to sign the petition to reopen it?"

"Sure," Jiri said, and followed the other young man.

Java Jimmy's was run by a mutant. The kind of mutant who wasn't afraid about keeping his power a secret and fitting in; the kind who'd realized he could turn a profit by making his mutation into a spectacle. The eponymous Jimmy was a big guy, tall and broad. Maybe Jamaican. It was hard to tell under the bark that had grown over his skin, but he certainly acted the part, totally playing up the accent.

The coffee house was two stories, with a circular hole set in the middle of the second floor. Through the center of the shop grew the largest, happiest coffee bush he'd ever heard of. Red coffee cherries hung from it in unnatural abundance. Every morning, with opening fanfare, Jimmy threw open the doors of his store and made the tree bloom. By night, the berries were ready for harvesting. Regulars said the taste changed a little, every day. Java Jimmy's was a trendy place, aimed at hipsters and locavores. It didn't get more home grown than this.

Jiri found himself sitting in a comfy pleather chair, in a circle of excitedly talking geeks, signing his name to a paper petition to reopen a book store he'd never set foot in. There was an empty seat open next to him, still, and maybe twelve people gathered here altogether.

The guy who had steered him to the circle of chairs stood, and cleared his throat. He was a lanky fellow in his late twenties, with a thick beard growing halfway down his plaid shirt. "All right, guys--"

One of the two girls cleared her throat. "Ahem."

"And gracious ladies. Welcome to the--" A quick glance at the mac book open on the table in front of him; "--53rd meeting of the New York Audubon X Society. We've got some new members tonight, so welcome them, and please don't bite. Umm. So, let's start by comparing notes. Anyone spotted any cool birds this week? And I'm just going to remind everyone, again, of the first rule of bird watching: pics or it didn't happen."

A balding man in his late forties raised his hand, and pushed a pair of wire frame glasses up his nose. "I, uh, it's a little blurry, but I spotted Cold Steel." The man pressed buttons on his smart phone for a second, then started showing the screen to the people around him.

"Oooo," came the appreciative sound effects, as the phone passed around the circle.

"Shirtless," one of the girls said. "Nice. You're putting that on the forums, right? For... research purposes."

Aubudon X wasn't a bird watching group. It was a mutant spotting club. Jiri was here to ask questions about mutants, in a place were people would be excited to answer them, where the whole super powers thing was just a glorified stamp collecting game.

It all started with an old camera and a hippie blogger, on a certain Tuesday morning. Conversation tumbled from behind a pair of round, blood tinted shades- bus routes, an extraordinary view of mutants in their natural habitat, bird watching.

"They what?"

And that was how Margo found herself in attendance at the 53rd meeting of the New York Audubon X Society, sprawled in a comfy pleather armchair and laughing her head off at the audacity of these people, who would make a hobby out of watching mutants, of all things. And where better to meet than Java Jimmy's, a two story hipster heaven with an actual coffee bush growing through the roof? You had to admit it was pretty awesome. The girl had complimented Jimmy on her way in, stopping to snap a couple pictures of the place.

Because, you know, Audubon X had an extensive online presence. The forums and blogs were her whole reason for being here, according to her cover. She was 100% human tonight, here to be a smart-ass and have fun.

She made small talk within the circle, signed a petition to reopen the Full Circle Bookstore, and ooh-ed and ahh-ed for effect with the rest of them. She neglected to mention the fact that she stayed at the same place Cold Steel did, instead offering to see what she could do with the picture. A couple of her own photos made their way around the circle, while she listened curiously as the others documented their adventures.

The boy seated to her left was looking a little lonely, Margo noticed. He seemed nice enough- quiet, but at least he wasn't outfitted in plaid, facial hair, peace signs, and oversized glasses, like the rest of the group. She gave him points for that.

"Hey, you spot any cool birds?" she asked, by way of a conversation starter.

It was a little creepy how many of the photos were of his classmates. There was the white tiger shifter from his English class, and Susan the crazy gargantuan monster girl, who he'd 'helped' give a tour to, along with a few other faces he recognized but couldn't name. Other pictures were set all over the city--a blurry man in flight, a guy with metal skin standing in line at the bank, a woman with six arms juggling in central park. Crazy stuff. Jiri stared at each picture that passed his way with more than casual interest, and tried to wrap his head around the excited stories that came with some of them. He was 99% sure he was awake right now, because he didn't think his subconscious could come up with half of this stuff.

The girl next to him leaned over, started talking. She looked about his own age. From her exotic hints around her eyes, he'd guess she was a mix of something Asian, just like his own features made it clear he had middle eastern blood. Where he had been silently gawking and listening, she'd been laughing and socializing, clearly at ease with being here. Probably a regular member, he figured.

He froze at her question, flushing just a little bit at the unexpected attention from a girl he'd normally have to work up a bit of swagger e to talk to. He was just about the only one who hadn't shared yet. He hadn't even thought to until she'd brought it up. His first meeting, he'd pretty much planned to sit quiet and listen. He took out his phone, started flipping through his photos.

"I, ah, spotted a purple guy. And a dog." All right, that second part sounded lame, even to him. He hurried to explain. "The dog talked in a British accent. In retrospect, I should have taken a video. But I didn't really think I'd be showing it off to anyone. Kind of came here on a whim tonight."

A whim that had involved agonizing over the Audubon X online forum for the better part of the week, stalking posts, haunting their chat room to figure out whether they were a bunch of crazies. They were. They totally were, but it was the benign kind of crazy, just like real bird watchers. 

He found the photo, and handed over the phone. The picture showed a teenage boy with purple skin out sunbathing, and a golden retriever, apparently barking at him with its head cocked at a sophisticated angle. He'd taken it to text home for his little sister. The five year old's favorite color this week was purple.

To anyone in the know, the picture was obviously set on the Mansion grounds. But then, so were a lot of the pictures being passed around--apparently Xavier's was a bird sanctuary, as far as this group was concerned.

"Have you been bird watching long?" He asked, trying to get a feel for her, and why the heck normal humans would fangirl over this stuff.

Margo raised an eyebrow in appreciation of the picture, but shushed the boy nonetheless. "Careful, or Walt over there's going to accuse you of copying him," she warned, nodding in the direction of the rainbow-hued tattoo monster, whose own rendition of a canine Brit (or was it the other way around?) was, indeed, attracting much attention.

"...So it said 'woof' just as prim and proper as her Majesty, and I was totally like 'bro can I take a pic with your dog?' cuz I'd already taken one with him..."

She grinned at and rolled her eyes at the boy, as if to say the antics of this circle were unbelievable. They were, and that was precisely the reason the girl made such a point of participating in them to her full extent.

"No. Uh, actually, yes." She shrugged in reply to his question, then laughed as she hurried to amend herself. "Yes, but not in the way you're thinking. None of this," with a sweep of her arm to indicate the gathering, "is so much my thing as photography. I've actually done quite a bit of bird watching in the past- as in, birds with feathers and beaks, of course. Photographing people is a different thing altogether, and, well, specials are so photogenic, you know?"

And there was Margo's proof, that the insanity of the place was rubbing off on her. Because having an X-gene totally produced a photogenic effect, which was totally why physical mutants, looking like gargoyles, got so much hate. The way she said it, though, it sounded almost believable.

"So, what exactly made you want to come tonight?" Her fingers skimmed over the laptop in front of her as she spoke, pulling up links to the online forums, searching for some pictures of her own for emphasis of that ridiculous point. "I mean, not that I don't understand the coming on a whim. Sort of did that myself."

Jiri obligingly slide his phone back into his pocket so other curious folks couldn't see. The tatt-man seemed much more pleased with his photo-capture than Jiri felt; there was no need to steal the man's thunder. Going by what he could hear, it had probably been the same guy-and-dog pair that he'd come across.

"Specials?" Jiri asked dumbly. A second later, it clicked, and he flushed. "Oh. Like... the purple guy? And people with bat wings, and crazy shii--stuff?"

Specials. Well wasn't that just... special. Jiri didn't know if it was a term used widely outside of the bird watchers here, but he didn't have any desire to say it to a special's face. Still, he guessed that attitude towards them was... better? She made it sound like seeing one of them, getting a shot at a photo op, was a treat. Personally, he questioned how good it was for his heart when he rounded a corner in the Mansion and bumped a giant scaled lizard-mutant in the back. Better to think happy thoughts, he guessed.

He leaned over curiously as she started pulling things up on her laptop. "So what do you do with the photos? Just post them online, show them off around here? Or are you trying to be, like, a pro photographer?" Were there such things as 'pro mutant photographers'? He flashed a grin. "You could set up a studio, specialize in senior pics for mutants. There's got to be a market for that." 

He momentarily froze when she asked why he'd come. Umm.

Ummmmm.

Stick as close to the truth as possible?

"To be honest?" Jiri said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Not really to share photos. I mean they're cool and all, but bird watching--feathers or not--isn't really my thing. But, well, I'd been looking up mutant info online, and it seems like you guys know a lot about them. I know all those mockumentary 'The Native Habitat of the Common Cold Steel' posts on the boards are just jokes, but it's like, there's a lot of good information in there, too. There was this kid at my high school last year. Totally normal, looked normal, was on the same soccer team as me. He figured out he was a mutant, right before summer break. And it's like... he didn't even know. It was kind of freaky. Got me wondering how powers and stuff really works. I guess I came here to ask questions."

"What got you into special bird watching?" He asked, with a cheeky grin.

Senior pics for mutants? Margo grinned at the suggestion as she constructed a hasty slideshow from the pictures she'd managed to scrounge up. He had her (well...whoever she was supposed to be tonight...) right on the money. "All of the above, actually," she replied in an offhand manner. She barely glanced away from her screen, but raised an eyebrow, as if to say, duh! "Come on, we're sitting in the beginning of that market now."

She actually froze for a moment as the implications struck her, of a market like that. It had been a joke, of course, a ridiculous idea. But in the midst of this circle, in this shop with a freaking coffee bush growing through the roof, anything was possible... why not? And that was proof #2 of the crazy rubbing off on her- it wasn't like she was here to start a business or anything, just to have fun. It wasn't like she could think of mutants as a profit.

We aren't that different, Margo almost wanted to blurt out as the boy told his story. Something in her went out to his friend who hadn't known. She wouldn't have figured out about herself, either, had it not been for Lucy; she knew too well what it felt like to have everything you'd thought to be sure of torn away from you (it sucked). A pity that tonight she would be stuck 100% human and 100% oblivious.

"I see. Can't say anybody really understands how those powers and stuff work, but there's no better place to find out than here, eh? Ask away." She angled the computer screen so he could better see it. "In the meantime, an abridged illustration of how I got into 'special' bird watching..."

"...Ta-da!"

Dozens of photos of birds came together on the screen to form a collage, the foremost (one of her better shots) of which depicted something like a red tailed hawk- Ace might be no more than the product of a nifty mutation, but the boy couldn't know that. "So how did I come from that feathered hobby-" click, and the picture changed to that of a griffin boy "-to this one? Well, long story short, I live down the street from Xavier's-" click, "-this bird sanctuary here, and it's pretty hard to miss the guys with the cameras. That's how I heard about the club. As for the pictures-" click, a collage of featherless birds this time, "Well, as I said. They are photogenic."

Something crossed her face as he told the story of his friend. Like she was about to say something, maybe; express some sympathy.  Whatever it was, she decided against it. 

"Very cool," Jiri said approvingly, as he looked through the photos. The hawk looked almost familiar--he had that same intensity to him that Ace'd had in the dream. Must be a hawk thing. As they flipped, he hazarded his first real question of the evening. 

"What do mutants do to train their powers, and stuff? I mean, you get all these pictures of mutants doing crazy awesome things, like making giant sculptures, or making Central Park bloom. But that can't be how they started. What do they do to figure things out, when two months ago they didn't even know they could do anything?"

...She lived down the street the street from Xavier's. She took photos there. Like, a lot. And frequently. And he recognized a lot of the students in them, though he didn't know them by name. Just people he'd seen in the halls, and a few who were stuck in summer school like he was.

She lived down the street from Xavier's. She was going to see him there, sooner or later, it was just a matter of time.

But she hadn't seen him yet. So... so he should just play this cool, right? He'd barely stepped outside of his room this week, never mind going were people outside the Mansion could photograph him. If she did catch him there, he could just apologize, explain he wasn't comfortable outing himself in front of a room of x-nerds.

(Oh god, people were going to try to photograph him if they saw him on the lawn. Was there going to be a whole message chain on the forums, speculating on his powers? He'd seen those, for other mutants. He'd thought they were funny. For other mutants. It suddenly did not seem funny at all.)

"Not to harp on your hobby," Jiri wiped suddenly sweaty palms off on his pants. "But are the mutants okay with being photographed like this? I know some people ask permission. But some... don't. It's it an invasion of privacy to set up camp outside the Mansion wall and snap shots of kids going to class? They're, like, minors. Is that even legal, to take pictures of minors without their consent?" 

It couldn't be legal. Nothing that felt so skeezy when he thought of people doing it to him could possibly be legal.

"The same way everybody else figures things out, I guess." For a guy who'd come here to ask his questions, it wasn't a bad one. Margo shrugged. "How does a musician go from not being able to get a note out of his instrument to performing in front of thousands of people? Practice."

It was true enough; they all did. Some methods were more dangerous than others, but it wasn't like the psychos of the city were restricted to the mutant population, even if there was a larger overlap than the girl cared for. There would always be those who crept out into the city and stabbed people, while others would practice in the secrecy of their own rooms- but it was a mutant's right to study control, they all agreed on that. Even the Mansion offered classes, not that she'd ever felt the need to sign up.

His next series of questions was a blatant objection, however carefully he tried to frame it. It was the last thing she would have expected, tucked, as she was, in a nook at Java Jimmy's and the convictions of a photo-happy member of Audubon X.

"Okay, first off? Just to make things clear, I live down the street from Xavier's and I won't pretend I don't take advantage of that, but I wouldn't- uh, I don't set up camp outside any school, birds or not." Margo felt no need to defend herself, except it bought her time to think. "Never mind. I get what you mean."

She watched his expression, her gaze all soft and cunning edges. "In my book, that would be an invasion of privacy, yes. Have you been reading up on paparazzi cases recently? I think they passed one in California a while back. You'll find that the law is circumstantial and vague about things like this, and it's not half as simple as that anyway. Take our circle, for example, using your case. How many of us would do something like that? It's hard to know. Some of us think all mutants are cool; I, on the other hand, don't care as long as I can get a decent picture. We have ethical standards and such, and so on."

Satisfied that she'd said enough for the moment, she gave the barest hint of a cheeky smile. "What about you and your picture of Mr. Purple and his dog? Where did you take that, and where do you think we should draw the lines?"

"Huh. Practice." He realized belatedly that he sounded way too thoughtful, and doubled down by sagely brushing an invisible goatee, hoping to push things over the line from serious response to incredibly not serious response. "I see, I see. That must be hard, for some of them. I get people like Cold Steel--just practice making ice sculptures. But what do, like, psychics do? Do people just volunteer to have their brains shuffled?"

Not that he was interested. Totally causal question, that.

His other question had hit a nerve. In retrospect, questioning the legality of the club's activities probably wasn't the way to make friends. It was like asking about divorce views on a first date.

It did not surprise him that she'd researched the law behind this, and was apparently keeping tabs on cases that might set a legal precedent. 

It did disturb him that "circumstantial and vague" were apparently the extent to which he was legally protected. So. Never appearing on the front lawn again? Yeah. That was his new plan.

And now she was turning things back on him. Yet another thing he should have seen coming.

Jiri self-consciously tucked his phone away. "Xavier's," he said, slouching a little in his seat, and putting his feet up on the coffee table. She didn't ask if he'd asked for permission first, so he didn't supply that information. It wouldn't have helped his case. "To be honest? I really didn't think about all this legal and ethical stuff until about a millisecond before that came out of my mouth. Sorry. Didn't mean to harp on your hobby. I didn't just kind of took it. But it's not like I'm posting it online, like you--like some of the people in your club do. I guess I'm starting to think that's maybe not cool, if you don't have their permission? It's not like we'r--they're celebrities, or anything."

A little slip up there. He barreled past it, hoping she missed it.

"They're just high schoolers. They're probably too stupid to even choose for themselves until they're adults. High schoolers aren't known for their sound reasoning, as much we'd like to think otherwise."

That 'we' was safe to include himself in.

"Ha, not me." Margo threw out her hands in a dunno kind of gesture, because there was only so much the girl down the street could see of such things. Psychics? He was just determined to make this hard for her. Half truths were lies, and if she'd been Pinocchio, her nose would probably have busted out of the side of this very awesome coffee shop by now. "Seriously, this stuff is the reason New York's so crazy. It's like a giant mutant hub, Hollywood and we're the side show."

For the record, Lucy had volunteered to be the guinea pig. If that even mattered- Margo was far from being an actual psychic, not that people who freaked out at the word "mutant" cared. That was freaking out in the positive sense as well-she was quickly coming to the conclusion that she'd never be able to step foot on the Mansion's front lawn again. Like, ever.

Also like how she should have known not to start a conversation with perhaps the one sane person here, because now he'd raised the topic of mutant privacy and not coolness and stubbornly refused to let it drop. Though his reaction to her probing was priceless- such a little slip of speech that revealed so much.

It would all make sense, if he was a mutant. The story of his normal, oblivious "friend," his curiosity, his unexpected objections to the mutant photos that were all over the web... It was far too early to let down her guard, but she could see where he'd be coming from. She read into his words. Uh-oh, what if someone took a picture of me? I gotta convince them it's not right or else they'll find out.

The boy couldn't know it, but if that were the case they were on the same side. He couldn't know it because he was arguing for himself, whereas she? She was arguing for an ambitious photographer who came into existence on Tuesday nights only.

"I don't mind this so much, your harping on my hobby. Honestly? I'm guilty as charged." A flash of a smile. She watched him put his feet up, continued to watch him but tried to be less intimidating, or whatever made him so self conscious all of a sudden (how could anyone be intimidated by a girl as silly as she made herself to be?) "You're wrong on one point, though; as far as this club is concerned, they are celebrities. The attendance rate of the Cold Steel fan girls are rather high tonight, actually."

Said fangirls' ears literally perked up at the name. Margo winked at them and tapped her keyboard to make it come back to life and spun the screen to show them a snap of the X boss himself. It was a lovely shot of his (rarely clothed but clothed this time!) backside, in fact, featuring what might as well have been an army of ice minions. They lost interest after a couple minutes, and she returned to the conversation.

"...as you just saw, sorry about that. But you don't see them as celebrities, do you? Some mutants are just people to you, like your friend, every bit an unwise high schooler."

The guilty-as-charged smile was both adorable and frustrating. How was he supposed to argue against that, when she was ready to admit that her hobby was wrong but keep doing it anyway? He couldn't seem like he was getting too wound up over it, either, because there was a limit to how much a human who'd casually dropped by this group would care.

Jiri laughed, and leaned back in his chair. Casual as a cucumber. "I guess you're right. I mean, if they really cared, they could just freeze our cameras or something, right?" Right. Or body-swap and make them take stupid selfies until they promised to behave.

...That mental image shouldn't have been half as appealing as it was. Not that he could even do that. Yet. 

She had said mutants needed to practice somehow. Weren't mutant-groupies that stalked people with cameras practically volunteering themselves?

...This was not a good train of thought to follow. It was a little more rationalizing super villain than he was comfortable with. 

"Yeah. I guess I don't see them that way. Most celebrities, they choose it, right? They want to be in movies or TV or whatever, they know what they're getting into. But mutants just wake up one day and it's like, oh hey, I guess this is happening now." Which is clearly how his friend described it to him. Yes.

"Obviously." Margo laughed at the comment, which was all sorts of thoughtless and not half as amusing as the boy seemed to think it was, but that was OK. It was the kind of thing she would have said in his position, and, besides, laughing was good- it meant they were joking around, so she didn't have to feel so bad about making it sound like she didn't care about mutants at all. She did.

At least if he was a mutant like she suspected, she could maybe catch him sometime away from this place and clear things up. If she was lucky, maybe he'd even eventually make his way to Xavier's.

"It's sad but true, yeah," she conceded. Somewhere along the way this debate had become something else entirely, what Margo wasn't sure about- all she knew was that she couldn't do much more than play at arguing against herself. Which she would.

"Personally? I don't think specials are so different from the rest of us, except for their built in special effects, right? Also, believe me." Her gaze lingered on him, and her next words were pointed. "Mutants know what they're getting into, and by mutants I don't just mean the ones with bat ears."

>> "Mutants know what they're getting into, and by mutants I don't just mean the ones with bat ears."

Jiri tried not to raise his hackles. His mutant-defending hackles. He'd been a mutant for, what? A few weeks? He shouldn't have mutant-defending hackles. But seriously.

The Iranian teen put an elbow on the arm of his chair, and leaned in closer. "Let's play devil's advocate. Let's say I was a mutant. And, like, I'd cleverly infiltrated your not-so-secret photography society. Would you still say that to my face?"

Because seriously. No. Just no. How could a mutant--any mutant--'know what they're getting into'? He hadn't even known he was a mutant, not even when crazy things started happening to him. How much worse would that be to wake up with, like, horns? Or with red skin and a salamander tongue? She made it sound like this was some kind of choice, like their x-genes had an off switch, and being camera bait was their hobby.

There was a sort of righteous zeal in his eyes as he leaned forward and proposed a game- a game that Margo was already playing, whether he knew it or not. She was on it in a flash, the answer sharp on her tongue.

"I would." A pause for effect. It would be the easiest thing to ask him now, the way he'd put it, but that would be no fun. She continued instead, all sass and evil tact. "And you would admit I was right, too. Don't get me wrong or anything, I'm not so dumb to think that people get to choose special. But the very fact that you would be here..."

The teen leaned back, and stroked an air goatee.

"Ah, but if I was here and a mutant, then I'd be hiding it in a clever ploy to, ah, figure out what makes you bird spotters tick. As a pretending-to-be-human mutant, I'd have to agree with you to keep my cover, but I totally wouldn't agree."

That was so not why he was here--he just wanted to talk to people who knew about mutants, but who weren't mutants themselves, because it seemed like most of the mutants around the Mansion were pretty far from what he'd call normal. It wasn't, like, a physical thing--a special bird thing. Not to lie, some of those people made him nervous, but it was more like... a cultural thing. A lot of them had been mutants for much longer, and it seemed like for most of them, that meant some kind of horrible traumatizing past. He felt stupid for having to ask questions, when they'd clearly figured things out on their own the hard way.

But if he was a hypothetical mutant coming to this meeting, then he was clearly doing it because he was interested in human things. Because a mutant coming to humans for help sounded even more stupid.

"Clearly," he continued, "I'd be here to change your mind. Convince you that this hobby of yours isn't as victimless as you think. So. If you were a mutant, what would you say to get a bunch of camera-happy photographers to back off?"