Rikke sat in the foyer of the Sanctuary. She picked at the nail polish on her fingers, flicking the shiny specks of black onto the white and gold floor. She'd never stayed at a shelter before, but after a night in this place, she was sure this place was no Sanctuary. Over the night she'd heard two women get into a screaming fight that ended with one of them getting knocked out. Her morning was met with barely warm coffee, 'hot liquids can be used as a weapon' they told her, but warm coffee was better than no coffee, barely. And to make things totally awful, some creeper was following her around the shelter and having very graphic thoughts about her.

After her index finger was out of things to pick at she moved onto the next.

"Hey, honey, you got any cigarettes?" A large guy asked her.

"No." She deadpanned, enough people had asked her for cigarettes all day and night to convince her that there was no way she was going to get nicotine into her system without any creative maneuvering.

The man across the room leered at her.

She recounted to herself the day before. Somehow the gate attendant was projecting her thoughts into Rikke's head. Same with the Williamsburg Bridge, except in that instance Rikke had projected a command into a woman's head. In the construction site with the META and the police officers, she heard the officers thinking. The girl she met at the mutant bar, Valeria, was psychic and seemed to think Rikke was as well. All things pointed to her having some level of telepathic ability. But why now? Her physical mutation was always a part of her life, mutating further at 23 seemed insane to her.

Oh man, I'm gonna make her to gimme some of that mutie *****. I bet she's got crazy horns down there too. Probably ain't got none since she got her mutation, lonely chicks are easy.

Rikke looked up from her chipped nails at the creeper across the room. He'd been following her since she arrived. And based on the latest poetry he'd just thought, he was planning on raping her.

Apparently her glare was interpreted as inviting, the man rose and walked to her sitting far too close for comfort.

"I'm going to make this easy for myself, " She said, "Why don't you get a horse and go live in the mountains where you won't bother anyone."

"What's your name sexy?"

Do exactly what I said. She commanded mentally.

To some surprise the creeper stood up and left out the front doors.

Wonderful. Apparently she had some psychic powers. The only downside was that now she'd been in that perverts head, she felt dirty. The creeper didn't have a decent thought in his head, all of them were perverted and rapey. She peeled a large flake of polish from her middle fingernail and glanced to her right where someone new was coming directly towards her.

After a while of feeling back about her lack of follow-through on her commitments, Juliette had finally managed to carve out some time to visit the sanctuary. Between joining the X-men, helping Doc Prof, and actually having a social life for the first time in a while, time had become a valuable commodity in her life.

Something felt notably different about being back at the Sanc, though. She somehow felt more... Equipped. She had more training, more contacts, and more of an idea of how to react in intense situations. Sure, there weren’t all that many of them at the Sanc, but it was still nice to know that she had the skill under her belt.

Juliette was in the med bay, treating a teen who had come into contact with a rusty piece of metal. She had cleaned and dressed the wound, and then given him a tetanus shot. For that reason, she was glad that he was at the Sanc. Out on the streets, he might not have received the medical care that he needed.

She held the used needle carefully in her hand, and placed it in the hazardous waste box. The lid barely closed on top of it. With a frown, she gave the med bay a good once over with her eyes. Apparently, whomever had been minding it hadn’t been doing a good job of dealing with things once they were finished.

Juliette sighed and picked up the box carefully, holding it out in front of her so there would be no chance of contamination. She walked steadily, making sure that nothing fell from the overflowing container.

She put the box in the back of the car she had borrowed and grabbed a temporary one from the supply closet to go in the med bay. She would have to drop the full one off manually on her way back to the mansion, and bring the other one back when she was able. At least it would give her a reason to come back in a reasonable amount of time.

She felt sort of bad about leaving the Sanc with just a cardboard box for a potentially long period of time, though. She glanced at it and bit her lip as she thought. Maybe Lisa could get her hands on a new one if she was told to. From what she had seen, that woman could do just about anything.

Juliette made her way to the foyer, where Lisa could almost always be found. Strangely enough, there was a distinct lack of well-dressed blonde women in the room. Instead, a man was straight ahead, passing by Juliette with an almost glazed expression.

She glanced at him as he walked past, but said nothing. Possibly a user, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t about to stop him and give him a twelve step pamphlet at that point.

Behind the man, there was a… Woman. Juliette’s expression faltered briefly before she replaced it with a pleasant one. She had seen stranger bodily things during her time as a nurse, but damn, that was a lot of tattoos.

The lack of Lisa or Devon left her to greet the woman and possibly get her settled. She abandoned thoughts of the waste container and held the temporary one at her side.

“Can I help you?” She asked the woman, trying not to stare too much. She couldn’t quite decide what, if anything, was a mutation, and what was aesthetic.

She looked up from her fingernails at the woman sardonically.

"Yeah, I need about a thousand dollar weekly deposit and a place to sleep where I don't have to worry about fights or creepers watching me sleep."

She gently listened in to the woman's mind picking up the surface thoughts that passed by in a second and disappeared forever.

"You're staring." She said and looked up to meet the woman's eyes.

Juliette pursed her lips at the woman's quips and made sure to make eye contact with the woman rather than looking anywhere else.

You would think she would be used to the staring.

Juliette had experienced her own fair share of stares over the years, having at one point been the only non-white student in her school, but she had made an effort to make other people stare less. She hadn't tattooed her entire face. 

But hey, first impressions could sometimes be deceiving. She had no idea what the reasoning was behind her appearance, and so she needed to be treated the same. 

"Sorry, can't help you with the money, but I can get you a room," she replied after a beat. She turned and walked behind the front desk, moving the mouse so that computer screen lit up. She looked at it for a minute at clicked around randomly, trying to make sense of Lisa's incredible system.

After a second or so, she found the list of occupied rooms, and found a empty one. She picked up the clipboard next to the computer and grabbed a pen. "Can I get your name? I'm Juliette."

"Rikke de Cordova" She said and glared at the woman. "But you'll find that I already am staying here. I spent the night last night, I almost got dragged into some *****es fighting two cots over from me. I think I've had enough of homeless shelters, to be honest."

"And to be clear, I'm not looking for sympathy, I know what I look like and I'm happy with my appearance. But you were trying not to stare, so I thought I'd help you out."

Rikke pondered her words, she came to the Sanctuary last night because she had nowhere else to go. She made one single friend at a mutant bar but the police and a META raided the bar and it burned to the ground. Rikke was lucky enough to escape, her new friend not so much.

But now that she had a handle on her newly manifested powers, she was conspiring to rob some poor rich jerk and get herself a nice place to live in.

She stayed seated in the foyer as the woman typed away on the computer, "You don't look homeless, you some volunteer that comes out on Thursdays to feel good about yourself?"

Sure enough, Rikke de Cordova was written in the slot under the one her mouse had been hovering over. There was no work for her to do, then. Other than listen to another embittered person with a chip on her shoulder chew her out.

Juliette stood up from the computer and crossed her arms as she looked at the woman. It seemed like she was digging for something; trying to get to her react to her comments. Juliette had learned better, though. You don't poke the bear if you don't want to lose an appendage. Rikke's appearance was her own concern, and she wasn't going to talk anymore on the topic.

She couldn't help but think briefly that it was a little strange that she always seemed to bring up the topic that she had been thinking about.

"I'm a nurse, actually. A volunteer, yes, but I come here to make sure that people get actual medical care. So yeah, I guess it does help me feel a little bit better when people don't die." She picked up the box she had set on the desk and looked back at the much taller woman.

"So then is there a reason that you're in the lobby, then? There's less of a breeze further in, and there are some quieter spots you can go to if you don't want to be bothered."

"Just watching the people who come in here." She gestured to her head, "And thinking."

A Nurse? What good was a nurse?

"You know anything about mutations? I'm a bit of a late bloomer, not sure what to make of these mental powers. Only ever met one other psychic before. Or, do you just change the needle bins around here?"

She had other plans for her life than researching her psychic abilities, but whether she wanted to admit it or not, she needed guidance.

"I made some perv decide to live in the mountains, a bit before you arrived, Can't get his thoughts out of my head. It's driving me crazy. I gotta wait till one of us goes to sleep or he gets out of range. How do I make that stop?"

The only other psychic she had met.

That sentence made Juliette stand up a little straighter. That implied that Rikke was a psychic. It made sense from the way she had so seamlessly moved into the topics that she had been thinking of at the time. That also implied that she was currently reading Juliette's mind.

It felt like an invasion of privacy, like all of her secrets had been pried out of the dark recesses of her mind and brought to light. In a way, they had. It was a strange thing to worry about for someone so affiliated with the light.

She furrowed her brow and tried to focus on what Rikke was asking rather than the fact that there was someone else inside of her mind. Easier said than done.  
 
"I have no idea," Juliette answered honestly. There was no point in lying if the woman would be able to dig out the truth in an instant. "I could tell you about my own powers, but I haven't spent much time researching anyone else's. And, truth be told, I've never met another psychic. There are things in place here, though."

Juliette reached into the desk and pulled out a cheesy pamphlet about learning to harness one's powers. It was lame, to say the least, but it was better than doing nothing. She didn't know what else to say without Devon. He would probably know more, but he wasn't there.

The mansion crossed her mind instantly. She tried to push it back, though, as she didn't know whether or not it would be Rikke's scene. Mutant teens everywhere, as well as the X-men. From what she had seen of her, Rikke's ideals didn't quite line up with those of the X-men. However, she knew that there wasn't really anything she could do to keep her in the dark at that point, as the psychic had an unrestricted access to all of Juliette's thoughts.

The idea of that sent a shiver down her spine. 

Rikke took the pamphlet and scanned it for anything that might be helpful. Nothing but lectures about containingpowers and not using them. However, it might prove helpful upon deeper inspection. She folded it and held it between two fingers.

The pamphlet may have been useless, but Juliette's mind kept a helpful secret. The X-Men, a Mansion somewhere and a school. Juliette doubted Rikke would like the school, but Rikke hated when people assumed something about her. A school had to be worth a visit, especially if it could help her get a grip on her powers. But then, a bunch of hormonal kids with incredible powers sounded annoying. Maybe Juliette had guessed right.

"We'll see." She smiled and gestured with the pamphlet,"Thanks for this, I hope it proves useful. See ya around." She headed for the doors, she had an idea for a novel use for her powers that would keep her out of the loud, unsettling homeless shelter.