Nathan had had the grand tour. He was no less lost. The sanctuary was huge. He’d stopped and asked for directions more than once, but was having difficulties sorting out where was where. To make matters worse, this whole place had metal door handles. I mean that was almost inconsiderate…Nathan stopped and mentally slapped himself. He needed to stop pacing, calm down and sit somewhere. Someone called Lenna was apparently coming to talk to him and he had to do his best to keep it together until she arrived. Whoever she was. Probably some other mutant, he figured. Most everybody here seemed to be.

He made his way back to the foyer (eventually) though it took him several wrong turns and a walk down a hallway to a door which was marked “Off Limits”. That seemed ominous and foreboding. He had backed quickly up the hallway and spotted the wrong turn-off he’d made. He walked quickly, the flickering lights above him lighting his way. He’d yet to form an opinion about this place beyond ‘big’ yet, and was still in a formative shock about it all. He was absorbing everything but not paying any of it huge amounts of attention. His brain was desperate to focus on something else to distract him from the enormity of what he’d done, but was then itself too distracted to focus on the details.

So he walked.

He was pacing so much he figured he’d built up enough static charge that when he DID touch metal it was going to hurt like a beast. He found a corridor he recognised and realised that it led him back to the lobby. That was where he’d been heading (or so he’d convinced himself) for the last half an hour, and he was finally there. He saw several seats sitting opposite the receptionist’s desk. ‘Lisa’ her nametag read, and he remembered the introduction they’d shared. He wondered absent mindedly if she was a mutant, or not, and, nothing better to do he decided to go and ask.

“Excuse me,” he began. Good strong, assertive start there, Nathan. “I was just wondering…since you work here and all…are you a mutant?” he finally asked. Her reply, audible to him, was lost to the rest of the world as the doors opened, the weather outside foul and lashing out. The skies shone with lightning as the storm howled against the building. Someone had just entered.

The door swung open, and Lenna stood in all her leather jacket, black jeans glory. Boots clip-clopped up to the desk. Lenna leaned on the counter, and smiled at Lisa.

"Hey Lisa. Have you seen someone named 'Nathan'? Meld called and told me I was supposed to talk to him."

The secretary's finger rose and pointed to the only other person in the room. Lenna's eyes followed.

"Well, that's convenient. So, Nathan. What seems to be the problem?"

Meld had told her, but that didn't mean it was any less important she hear it from the kid himself.

Nathan looked at the entrant. She cut an impressive figure as she strode in, her feet clapping on the ground. She stood maybe 5’6 and was clad entirely in black. Quite pretty, he noticed, but with a definite biker-groove. Nathan, with nothing else to do but wait for Lenna watched her walk up and mention him by name to Lisa. Well. Now he knew who she was.

“Hi. Lenna, yeah?” started Nathan, knowing that he’d have to open up about this and feeling awful. “Oh man, where do I start?” he asked, running a hand through his hair and messing it up. Not that that mattered hugely to him. Nothing much mattered any more.

“Meld said I should talk to you about…what happened. I…I really hurt someone.” said Nathan, gripping his hands together his knuckles turned white. He was shaking a little. Not enough to knock anything over, but trembling nonetheless. Some of his words, therefore, came out a little stuttered. “I just got into New York…I only found out what I…what I was…about a week ago.” Nathan was clearly distressed, his sentences coming out in wrenches as he took deep breaths.

“And now I’m here and…and nothing’s changed!” Nathan said, tears forming in the corner of his eyes as he hyperventilated. “They don’t…don’t…treat us any different here” he wiped his nose on his sleeve and carried on, trying to keep it together. “And I, I bumped into Meld and I turned…I turned into it again and then…then she said she could take me here!” Nathan managed, tears beginning to flow.

“But then these…these men were…were after her. So I stayed and…and…and then I hit one of them!” he said, fully sobbing now, dropping his head between his knees. “I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean for it to..for it to happen!” me managed, in sobbing gasps as tears flooded down his face, the memory fresh and exquisitely painful in his mind.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down, kid." She told him, raising her hands to slow the wave of inner torment that was rolling towards her. The kid was breathing funny, talking slowly, stammering, and crying. He needed to suck it up. "Don't cry. God. Deal with your emotions. Start from the top. What's your mutation?"

The kid was a mess. An absolute mess. Meld had told her he needed talking to, but this was ridiculous. He was a hop, skip, and a retch from spilling more than his guts. She'd have to work him through it.

"So, you killed someone? So what?" It happens all the time. Big whoop. Was that what he was falling apart over? Forget that.

>> "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down, kid. Don't cry. God. Deal with your emotions. Start from the top. What's your mutation?"

Nathan took a deep breath and tried hard to slow his wrenching sobs. God, he felt like a child. Here he was spilling his emotions all over the floor, and he was relying on this poor woman to mop them up for him. Because right now, he was in no state to clean them up for himself. It did strike him how selfish that was, but right now he felt he needed to be a little selfish.

“I’m…I can turn…turn into metal” he started, beginning to get his breating under control. “I touch a metal and…and I change. I try not to touch…to touch any, but Meld…she had a metal arm…” he trailed off, half uncertain where he was going with that, half still trying to stop crying. He’d managed the important bits.

>> "So, you killed someone? So what?"

Nathan looked up, incomprehensible. He hiccoughed and sniffed in a great inhalation, blinking away some forming tears. His breathing was better now, and he felt more able to carry on, but after that…he didn’t know what to say. “I..I’m sorry?” he said, unsure if he’d heard her properly or if there was some other way those words could be taken.

"You're sorry..." Lenna repeated like she hadn't quite heard him. "Sorry?" Her eyes narrowed, locking with his for a moment, and then she tilted her head in mock annoyance. "Yeah, you are. You're sorry, alright." She looked away with contempt. "A sorry excuse for a man. Weak, sniveling, pathetic, making excuses, not accepting the consequences of your actions, trying to cry, feeling sorry for yourself, whining at me and apologizing to me like that will make everything better. Sorry." She paused her reading of the laundry list of reasons why Nathan was sorry, looking at him again, voice softer this time. "I know that. Meld told me what happened. Your power activated, and you didn't know your own strength. I get it. You didn't want to kill. But that means nothing. You did. I won't forgive you for crying about it, now that you've taken a life."

She looked him in the eye seriously. "You're going to learn to control your power in order to prevent that sort of thing from happening again, Nathan. Don't cry about it. Use it to bolster your resolve. Grow from it. People die. People get killed. It happens every day. Idiots make mistakes. People throw themselves in the line of fire doing the work they do. Cops or criminals, things get violent. People get hurt. Sometimes, one has to defend themselves. Police officers know how to do it without killing, but sometimes, when a guy's waving a knife in your face, logic goes out the window. They use excessive force. You're a mutant. There are going to be idiots waving knives in front of your face on the subway, on the street, everywhere there's hatred. People are going to look at you. You need to know how to handle yourself, so you don't get killed, and... since you obviously don't seem the 'killer type', how to use your powers without harming others. Got it?" She smiled thinly. "That's the 'so what'."

(OOC: Great post, Shin, gave me tons to work with. I really enjoyed writing this one, but it's a little long. Sorry!)


Nathan waited anxiously for the older woman’s response, looking up with tear-stained eyes, but as she delivered it, he realised very quickly that they were playing different games here. He was playing something soft and simple, with all the corners wrapped in plastic to not let anyone get hurt. Like a gentler version of snakes and ladders. Lenna, was not. She was playing a beat-em-up. On expert-difficulty. And she was good.

>> “Yeah, you are. You're sorry, alright. A sorry excuse for a man.”

FIGHT! Wow. That one opened the combat, with a vicious blow, sending Nathan mentally staggering back, looking for a controller and the game disk. He was in no state to play, but he had to try and defend himself, right? Yeah, right…

>> “Weak”

POW! Lenna followed up the opener with a strike to his manliness. Called shot, designed to stun. Nathan’s mental fumbling was halted for a second as she delayed him further. He knew what game they were playing now, and was just trying to find his own mental disk. He had to do something, before…

>> “Snivelling”

TWO-HIT! This was starting to sting. Nathan could see his health bar dropping, as Lenna turned her unconnected strikes into a combo, hitting his manliness and his maturity. Good shot, well played. It left Nathan wide open for another combo chain, however, and an opponent as good as Lenna wouldn’t be able to miss such a…

>> “Pathetic”

WHAM! Okay. Firstly, ouch, and secondly that was downright low. He wasn’t pathetic! He was just crying his eyes out to someone he’d never met about his own emotional fragility….damn it. Fine, point to Lenna. Nathan realised, too late, that that had been a calculated insult, barbed to make him rile and make his guard weak. He put in the game disk and waited for his own program to load, because as it was he was SO unable to defend himself…

>> “Making excuses”

KA-POW! Lenna hit home with another smash to the chest, winding him and doubling him over. His health bar was half gone and she was having a perfect game so far. Nathan needed to retaliate, but the damage she was doing to his morale was making his system load the game slowly, so he sat there, unable to participate, watching as Lenna took him apart. Besides, he wasn’t making excuses! He’d just had a really tough few weeks, he didn’t know his own strength, the guy hadn’t dodged, and how was he to know what he should have done! “They sound pretty much like excuses to me!” said his inner monologue, sitting there watching the show with popcorn and a huge grin on his face. Nathan was about to reply, when the inner monologue winced and Nathan looked back to the game just in time for…

>> “Not accepting the consequences of your actions.”

BANG! Lenna was playing for keeps now. She drove past his guard and kicked him high into the air. The disk that had been loading internally was forced out of the system from the power of that blow. It hurt because it was true. He wasn’t accepting the consequences of his actions…Lenna was right. That point, at least, she’d earned. As for the rest of them…

>> “Trying to cry”

CRASH! Lenna spun her other leg up, keeping him in the air with a juggling kick-combo, slamming this one into his guts. Damn it, he was succeeding at crying! “I think that’s the point, you utter wuss.” his inner monologue explained for him, disgusted at his lack of spine. A problem his character was about to develop as…

>> “Feeling sorry for yourself”

CRUNCH! Nathan watched helplessly as his character, now totally unable to respond was flung across the screen. Lenna’s fighter gave a grim smile as her knee drove into his backbone, pulverising it. She teleported across the screen to meet him, preparing a fist to send him flying backwards, like a ping-pong ball. He had practically no HP left, and he waited limply to watch her final blows.

>> “ whining at me and apologizing to me like that will make everything better.”

BOOM! There were shockwaves from that punch as Nathan’s fighter began to circumnavigate the globe, sent soaring off into the distance by the power put behind that one. It was so strong, because Nathan felt some personal grievance added into it to give it some more wallop. He was whining to her. She didn’t even live here…he’d called her in, and for what? To help him man up? What a joke. She was twice the man he could ever be. Balls or no. Nathan was now an appreciable way around the world and picking up speed. He was on his last legs. Lenna waited for him to fully return, having gone the distance and then stopped his awesome flight with a spinning heel-kick to the face.

>> “Sorry.”

K.O. Nathan’s fighter dropped to his knees and fell flat while Lenna looked down at him, contempt on her face. Flawless Victory. Continue? Real Nathan looked up at Lenna. He deserved all that. All that and more. The worst part was, protest it though he might, it was all true. All of it. She had verbally beaten the crap out of him which is nothing more than he deserved, because she hadn’t told one lie. In the back of his mind, the ‘Continue?’ numbers started at 10 and began to tick down.

Nathan had a choice to make. 9. He could keep being a snivelling wretch, or he could pull himself together and try and be something more. 8. Lenna had shown him just how useless his tears were, but it felt like they were all he had. 7. Was he okay with that, though? 6. Was he happy with who he was? 5. This pitiful, worthless guy, unable to solve his own problems? 4. This complete wreck, so messed up that he was so in pieces he was retreating to a video-game fantasy? 3. Was that the guy he was going to be for the rest of his days? 2. Was that all that he had the potential to be? 1. Like hell. “You bet your ass I want to continue.” he said, slamming the game back in the system and picking up the controller.

The screen inside his mind greeted him with a picture of his life to date. “Load File?” it asked him. He didn’t even have to think about that one. “Nah. New character”

He listened hard to what Lenna said about the nature of killing, be it accidental or otherwise. She was right. She was right about everything. She knew what she was talking about, probably through dint of experience. Meld had been right, though. Selfish as it had seemed, Nathan had needed to talk to her. He looked up at her, blinking and managing to get his breathing under control as he cleared the tears from his eyes. He took a moment. These were the first words of his new life. “Thank you.” he said, smiling. “For…everything. I needed that, whatever that was.” he said, meaning every word of it. He stood up, his knees not shaking any more and wordlessly went to hug her. This was not a hug of desperation or a cling for support, but one of gratitude.

"... That's better."

Lenna looked away as he hugged her. No, she wasn't looking to Lisa for help, though the secretary certainly could have aided her in getting this kid to stop clinging. If she looked a bit bearish as he hugged her, it was but a trick of the light. She was fine, really... she... just didn't like random people hugging her out of nowhere. It was a bit too close for comfort.

At least he seemed to have stopped leaking from his eyes, though. "Is that a 'yes, Lenna, I'll follow your orders and toughen up', now?" She said, changing the subject.

He was taller than her, Lenna'd suddenly realized. She couldn't quite look him in the eye. For some reason, that just didn't feel fair.

>> "... That's better."

Nathan felt her stiffen up a little as the hug caught her by surprise, but couldn’t find the words to express how much she’d just helped him. So he hugged her. He tried to put emotions into the hug that he knew he’d never be able to express verbally. He wasn’t Shakespeare. But he needed her to know that she had just had an impact on his life. The second greatest impact, probably, since the bus.

What was that line again? You either get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’. Shame he wasn’t Morgan Freeman, because he really couldn’t pull that off. Didn’t make the sentiment any less true, however. And life was too short to waste. He was gonna live in the moment from now on, because you never knew when you were going to die. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow…or something.

>> "Is that a 'yes, Lenna, I'll follow your orders and toughen up', now?"

Nathan grinned and stopped hugging her. She looked grateful for that, but Nathan didn’t notice. He nodded. “Yeah…” he began “You got it. I’m gonna toughen up. Sorry I was such…such a wreck.” he said, shaking his head. Five minutes seemed like a lifetime ago. How could so much have changed in so little time? He wondered if such a drastic change was healthy. “Don’t worry about it.” said his inner monologue, and in one of the more stupid actions in his life, Nathan listened to it, and didn’t.