Aiden murmured something that sounded vaguely like "It's not just that." Which was an incomplete sentence. Cafas considered pushing for more, but it didn't seem like the kid wanted to share. Fair enough too. Maybe a bit later on. For now, he had a question to answer.

"Because evolution is natural, and all we really are is the next rung on the evolutionary ladder of humanity. Born with abilities beyond what some people could dream of. Really, it's as silly as being ashamed of having black hair. That was a mutation too. We are the sum of millions of years of mutation. We've no more need to be ashamed than any other person walking down the street."

Nom nom pudding. Cafas leaned back on his chair, tilting it onto two legs. "Why be ashamed of how you were born? There are people out there who choose to do terrible things to people. Those people should be ashamed, for their actions and their choices, not you and me for our gene code. So I can melt metal without so much as a thought, so what? Do I seem like a monster to you?"

He spread his arms to aid inspection. Granted, he didn't look amazing in his shirt and hastily thrown on cargo pants, but certainly not like a monster. He knew some people who did, but a few of them were perfectly lovely.

Others were not.

The relief Aiden felt at Cafas being diverted from his inadvertent comment was weak, but it was still relief. He ignored what seemed to be a momentary hesitation on Cafas' part, though, and let himself believe that what he had muttered had indeed gone unheard.

Now, if Aiden had sprung from a preachy-churchy family, rather than just a conservative one, he could have fired back with a few comments about evolution being a theory, a false theory, and how God had made everything perfectly to begin with and it didn't need changing, thank you very much, and so any modern mutation was just an insult to His work.

Aiden's family was just conservative. He didn't have that defence against Cafas' logic. As such, his expression as he shifted awkwardly in his chair was distinctly that of a kid who knew what he was being told was the intelligent thing, but really, really, really didn't want to agree with it, because that would require both a restructuring of his thought patterns and beliefs and the dismissal of everything he had been taught by his parents on the subject. What kid didn't trust his parents to do the right thing?

Even when they send you off without even going to your brother's funeral?

Well, what would the neighbours think? It would be very disruptive and lead to all sorts of nasty gossip.

Well... not that anyone in Aiden's family had actually ever shown all that much care for what the neighbours thought. Up until everything went wrong, they really had next to no dealings with their neighbours. It wasn't as if they saw them all that regularly, and as for gossip, well, people at school liked to talk anyway. They'd pick up a topic for a while, then they'd get tired of it and never bother bringing it up again.

Cafas was clearly waiting for an answer, so Aiden eventually glanced up, not quite realizing that his head was still lowered enough that there was a chance Cafas could see over his sunglasses a bit, and had to admit that Cafas just looked like a guy. A guy with pink hair, sure, as if that weren't weird enough, but just a guy. He shrugged. "No..." he said softly. Stupid logic.

No was certainly the answer he was going for. He didn't know what he would have done with a yes. "So why be ashamed of yourself for your mutation? You're no more of a monster than I am from what I've seen. If anything you're probably less of one." Cafas finished off his pudding, stacking the two bowls and the cutlery. He pushed those aside.

He was feeling quite nicely full. This had two effect. First, it made him a far happier person. Second, it kind of made him sleepy. Not that the sensation was new to him. He pushed it to one side. The sleepy, not the happy.

"So what's your ability Aiden? I can manipulate the properties of metals I'm touching; melting point, boiling point, density, that sort of thing." He thought better of giving a demonstration. He'd destroyed enough cutlery in his time. Instead he grabbed the empty bowls and moved them to the sink.

Gathering the rest of the stuff they'd used to cook, Cafas began to wash it all. "Who told you mutants needed to be ashamed of themselves anyway? Clearly someone you trusted and respected." He suspected parents. It did seem to be parents an awful lot of the time.

Cafas kept asking annoying too-logical questions that Aiden couldn't answer. He might be introverted, according to all the various random internet personality quizzes he had ever done (excluding the one that somehow managed to say he was a manic psychopath on the cusp of taking over the world), but that hardly meant that he was interested in in self-contemplation. In the end, he settled for yet another shrug. He couldn't consider himself a monster, for all his flaws... but he could hardly see himself as normal either.

Ai eventually found himself finishing off his pasta in order to muffle the lull. He was between mouthfuls when Cafas spoke next, however, and taking another bite right now would be extremely obvious as stalling. It was another question he couldn't really answer, though. He had yet to be able to prove anything beyond not feeling cold no matter how cold he should be getting. Even rolling around in half-melted snow until he was soaked to the skin in ice water hadn't so much as cooled him off.

Still, even if he hadn't been able to replicate it, the scars on his arm and face were kind of proof in their own right. At length, he had the fragments he knew assembled enough to try for an answer, if only a weak one. "I don't... really know," he said slowly. "I don't get cold anymore. I know that. And it's pretty obvious that I can heal myself somehow... but... well..." he trailed off, realizing too late that he would kind of have to show off some of his scars in order to prove the healing aspect, and he really didn't want to do that. Instead, he gently prodded the inside of his cheek with his injured tongue. "I think it might only work on big things, though," he let himself muse aloud, "and I don't want to test it."

After such an unusual (for Aiden) amount of talking freely, he kind of kept rolling without realizing it. "No one ever said anything," he retorted. Well, some people on TV said that mutants should be ashamed of themselves, but that was probably beside the point. There were offhand comments, though, comments that Aiden hadn't really realized he was picking up on at the time but some of which he could vaguely recall now. 'Those people.' 'Freaks.' 'Why doesn't anyone do something about them?' 'Those poor cops, having to face that to protect us.'

Of course, being Aiden, those thoughts and words never made it anywhere near his mouth, which was finally getting to taste pudding. It would have tasted better if his tongue weren't sore and the chocolate still a little tainted with blood.

Cafas considered the description for a moment. "Don't get cold huh? You should speak to Sam Johnson, or Cold Steel as he goes by in the X-men. He has a power related to coldness, though I'm not sure it heals him. Still, it might be a good place to start."

Scrub scrub scrub went the scourer in the pot. Soapy bubbles and near scalding water dripping from Cafas' hands. He let the conversation lull for a minute, working his way through the dishes. When he felt the silence had gone on long enough, and had found the words, he pressed on with the conversation.

"Maybe not directly, but I'm sure someone said something. Regardless, we're just normal people, you and I. Sure we have powers, but we still have emotions, we still have to sleep and eat, well, most of us. I suppose there are some that don't. We still have jobs, pay taxes, have friends, families, loved ones." He paused in his washing up for a moment. Reflected on what he'd just said. He hadn't really thought about it before himself, how petty the differences were that humans and mutants hated each other for.

"Just try to think of it like that, and don't let people tell you you are a freak, or that you should be ashamed. Those people aren't worth your time. If they can't see past your mutation to the person that you are, screw 'em; they're not the sort of people you should be looking to for anything except an example of how not to be."

Scrub scrub scrub.

There was someone vaguely similar to him in terms of freakness? Aiden blinked. He'd kind of gotten the impression than mutants were so widely varied in ability that finding two the same really didn't happen. Of course, he'd also kind of heard that most mutants only had one ability, or a few interlocking ones. Aiden couldn't really find a solid connection between not getting cold and maybe sometimes healing, so he must be missing something.

Normal people. Could he bring himself to believe that? Should he? Did he want to? Even if he had to put so much effort into repressing them, he couldn't honestly deny that he had emotions, as Cafas said. The current hour notwithstanding, his brain did indeed start doing weird things if he didn't sleep (and he'd had a fair share of practice in staying up way too late and being exhausted the next day). The fact that he had just made pudding and eaten a bowl of pasta confirmed what Cafas said about needing food. The next few options really didn't apply to Aiden, though. He didn't have a job or pay taxes because he was still in school, though getting a job, if such a thing were possible, would probably be helpful at this point. Friends... well, friends were overrated and Aiden had yet to come across people he actually liked enough to consider a friend who weren't extremely closely related to him. Which led to the next item on Cafas' list. Yeah, his family wasn't exactly acting like a family at the moment.

Wasn't he supposed to be agreeing with his parents' actions?

Anyway, the point was that Cafas' list of conclusive proof that mutants were normal people failed at the end, therefore he was clearly not a normal person. Except he had had family, had cared for another person, and there was enough flexible intelligence lurking in his brain to consider that sufficient to satisfy the would-be failed terms of the list. So was he a normal person or wasn't he?

Even when everyone in his class at school thought he was weird, there had always been someone who didn't. Sure, he always acted like his little brother was a nerdy freak in public, but he'd still play video games or whatever with him once they were alone. Aiden had never taken anything Conri had said in public seriously, because he knew that you just had to put on the right show for society. Only he never quite knew what show to put on, only that the truth wasn't the right one.

"Would Conri... call me normal?" he whispered bitterly on only the slightest breath, and then abruptly sighed and lowered his head into his hand, propping himself up on the table with an elbow. If he didn't, how was Aiden supposed to handle that? And he wouldn't even know. He couldn't even- He couldn't- The least he could do was drive off the tears and not think about their cause. He knew that Conri hated him crying. He knew that.

Cafas propped the last of the pots on the drying rack. He pulled the plug in the sink. Turning to Aiden he noticed the boy was looking thoroughly sad. "Anyway, new topic. Got any hobbies?" Cafas had officially run out of things to do. He moved back over to his seat and resumed his rocked back position.

Maybe I should grab something else to eat? No, that's just plain unhealthy.

He was sure he may, eventually, be able to get the kid to the point where he wasn't ashamed of himself. It was seeming increasingly like it would be a long journey though. That made sense, in a way. It was hard to just switch to a new belief system overnight. Or over dinner, as it were.

Ah well, he'll learn eventually.

Cafas considered Aiden's apparent visible mutation, though he was covering it, he assumed it was obvious enough to warrant the covering. He knew just the person to speak to about that. "You know who else you should speak to? I have a friend, Allison. Her mutation just became even more visible. She kind of can't hide though. Well, sort of, but she lives in a dangerous area the paparazzi won't even go."

For a while, Aiden just sat, not even thinking. Eventually, though, as Cafas' subject change seeped far enough into his brain to be noticed, his breathing eased and he returned to eating his pudding. Hey, he finally got to eat the chocolate he had come here for! Took a while. Even if his stomach was far more satisfied than it would have been if he had had just the pudding as he had originally planned... oh well.

"This and that," Aiden replied after a few calm(er) mouthfuls. He still couldn't be considered to be speaking freely or cheerfully, but now that they were off the nasty track he felt he could cope a great deal more. When Aiden felt he could cope, things went a lot better overall. "Books. Games." He shrugged. His interests were hardly unusual. He was really kind of boring.

Except when he started not-really choking on chocolate pudding. After a few hacking coughs and several more deep breaths, he managed to get his torso under control again and blinked at Cafas. What were the chances that two people named Allison with unhideable mutations lived in dangerous areas? Ockham's Razor. Replication was unlikely. Besides, any half-decent plot would clearly have them be the same person. "Would this Allison have too many tattoos?" he said, voice still a little strangled from the pudding attack. He rubbed his throat, trying to make it actually behave like it had started to feel like. Yeah, if his life were a book (bloody nasty book it'd be, though), Cafas would indeed be referring to the Allison who had given Aiden the very sunglasses he was wearing right now in an attempt to fix his life. It would be dramatic and twisty, wouldn't it? No, the twist would be these sunglasses having originally come from Cafas - Ai, after all, had no idea how he knew her, but did vaguely recall that her spare sunglasses were the results of unneeded gifts.

Books and Games. Cafas could get behind that! "Sweet. I'm a Tolkien fan myself, I like other Authors, but Tolkien takes the top spot. As for games, RPGs like The Elder Scrolls, and secretly call of duty." Not much of a secret, especially not now. Games and books were largely how he spent his free time, when he wasn't spending it with Calley. He wasn't really that good. Passable at the shooting games and what not. He was much better at the RPGs and stealthier games. The irony of this was not lost on him.

Fits the bill for nerd though. Even here that's not greatly tolerated by the kids. Stupid kids.

The description of Allison was... Well, technically accurate, depending on your interpretation of too many. "She has quite a few, yeah. Allison Sinnocence. You know her?" There was, of course, the chance that he simply knew of her from the movie's advertising campaigns. Though that didn't seem as likely, because he hadn't recognised Cafas. They were nigh on a single entity to the public at that point, much to the ire of many middle school girls, and a surprising amount of women from other age groups with terrible taste in literature.

Yeah that's only going to get worse when it's released.

Of all things, Aiden hadn't expected to have something so significant in common with any guy with pink hair in a place like this. Even if he personally preferred BONES to Tolkein, and Dragon Age to the Elder Scrolls. It was an efficiency and plot thing, respectively. "A lot of my games didn't make it here," he admitted. "What do you have?"

What was the actual chance of something like this happening? In fiction, the chance was probably in the high nineties. In real life, though, it had to be way lower. No more than twenty, thirty percent, surely. While all the numbers and stats were running through his head, though, he was doing a fair amount of blinking behind his sunglasses. "Uh, I wouldn't say know," he said slowly. trying to put some sort of label on his brief interactions with the rather scary colourful girl. "Well... see, I came across her in a park, and when someone knocked me over and broke my sunglasses, she replaced them." After leading him into a really creepy part of the city, into a really weird building, wherein he discovered she lived near the really, really terrifying infamous mass murderer whose name he couldn't always remember but who wore an anime-esque bow.

He really didn't want to know if Cafas knew Isabel too. That was one thing he felt much better off not knowing. Even if he did, if Aiden didn't know then he could at least pretend that Cafas had had absolutely no dealings with. well. Her. Best to just brush all that away and not deal with it. He should really tweak the conversation too, so that he could get his mind off this track and stop thinking about whether or not Cafas would know Isabel and how much better he was off not knowing, because otherwise he'd start thinking about whether it might actually be better to know if Cafas did know Isabel, in which case he would deserve the same treatment Aiden had given Isabel herself. "How do you know her?" he asked, bashing a little curiosity out of the stony reservoir he tried not to delve into too often, but kept handy for such times where changes of topic where helpful.

"I have a few things, dunno, don't get as much free time as I'd like so I've forgotten a few of them. Considering switching to a computer though. My X-box has got me through a lot though." He had to think about what games he had anyway. "I have most of the big games from the last few months, though I've played maybe three of them, and a heap of old ones."

As for Allison. Well, yeah that sounded like it could be her. Not like new glasses would even cut into the money they had from the movie. As for how he knew her. "Oh, we're both in the movie "Dusk". We see each other pretty rarely these days, but I imagine that's about to end, we're going into full publicity mode." Cafas shrugged. There was always the chance they wouldn't see that much of each other then either, she might not show up. Still, they were being offered quite a bit of money for interviews.

More than we need anyway.

"How was she anyway?" He'd be interested to know if anything had happened since they'd last seen each other at the panel.

Aiden nodded vaguely. "I really just have my computer for games now. Nothing to plug any other systems into properly." Which was entirely not his fault. His old tv probably hadn't fit with the rest of his stuff, and he could hardly go buy himself a new one. Not that he needed one - no, his computer worked just fine. Great, even. "I don't have any of the newest games, though. Things... haven't worked out right for that." Change of subject time.

Wasn't 'Dusk' that... oh please no. Ai eyed Cafas with hopeful skepticism. "Please tell me that isn't that young adult romance thing that everyone's been freaking out over." Sitting in the same room as an actor, kind of cool. Sitting in the same room as someone involved in that, not so much. More like negative cool points, if coolness were measured in points and were capable of going negative. Actually, even if it were incapable of going into the negatives, it might just end up being negative anyway.

"She seemed fine," Aiden replied, not quite sure if he should have been keeping an eye out for anything. "She wasn't upset or anything, as far as I could tell. Although she did offer to give me a tattoo. Is that normal for her?" His tone distinctly indicated that he didn't think that it was a normal thing for normal people to do under normal circumstances, but he might be willing to make an exception. The normal thing and normal circumstances part. As nice as she had been to him, he wasn't sure she could qualify as 'normal people.' Then again, he hadn't met anyone he'd consider 'normal people' in quite a while, so maybe that wasn't saying much.

"Kind of figured things hadn't worked out great for you. Not many of us are here because things did go well." Cafas was working on keeping his chair balanced. He supposed they could all use a bit more luck in their lives. Well, not him, he'd done pretty well recently, but others in the mansion certainly.

Well I wish he hadn't recognised it...

"The very same. May it serve as a lesson to you, read the source material before signing anything. I've sold my soul now though, so may as well stick with it. The money is pretty good, so really not much to complain about. Cafas shrugged in a very 'such is life' sort of way. "Plus, you know, if the movie goes well I might get to do some better stuff." Like action movies, or, you know, fade back into obscurity.

Obscurity might be nice. Living so publicly is starting to suck.

So Allison was still okay. Well, that was good. "I don't really think the word normal has ever applied to Allison, but I don't recall her making me that offer. Granted I'm old enough to get it done myself." He had even considered it more than once. "I don't think it is though."

Really, hadn't worked out great? Well, wasn't that a coating thick enough to explode a few hundred sweet teeth with sheer ecstasy. Plus all of their offspring and ancestors. Maybe just every single sweet tooth to ever exist or have existed.

Aiden was not impressed. Cafas' reputation was rapidly crumbling and turning into slimy, putrid goop. Aiden wasn't a fan of goop that didn't smell bad or feel all greasy or whatever, much less both. This goop was probably about as annoyingly coloured as Cafas' hair too. Maybe with neon colour-changing spots or something. Hm. Maybe the chocolate pudding wasn't the best idea after all. At least some part of his brain remembered that it was supposed to remove all forms of writers' block when it encountered chocolate pudding at strange hours of the day.

Wait, he hadn't read the thing before signing on? Okay, maybe the goop that was his reputation wasn't quite so smelly. Not being smelly made it far more tolerable. He didn't gain any points for intelligence or common sense, legally binding himself into something without knowing what he was getting into, but there was some reputation-salvaging. "Better stuff? No, something like that's going to brand you as the character forever. Anything popular does that. This kind of popular does it even more." No, Cafas was never going to escape. It might be his fault, but Aiden couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him.

Aiden was not going to argue about the label of 'normal' having trouble sticking to Allison. Not even as some skewed idea of playing the devil's advocate, and trying to argue just for the sake of arguing. How was he supposed to argue something like that anyway? "Normal or not, old enough or not, it still looked better at the time than the tour she offered," he muttered, starting to scrape pudding remnants from his bowl with careful, meticulous strokes. He'd ended up with more than enough of a tour going in and especially coming out. He shivered faintly, remembering once again running into Isabel. Definitely a good thing he could run fairly fast and keep going when he had to.

"Better stuff? No, something like that's going to brand you as the character forever. Anything popular does that. This kind of popular does it even more."

"I dunno, the kids that did that wizard series have turned out okay. Granted the girl is having way better success, but she was better than the other two anyway. Still, you're a stronger man than I if someone offers you over a million dollars to play a part in a movie and you turn them down." That was a lot of money, and he knew that it could set him up pretty cosy for life if he played his cards right. At a certain point, taste and perceived 'standards' had to be set aside for the chance to build the life you wanted.

Not that being adored by 13 year olds is really what I wanted, but, small price to pay for a financially stress free life.

"Normal or not, old enough or not, it still looked better at the time than the tour she offered."

"She offered a tour? What, at the Sanctuary? Yeah don't blame you not wanting to stick around there if that was the case. Nice enough place, just the people that hang out there that tend to be a bit worrisome. Still, some good people are there." Cafas watched as the kid finished the last of his pudding. It was vaguely interesting to note that the kid had left the sanctuary though. Clearly he had run into someone well known for their exploits.