Persi was used to bullies.

He had long hair, took art classes, wore dark clothes and didn't work out. Of course he was used to bullies, and to what bullies did. Names, shoving, and thrown pencils still annoyed him, of course, but he knew how to deal with them. How to deal with a guy that could create sparks between his fingers and flick them at you, Persi was less sure of. They didn't hurt more than a static shock did, but that was annoying enough. Especially when the guy apparently didn't have any limit to how many he created. Wherever one landed it felt like a bug's feet still digging in; Persi tried to brush off the feeling when he could subtly, but it wasn't always possible. His face, for one, felt like it was covered with bugs. He'd have been scowling anyway, but that added to it. "Go away."

"What, you're not even going to fight back?" The guy flicked another spark at Persi's shoulder. "Just gonna run like a little girl, huh? Letting us know what a girl you are with your hair, that's nice of you."

Persi kept glaring. "Not everyone needs to boost their ego by picking on other people for no reason, asshole."

The next spark landed in his eye. Persi yelped and clapped his hands over it. "S***!"

“So, basically, you’re saying little girls don’t fight?” Kaitlyn was standing just a few feet away, looking straight at Persi’s tormentor. She seemed more amused than anything else.

The bully smirked at her. “Well, yeah, pretty much.”

That was the moment when Kaitlyn decided that this boy was going to suffer. Smiling, she let her backpack fall to the ground, then turned to the bullying victim. “Hey, new kid. You said this kid’s name was ‘Asshole,’ right? Is Asshole giving you any trouble?”

“My name’s Bill,” Said the indignant bully.

“You’re such a joker, Asshole. Stop lying to the new kid about your name.”

Asshole frowned.

Persi kept his hands over the sparked eye--that had hurt--but peered at the interruption (one he didn't resent, for once) with his other eye. "Best name for him, I think."

...That was a little girl.

Granted, a little mutant girl, considering where she was. But still a little girl. She was even carrying a backpack. A good little schoolgirl, apart from the whole mutant thing.

Oh, whatever. Persi was already a mutant; what did it matter if little girls could stand up to bullies now? He shrugged. "Not more than usual." Whether that 'usual' was referring to other bullies or other meetings with this one wasn't clarified, nor did it particularly matter. Asshole had a new trick that Persi had to adjust to; that was really it. He'd probably have to adjust to several here.

Well, little girl or not, Persi liked the effect she was having on Asshole. Upset bullies... well, generally weren't good, but that wouldn't stop him from enjoying it. Enjoyment didn't stop him from keeping Asshole in his sight while he looked at the girl, and cautiously lowered the hand from his eye. "My name's Persi, by the way."

"Your--"

"You're obviously not good at names, Asshole, so shut up." This was kind of fun.

Ow. Sparks to the ear were less fun. At least it wasn't his eye again. Persi winced, but managed to grin again pretty quickly.

Asshole zapped Persi. The girl’s eye twitched.

“I’m Kaitlyn. Nice to meet you,” she said to Persi. Then, she got between him and the bully. “Now, Asshole. Please. Don’t you think we get tortured by humans enough already?”

Bill was not amused. “Mind your own business, kid.”

“This is my business.” Kaitlyn said, smile gone, voice raised. “The entire world hates us. We mutants have to stick together and respect each other. Are you gonna start respecting my friend Persi, or am I gonna have to beat the crap out of you?” Bill was six feet tall; she needed to crane her neck back all the way just to look him in the eyes. Bill wasn’t about to walk away just because a 12-year-old girl threatened him.

Seriously. Persi was being defended by a little girl. This was weird. Like, there ought to be science on how weird it was.

Whether the 'science' Persi wanted could be summarized as 'the X gene' or not he didn't bother to decide.

Also, she had a point. Granted, the humans were just trying to help, but helpful torture was still torture. It wasn't fun to experience; that was the point. For someone who didn't know that, or couldn't stand to acknowledge it, standing together against it was pretty logical. Of course, since Persi did know the truth, standing against it at all was clearly a bad idea, but Persi wasn't very inclined to correct the little girl who thought she could stand up to an electric football player.

Regardless of her confidence, though, it was still really weird to be protected by a little girl. Also, made him feel kind of guilty. So Persi started edging to the side.

Not fast enough, apparently. Asshole reached down and picked Kaitlyn up by the back of her shirt. "Listen, girly, it's not your business."

"Hey! Put her down!" Still not fast enough, Persi.

Kaitlyn did not appreciate being picked up like that.

First, she jabbed him in the throat; her first two knuckles landed squarely on his Adam’s apple. Before he could drop her, her right foot had introduced itself to his groin.

He dropped her. She landed on her feet, but quickly sat down, then lay down on the floor, flat on her back, arms held out towards the large, angry football player standing over her. Lying down on the floor meant she wouldn’t knock herself over when this happened:

CRACKOOM!

The shockwave hit Asshole like a truck. He flew off his feet, colliding with some lockers at an angle before hitting the floor. He would have a bit of trouble standing after this. Or breathing. The DocProf was becoming far more familiar with Miss Faust’s handiwork than he would have wanted.

Kaitlyn sat up and looked up at Persi, speaking just loud enough for him to hear, once the ringing in her ears died down. “He was hurting me. It was a power control accident. Got it?” It would be important for the teachers to know that, for the record.

Okay, apparently this particular little girl was good at dealing with bullies. Either she dealt with them often, or... she dealt with them often. Persi had to wonder if she'd been here long; she was certainly acting like it.

...Bullies really were kind of stupid. Persi would not have needed to be hit like that more than once to learn not to pick on the little karate girl. He might not care, if she was particularly annoying, but she wasn't so that was hardly an excuse for Asshole.

Oh. Little girl could explode. That... just made the bully even stupider, really. Persi kept staring.

"Er... yes. Got it. He tried to kick you?" Ma'am probably would not be appreciated, no matter how much of his mind was screaming at him to use it. "...What's a power accident?" It probably didn't have anything to do with electrical outages or wires exploding. Probably. Persi had just seen a little girl throw an explosion at a bully, he wasn't going to rule the possibility out yet.

...Kaitlyn. It might not be in his best interest to keep thinking of her as little girl; a lot of people tended to take offense to terms like that.

Persi didn’t know about power control accidents? He really was the new kid.

“A power accident is when you lose control of your mutant power, then bad stuff happens.” Kaitlyn stumbled to her feet. “It happens pretty often here. I’m a lot better about that than I used to be, though.” Assuming the random explosions that happened when she wasn’t around weren’t actually her fault. She was pretty sure they weren’t.

“Let’s get outta here before we get in trouble.” Kaitlyn said. The teachers here didn’t take kindly to Kaitlyn using her ability on other students. She picked up her backpack and started to walk away as though nothing had happened.

Persi... was kind of tempted to be offended by what seemed like an overly simplified answer. Of course, this might be a case of ask a stupid question, and anyway, he wasn't going to be offended at TNT girl. C4 girl, or whatever she was. TNT seemed a little more likely, if 'power control accidents' were a common thing. Either way, he wasn't offending her. "That makes sense." He almost offered a hand to help her up, but before he finished hesitating (would she take offense to help?) she was up anyway, so he didn't have to decide.

"Yeah." That, Persi was familiar with. Not that leaving wherever he'd done something always actually freed him from blame, but sometimes it did. And most of the time it at least gave whoever found out time to blow off steam while they looked for him. And he had no particular qualms about leaving the bully on the floor. He'd probably be fine, and if not... well, he'd brought it upon himself.

"So... is there anywhere that's best to go? Like, to hang out?" Granted, Persi had managed to locate a few rooms that seemed to be intended for hanging out, but considering the number of interruptions that occurred they didn't seem to actually be good places. Hopefully TNT-Kaitlyn would know.

“Hm…”

Kaitlyn and Persi made their way around a few corners and down the stairs.

“I guess it depends on what you want. If you like people, the common rooms are there. If you want quiet, the library has soundproof study rooms. If you want privacy, the hedge maze and the foresty part of campus out back are great, if your room is – that just seems like a bad idea.”

She stopped walking and looked up. A boy somewhere between Kaitlyn’s and Persi’s age was crawling on the ceiling. He seemed to be struggling with his heavy backpack, dangerously close to falling. Kaitlyn made sure to stay out from under him. They kept moving.

"There's a hedge maze? Mazes? How big is this place?" Big was the impression Persi had gotten, but it was sounding like it needed to be amended to 'huge.' Or larger. "Er... what's a bad idea? My room is what?" That sounded like it might be a thing which he was not supposed to ask about, but it also sounded kind of like something he might really want to know.

TNT-Kaitlyn stopped abruptly, and looked up. Persi looked up too.

...He knew he'd see someone on the ceiling here. And apparently it was a common enough occurrence that no one commented. Though Persi did follow Kaitlyn's lead in avoiding the space under the backpack. That wouldn't be fun to be hit by.

"So.... Where are we going now?"

There was a thump behind them that might have been backpack, or might have been boy and backpack. Persi glanced at Kaitlyn to see if they were supposed to check which it was.

Kaitlyn turned around to check. As she expected, Tom fell right off the ceiling and onto the floor. At least his backpack broke his fall. “That’s what I was saying was a bad idea,” she nodded at the fallen student, then continued on her way.

”So.... Where are we going now?"

“Uhm…” Kaitlyn was confused to hear the word ‘we’ in this situation. She thought she would just be going up to her room, but… “I guess I could show you the hedge maze and the greenhouse and stuff. They’re pretty cool. I help the gardener sometimes.” Maybe if this kid was really new, she could tell him the truth about a few things before the X-Men got to him.

"Oh. Okay." And, apparently, they were not going back. Well, the boy had gotten himself into the situation, and there probably wasn't anything to do other than make sympathetic faces and ask if he was alright anyway.

"I don't think I've ever seen a hedge maze...." Hedges, certainly, which didn't make a hedge maze sound all that appealing (also, the fact that it was outside), but Persi wasn't about to argue. Greenhouses he had seen, and they'd been interesting; he could think of ways to adapt the plants to something more interesting, or just juxtapose them with something dark, or hide characters among them.... For that matter a hedge maze might be good for hiding characters in, too; who knew. "You like gardening?"

Persi... would have expected something more like fireworks or bonfires, really. But then she was a little girl, too. And burning the dead things removed from gardens was a pretty good way to get rid of them.

Shrug. “I guess.” Technically, she became Regan’s assistant as a punishment for blowing up part of the greenhouse. Gardening was a lot more satisfying than she expected, though. And Regan was cool. She kept helping even when she no longer had to.

By now, they had reached the back door of the school. Most of the students were hanging out by the front of the school, catching up with friends as they waited for a ride home, or whatever it was the day students did with themselves after school was over. There were still a few kids in the back with them, though. They mostly kept to themselves.

“And now you’ve seen a hedge maze,” Kaitlyn said, gesturing towards the large area full of 8-foot-tall hedges. “It’s easy to get lost in when you’re trimming it.” They continued to approach it.

“So… what’s your power?”

"I've never tried gardening." He had, on occasion, had to stand around and carry things when his mother was gardening, and he'd done yardwork like mowing, but Persi was pretty sure that neither of those really counted. They certainly hadn't made him enjoy any of it, at least.

Persi didn't recognize any of the people standing around the door, and he didn't feel any particular need to get to know them. He ignored them, and did his best to pretend it didn't feel like any of them were staring at him. He didn't normally mind being stared at, that was why he'd dyed his hair after all. Which he really needed to find a way to do again....

The hedge maze was... sort of more impressive than he'd expected, and sort of less. It was larger than he'd been imagining, he'd been thinking of something that little kids would play in while parents watched from raised seats or something, not an actual maze. But on the other hand... it was still a bunch of bushes.

Oh. That. Yeah, Persi didn't like that question. For a number of reasons, one of which was the way his entire face was turning red now. Maybe he could blame that on the sun, it was a lot warmer out than he liked. "Um. Nothing, basically." Of course, he didn't like embarrassing himself, but he also didn't like evasive answers, and, you know, Kaitlyn could throw explosions around. So he answered. "I can get stuff stuck in peoples' heads. For a little bit. If they're already thinking of it." And he never knew what he got stuck, but he'd probably already emphasized how useless he was enough for one sentence, thanks.