"Scotty?" The name seemed... hedges were not supposed to be named Scotty. They weren't supposed to have names, but if they did, Persi was pretty sure that Scotty was not an appropriately hedge-like name. Maybe something like Oak.

Oh. Possessed hedges. That was much more logical. No it wasn't, but Persi's brain was already overloaded, so he was going to tell himself it was and hope that helped.

...Or, that could happen. Persi got his arm back, folded his arms, and sulked at the comment on his mutation. Of course it was true, but that didn't mean he had to say so.

...Persi supposed it wasn't his fault though, so Persi unfolded his arms enough to shake the hand that was offered. And to have to look up to see the guy's... face. That was a face. Probably. Persi was going to have to redo his definition of face.

Also? His face. Made of leaves. And all of him. Made of leaves. And Megatron and giant voice from everywhere and Persi's brain was curled up in a corner whimpering. "Oh God this school is weird. My brain hurts."

The bushes laughed. It was a very unsettling noise. “I THINK I BROKE HIM. GREAT SUCCESS.” With a wave, the bush-man disintegrated.

Kaitlyn patted Persi on the back. “Living with mutants is really weird. You’ll get used to it.” She started to lead him the rest of the way out of the hedge maze. “Heh. Back when I got taken into the Sanctuary, I met a guy whose head is on fire all the time. Scared the crap out of me.”

Even though she was trying to make him feel better, she still found Persi’s plight hilarious. The look on his face was perfect.

Persi... could not really argue with that. He felt pretty broken. In a much more weird-leaf-man-related way than normal. He watched the leaf guy... dissolve?

...Persi buried his face in his hands. "Please tell me there is nothing weirder than that. And the dirt eating." He didn't know which was weirder, really. He didn't even care that leaf guy might hear him. Broken was a pretty good description.

Apparently they were walking again, though, so Persi needed to see. Which meant he couldn't keep hiding in his hands. Damn. He dropped them and walked, keeping a certain minimum distance from the hedges. Screw pride, his brain could not handle being kidnapped by a bush again. "Sanctuary?"

Kaitlyn could tell Persi that he wouldn’t see anything weirder than Scotty. She could also tell him that the sky was purple. Wouldn’t make it true. She smirked and left that comment un-answered.

“The Sanctuary is kind of a homeless shelter for mutants. They took me in after my power manifested and I ran away from home. Usual kind of story, you know.” The Mansion had so many runaways, Persi would have to be horrifically new not to know what Kaitlyn was talking about. “Not a lot of kids there, though. Mostly adults who can’t get work ‘cause of mutant haters.”

That wasn't a reassuring silence. Or a reassuring smirk. Sure, Persi hadn't expected reassurance, but still.

"That... would be useful." Would have been useful, too, if he'd known about it. And maybe he could have avoided being grabbed by a hedge. That would have been really nice. "Why no kids, though? If they don't make you go to class...." Persi was pretty willing to consider a lot of things if it got him out of class.

‘Useful’ was a strange choice of words, in Kaitlyn’s opinion.

“I wasn’t the only kid; it’s just there weren’t many of us. And I technically didn’t go to class, but I still had a private tutor. It woulda been too dangerous to put me with kids my age, ‘cause of my power.” That wasn’t the only reason they kept her out of school, but it was probably one of the better ones. “If you went there, you’d still prolly have to go to school. ‘Cept the schools near the Sanctuary suck really hard, which is why I’m going here.”

The two finally made it out of the hedge maze. There were a few trash cans by the outdoor basketball court on the way to the woodsy back end of campus. Kaitlyn decided that they should stop by there. Meanwhile, a kid with super-speed was having a one-on-one game with a kid with telekinesis. It was an impressive sight.

"Oh." Well that was disappointing. Persi had really liked the idea of not going to school. He supposed he could always just skip; it wasn't like it was going to matter either way. For one thing, he was a mutant now (well, known to be one, which was the part that mattered), and for another, he wanted to be an artist. What degrees you had really didn't matter either way for that. So art classes were good for ideas and practice, but otherwise, school was a waste of time.

They ended up stopping by a basketball court. It took a second for Persi to figure out what was going on and be able to keep track well enough to get any sense out of it, but once he could it was impressive. And... kind of like nostaligia, only instead of reaching back for a really nice old memory, it was reaching back to a painful old hole. Persi had never been athletic, he didn't want to be anymore. That didn't make watching what he couldn't do a whole lot easier, or remembering how he'd felt when he had still been trying to be as good as Ace.

...Well sports were stupid anyway. They were fun, but they didn't achieve anything. And if he didn't have fun there wasn't even that to make them worthwhile. So it didn't matter. Persi looked away, and could see trees nearby. The forest was a bit far, though visible, but there were nice maple trees nearby, and he could probably reach the branches of the nearest one. He wandered over, kicked his shoes and socks off, and began climbing. That required a jump to get ahold of the first branch, which was always annoying, but he managed.

Kaitlyn had stopped for a few moments to watch superhuman basketball. When she turned around again, Persi had disappeared. But his shoes and socks were still around. Apparently he was climbing a tree.

“Having fun up there?” Kaitlyn called up to him. She took the plastic spoon out of her pocket and threw it in the trash can.

The trash can exploded in an ear-shattering metallic crack! The blast tore off part of the can and sent it several feet into the air. Its contents flew a lot further than a few feet. Kaitlyn hit the ground.

The basketball players stopped and stared.

…Did I do that?

"Relatively, yes." Persi was a few more branches up the tree by the time Kaitlyn called him, sitting sideways on a branch. He could still see the basketball game between the leaves, but it felt a bit distant now, and as a result was interesting to watch, rather than painful. Trees generally seemed to make life easier that way, really. "It's quite pleasant." ...Assuming Scotty wasn't able to attack him from the trees, too. Persi eyed the leaves surrounding him with sudden caution. They looked safe enough.

"S***!" Leaf guy may or may not have done anything, but something certainly happened. Persi tipped backwards, whether from a shockwave or pure surprise he didn't know, hit a shoulder against a branch behind and slightly below the one he was sitting on, and managed to grab it. Ow. Peaceful trees might be, but they could still hit pretty hard. And his weight could pull pretty hard on his shoulder, too. The catch prevented him from falling headfirst into the ground, fortunately, but did leave him hanging by his knees from one branch and elbow from another. It was a slightly awkward position.

It took a moment for him to haul himself into something resembling a mutated chinup on the branch he'd caught, and get his legs off the one he'd been sitting on. That done he lowered himself to sit on a lower branch, and kept a very firm grip on another one while he peered down at the basketball court--confused, apparently, but undisturbed apart from the garbage scattered on part of it--the trash can--could probably be safely called demolished--and Kaitlyn. That... looked a lot like an explosion. "Did you do that?"

“I don’t think so. Something in the can exploded.” Because it was something in the can, she doubted that it could have been her fault. Her mutation didn’t work like that. At least, she assumed it didn’t.

One of the basketball players removed an old banana peel from his face. Kaitlyn would have apologized, but that would have felt too much like claiming responsibility. Meanwhile, the telekinetic kid waved his hand in the trash’s general direction, picking up nearly a fourth of it at once. “I’ll get it.” The trash levitated back into its container.

Kaitlyn would let him take care of that. She stood up and walked over to the tree Persi nearly fell off of. “You okay?”

"Who else explodes things?" Persi hoped that was a rare mutation. Mutations in general were scary too, really, but explosions... he'd rather those be limited, thanks. Even if it meant replacing them with something else.

Like that. That was useful. As long as the guy didn't try picking him up and moving him around like that, Persi would be happy.

"Yeah. Maybe kind of bruised, but that's okay. I used to fall out of trees a lot." Now, of course, he still fell, he just caught himself on the tree instead of the ground. Falling later, from higher points in the tree, helped with that. Persi idly tested the arm he'd caught himself with; the shoulder was still sensitive enough to be aware of, but not enough to really hurt.

Now... a dilemma. Did Persi feel like staying in the tree he could be knocked out of, or going to the ground closer to the possible source of more explosions? Hm. Well, Kaitlyn didn't look very hurt, so Persi began climbing down to the lowest set of branches. "Are you alright?"

How many people could explode things? “Aside from me… there’s Mikey and Jason, and I guess some of the air manipulators and telekinetics could do something like this. And then there’s a whole bunch of other kids who could have a power growth that does that and they just don’t know it yet. These random explosions have been happening for a while, by the way. Nobody knows why.”

Kaitlyn wasn’t even the top suspect. But she was starting to notice that all of the explosions happened in places she frequents, sometimes even right after she was there. And now this.

She wasn’t sure, but it might have been the spoon itself that blew up. What would that even mean?

“My ears kinda hurt, but I’m okay.”

“You need to see the DocProf?” asked one of the basketball players. Kaitlyn just shook her head. She could walk it off. The DocProf would probably be ticked at her for wrecking Bill’s face, anyway.

"Oh." That... was more than Persi had hoped. By a lot. He'd hoped that there was one, maybe two other explosion-type mutants here. Apparently there were something a bit closer to ten or twenty, going by the 'a lot.' And Persi now had to watch out for random explosions at all times. Suddenly the hedge seemed safer. "Are they all able to... make explosions that strong?"

That made sense. Persi's ears were ringing a bit, but he'd been significantly farther from the explosion than Kaitlyn had, plus had a few distractions. As long as she was alright, though, Persi would focus his worrying on the next explosion that was apparently going to happen eventually. He got to the lowest branch, sat, and slid off; the landing shocked his shins a bit, but was pretty easy. Thankfully; Persi wasn't sure how he'd deal with falling now, when he was intentionally getting out of the tree, immediately after having managed not to fall when knocked out of it by an explosion. The irony of that would just be a little too cruel.

"So...." Persi eyed the trash can. "Should we leave before it explodes again?"

“I could probably make stronger explosions than anyone else in the Mansion,” Kaitlyn answered with a hint of pride. “But I dunno much more than that. Plus, ‘cause of power growths, we can’t be sure about anyone.”

She glanced at the trash can. Telekinesis boy had already finished with the trash, and he was back to his superpowered game of basketball with the speed mutant. The can was broken and dented, but still able to stand upright. “I think it’s safe. From what I’ve heard, stuff will only explode if you bump into it too hard or something.”

Kaitlyn really hoped this wasn’t her fault. She didn’t want another power with a steep learning curve that would hurt everyone.

"That... is not very reassuring," was the politest response Persi could think of. Wondering out loud if there really wasn't any safer place he could go had a decent chance of immediately making the place even less safe for him. Plus, he was already pretty sure there wasn't anywhere safer. Unless there was some reason that exploding mutants really liked the Mansion, which seemed unlikely.

"Okay...." Persi was going to have to figure out a way to never, ever bump into anything again. Too hard didn't seem to be very hard at all, considering how the trash can had just exploded. And... Persi really had nothing more to talk about, for the moment. He went back to watching the basketball game.

Hm. Actually, maybe he did have a question, even if Persi wasn't sure he wanted to actually know the answer. "Do you think most mutations are more like... that? And yours? Or like mine? You only ever hear about really impressive ones, but...."