Kaitlyn shrugged. “There’s a lot of closeted mutants who can keep it a secret because their powers are tough to notice. Then there are people who don’t even know they’re mutants. Can’t count any of them, so nobody knows for sure. But… most of the people here and at the Sanctuary are the impressive ones.”

Soon after they had started, super-speed kid and the telekinetic had stopped playing. They were arguing about whether using telekinesis to knock the ball out of the court meant that the speedster would get to keep the ball, or whether the telekinetic would get it. Kaitlyn got bored with the game, and decided to keep showing Persi around.

“There’s a few cool things in the woods, if you still wanna see that.”

"Hm." Persi... wasn't sure if he was happy or annoyed by that. He probably wasn't the sole laughably weak mutant in existence. But the others were probably all managing to live normal, happy lives, without being known and kicked out and stuck in a building full of living explosives. Alternately, he could just go back to envying humans. They had a much better deal after all; Heaven tended to beat living powers pretty thoroughly. That seemed much easier.

Arguments... were even less interesting than the sports they were about. And Persi definitely liked forests. "Sure. Is... Scotty," that was still not an appropriately hedge-like name, "going to be there too?"

“He could be,” Kaitlyn said, already moving towards the woods. “But his body’s probably still in the main building. I dunno if he could reach us all the way out in the woods.” Admittedly, she didn’t know a lot about how Scotty’s power worked, but it would make sense if he had a limited range or something.

“By the way, Persi… what do you think about the X-Men?” He seemed so new to all of this mutant stuff; Kaitlyn hoped he hadn’t been indoctrinated into the X-Cult yet.

"Oh." He had a body. That wasn't leaves. That was nice. The mental image of said body probably laying as if dead somewhere was a little less reassuring, but at least he wasn't actually made of leaves. "As long as he doesn't grab me again."

"Um...." Persi thought, then shrugged. "I don't know. Not much, I guess. I know they exist, that's about it...." And that they were mutants, but Persi didn't have much room to criticize them on that detail. "Why?"

Kaitlyn loved answering that question.

“Because everyone here seems to love them, even though they’re idiots and hypocrites. They pretend they're superheroes, but they really just help humans oppress us more. They say stuff like ‘humans and mutants should be able to live together’ after making the humans happy by helping them make our lives suck.”

Suddenly remembering how new Persi was to mutant issues, Kaitlyn took a few steps back. “You know what those riots a few weeks ago were about, right?”

"Oh. Uh... okay...." Persi... didn't see a problem with making humans happy, really. Whether or not it made mutants unhappy. That was how things were supposed to work. He definitely did see a problem with telling Kaitlyn that, though. He'd rather not get an explosion thrown in his face, thanks. Plus, there was no reason to think she wouldn't tell others, and then he'd have to deal with a lot more than an explosion. "So... what do you think they should do, then?"

Persi shook his head. "No, not really." He hadn't even known there were riots until a few days in, and certainly didn't know the cause. "I wasn't really watching TV much when they started." By which he meant, he'd been kicked out and there was no TV to watch.

“Well they sure as heck shouldn’t be helping the humans out,” Kaitlyn snapped.

“It has to do with that oppression I was talking about. The laws are set up to make life suck for us. If someone knows we’re mutants, they can kick us out of their restaurants. If we get jobs, our bosses could fire us for it if they find out. If we try to follow all the humans’ rules, chances are our lives are gonna suck. And if we break the rules, we get cops and X-Men making our lives suck.”

Kaitlyn began to realize her that rant wasn’t really relevant to Persi’s question. It was time for a segway. “So we’ve had to deal with that crap for years, but the riots happened because the cops kicked it up a notch. There’s a girl named Gina Schuyler who goes here. Cops see her on the street, they see she’s all gray and she has wings, so they decide to stop the car and beat the crap out of her for no reason. And they didn’t even get punished for it!

“Then, a few months later, they killed a cockroach-looking mutant kid. Then they called a reporter who they knew was a mutant from TV, and tricked her into going somewhere so they could beat the crap out of her too. So the reporter got on TV and told everyone about it, and the mutants started rioting, 'cause it's not like human laws were gonna punish any of that, either. And guess what the X-Men were doing the whole time?”

Kaitlyn didn’t give Persi much time to respond. She even stopped walking to give this last point its due emphasis. “They were helping the cops, ‘cause they think that kinda crap is okay.”

Persi did not say 'eep.' He had the wonderful luck to automatically shut up when afraid, so all 'eep's and similar thoughts stayed internal. It took a second for him to manage to get words out. Fortunately Kaitlyn was talking, so that was okay. "Yeah, I've... noticed that...." He hadn't noticed any problem with it; sure it was kind of bean on the humans' part, but it wasn't that bad; they could be much worse than they were if they wanted to. But he was aware of it.

That looked... kind of like Kaitlyn wanted a response. Newly terrifying Kaitlyn wanted a response that agreed with her. Which meant Persi definitely could not be honest. He supposed it wasn't that big a lie; beating someone--even a mutant--up for no reason was extreme, and the police were supposed to be better than average. Fair when no one else was or expected them to be. He didn't know what to say, though. "That... sucks. I don't know what would fix it, though...."

“Well, since the system wasn’t gonna give us justice, we had to take it for ourselves. That was the whole point of the riots.” Kaitlyn was so wrapped up in her righteous fury that she didn’t really notice how terrified Persi was.

“The riot was just a short-term fix, though. Long-term, we prolly ought to form our own country so we don’t have to deal with the humans and their crap. They’d prolly be happy to see us gone, too.” She’d gotten that idea out of a pamphlet, and from hearing a few of the rioters talk about it during a lull in the violence. In her eyes, it sounded like a total win-win situation. Not that she felt so great about the humans getting another ‘win’ under their belt, but at least they had a chance of agreeing to it.

“The X-Men prolly wouldn’t want that though. They still think we can live together, even after Registration. Seriously, they’re either stupid or the humans are paying them a lot.”

Kaitlyn was parroting most of this stuff from the other Sanctuary residents.

"It... doesn't seem like the riots worked, though." Not for anyone. Not for Kaitlyn's goal, not for the X-men's, not for God's; they just hadn't worked. Persi didn't think he even had a goal and they still hadn't worked for him.

Oh. Well... Persi wasn't convinced the riots were a short term fix either, but a mutant country... actually didn't sound that bad. Apart from the time it'd take to move everyone around, and having to send mutant kids to the new country, it really did sound like a win-win. And, for that matter, Persi couldn't see why the X-men would object to it; sore losers maybe? Or just wanted to stay superheroes? "What do you think it would be like?"

“I think the Riots worked. We let ‘em know they can’t get away with stuff like that anymore, ‘cause we’ll fight back.” Kaitlyn sounded very proud of this.

As for what a nation of mutants would be like; “…I dunno.” She shrugged. “Has to be better than what we have now.” Better than not having a future, at least. The new country wouldn’t have an exhaustive list of things she wouldn’t be able to do when she was older, just because she was a mutant.

Kaitlyn started leading him towards the woods again.

"Oh. I guess so." Persi wasn't sure that was really the right way to fix things, but it did seem effective. And, well... effective might be what mattered; if you were going to hell anyway, then being good didn't matter so much.

"We could all have jobs based on what we did. Like, we wouldn't need planes, because people could fly. And you could work for a construction company, blow up all the old buildings and statues and stuff that we don't want anymore. And I...." Persi's fantasy stuttered to an abrupt halt once he included himself in it. "I guess I'd be a tutor, or something? That would suck. Learn your times tables, or I'll stick Sesame Street in your head again!" Which might not actually work as a threat, considering the age of kids learning times tables.... "Or something."

Also, that was... kind of ridiculous. Persi generally tried to keep his imagination to drawing, not to anything he said out loud. "Um. Sorry, that was kind of ridiculous...."

“Heh. It’s fine. You could probably get your lesson stuck in your students’ heads, too, so they wouldn’t forget it. But…” Kaitlyn shrugged, “I’m not sure I’d wanna work for a construction company.”

Kaitlyn rubbed her chin for a second, looking thoughtful. They were entering the woods, now. “It’d actually prolly suck if you had to get a job based on what your X-gene did, though. I mean, it’d be cool if your power could help you do your job, but what if I wanted to be a scientist or something?”

Though if Kaitlyn had to get a job that fit her power, she really wouldn’t mind joining their military. She was already fighting for the stuff she believed in, anyway.

"Maybe. It doesn't last too long, though... and I'm not sure how memorable math equations are, I might not be able to do anything with those." Persi certainly could never remember them, anyway, but then he couldn't stick things in his own head either. Not that he'd tried....

"I dunno. Science does have a lot of explosions." The shade was a relief, even if it wasn't that big of a difference. Still definitely an improvement. Persi turned an automatic attempt to scratch the side of his head in thought into pushing his hair out of his eyes. Seriously wherever he'd picked that up from needed to stop, it made no sense and it was cliche. "I don't think it'd be like, you have to. There's got to be someone whose mutation wouldn't help with anything, and someone whose mutation would help with everything. So more like... 'my mutation does this' would count for proof that you could do it. So if you did want to work in construction, you could just do it, not have to get training and then use dynamite anyway."

Kaitlyn shrugged. “My power would prolly suck for demolition, though. When they take a building down, they put a bunch of bombs in key spots and make ‘em all go off at once, so it collapses in without falling on anything else.” At least that’s what she gathered from a television show that one time. “It would be pretty good in the military, though.”

After some silence, something occurred to her. “You could make little jingles for the lessons you do, so you could get ‘em stuck in people’s heads. Like the grammar jingles the sixth graders do.” At least, they did that back when some of her classmates were in the 6th grade at this school. According to them.

There were several dense bushes in the forest, along with the trees. Kaitlyn dropped her backpack to the ground next to one and retrieved a red, plastic flashlight from it. “This is basically the best hiding spot,” Kaitlyn began. Then she stopped herself. “You afraid of tight spaces?”