Somewhere between late afternoon and early evening, the heat broken by the previous night's thundering rain but already returning as the ground underfoot baked solid once again, a young mutant sat perched on a slightly raised root of a tree at the edge of a small grove, trying to keep from getting too damp from the remaining mud and only borderline succeeding in sketching an amphibious aerial-aquatic battle between a dragon and a kelpie while avoiding toppling both himself and his sketchbook onto the ground with the quick movements of his pencil-wielding arm.

As might be expected, even with Aiden's balance and self-awareness the situation could remain stable for only so long, and eventually he was distracted enough by considering whether or not a line was appropriately placed and shaped to be just a little bit too slow in correcting his posture and balance when his weight shifted on the way to the next pencil stroke. He went sideways. His sketchbook went rather more forwards, tumbling and scattering loose pages across the spread of pasty mud while his pencil stuck out of the ground at an angle, a defiant flagless post refusing to lie down even when its usefulness was smeared thick with dirt.

Aiden himself rolled fairly easily, and came up again with only a little dirt smeared across his shoulders and upper back, but he was on the ground again soon enough. See, the page he had been working on was facing down. In the wettest patch of mud within several dozen feet. He only stared in horror for a moment or two, though, and then clued in and shot forward to snatch it out of the dirt. His sketch was indeed ruined, a sodden brown smear dripping clumps of liquid mud. He stared at it, and then forlornly crept back onto his root to try to dab the mud away with a corner of his long-sleeved shirt.

Whistling to herself, Adeline skipped along, wide-eyes swiveling to and fro, trying to absorb every detail. The Mansion's yard was bigger than she had first thought, almost as big as one of the paddocks at her Uncle's farm. Seemed everything here was bigger than it seemed, but that was what it appeared mansion life was. Living, only bigger!

It had rained last night, and even though the sun was shining, it left the grounds damp and muddy. Which meant she was going to have to be careful around any muddy patches. It had taken her all morning to get ready. She didn't want to ruin her costume and makeup!

When she had woken up this morning, a stark realization had dawned on Adeline. Apart from the couple of people she had chanced to meet so far, she did not know anybody else who lived at the school. And while she did not consider herself a shy person by nature, she was not very experienced when it came to trying to make new friends. Her life had been a mostly nomadic one, and it now occurred to her that she had never really put much effort into making people friends . There had no point when she knew that the next circus season was just a calender page or two away. Now, though, she was not sure when her next tour would be. It could be next year, or even longer! Which meant she would need friends, if she didn't want this school to turn out like the last one. When she was younger, she had compensated for her social awkwardness with entertainment. Juggling, acrobatics, tightrope - things Adeline had known her whole life were mysterious and entertaining to townies. And while they may not have made her any real friends, they got her noticed enough to at least make an acquaintance or two.

Adeline didn't consider herself shy.

She was just socially naive.

She rounded a corner of the mansion, and noticed a boy sitting at the base of a tree, all alone. From where she stood he didn't seem all too happy. In fact, he seemed quite glum. His attention seemed to be focused on something he was nursing in his lap and wiping with his sleeve. The perfect candidate for cheering up! Grinning to herself, Adeline skipped towards the boy, reaching into her pockets. She sung out a small fanfare, in order to get the boy's attention.

"Dun dada daaaah!" When she was sure he was looking, Adeline pulled three empty cotton spools from her pocket. Still skipping towards him, she began to juggle the spools (harder than it looked while skipping!). She spoke quietly to her mice, who were waiting, hidden inside a special pocket inside the back of her jumpsuit. Knowing their cue, she felt the trio begin to climb out of the hidden pocket inside her costume, scurrying up the back of her undershirt until they rested in wait on her shoulders. Carefully, Adeline snatched the final spool from the air. With a dramatic flourish, she began to throw them out to the side and front of her, keeping her arms outstretched. "Un...deux..." As each arm was extended out, Basil, followed by Speedy, scurried down one of her arms. From each sleeve leaped a mouse, who landed on the ground and began to run towards their respective spool.

"...trois!"

As the final spool was tossed on the ground just in front of the boy Mega Mouse Man climbed up Adeline's tight blonde bun, onto the top of her head. Her hands free, Adeline them up in the air, before flinging them back down. As she leaned forward, Mega Mouse Man gave a leap forward towards her spool. Feeling the mouse leave her scalp, Adeline flipped herself up into a handstand. As she began to walk forward on her hands, the mice all perched themselves up onto their respective spools. Then they began to push them, roll them towards the boy, until all three mice were standing in front of him.

{"Ready, Adeline!"} called Mega Mouse Man.

Hearing her cue, Adeline lowered herself. With a burst of energy, she pushed herself into the air, and back onto her feet. Throwing her hands wide, she smiled at the boy.

And so stood the girl, dressed in a jumpsuit of pink and purple stripes, covered in assorted shapes of felt in all colors, complete with a small 'tail' sewn onto the bum of the costume. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, which exposed her large ears. Her face was painted in the 'Auguste' clown style: a light pink foundation, with white around her mouth and eyes. A bright pink nose, and exaggerated black eyebrows completed the makeup.

"Ta-dah!"

"Dun dada daaaah!"

Aiden blinked up from desperately trying to save his drawing from the mud (and completely and utterly failing, because dirty water did have a certain tendency to soak into nicely absorbent paper) with a great deal of confusion. What he saw really didn't clarify things much. After a moment to adjust to looking into the brighter light of the open area nearby, he spotted what appeared to be a youngish girl. He really didn't want to assume much about people in this place, and he was in an appropriate mood to at least remember to attempt to avoid making such assumptions.

The probably-girl-person was... was she juggling? It kind of looked like it. Why would she be juggling? Was she practicing something? She kind of looked like she was looking at him. That was awkward. He should probably slink off under the trees before she noticed him and panicked or something. She didn't seem to be juggling anything big and dangerous, if her weird arm movements were indeed juggling as he presumed, but so long as she was juggling something it could hit her in the head or the eye or something if she were startled and dropped them.

She was getting closer and he hadn't had a chance to vanish. Great, now it would just be really obvious and awkward if he made a break for it. She must have seen him. Did she just not care? There were people like that. He was never going to be one of them, but there were people like that. Aiden only grew more bewildered as the girl in the strange costume flipped over and started walking on her hands.

Behind three mice pushing spools of some kind.

Wearing a fake tail.

And with enough energy and physical strength to flip herself back to her feet from a handstand.

What a bizarre kid. He supposed she was suited to this place, though. Anyone that weird probably ought to be a mutant. And, you know, associating with impeccably trained mice while sporting ears like that kind of hinted at her status too. Yeah....


So, what was he supposed to do now? Given the flourish she'd given, the grin she appeared to be giving him, and the whole general apparent focus of... everything, that had probably been a rehearsed sequence thing of some kind. A routine? Act? There was some multipurpose word that fit the situation. Whatever it was, though, people were supposed to clap, right? Except being the only person clapping was really, really awkward. Besides, he was busy trying to save his probably unsaveable sketchbook. "Um..." he said, before noticing that he really didn't have anything to say. What was more appropriate than solitary applause? "That was cool?" he offered hesitantly. It was, if strange and completely unexpected, but should he say that? He'd already said it. Well, should he apologize for saying it?

Weird things were so awkward.

He looked confused, the poor thing. Maybe he had good reason to, Adeline didn't know. Maybe the direct clown approach had scared him, or made him think she was weird. Or maybe it was just unexpected for him. She had grown up surrounded by clowns, acrobats, jugglers, tightrope walkers. Circus folk. Someone doing their routine out of the blue, at any stage of the day was a common thing for her. Maybe it was weird to townies.

Still, she was here now, and despite his obvious awkward hesitance, Adeline had no such concerns.

"Hi, I'm Adeline! I hope I didn't freak you out. You looked like you were lonely and sad, and I thought maybe you could use some cheering up! Oh, and these are my friends. This one is Basil, that one is Speedy, and the one in the middle is Mega Mouse Man. They all say hi!" Indeed, the trio of mice all squeaked a greeting in unison.

Walking closer to the boy, Adeline looked down at what she now saw to be a notebook resting on the his lap. Her smile drooped slightly as she realised why the boy probably looked so sad. "Oh no! Did you drop your book? Is it okay? Can you fix it?" It didn't look fixable. Squinting her eyes, she could just make out a trace of something drawn. She didn't know what though. The mud obscured the best part of it.

"Were you drawing? What were you drawing?

"Erm... Aiden," Ai replied faintly. This girl.... talked a lot. And quickly. And totally knocked him aside, in terms of mental thinking ability or whatever. He bobbed along in her wake for a moment before he could process more than the part where she had introduced herself. She had introduced others. Picking out the names from the chaotic flurry of word-detritus, he peered at the mice. "...Hi.....?" he offered the rodents hesitantly. Real, normal mice? Supersmart mutant mice? Humans in mouse form? How was he supposed to know in this place?

"Oh.. I'm not freaked out." That counted as true, right? He wasn't running away and he didn't really feel a desire to try, although he was very thoroughly confused. He looked down at his sketchbook, and the confusion masking his prior maelstrom of more negative emotions lost some of its grip.

"Yeah. Lost my balance..." he explained sadly. "I... think it's a lost cause." He dabbed at the page with a cleaner piece of shirt. The shirt became dirtier but the page didn't become any cleaner as far as he could see. "It wasn't anything important. Just a doodle." Giving up entirely, he flipped the sketchbook closed and set it beside him, taking a few moments to make sure it was securely balanced. He could balance himself, and the sketchbook could stay balanced without him, but put them together and things just fell apart.

Adeline frowned in sympathy for the lost doodle. "What was it a doodle of? Can you draw it again?" she asked hopefully. She hoped he hadn't gotten too far into it. That would be a shame. He mentioned that he had lost his balance, and Adeline felt her grin perk up. Slipping off her flared-toe clown shoes and socks, she leaped across to the root next to Aiden's, careful not to touch the mud. She landed nimbly, and proceeded to hop from foot to foot.

"I know how to balance good! My Mom started teaching me when I was really little." Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot. "Pieds légers, Adeline! Pieds légers!" she said, impersonating her Mom's French accent."Light feet."

She hopped to the next root over, and spun around on it, still hopping from foot to foot. She was beginning to make a little dance of it. A jig, that Tony the Clown had taught her. Soon, she began bobbing lower and lower, kicking her legs out, until she was nearly doing it from a squat. This was a Russian dance that Dimitri the Clown had taught her. The Prisyadka she thought it was called, although she couldn't quite remember. She wasn't performing it quite as low as she could go if she was on flat ground, but it was low enough that it still looked impressive. Especially on an exposed tree root.

"So... What's your superpower?" she asked bluntly, still dancing.

There was no fear of falling, no thought of falling. Adeline was born with circus in her blood.

This was as natural to her as breathing.



((Any bad French is the fault of Google Translate)

Aiden shrugged shyly and edged the sketchbook so it was a little more hidden and made him feel like she wasn't looking at it so much. "A dragon and a kelpie..." he said quietly. He could still pick out the curve of the dragon's neck as it struck at the kelpie with its fangs, the angle of the kelpie's powerful legs, but that was probably just his imagination and memory conspiring to taunt him with the picture's loss. "I could draw something similar, but it wouldn't be the same. You can never draw the same thing twice."

What did the crazy circus girl think she was doing now? Aiden twisted to follow her movements, only to realize that twisting was going to knock him over again and if he just turned around all the way there was a pointy nub of root digging into his backside. He hopped enough to catch his feet beneath him, finding it infinitely easier to balance without worrying about the sketchbook, and watched the weird mouse girl with confusion from an easy crouch. Her temporary accent made it far easier to follow her... jig? than her words, even when Adeline evidently translated her own blur of words.

Wow, the kid was good. He blinked and watched, rather amazed, as Adeline attempted and succeeded in doing what looked like that famous Russian or whatever thing. He'd seen it in the odd movie or show type deal, and some manga tried to involve it, but it really needed animation and was infinitely more impressive in live action than in animation.

And then she tossed a metaphorical giant sickle of doom with free biohazard bombs attached at him. That was fun, to choke with the shock and find his feet had already slipped out from under him and left him sitting on the root with his feet in the mud. Really, it was great fun?

He turned away from the still-dancing, utterly oblivious girl and stretched to collect his lost pencil. Cleaning it off occupied a few moments quite well, but not answering would be rude.... and no matter how rude she had been to ask like that, it wasn't right to be rude in return. He swallowed and tucked the pencil into the ring binding of the sketchbook. "I... make it snow sometimes," he said slowly. Deciding to accept the situation so did not make it easy to discuss it. "But mostly I don't get cold. I do get hot fast, though..." he trailed off, eyeing the sunny expanse of horror so nearby.

Adeline scrunched her face up in thought, before offering a small shrug. She couldn't draw, which meant that she had no advice to give Aiden in regards to his ruined picture. Not that he seemed too upset about it. Slightly glum, yes, but she was sure he'd get over it.

From the corner of her eye, she watched as he shifted around on his chosen seat, carefully trying not to fall, or knock his things onto the ground. It had to be said, that he wasn't the most graceful of beings. Nevertheless, he managed to keep himself upright and dry. Until she asked him about his superpower. Once the question had been thrown out into the air, it was like somebody pulled a rug out from underneath the boy. He didn't fall, but his feel slipped into the mud and he seemed to begin to splutter. Adeline covered her mouth, and gave an amused titter.

He seemed almost...embarrassed about his power.

Adeline couldn't imagine why he would be.

"Wow! Really? That's so cool! Can you make it snow right now? How do you do it? Do you have to say a magic word? Or can you just make it snow with your brain? The dancing had stopped, and she was now crouched down on the root closest to him. She had heard Aiden's explanation that he couldn't feel the cold, and that he got hot easily, but in her excitement such facts were overshadowed by the awesomeness of being able to make it snow.

Oh, look a cold pun.

Yippee.

At least the girl had stopped, both the crazy dancing and the whole laughing-at-him bit. Yes, he was muddy. No, it really wasn't funny at all. "It just happens sometimes, okay? Just only when I'm moving and never when I want it to." And he wasn't interested in trying to make it snow now. At all. He just wanted to last through this day and let it slide away into vague anonymity. He liked days like that.

"What do you do?" he asked quickly, trying to divert the conversation away from himself before she asked other questions, potentially nastier ones, although there weren't really any that weren't nasty at all. Even if he knew she was involved with mice somehow, and really didn't want to know any more, listening to her ramble on about herself like most other people seemed to adore doing was infinitely preferable to being forced to do the same about himself.