The effect had first come to Slate's attention approximately a week ago. It had been a cloudless day, but that was not to say it had been clear: the sky had taken on the grayish haze which tended to cover large cities during times of extreme heat and humidity. 'Smog,' it was called, and it was generally accompanied by a rise in asthma attacks and advisories to avoid long periods of exercise, particularly if one is pregnant.

Being neither pregnant nor asthmatic, Slate's attention had been focused elsewhere.

It was a day in which Katrina was not with him; much like today, in fact. She had a lot to do in order to get ready for going to college in the Fall, and not all of it required a boyfriend. Thus he had been left unchaperoned on the steps of the Mansion, with only a service manual for the Blackbird to keep him company. It was then that he had first noticed it.

It had first been brought to his attention with much squealing.

Some combination of metal-mancy and excessive free time following the start of summer break had resulted in the Mansion sprinklers being repurposed as... well, sprinklers. He was fairly certain that the water line feeding the curbside fire hydrant had been compromised as well, given the power behind the spray. It was like having a water park installed in the Mansion's lawns, which could be turned on by any passing child.

The squealing was sudden, and quite distracting. A group of girls had been caught in the spray, which had been turned on by a similarly sized group of boys, and they were making the sorts of protesting noises young females used to indicate that they were actually having fun.

After his initial frown for this interruption, Slate blinked. Then, he began to take careful notes in the margins of the manual; notes quite unrelated to jet engine maintenance.

Black was the least dramatic. Dark purple and blue were similar, but slightly more pronounced; then green, red, orange, yellow. The lighter the spectrum, the more noticeable the effect.

He began to include pictures along with his notes, then thought better of it; while Katrina was highly supportive of his mathematical pursuits, not all experiments required the eyes of a girlfriend.

Over the course of several days, he was able to gain much documented evidence of the effect. Yet there was one single point of data that eluded him: white.

They always seemed to avoid white, as if by some strange unspoken agreement. At first he thought it a mere statistical anomaly, but as the days stretched out, he began to suspect that they knew something he did not. It was most perplexing, as many matters concerning the gentler race were.

That is why he was startled to see the young blonde woman walking towards the Mansion's doors, wearing precisely that shade.

Slate blinked. Then he reached a hand out and, his baby blue eyes unabashedly upon her, dialed the water line to full. The lawn sprinklers sprang to immediate and voluminous life.

She was wearing a white T-shirt. He had to document the effects of water on her, for science.

It had been a long day at work, and Evelyn was exhausted. The museum had recently acquired a new exhibit, and all staff was busy rearranging and setting up all the additions. Short staffed (a growing condition), Evelyn was removed from her usual 'be bossy and point' position, and instructed to help carry and place the various artwork. It was grunt work, which she had trouble with, but she put on her pony tail and resisted complaining until she was finally released to go home mid afternoon. While she was sore and tired, she felt satisfied to accomplish something other than just make things look pretty. She didn't even feel disappointed taking the short hike across the lawn when the cab driver had her get out earlier than expected.

Rather than dress in more formal attire like she had a habit of, today she opted for a plain white t-shirt and jeans. Easy to wash and clean, and less likely to be ruined by a stray nail or screw, she felt a little casual and somewhat disheveled as she approached. While at work, the dress was useful. Now the shirt just seemed boring and she was eager to change. Mentally sifting through her wardrobe trying to decide an appropriate outfit, she didn't notice the echoes flicker warning her of the sound of water.

Exactly two seconds later, she was squealing in surprise as the lawn sprinklers came vehemently to life, and doused her with a completely unnatural force.

Slick grass + tennis shoes + panicked scrambling brought her butt quickly to the ground and she yelped in surprise, covering her head with her hands as the water sprayed her in the face from a nearby sprinkler head. Her white t-shirt, which had been practical earlier in the day, was transformed into an all too transparent reminder of why one should never where white around water.

Thank goodness her bra was tan....

[Male, dark brown hair. Responsible for activating sprinklers.]

"What's the big idea?!!" She yelled over the water, coughing slightly as it got in her eyes and mouth.

The squealing, of course, was typical: well within previously observed pitches and frequencies. She was female; that was simply the female reaction to such stimulus. It was every bit as involuntary as the dilation of pupils in response to strong light: when one applied water directly to an unsuspecting woman, she squealed. He suspected it was an instinctual rather than a learned reaction, but the Mansion lacked a proper range of cultural diversity with which to properly test the theory. In any case, the noises she produced were tangential to the experiment at hand.

The squealing was typical: the falling, less so. It made it far easier to gather his target data, as the test subject lay prone on the grass during the key time frame.

"One moment," he shouted back, jabbing a thumb down to stop the timer on his cell phone screen, and hastily scribbling the appropriate observational data into his notepad. His pen gave a final flick; then he looked back up, and met her gaze.

"I am gathering data on the relation between material composition and hue with regards to the relative rate at which transparency occurs under application of water. Your shirt lasted," he glanced down at his cell phone stopwatch, "Point-four-three seconds. Is it pure cotton, or a cotton-poly blend?"

This was an important distinction. Which the occurrence of "white" being so rare among the female population (at least, amongst the subset that knowingly walked near the Mansion's new sprinkler system), it was important to collect as much information as was possible.

As it was, it was clear that white held the potential to be a substantial outlier; .43 seconds could almost be considered embarrassing.

One moment.

Oh, one moment….

He was apparently busy taking notes and her distress was inconveniencing him. Soaked to the skin, sopping wet, white hair hanging from her ponytail and dripping water down her drenched back, she crawled to her feet and prowled forward, irritation beginning to trickle into the back of her mind. Evelyn was a fairly calm person, on most occasions. She dealt with a variety of people, from socially awkward teens to serial killers who tried to kidnap her. She had pizza with a sewer monster. But this guy, whoever he thought he was, pushed her buttons.

Jabjabjab.

”I’m gathering data…”

Jabjabjab.

Oh, so she was an experiment. That just made it that much more frustrating to her. She wasn’t just going to sit there and be someone guinea pig, especially when that someone was testing how transparent her clothing was. Her face turned crimson, both from embarrassment and from anger. She kept her arms pressed tightly against her chest and glared daggers at him.

”Your shirt lasted…point four-three seconds. Is it pure cotton, or a cotton-poly-blend?”

Jabjabjab.

[Cotton-poly blend.]

The combination of the long day, her exhaustion, her wet clothing, her irritation, and her echoes insistence on participating in the conversation resulted in Evelyn’s fist moving from across her body, and flying towards the guys face. Punching, it seemed, was much more in her nature than slapping.

She hoped he took note of that data.

”Jerk!”

The woman was exhibiting a negative reaction to his response. A markedly negative reaction, he would go so far as to state. A markedly negative reaction which was drawing closer to him with short, determined steps. Slate stood as she approached, so as to meet her at eye-level. He tucked his notepad under his arm as he waited quite patiently for her to mount the stairs, and finish her approach. He braced himself for her slap—

Noted the curling of her fingers and the trajectory of her arm somewhat belatedly—

And received the punch to his cheek, in due course.

It took him significantly less than .43 seconds to become reacquainted with sitting on the ground.

"Oww," he said, as authentically as possible. It did hurt: enough that he had taken the trouble to heal it already (...as well as the impact to his posterior). It would have been a most inconvenient bruise to explain to his girlfriend.

[Cotton-poly blend,] came a more helpful addendum to her thus far most unreasonable reply.

"Oh." The brown haired Italian took his notepad out again, and dutifully recorded the data. "What is the exact percentage?" He asked, blinking baby blue eyes up at her.

Women were confusing. They could punch you, and answer your question in a most logical tone, all in the same instant.

Evelyn's fist met her companion's face, knuckles stinging with impact and leaving twinges of pain across her hand. But, like her previous experiments with punching, it gave a satisfying warmth somewhere inside here where she felt delighted to stand up for herself and not let someone push her around. Or embarrass her.

The delight flickered momentary however when a question followed her attack. "Percentage of what?" She found herself saying, and the echoes chimed in.

[Percentage of cotton-poly blend. 70%.] She thought about it for a moment, and realized she hadn't said anything about her shirt blend out-loud. She had heard the echoes continuing to chime it while she punched the kid, but there had been no verbal mention. He might have guessed, it was entirely likely, but something in his body language was as if he was responding to something she said.

Taking a step back and looking at the figure on the ground, she squinted at him. Then quickly re-crossed her arms. "The data of my shirt's material makeup is not relevant to this conversation." She snapped. The echoes tried to calculate how far her room was and noted how many students she might cross paths with on the way there.

She was mad all over again.

"It is entirely relevant to this conversation," Slate stated, writing the number 70 down in two deft strokes of his pen. "It is, in fact, the topic of this conversation and the initial starting point thereof, making it intrinsically and preeminently relevant, of which you are most assuredly aware. Though you may be prone to violent outbursts of testosterone-mimicking female hormones, you cannot hide that you actually—"

...That she actually had a hum of data in her mind regarding distances and the probability of further human interaction dependant upon the route selected.

It took Slate a moment to realize what was going on. When he did, his blush was sudden and profound.

"My sincerest apologies," he said, with great contrition. "I did not mean any disrespect, nor did I wish to belittle you in any way."

He should have known. Should have realized it, immediately. He of all people.

"I did not realize I was addressing more than one of you."

Thank you for helping with my studies, he stated within her mind, like a humble penitent. May I know what you call yourself?

He was not referring, of course, to their current voice box. The mind—minds?—within her were to whom he addressed his remarks, not the illogical punch-happy creature currently in control of their body. He was quite ready to be done speaking with her.

Evelyn watched as the figure started taking notes. The echoes picked up on the number 70 gliding across the paper and she felt herself give a firm, confused, blink.

[Companion hearing echoes. Mind reader? Telepath?]

The possibilities were there, but it still made her thoughts whirl a little. She was used to silently arguing with the voices in her head, but having someone talk back to them was something else entirely. Her momentary confusion let a few of them wander and start counting the drips of water coming off her hair, the color of the leaves on nearby trees and note the bird poop on the sidewalk nearby.

Like she wanted to know that.

"Violent outbursts of--Who do you..."

He blushed. The action seemed completely unfounded and the echoes tripped her to a halt as they noted it. He was apologizing, yet, not to her. He was speaking as if the echoes were their own little life force, and she was nothing more than an annoying vessel they were sitting in. Then he went so far as to invade her mind and start trying to address them.

"Hey! Hey stop that!"

Sometimes, Evelyn felt like her mutation could be described by a number of human illnesses. Hyper awareness always sounded normal, and for the most part she felt it was. That was up until the point when her companion started talking to the voices in her head.

[Mental intrusion. Contemplating possible counterattacks."] She glared at the man and redirected the echoes to their analysis of the bird poop.

"There isn't more than one of me. There's just me so stay out of my head!" She snapped, turning and scampering into the building and away from him. When all else failed, running seemed like a good solution.

Running was a good general evasive strategy. Except, of course, when one was dealing with a telepath. Even putting his own experience-based prejudices aside, Slate could tell who were the real brains behind her mind.

I was not speaking to you, he stated firmly. The Italian followed her inside, but with distinctly less scampering. He followed at a steady, determined pace. Should she happen to turn around, she would find a slight frown on his lips, and a furrowing of his brown eyebrows. It was very possible for her to get quite far from him, given his pace relative to her own: to escape the range of his telepathy, however, she would have to leave the Mansion grounds entirely. And until such time as she did, he was still following her. Steadily, and without temperamental theatrics such as she was exhibiting.

A punch to the face was quite effective at establishing a mental connection, as it turns out.

Please do not be alarmed. I am a telepath, as I am certain that such logical individuals as yourselves would have deduced by now. Also, the poop was left by a house finch as opposed to an English sparrow: while the sparrows are certainly more common in this vicinity and I respect the statistical likelihood implicit in that observation, I happened to see the finch responsible. No, it was female. Can you really deduce that from excrement...? Curious. But more to the point: I can assure you that counterattacks will be quite unnecessary. I simply wish to talk. Would you like to get a cup of tea with me? I have a blend recently shipped from Colombia that I believe would pose quite the analytical challenge for your senses, should you accept my offer.

The blonde was invited, by extension.

For a short moment, Evelyn believed if she got far enough away from the figure she could escape the sound of his voice. But it followed her, planted as firmly in her head as the echoes were. As she retreated to her bedroom and slammed the door shut, she growled as she prowled to the dresser to try and find something dry to wear.

The echoes are PART of me. They're my mutation, and just my brain's way of pointing out obvious stuff. They aren't people so stop trying to talk to them! She grabbed clothing, made sure the door was locked, enjoying the click the bolt gave. If only she could do the same to her brain. Tuning her her powers, Evelyn quickly changed before she suspected he could get close enough to attempt to barge in. At least once she was in dry clothes she didn't feel as embarrassed or grumpy.

That was, until the echoes started discussing bird poop with the telepath.

No one is getting a cup of tea with anyone. Go away. She mentally snarled, staring at the wall and forcing the echoes to take notes on the textural applications of the spackling. She could have thought of a number of more interesting things to think about, but suddenly she felt like she had to protect her privacy from the invading resident in her head.

[Cotton clothing. Distinctly cold when wet. Estimated drying ti--]

We aren't discussing this any further.