Afternoon. Weekend. Standard fall weather. Aiden didn't have anything better to do, and he certainly wasn't going to do something worse, so he was in the light forest near the mansion. He wasn't too far out, since he wasn't planning on being gone for long, and an extra-cautious part of him was more than willing to warn him not to be unfindable if something went wrong.

Given that if he worked too hard he would faint afterwards, the potential for something going wrong was fairly high.

For all his shyness and awkwardness and general wimpiness, though, there were times where AIden was quite happy to ignore the potential for disaster and just do what he wanted. In this case, it was work his left arm in better balance with his right because Cafas never had him train with both batons in their regular training sessions. That was what these idle, homework-ignoring sessions were for. He did occasionally wonder if anyone ever came across the little drifts of snow he left behind before they melted, but he hadn't heard of any weird myths building up so he wasn't too concerned. For now, he focused on finding the agreement between the two batons that the new weapons just insisted on hiding.

Concentration was easy when there was enough snow to make it hard to see past his area of effect. No distractions beyond himself.

Serena had been having a bit of a hectic time as of late. And with more and more of the students spending time inside as fall weather set in and made everything colder, she found herself wanting to do the opposite.

The mansion was noisy. She could do without noise, she needed to do something to clear her head. Or rather, fill it with different thoughts, maybe something nice which will let her mind wander, yes. A good book is what she needed.

Serena grabbed her current adventure and tucked it under her arm, before throwing a teal scarf on. She was wearing jeans and a white and red top, with a blue sleeveless jacket and scarf.

She picked up her MP3 and quickly started listening to some 90's rock, The good stuff. And began to make her slow walk out of the mansion. It was quite light today. Maybe she would read under some trees.

She slowly paced through the grounds, Autumn leaves falling around her, music playing. It was rather pleasant.

As she walked into the forest Serena felt a slight change in the air, as if things had just gotten a little... colder.

She walked into a clearing, as she moved it got colder. Then she saw it, snow, a field in the clearing where it was snowing, and settling on the ground. She could see a figure in the snow, making rapid movements, as if he was practicing something.

"Hello there." Serena said to the figure clad in snow.

His dummy was simply air today, but his focus shaped a vague figure out of the snow before him. Shadows and light and movement, he threw combos at the figment of his imagination as randomly as he could. The weight - just wasn't - right. He paused for a moment, irritated. He didn't want to be modifying these, at least not while they were so new and it would be insanely obvious, but the centre of balance in his left baton was just a little bit too far back.

"Hello there."

What? Aiden spun around, bewildered at the voice. There was someone there? Oooooh this was awkward. Was he going red? No, wait, white. At least he couldn't look too embarrassed like this. He cleared his throat and tucked his batons through their loops. "Um... hi?" he said hesitantly, stepping to at least the edge of the snow. Some girl? Who evidently thought it was cold enough to need a scarf. Was it really? Great, now he felt awkward about just being in an old t-shirt, even if it was as pristine a white as everything else at the moment. Well, he was wearing pants rather than shorts, since he was wearing a belt to carry his batons, so maybe it wasn't so bad. What was she doing here, though?

Serena smiled as the figure stepped through the snow towards her and greeted her, mildly awkwardly. She supposed that if she was in the middle of practicing combat, and a person walked in on her doing that, she might feel slightly awkward.

Was he using batons? Serena had never thought of those as viable weapons... A thought occurred to her. She could probably form them out of blood, or something else similar. Maybe a staff? That would be a good way to defend herself without putting the attackers life in danger... Serena had never thought of that.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, I just saw the snow in the middle of autumn and became curious as to what was causing it. I didn't meant to interrupter anything." the British girl commented.

Serena wondered why he had decided to come and practice the batons out here... Surely if the boy asked, Sam would set him up something to practice with, or in the danger room. This was of course, assuming that the boy was a student at the mansion.

Aiden tried to stomp on his embarrassment and edged forward as the snow caught up with him, tracing idle patterns in the snow on the ground to try to keep the snow from fading too fast. Okay. He'd been expecting something like this to happen at some point, he'd just been hoping that it wouldn't.

"It's just me," he said simply. "It's not optional at all, and I don't have to try to clean up afterwards out here." There. He'd prepared for this, he'd had words to say, he said them. All was well, and now he just had to last until she found herself satisfied and kept moving. He glanced towards his watch out of habit and then grimaced. He kept forgetting to take it off before he started and then it turned white too and he couldn't see anything on the face. What a pain.

He glanced awkwardly over to the girl as he flicked the catch on the band and tossed the shiny white watch off to the side where it shouldn't get buried. "I.. .don't suppose you have the time?" he asked sheepishly. "Solid white's kind of hard to read..." The watch in question had landed on a couple of fallen leaves and was slowly starting to regain spot of colour as the white melted away.

The boy gave a bland and fairly straightforward response to her comment. She only noticed as he approached just how white he was, everything about him, including his clothing and his eyes... They were silver, that was a little strange. His mutation was certainly a beautiful one, or so Serena thought.

She smiled to him and quickly looked down at her watch. "Of course! The time is... 12:30" Serena smiled. She was being friendly, but not overly, he seemed a little shy.

She wondered where exactly he had learned to use batons. She had a suspicion if he was a student at the mansion, Sam would have been a fairly safe bet. If not, it could have been somewhere outside of the mansion.

"I was just wondering, where exactly did you learn to use those?" she gestured towards the pair of batons at his side, and spoke in a warm and friendly tone. Ironically.

Aiden tried not to flinch aside as the girl looked him over. Seeing him. Scrutinizing him. Judging him. He saw her smile, though, and relaxed a little bit. Yes, people were going to look. Not everyone was going to think nasty things. Half past noon? He seized on the time to distract himself. It was still a bit early to be stopping - he greatly preferred to go find lunch after the main rush had died down - but if people were finding him maybe it was for the best.

Aaaand asking questions. Straightforward question, straightforward answer. Right. "Oh, those. Cafas." He shrugged. "He does most of my training, but he doesn't use two at once. Do.. do you know him? Australian, pink hair, does stuff to metal?" And kind of built like a wall. A brick wall.

This... wasn't so bad. Of course, they never seemed to be all that bad until he got into the meat of the conversation and it dragged on and he said something or did something and offended people and messed everything up... Well, at this point all he could do was hope that she'd go on her way before that happened.

Serena smiled gently. She didn't want to make him feel awkward. She would most certainly feel awkward if somebody bumped into her using her mutation, so she was sure it was the same for other people.

Cafas? Pink hair? She had never heard of him before. She was sure she would most certainly remember if she had seen him before... Pink hair and metal based mutation was something rather unique.

She shook her head. "No, I've never heard of or seen him... Is he on the mansions staff?" she asked, Curiously.

She shifted about on her feet slightly, not enough to seem impatient though. She was giving off friendly body language. She could tell this boy was a little socially awkward. That was fine.

Oh. She didn't know him. He'd spent so much time around Cafas the past few months that it was hard to remember that not everyone knew the x-man. "I suppose you could say that," he said slowly. "He's with the X-Men."

He glanced behind him for a moment, gradually realizing that the snow was definitely starting to taper off. Really, now? Hopefully the backlash would at least be light enough that the girl wouldn't notice. He eyed her warily. The conversation didn't feel like it was at a close at all, but if he could edge things along and at least not be the focus of her attention by the time he melted... If she wasn't looking at him, or better yet was facing away entirely, then even if he stumbled she might not notice.

"Well, if you happen to pass him around, you'll know who he is," Aiden said. End of chat end of chat end of chat. Please let her keep going before all the snow was gone. He folded his hands, trying to hide his nervousness, but only noticed the growing patches of colour. Time to go!

Serena smiled. She had actually met several of the X-men, and it had never occurred to her just how many of them there may be... She wondered. And then she found a portion of her thoughts wandering into what exactly they did. She had never looked into them too heavily, which was odd, considering she had met so many of them.

She noticed his body language taking a more nervous edge. Maybe she should try to focus his attention a bit more, get him talking and relaxing a bit more. Yes, that could definitely help.

"Oh!, I've met a fair few of the X-men, the reason I was asking is because one of the ones I'm friendlier with, Sam, is a self defense instructor, do you know him by any chance?"

Serena still had a very gentle and friendly tone. She was trying to make the boy feel less... stressed. He seemed far too agitated for a teenager.

Aiden scuffed at the snow, trying to get some back up into the air. He had no idea if it would convince his mutation to hold out a little longer. He dearly hoped it could. It was going to have to, because this girl wasn't getting the point at all. Why was she still talking? Why couldn't she just trundle off with her book or whatever it was she was holding?

He swallowed and tried not to think too much about when he was going to get slapped in the face with tired. "I'm still getting to know most of them," he said, starting to give up on getting out of this. "The name's familiar, but I only really know Cafas, Saphirus, and Mirror at all." He shuddered involuntarily at just how he'd met Mirror. He was so not good with kids, especially ones that were apparently well under a month old.

He tried to put more information than just a faint ringing bell to the name. It wasn't as distinct a name as Cafas' or Saphirus', and it just bobbed just out of reach. Eh. "Is that how you know him? Through self-defence training?"

Serena smiled as he began to respond more thoroughly. Mirror... Where has she heard that name? and then it clicked. She had heard it from Evelyn. Mirror was the gender shifter who had the ability to go through mirrors, thus the nickname. And was also an X-man, as the boy had mentioned.

She felt slightly embarrassed that she had needed to go to Sam for self defense training, especially considering her older brother had been a member of the police force...

"Yeah, I ended up feeling that I needed to be able to defend myself, thus I started taking self defense classes with Sam, he's a really nice guy. Ice mutant, and he's also an X-man. And I've also met Katrina, Shin and Kealey. I don't know if you've met any of them."

She smiled gently at the boy. Then she blushed slightly. "Where are my manors! My name is Serena."

Ice - ?

Oh. That was where he'd heard the name. Aiden kind of had the impression he was supposed to go talk to Sam at some point, given the at least superficial similarities between their powers. Who knew, maybe Sam would think of something that would be useful for Aiden.

The other names weren't at all familiar as more than names, though, and he just shrugged blankly at them. He didn't have to explain his lack of familiarity, though, because suddenly the girl was blushing and introducing herself. "Er.. Aiden." He glanced surreptitiously at his arm. Good, there was still some white left. He still had a bit -

He winced as a rush of tingling exhaustion blasted through his muscles, especially those of his left arm and back. And yikes! What had he done, sprain his wrist at some point? He tightened his right hand over the spiking pain and forced his weight into his heels to keep from swaying. One... two... At least he wasn't going to faint this time. He would have already if that were going to happen. Just breathe, and look, everything was coming back online already. His wrist settled down into a sulky throb, and the sweat that had sprung out across his skin was able to start drying.

Serena noted that the white was starting to dissipate. The snow as as well, was this because he was no longer consciously using his mutation? If so, it seemed to be relatively without backlash. If this turned out to be true, Serena would be jealous. Her own mutation had a rather horrible backlash.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Aiden-"

Serena cursed herself for her thoughts somehow jinxing the boy. Oh yeah, His mutation looked like it had backlash. She took a rapid step forward. "Hey, What's wrong?" she asked.

She was ready to give him any help if needed. She knew what it was like to feel backlash from her mutation, and certainly overuse of it.

"Fine," he said, though it came out rather tightly through his teeth. Maybe it was a good thing she'd interrupted him when she did; if he'd kept at it for much longer, he might have fainted instead of just... this. He forced himself to keep breathing evenly. Okay. The exhaustion was fading, and maybe he could stop crushing his wrist soon.

A couple of joints creaked in protest when he did pry his fingers off his wrist, the pain there already little more than just a memory. It wasn't really bad, just unexpected. He'd convince himself eventually. Okay. Settled enough to move? He shifted his weight a little bit. Close enough.

"I should probably be going," he said, giving his face a rub and hoping it got some colour back into it, if it were anywhere near as white as what skin he could see was. It was probably a very good time for lunch.