Persi glared back. It would probably be less than effective, seeing as he was still stuck in a hospital bed (and hospital clothes, which hasn't stopped driving him insane yet) and bandages, and Aiden had just slapped him, but glaring was really all he could do. "It's not an excuse. I said you can do whatever you want, didn't I? So it's none of your business what I do anyway."

"The stuff in the Bible is about loving and tolerating other people, not myself, and mutations are pretty incompatible with that. They basically all have to do with hurting other people, in case you haven't noticed." Which was kind of mean to say to Aiden, really, since he was convinced he could actually do good thing with his, but it was true. "And yes, actually, since I don't do any good and do make a lot of things worse, replacing me with a rock would improve a lot of things." Probably not a lot, Persi was only one person after all. But a little bit still mattered. "I don't make things better and I can't make things better, so all I can do is stop making things worse."

"I don't want to have to get a new roommate." This was more awkward than anticipated. No, wait, he'd anticipated plenty of awkwardness. He just hadn't anticipated Persi to be quite so brain-dead.

Cafas needed to hurry up. Aiden sighed and stalked over to an empty chair against a wall. Dropping into it, he shook his head at Persi. "Anything can hurt people. Learning to drive, or not learning to drive, can both hurt people. Or going around with a cold. You think anyone those apply to should kill themselves too?"

How could people be so stupid and annoying? Well, he'd known all along that people could be supremely stupid, and annoying was an inherent quality to most people. But -- GAH. Couldn't people who could actually do this deal with this? Was this really in his worryingly vague job description? He tried to think. Persi couldn't be quite as useless as he was saying, could he? Wait- "Rocks aren't very good at dragging roommates away from invading phoenixes," he pointed out.

"You wouldn't have to get a new roommate. You didn't have any before." That was, after all, why Persi had been made his roommate; there was space. "And don't the X men all have their own rooms anyway?" Persi had never heard anything about it, but it made sense. Why would the X men share the same rooms as every random student in the Mansion if they didn't have to?

"Hurting people isn't the point of learning to drive. That's why it's generally called an accident." Driving had a use outside of killing. People who drove a car for the purpose of killing someone were sinners, people who drove a car in order to get somewhere weren't, or weren't for that reason. Persi really wasn't sure why that was a hard concept to grasp. "And not all sins are the same, if they were no one would ever get into Heaven at all. It's just the really bad ones people have to make up for by dying, or if they can't do anything else to make up for it." Both of which applied to Persi, but that should be obvious.

That... okay, Persi didn't really have a direct response to that. Still. "If you stopped opening the window for it, no one would need to drag you away. Or literally anyone else here could."

"I didn't exactly arrive all that long before you. You were just the next person to show up. Summer and fall are when most people change schools, you know." Idiotidiotidiotidiotidiot. "And I'm not an X-Man. I'm a trainee. There's a big difference." Lots of big differences. Like ability and skill and experience and age and social tact.

"So sins you can't change are worse than the ones you choose to commit?" Aiden was not impressed with this concept, and found it quite stupid. He didn't even try to moderate his expression, and probably would have completely failed if he had.

Did Persi really know that little about the phoenix encounters? "If I don't open the window, it just sits there and heats up the entire room. Frying slowly isn't any less dangerous than flash frying. Besides, it's intelligent, if seemingly incapable of remembering anything from the day before, so I have to at least try to talk to it."

"What? No." Was Aiden deliberately being obnoxious, or did he actually not understand? Deliberate obnoxiousness didn't seem much like Aiden, but he was a mutant. "That's not how it works at all. If you kill someone with a car, then the sin is killing someone, not having a car, because cars aren't for killing."

"You have legs. You could always walk out of the room. And ask someone else to talk to it." Or walk out of Persi's room, now, and not talk to him. Persi hadn't actually intended to hint at that, but it was an option too. "What's the point of trying to talk to it if it never works and it doesn't remember?"

"Cars are tools, like everything else. It's what use you put them to. I have swords. I don't use them to hurt people. Tools aren't inherently anything, even if they might be easier to put to one use than another." He shook his head. You could kill someone with a paperclip, at least theoretically, or a shield - shields made pretty effective weapons, actually - just as much as you could use weapons to keep yourself healthy or, say, repurpose them into some other tool. A bowstring could become a fishing line, with the bow itself forming the rod.

Persi's mood just wasn't a good one for learning or understanding anything. "If you start walking, or running, you can never stop. It's a matter of principle, but it isn't just theoretical." Aiden had run before, and he had since realized just how much harder it was to regain a forfeited position than it was to hold onto it. It wasn't just that your opponent, whoever or whatever that entity might be, had the chance to strengthen their hold. If you've lost before, you will always know it's possible to lose again, and be more likely to let yourself fail.

"I know, that's the point. If you kill someone with a car then the sin is murder, not driving a car. There weren't cars when the Bible was written anyway." Why was Aiden being stupid? That was exactly what Persi had just said. It had to be on purpose.

Also worth noting: Persi was bad at staying still. Mostly because not moving made him restless and annoyed. Which was kind of problematic, since there really wasn't much moving to be done without arms when sitting on a bed. His arms didn't hurt anymore though, so he deliberately ran a hand through his hair. And then stopped halfway through because, ew, he really needed to wash his hair. "Okay, but the phoenix keeps nearly killing you. What about if you start putting yourself in the hospital because you're being stupid?"

Pay no attention to the hospital they were currently in. Persi hadn't been being stupid, anyway.

If Aiden were typing, he would have -facepalm-d on the spot. He didn't really feel like shoving his hands in his face, though, so he just stared at his incredibly idiotic roommate. "If the sin is what you do with it, then why is being a mutant automatically a sin?" How could Persi possibly not realize that he was using the other side's argument to try to prove his own deluded point? Wait - it must be the blood loss. Yeah, that made the most sense. Okay. If Persi was being stupid because he'd lost too much blood and his brain wasn't working properly, he shouldn't take it personally. He should cut the guy some slack.

But not enough for Persi to hang himself with, because clearly that would come back to haunt him in no time at all.

"It's not doing it on purpose, and I'll think of something else if it gets that bad." Like giving up on things and inviting the clearly-heat-loving thing into, say, a deep fryer. "It would still be a better reason to end up in the hospital than this." He eyed Persi pointedly.

"I don't know, okay?" Persi snapped. It probably wasn't entirely justified, but Aiden was being stupid and Persi had spent years trying to figure it out. And anyway, it wasn't like Persi had ever had good self control. "I tried figuring it out and I can't but the priests all agree that being a mutant is a sin and they know God better than I do. That's why they're priests."

Persi got the point.

That did not mean that Persi was going to acknowledge the point.

"You mean visiting people so you can yell at them for having a different religion than you?"

Persi never had managed to grow up enough to not be called a brat.

Blood loss. Remember the blood loss. At least remember it enough not to go over and smack Persi again. He didn't have blood to spare for bruising, no matter how much he deserved it.

He really deserved it. He deserved it just as much, if not more, as when Ai had actually hit him. That was before he remembered the blood loss, though, so he had to resist and not try to straighten out Persi's head quite right now. Leaving him deluded wasn't really an option either, of course, but Aiden was very limited by his roommate's condition.

And bullheaded idiocy. But mostly his condition.

"More like have a different amount of intelligence," Aiden muttered.

"Yeah, probably." Persi gave up, folded his arms, and leaned back to glare at the ceiling in annoyance. "I've heard like four studies that say the smarter people are, the better they are at deluding themselves." He'd been spending entirely too much time staring at this ceiling recently. He could probably draw a perfect photograph-like replica of it once he got back. It'd be hard to check though.... Chances were if he failed again he wouldn't happen to be in exactly the same room.

"Then you are clearly the smartest person on the planet."

That may not have been the most tactful thing to say. Oh well. If he recognized that it was tactless, even if it was after he said it, that was probably still an improvement. Cafas'd probably appreciate it.

A thought occurred to him. "Why would you consider scientific studies and then just accept whatever your priests say?" Even more improvement! His infantile tact-sense kicked in before he described what the priests were clearly saying. Or maybe that was his refusal to swear. Hm.

...Smartest person on the planet. Persi.

Persi started laughing. And kept laughing, and eventually ended up pulling his legs up and hiding his face in his knees to muffle the laughter, since it was slightly difficult to fall over from anything while sitting on a bed. It took a while to be able to speak again. "If I were smart, I would've gotten this over with five or six years ago." You know, when he'd just become a mutant, and the people around would have helped him instead of causing problems.

Okay, that was actually a fair question, for someone who didn't know. Not that Persi was good at explaining things, but still, it wasn't a stupid question to ask. Persi just was a bad person to ask, but he supposed Aiden didn't really have anyone better. "Because the science was about humans, and how humans think. Science works for that, as long as it's done right and the scientists aren't biased. But it's limited to the tangible world, because it needs to measure and see stuff, and you can't measure what God things, so religion is outside of science's ability. Science is about what exists and religion is about what it means. They don't actually exclude each other."

...

Was that healthy laughter or deranged laughter?

...

Had to be deranged. Aiden hadn't said anything funny. Should he slap Persi again? Sheesh, this was almost as bad as anything thus far in this stupid conversation. Where was Cafas anyway? An interruption would be very welcome.

Yeah, definitely deranged. Aiden levelled a refreshed glare at Persi. "No, that would be if you were more gullible and idiotic. If you were smart, you'd realize how idiotic all this is." Was Aiden seriously better at not hating himself for being a mutant despite only being one for a few months when Persi had known for years?

Oh dear stupid deranged misinterpreted God, his roommate really did have issues.

"And science doesn't have anything to say about the people interpreting what God thinks, who are automatically believed by so many-" he didn't say stupid, he didn't! "-people, regardless of what they say? Priests are human too, and subject to human failings. They aren't perfect, and they certainly aren't incapable of lying or making mistakes."

"I'm not--well." Persi had to stop and think about that. "I probably am gullible. I don't know. So probably. But that's not the point, because everyone else in my church knows, and that's too many people for it to just be me being gullible. So if I was smart, I would've done this when I hadn't been sinning for as long so it'd be more likely to work, and everyone around would've helped me instead of interfering." The lingering humor from being called smart had kept Persi cheerful at first, but wore off, and he ended up staring at his arms again. "They would've just done it for me if I'd asked, and then there would've been any chance I'd screw it up that way...." Even Persi couldn't manage to mess up that many peoples' efforts by accident.

Persi shrugged. "If they were lying about what God said, God would probably do something about it. At least tell another priest or something. But that hasn't happened. So either they're telling the truth, or God wants us to think they are."