Margo smirked and rolled her eyes as she waved the feline gangster off, then stopped sticking her nose out the window just long enough to look at Jude. "No? Um." Apparently he'd totally misunderstood her, because she couldn't remember having said anything about making things smell bad. Had she? "I'm pretty sure that's the barf," she said, and there was a pause as she racked her brain for an answer to his questions.

She didn't know. Golly, she had the lamest power in the universe and now Jude had it too, and the girl had absolutely no idea how to explain any of it. This was great.

"So I told you about the psychic wavelengths, right?" Jude's unconscious emissions tickled at the edges of her consciousness, and her own power responded instinctively, struggling to the surface. The whole thing was like those dogs who just couldn't stay away from each other when they walked past on the street, and Margo almost wanted to just give in and give it a try. But that was the last thing they needed right now- a vicious cycle of powers feeding off each other. So with a small sigh, she swallowed his anticipation...and was that disappointment? "I, uh- the bad news is you really can't tell when you're doing it or not, or control it, until you get really used to it. At least I couldn't, when I first found out, but it might be different for you. Can you feel anything, at all?" These days she mostly kept her powers under lockdown; if only she could explain how. That was probably what he wanted, right?

"It's hard to put in words, but I when I use my power, I know what I'm doing. As in I have to keep a hold on the feeling I want to send out, but I can 'see' how far it reaches. Which probably doesn't help you if you're doing it unconsciously, because default is whatever you're feeling at the moment, however far." And she really wasn't doing a good job of explaining, because she'd somehow managed to confuse even herself.

"Maybe you could try to do it on purpose, so you can at least get a feel for it?"

Jude watched the emotions play over Margo's face and wished for the hundred million bajillionth time that he was a telepath. Absolute wistful longing exuded from him while he intently watched Margo's features. No way she could misinterpret those emotions, right?

Okay. Okay. Focus. Jude tapped his cheeks with his hands. According to Margo, he just had to get used to it. Uhm. Okay.

Used to it! Jude sort of did a little Jazz hand number? Yeah. He wasn't used to it. She still didn't feel anything yet.

> "Can you feel anything, at all?"

"Uhh. Your power is really subtle." But he could use the visualization he usually did to shut powers off. Jude closed his eyes for a moment and started to imagine a rose blooming in reverse. He'd seen it in a music video once and the image usually worked.

The key word here being usually. Jude wrinkled his nose. "Ugh. It is really ripe in here." Did he shut it off? Who knows? How do you shut off something you can neither see nor feel?

"Uhm. Would it be okay... We should go outside and let my room air out?" He was going to have to find a couch to sack out on or something. Bluh.

She couldn't be doing that bad of a job of explaining, could she? Margo flushed as she felt Jude's intent gaze on her, and the accompanying wave of...longing and wishful thinking? The gist was clear enough, but it confused her, that desire (not in the awkward way, thank goodness) which came out of the blue. She couldn't fathom what he was wishing for, or why he was watching her that way- would it be rude to ask?

"Yeah, sorry about that?" The girl watched as him do something where he closed his eyes, and after a moment it was almost like his power was folding in on itself, until it flickered into nonexistence for the briefest of moments. Which was impressive, seeing as it had took her months to learn to box it in herself; he made it look so easy! "How did you...? For all that it lasted two seconds, that was good."

So apparently maybe her powers didn't suck that much, and she was just really bad at controlling them. That was a totally comforting thought.

"Yeah, yeah!" She jumped on his suggestion perhaps a bit too quickly, before realizing it might be harder than that. "Good idea, you know a place or something?" 

“Uh. There are a bajillion places to explore if you have a mind to! Have you ever been down in the flight hangar?” Either way they were leaving pukesville. Jude opened the door and motioned for the lady to go first. “There’s also the gardens. Or the roof. Cerebra, if you’re feeling brave and stupid.” They were both psychics right now, right? Jude had been itching to get in there for a while now.

Of course, it was way past curfew since they’d started their poker match at lights out. Jude scooped up a few snacks that seemed to be untained and padded down the hall after Margo in his socks.

That was the funny thing about being a power copier. People were really impressed when he did practically nothing with their own powers. “C’mon. Two seconds?” Jude groaned. “If you shut off your power for two seconds, you’d be mad. Don’t give me that ‘you only just got this power’ lecture. I’ve been using lots of powers for years now. I should be able to do this.”

That officially made five choices out of a bajillion, most of which would never have crossed Margo's mind- partially because she hadn't been aware of their existence up until now. "We have a flight hangar? And you have access to it?" Because that would be seriously awesome, just like she would be seriously pissed if Jude was pulling her leg. Of course they could visit the gardens or chill on the roof, (talk about a cheesy date taken straight out of the pages of a novel) which she wouldn't protest against, especially if there were glow in the dark flowers- but why do so, when there were adventures to be had tonight? "Please tell me I'm not a total idiot for not knowing what Cerebra is."

Brave and stupid, eh? "I find that a charming combination." She gave him a dose of brave and stupid, all right: recklessness (pinning a name on a feeling made it SO much easier to project), and her power jumped to it.

Pausing in the hallway to wait for a snack burdened Jude, she made a mental note to ask him about that later. As in what the powers he'd copied shared in common, and what made them unique. For the moment, though, that was the least of her worries.

Her grin was lost in the darkness, but not in her words. "Where to, Dora the Explorer?"

"Yeah! You think the X-men walk everywhere?" They totally had a flight hangar. He'd been in there exactly twice, once with Ghost. Once just to test a theory...

"Access? Noooooot exaaaactly." Jude nearly dropped a plastic wrapped confection. He had to stop and bobble it for a second and when he did finally catch it, he felt the need to hold it up like a sword. "Onward and away!" It was, what? 2 am? He probably shouldn't be shouting. He changed to a stage whisper instead. "I'll have to ditch your power, but I can get us in." And he was feeling amped to do so.

O-oh! Jude took two excited steps before he realized that his feelings were not 100% natural... "So that's your power!"[/color] He felt it now. Or, well, he felt the effects. Was he amping her sense of mischief up too? This could be a serious danger if it didn't seem like so much fun.

It was down some stairs to get to the kitchen level of the Mansion and one more set of stairs to get down to the X-men level. They had all the cool stuff under genetic lock and key. Usually that was enough security, but Jude's power rearranged his genetics every time. But he didn't take them straight there. They had to take a detour to the adult's hall first.

"Uhm. Hold this." Jude transferred the snacks to Margo and tippy-toed down the hall. He held out his hand toward the walls, this time using his own ability.

His power was greedy. It felt, to him, like the arm of one of those sea creatures in shells. It blindly felt out around him when he let it. Always seeking. And when it found something... Jude stopped in front of Sam's room. He heard a bit of whining that quickly quieted. Ah. So the boss man was actually in there tonight?

Jude let that invisible seeking mussel copy ColdSteel's ability. If any one could get in, it'd be him.

"C'mon" He mouthed the word at Margo and then, finally, they could go down that shiny X-men hallway.

Jude took it better than Margo had thought he would, perhaps even too well; the strength of his hype bounced right back at her, reinforced by his excited manner. She laughed quietly at his antics (was that a Nerd rope he was brandishing like a sword?) but toned the mischief down, nonetheless. "Yes. Was it too obvious?"

They reached the adults' hall, and the snacks were dropped into her arms. Jude made his way down the hallway with an outstretched hand, pausing briefly before one of the doors. She guessed he was copying someone's powers, not that she knew how that would get them into the flight hangar- hey, but she wasn't complaining! The girl could literally kiss anyone who would let her down there, and, well...Jude was cute, after all.

He beckoned; she followed.

Was it too obvious? "Noooo" morphed into a "Maybe? Just a little?" as Jude registered Margo's disbelief. Yeah. He probably wouldn't have picked it up if she hadn't pushed it. Jude was still grinning, though. Powers were meant to be used.

Sam's power was always... trippier than he expected. Maybe he'd grown the extra heat sense to make up for the time when he'd only had one eye, but for a guy with two eyes who usually didn't see a heatmap overlay, the colors made everything like a bizarre, angry candyland.

To Margo's credit, she didn't comment on any weirdness. She just followed. Down the carpeted stairs. Across the shared living spaces. Down the metal stairs. Down the ominously bare metal hallway. Nothing but bio-scanning hand plates and doors, down here. Near the end of the hall, Jude took a left. He put his hand on the black bio-scanner and it ran over his hand, flicked orange and then red.

"Hold on." He took his hand back, blew on his fingernails like you might blow into the back of an old school nintendo cartridge, and put his hand back.

It scanned again. Orange. Yellow. Orange. ...Green.

"Welcome back, Sam."

"After you." Jude smirked.

((OOC: first there's a locker room and beyond that is the hangar. Details change with every telling so feel free to make up whatever ))

Whatever Margo could say about the X-men, they sure were careful. The hallways down here were nothing but fancy bio-scanning devices and doors; if she hadn't been so hyped to see this flight hangar, she'd have been intimidated by the place. Even as it was, she shivered slightly as she leaned against the cold metal of the wall, watching the colors as Jude "flashed his pass".

Orange red. Orange yellow orange.

Green.

O-oh. So that was the reason behind the detour down the adults' hallway, then. Genetic recognition? So Jude's power didn't just copy powers, but also genes? That sort of made sense and was really cool. Just her- amazing- luck.

Inside, it was as good as she'd imagined: on the smallish side, but it wasn't like there were all that many jets. Margo padded past the locker room and into the hangar itself, pausing near the doorway to take it all in- it was pretty amazing, actually- and give Jude a chance to catch up. "So, you been down here before?"

A slow clap for whoever had spray painted a blue X on the side of the jet, among other things.

"Only once and that was with Ghost so no poking around." He nibbled at the Nerd rope more because he had it in hand than actual hunger. He had been down here after an incoming flight if he remembered right. A couple years ago when he was... 9 or so? Jude had been planning to get down here again. He didn't want to get into trouble, but he did want to see why they kept it all secret-like.

"You don't think they have weird stuff down here, right? Adults just keep us out because liability and all that dumb stuff?"

The locker room was entirely disappointing. It even smelled like locker room. Which was to say that it smelled rather a lot like stank.

Margo was wise to step right on past that.

And then it was jet time. "I think I can make us a staircase." ColdSteel did that kind of stuff all the time. Jude rubbed his hands together. "This is a straightforward power. I like those." Way better than mischief making emo waves. Jude sort of wiggled his fingers and then flicked them outward like he was a sith lord shooting lightning. Only he was actually shooting ice.

"Do you want to build a snoo~oowman?" He teased and tried his best to make a staircase, but... well... stairs were surprisingly not as easy as Sam made it look. What they did get was a ramp. A lumpy, bumpy ice ramp that led all the way up to the jet's door. "Uh. Lady first." Did it have a key or was leaving a jet in a locked, hidden underground hangar good enough?

"Ghost, how so? Because she's on the X-man team?" That was as much as she knew about her, but Margo was curious. About everything, actually, which was probably the reason she was down here in the first place at...what, two in the morning? "You tell me. Liability and all that dumb stuff could just be a cover for all the dirty X secrets we're about to discover, maybe."

Elbow against the hangar wall, she let Jude slip past her. She smiled into the back of her hand at the antics of that boy, then trailed after him a moment later.

"Now if only you could make a straightforward staircase," teased the girl in return as she made her way up the ice ramp carefully; it wasn't too terribly slick, but it was ice, after all, even if the lumpy surface did help a bit. In any case she made the top without problem and turned to wait for Jude once again, the side of the jet cool against her touch.

"No keyhole but it opens out, I think," she reported. "If you could scoot the...ramp?"

"Yeah. Ghost is an X And she's also my... sponsor?" He finished lamely. "She adopted me because... reasons." Also a lame finish. It was really tiresome to explain the whole deal around how they met and why his life sucked before. Like really, really tiresome.

Maybe it just made him tired because it was 2 am, a fact Margo helpfully pointed out. Jude scrambled up the ramp behind her. It wasn't a bad place to be, all things considered.

> "... it opens out, I think. If you could scoot the...ramp?"

"Yeah. No prob. Uhm. Hold on to... something." He quickly made the ramp sprout a couple poles at the top so they could hang on, and then eased at the knees before making a wide, slow wipe motion with both his hands. The whole ramp creaked backwards like a giant glacier, one centimeter at a time until Margo had enough room to operate the pull handle deal.

Okay. So many they didn't need to hold on. He'd thought it would have been a bit faster than that.

Sponsor... adopted... reasons... wait what? Margo blinked at the back of his head but asked no further on the matter. Sure, she wanted to know, but it didn't exactly seem like the sort of conversation Jude wanted to have at the moment. Yeah, at 2 a.m.? Heck no.

Suddenly there were ice poles like on the public buses, and Margo found one to hold on to as the ramp inched- or, more like quarter-centimetered- backwards. Maybe it wasn't too nice to poke fun at the guy who'd gotten into them in here and put up with her all night, just like it wasn't her place to ask about his personal life?

Oh, well.

"Actually," she tugged at the handle with an effort, "I take back what I said, okay? Carbon copy, cubic centimeter, it's more like you only have a cc's worth of coordination with everything else of the 'can't have hand sanitizer around because the high schoolers will eat it!' attitude."

Somehow she got the jet door, with its own little stepladder clattering as she hopped over it, open. Then she was in. A moment of fumbling for the control switch later the jet's lights came on.

"Welcome aboard," grinned the girl in her most adventurous cyborg voice, "Please mind the gap."

"What?" It took a couple blinks for him to parse that. "People eat hand sanitizer?" Was this some American joke? He hated not knowing pop culture. He'd tried to fit in seamlessly, but some things were just absolutely beyond his comprehension. Wasn't hand sanitizer like straight up nasty alcohol jelly?

She hopped right past him and made herself at home in the cockpit, robot voice and all.

Also, "Heeey! I think that was an insult!" Jude wrinkled his nose playfully at Margo as he hopped aboard after her. "This from the girl with the crazy emo waves." He teased as he took a mental survey of the massive spread of buttons.

"Whoa." He took a seat as Margo's co-pilot. There were little icons and flashing lights and a screen with little blippy parts. "Cool." He grinned at Margo with a question in his eyes. They really shouldn't touch it, right? Right?

"Uh, no. That was sort of the point, but never mind." Ha, so much for her tease then. Margo mentally berated herself for her assumption that she hadn't been the only one subjected to the no-hand-sanitizer-out-in-the-open regime. It was a ridiculous assumption now that she thought about it, considering the nature of this school.

Lesson learned? You never know, so keep your mouth shut. Like that was ever gonna happen...

"Hey, who you calling crazy emo waves?" asked the girl with play indignation as she settled herself into the pilot's seat. Surveying the panel before them with its sheer number of buttons and icons and flashy lights, though, she couldn't help but agree that woah and cool were right. Coolio.

With a Cheshire grin she let her fingers hover above a blippy area of the screen, then chickened out and withdrew her hand. Instead she met Jude's gaze with an invitation, "If you would like to do the honors, Mr. Elsa?"