Actual crickets were actually chirping into the awkward silence between them as Jiri manned up, and pointed straight at the Mansion. Some of the younger kids had gone to bed by now, but most of the teens still had lights on in their windows, and there was always lights on in the kitchen downstairs.

"So. Are you here for more pictures of Cold Steel, or are you coming in?" He grinned a grin of complete mortification. What would be worse--her being a student, and him not figuring it out, or her being a creepy photographer, and him admitting to being a bird?

"Jiri, by the way." He stuck out his hand. There was really nothing else to do.

He pointed. Her eyes widened. The crickets continued to chirp.

"But, does it have to be one or the other?" Margo grinned, hoping by now just to delay the inevitable moment of truth. She gave the offered hand a quick shake- what was it that she had said again, that she lived down the street? So she could... walk by and then double back when Jiri had gone and then avoid him for the rest of her life, right?

Yeah, no... maybe so. "C'mon, I'll walk with you," she said.

They shook on their mutual mortification. Like good responsible teenagers, they too could 'fess up to the truth when things were literally shoved in their faces.

Technically she hadn't admitted to being a mutant, or living at the Mansion. Yet. But technically, neither had he.

At this point, he didn't think either of them was fooling the other. So. Might as well break the mutant ice.

"Body snatcher. Been here... a little over a week? I've been stuck in summer school, though. Which. Ah. I notice you are not stuck in."

This was possibly the longest walk up the Mansion lawn he'd ever had.

There was something about introductions in the mutant world, that they always began in more or less the same way. With powers, and in this case length of stay at the Mansion. Jiri's was no exception, and that was when she knew for sure that she'd been busted.

"Empath, sort of," supplied Margo. "Been here for about a year now. And yeah, no summer school for me. Uh. Sorry for leading you on."

Yeah, she was totally not avoiding his gaze now. The distance from the bus stop to the Mansion gates had never seemed so long, except for maybe that first time she'd come here with Alex and a mutant hater had pulled a gun on them. Maybe that time, but still.

"So... is that your real...?"

... She should just do die in a hole now.

Jiri blinked in utmost confusion. He was pretty sure he should get it, she'd trailed off like he should get it... but he didn't get it.

"My real... what?" His mouth was quirked into a half-smile as he asked. The half-smile of I probably don't even want to know and I KNOW that but I'm asking anyway, why am I asking.

"Empath is cool. Very traditional. A, ah, staple of the community. So does that mean that you can, like, feel what I'm feeling? Right now?" Why did he ask these questions, he did not want to know the answer. On a scale from tomato to volcano, just how red was his face now? It felt so warm, it was kind of going numb. He'd thought he'd been embarrassed before, but no he realized that all  other embarrassments in his life were simply stamina training for the moment when he'd be embarrassed in front of an empath.

"So. Umm." Umm. "What do you really think about bird photography?"

He needed to just. Stop talking. Yeah.

"Your real form... body? You said you were a body snatcher." That half-smile, though, almost made her want to reconsider and say never mind, then run off into the desert and never come back. Yes. This was I just killed my dad my uncle said so levels of shame right here, that Margo felt burning up her face. " And no. I change feelings, not feel them."

Seriously, how long was this walk going to last? Seriously, she was going to die before they stepped foot on the front lawn.

Seriously.

"Honestly, I'm not even sure," she laughed, or tried to. It sort of got choked out by all the awkwardness in the air, and the girl just ended up sounding like a total idiot. "I, uh, didn't even know it existed until like, yesterday. It's creepy and totally weird, but there are worst things. What about you?"

His real form. Body. He wasn't sure which of those sounded creepier, actually, but he was leaning towards form. It made it sound like he could go all crazy with the non-human.

Which... he could. To be fair.

"Yes real body. This is." He very eloquently replied, through a face palm. "Sorry. Didn't quite follow you the first time. Umm, yeah. This is me." If he'd been in another body, believe-you-him he'd have ditched out on coming back to the Mansion with it. Going to that meeting in another form was a genius idea, actually. Except for the whole 'violating someone else's free will' thing, not to mention the 'he didn't really have any control over this' angle.

At least they were at the gates now. It wouldn't me much longer until they were at the doors and then inside the Mansion and...

...what then? Awkward good nights? Even more awkward socializing in the living room while the nocturnal kids had a game tournament on the couches? There was just no way this was ending well.

"About the same," he answered, with regards to his photography interests. "So it's going to sound even more stupid now, but I just feel like no one here really knows what's up with my power. There's another body snatcher, but the way she does it is just..." Unclean unclean unclean. "It's, ah, physical-based, I guess you could say. Mine's mental. And Audubon-X has pretty decent forums, so I figured I'd check out the group, and see if... I don't know. Someone had heard of a power like mine?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "I should probably just stick with the internet."

At least her powers didn't involve reading emotions. That seemed a little weird for an empath, but he didn't even care if she was lying, at this point. Anything that made this less traumatizing was fully welcome, in his opinion.

"So. Ah. If you just heard about the club yesterday, why did you have all those pictures of Cold Steel?"

...That was maybe something he really didn't want to know, come to think about it, but the question was already out there.

"Cool." That had been a terrible question, so what more was there to say? "It's my bad, didn't come out like I thought it would. I, yeah-- sorry."

Could he have gone in another form, though, and would he have? She'd not be the one to ask.

It seemed like a lifetime before they finally reached the gates of the Mansion, and thank goodness it wasn't so long a walk from there to... wherever they were going, she didn't even want to think about that anymore.

"The Internet's always a good go-to," Margo agreed as they crossed the front lawn. "Have you tried that yet, asking on the forums?" In theory asking in person would probably have been the better option, but she'd sort of already ruined his chance. Which was so not her fault, it was his for not wearing a dozen peace signs around his neck and looking all lonely and then getting into a debate with her about the ethics of photographing specials and not talking to anyone else, like he should have been.

His fault. So it wasn't like she was under any obligation to help him out, especially not because she felt guilty of anything. "Is the body snatching giving you trouble?" asked the girl out of no obligation. "Someone told me powers are more alike than we think. I don't know, maybe someone you haven't thought about could help."

>>"So. Ah. If you just heard about the club yesterday, why did you have all those pictures of Cold Steel?"

She'd have spit her soda all over Jiri, had she still had it.

"I pulled up... six." The pause there was for glaring purposes only, and to confirm that six was indeed the right number. "Four of which I didn't even take, and I said so. One of which I took yesterday as part of my cover, thank you very much."

One photograph did not make one a fangirl, in case anyone was wondering. She didn't even like ColdSteel.

"I, umm, haven't gotten up the guts to break my cover." Online or at the real club, either. "I guess I could make a throw-away account and ask. Maybe. Umm. I've been having... a little touble? I guess?"

Just a little trouble sleeping, and not possessing people. Which she was going to find out as soon as she walked through those doors and talked to anyone who'd met him. He'd possessed half of summer school by now, and teachers were no exception. Neither was the newt they kept in the science lab.

He took in a breath, and let it out.

"Which is to say, a lot. I, ah, kind of can't... not do it?" He immediately punctuated this with but-hey-don't-worry jazz hands. "I mean, when I fall asleep, it just kind of happens. So it's not like I'm just going to randomly steal your body," unless he randomly fell asleep, because oh hey narcolepsy, fun! "probably. Umm."

The shutting up now. He was doing that.

>> "I pulled up... six. Four of which I didn't even take, and I said so. One of which I took yesterday as part of my cover, thank you very much."

Okay, now that was too fun to pass up.

"Now, I'm in summer school, so let me double-check my math here. That's 'one of which' that you took as part of your cover, and... let's see, six minus one is..." There may have been some dramatically deliberate counting on his fingers. "Huh. Five that you didn't have as part of your cover."

He grinned an impish grin. Now this was a kind of awkward that didn't really feel that awkward at all.

There was a confession, then there was jazz hands. Margo furrowed her brow at both; it was more than enough to throw off someone who'd dealt with newly discovered mutants their whole life, and that person she was not.

"You mean, you won't randomly steal my body unless you fall asleep? What if I was asleep, too? What if I were awake?" It was something she was genuinely curious about, curious enough to ask more questions despite the spot her previous ones had put her in. Could he really not control it, or had he just not learned how? The former would... suck, to say the least.

"I could ask around for you on the forums, if you'd like," she offered in regards to his comment on not wanting to out himself. With her longish running blog she might actually have enough credibility to pull it off, plus all the bird watchers she'd met tonight and done stuff with pictures for would provide enough of a handhold. She hoped. "You know, asking for a friend. Except I would actually be asking for a friend."

It was just one of those phrases like Netflix and chill. If you said it, people knew what you meant.

>>"Now, I'm in summer school, so let me double-check my math here. That's 'one of which' that you took as part of your cover, and... let's see, six minus one is... Huh. Five that you didn't have as part of your cover."

That grin, though. In those eyes? How could she do anything but play along?

"Yeah, Jiri. Six minus one is five." The glare had disappeared, replaced by the utterly, utterly innocent sarcasm of a math teacher. "Do you have a problem with that? I'll set you up for an appointment with the man upstairs after class, but in the meantime, why don't we move on to part b:

If I scrounged up four of those five pictures from the Internet to distract a group of fan girls, how many did I have before I found those?"

Questions. Oh God goodie questions. Just like he very much liked answering about his power that had literally put him in the loony bin until the doctors had figured out what was going on, and shipped him here instead.

"Asleep, I join your dream? I think? It's only really happened once, that I'm sure of." Things from before he knew he was a mutant didn't count. The memories were too disjoint to count. "Awake? Umm--it's just--I sort of... control you?"

Different subject moving on please don't think too hard about what he'd just said, really, don't. It was bad enough when it happened without either of them getting traumatized by the thought of it.

"You realize that asking for a friend is never asking for a friend." It was, but internet definition, asking for yourself. "Unless you want to get branded a body snatcher, too, you probably don't want to open that can of worms. Thanks, though. For offering."

And then they were into his math lesson for the evening.

"Four of five, with internet search..." He scratched the back of his head. "Is this a combinatorics problem? I hate those, just give me a second. Umm. Well the internet is infinite, and assuming safe search on because oh God why would you look for Cold Steel with safe search off, then infinity dived by two is... still infinity. So infinity choose four... Ooooo. Oooooo."

That grin. Had she thought that was his best grin? 'Cause that grin had nothin' on this grin.

"I get it, this is one of those abstract problems. The real question is: how long did you spend staring at shirtless Cold Steel pics before you choose the perfect four to impress fan girls with?"

She'd totally spent an hour ogling the X-Lead on the internet. Admit it.

"Ladies and gentleman of the jury, might I also note that you spent--let's call it time t--looking at internet photos, and yet you still felt the need to go out and photograph the man yourself. In spite of the fact that you already had one perfectly usable photograph of your own. Which leads me to conclude:"

(And here, he took in a deep breath, as proper preparation for what was to come.)

"Faaaaaan giiiiiiiiirl."

He considered this practice, for when his own sister was old enough to properly tease over her own celebrity crushes.

She was never going to get out of this conversation, was she? Jiri's grin confirmed it. Golly, how was his eye color even legal? The expression in them was even less so.

"Multiple choice, yo. Is the answer one, negative one, or negative three?" It had to be pretty obvious, even to a kid in summer school, that there was no such thing as a negative number of photographs, right? Right? But even this last attempt at the teacher voice was ignored in favor of launching into his think out loud exercise... as expected.

He kept talking.

Why couldn't he just. Stop. Talking?

It was in vain that Margo tried to protest, at first whenever the boy paused for breath and eventually even when he didn't. Eventually she was just trying to talk over him, her arguments becoming increasingly of the type that could easily have been punctuated by exclamation points, but were not. The type that could easily have been represented on a text post by the three dots of an ellipse.

>>"Four of five, with internet search... Is this a combinatorics problem? I hate those, just give me a second."

She was hopeful. "Did you mean basic arithmetic?"

>>"Well the internet is infinite, and assuming safe search on because oh God why would you look for Cold Steel with safe search off..."

She was amused. "Why would you look for anything with safe search off?"

>> "The real question is: how long did you spend staring at shirtless Cold Steel pics before you chose the perfect four to impress fan girls with?"

She was wicked. "Like, actually two minutes before the meeting and then the thirty seconds when they came over? You were there."

She steered him by the arm to the side lawn and beyond, as discreetly as one could do such a thing. When she grinned, that should have been his warning.

>> "....you still felt the need to go out and photograph the man yourself. In spite of the fact that you already had one perfectly usable photograph of your own."

"Your logic is flawless," she said, and tackled Jiri into the pool just as he began his accusation.

Multiple Choice. Choose the best answer.

1) If a girl waited far, far too long to give you your multiple choice options, you should...
A) Ignore said options           
B) Pay no mind to her feeble protests even as they increase in volume and urgency       
C) Watch her flail
D) Smile like you don't even realize you're doing it but you both know you totally do
E) All of the above

Correct answer: Eheheh.

>> "Like, actually two minutes before the meeting and then the thirty seconds when they came over? You were there."

"Far be it for me to contradict you on so sensitive an issue," Jiri mimed a tip of his gentleman's top hat. They weren't going for the front doors, probably because she didn't want to drip fan girl all over the entryway. He had to admit, he was enjoying the more scenic stroll. Whether it was the company, putting a healthy rose glow into said company's cheeks, or all of the above... 

>> "Your logic is flawless"

"And so she admits to it, and the path to recovery beings. For truly she is a fan--"

SPLASH.

True or False. Mark T for true and F for false.
___ 1) Jiri regretted nothing.
___ 2) Nothing.
___ 3) Noooooothing.
___ 4) Except that he'd have to do laundry, because his roommate would complain if he left chlorinated clothes to puddle in a corner of their bathroom.

He tipped an imaginary top hat at her like a gentleman, a gesture that Margo did nothing more than smile at. Her face was feeling hot enough to fry an egg on by the time they rounded the side of the Mansion, but that was alright-- it was astounding, what having a plan could do.

For a [fan] girl, it meant nothing more than bearing her cross for the moment. Until

SPLASH.

It was, simply enough, payback. But what Margo had not intended was this: that in the midst of Jiri's very much deserved dunking, she should fall in on top of him and her nose meet his face.

... 

"Not sorry but sorry?" said an appropriately abashed girl, when they had emerged- entirely separate, thank you- from the cloud of bubbles.