>> You are a Mansion kid?!

Yeeeep. For the record, if I'm here, it probably means I feel asleep during Sociology. I'll be out of your head once I wake back up.

He didn't mention just how long that might take. So far people had tried yelling, shaking, threatening him with imminent bodily harm, and tossing glasses of water into his unconscious face. If there was something external that could wake him up, he hadn't found it. Heck, he'd even crashed a car once, and got to watch himself sleeping through it. Best to give the nice bow-slinging X-girl hope that this ordeal would be over soon.

Her name was Maya. Maya Morris. Maya Morris Mirror.

The voice in Maya-Morris-Mirror's head went very still for a moment. The kind of stillness that could only mean he was trying very, very hard not to laugh.

Nice alliteration, Jiri finally settled on. He wasn't even going to touch the fact that the mirror-walkers codename was Mirror. Why couldn't all mutants have names like that? Then ColdSteel could be Ice McHitsOnChicks, and other-Maya could be Breezy O'BodyPossesion. It would really help determine who you had to be careful around, if you shook someone's hand and they said, hi, my name is X, but my friends call me Eats Small Children.

Mental hesitation. Totally noted.

'Work with the police.' He echoed, with an implicit 'uh-huh.'  He might have added more, but apparently they'd die if a mirror broke.

Wait what? Okay seriously lady, we need to have a talk about priorities. Priority one: if it is something that is going to kill us that is the priority.

He started running. Navigating in this place was weird--he was pretty sure he ran off the edge of the building at one point, or something, from the views he could see. Street scenes instead of creepy clown death maze scenes. Against his better judgement, he turned back around.

Can we talk about the whole arrow thing? You might be the reincarnation of Maid Marian, continued alliteration with Maya-Morris-Mirror totally unintentional (okay maybe just a little), but I think we need to be realistic about my chances of hitting anything that isn't us. Maybe we could do something else? Like, our-powers-combined or something? ...I could try possessing him instead, maybe.

Hesitation-in-his-head: yeah. Mirror could probably hear his, too. Jiri knew he could hop heads. He'd done it before. But he'd never done it while he was particularly lucid.

>>Yeeeep. For the record, if I'm here, it probably means I feel asleep during Sociology. I'll be out of your head once I wake back up.

Maya made a mental note to have a talk with the Sociology teacher. Whoever it was at the time. Kids falling asleep never reflected well on the curriculum.

>>Wait what? Okay seriously lady, we need to have a talk about priorities. Priority one: if it is something that is going to kill us that is the priority.

The clown is going to kill us. Maya noted as another mirror shattered nearby. The clown must have seen them move through. Or maybe he just liked breaking things. Clowns were mean like that.

>>Can we talk about the whole arrow thing? You might be the reincarnation of Maid Marian, but I think we need to be realistic about my chances of hitting anything that isn't us. Maybe we could do something else? Like, our-powers-combined or something? ...I could try possessing him instead, maybe.

I am not freaking Maid Marian, Maya groaned internally, If anything, I am freaking William Tell.

On a good day.

Wait, the kid was saying something else too.

Wait, can you possess him like you do to me? And what happens if I... uh, shoot him while you are... uh, inside?

Manual. This kid needed one.

If Jiri had any idea he'd be getting his teacher in trouble, he might have supplied the helpful explanation that he was narcoleptic. And if he was remembering right, he'd pretty much fallen asleep in the middle of a debate on crowd mentality. Which was cool, scary stuff.

>> The clown is going to kill us.

Yes thank you, your sarcasm at this juncture is appreciated.

Seriously. And this woman was the adult, here? He let the Maid Marian/William Tell thing slide. A) Because one of them needed to keep focused on the clown trying to kill them, and B) so he didn't have to pretend he knew who William Tell was. Probably someone good with arrows, he guessed. And less girly than Marian. He wasn't getting real strong girly vibes here.

I think I can possess him. I mean, no promises, but I'll try? I've done it before, but I--wait no NO shooting! I do NOT know what would happen, and do you really think this is the time to find out? Please dear god tell me you're not the teacher of that power control class because I am going to drop it so hard.

He was signed up for that, in the Fall semester. He was already pretty sure it would be useless but he'd suddenly gotten a vision of how it could be worse than useless.

How about I try the possession thing and, just, stand there or something? And you can handcuff me? If there was a way to give a sidelong look inside someone's head, that's what Jiri did. Because anyone working with the police has legit handcuffs, right?

Riiiight, Maya-Morris-Mirror-Maid-Marian? 

>>I think I can possess him. I mean, no promises, but I'll try? I've done it before, but I--wait no NO shooting! I do NOT know what would happen, and do you really think this is the time to find out? Please dear god tell me you're not the teacher of that power control class because I am going to drop it so hard.

Cold Steel teaches power control. And God knows you could probably use it.

Otherwise the kid would not be stuck in her head during a mission now, would he? Maya wondered what made her seem like a teacher to Jiri - what kind of name was that anyway - and she did not like any of the possible answers. They made her feel old.

>>How about I try the possession thing and, just, stand there or something? And you can handcuff me? Because anyone working with the police has legit handcuffs, right?

She couldn't with a clear conscience order a fresh Mansion resident - and a minor - to possess a psychotic, laser-shooting mutant clown. That was so far out of protocol Sam probably had a secret payroll for it.

Then again, there was no protocol for her body being ridden by a teenager either.
...
And no good words either.

You try to hold him still and close his freaking eyes. If it doesn't work, you get the hell out, you hear me?

Colorful patches shifted around the corner.

All right, go.

Oh. Ohhhhhhhh. Dissing the name? Did she really go there? Did she not realize he was in her head hearing her every thought? She could hear his, too, but at least his weren't casually racist.

The name is Iranian, he enunciated carefully in her brain-space. My dad gave it to me. Because he is also Iranian. Thank you for asking. I am glad for this meaningful cultural exchange.

Yep. He was totally ready to get out of here. Close his eyes, he repeated back. Got it. 

The evil sheen of colorful polyester reared its ominous red nose. Jiri took a breath, and stepped them out of the mirror. He was pretty sure, on a this-makes-sense-instinctively level, that his power wasn't going to work from inside of a crazy mirror pocket dimension. 

He met the clown's glowing gaze. Okay. Come on, powers. Let's get this over with so--

--we can eat cake?

Jiri stopped shoving fistfuls of cake into his mouth with pudgy, sticky hands. He was under a table, he was seven, and he'd had enough presence of mind to get not only himself but an entire sheet cake evacuated to this completely safe location. 

Aaaaahhhh! The kid was screaming in his(their) head. "AAAAAAAAAHHHH!" The sound was even louder, on the outside. Apparently he didn't have as much control over this one.

Aaaahhh yourself. Get out of the building or I'll make you get out. No no, bring the cake, that's legit. War trophy.

Okay, trying this again. Hopefully Mirror hadn't gotten lasered to death in the minute he'd been gone. Clown clown clown clown--

Clown? Clown! 

Aww crap, fully charged clown.

The laser death beam went off. Totally not Jiri's fault. He preemptively dodged behind another mirror, just in case Maya retaliated. Because, yeah. Laser death beam. Happens to the best of us?

The wild cackling sharing his brain was not helping.

>>The name is Iranian, he enunciated carefully in her brain-space. My dad gave it to me. Because he is also Iranian. Thank you for asking. I am glad for this meaningful cultural exchange.

Maya would have facepalmed, had she any control over her hands. Or face. The middle of a life-or-death laser fight was not the time for cultural sensitivity. And it's not like she could see...
... nope, still casually racist. Maya aborted the train of thought.

>>Close his eyes. Got it. Okay. Come on, powers. Let's get this over with so--

There was a childish scream, and a cackle, and another death laser that she barely ducked away from. There was a child in here somewhere, and from the sound of it, Jiri was in the child - not better - and the clown was having tons of fun.

It was time to end this.

With the knowledge that Jiri was safe in some kid's brain - gotta sort out the therapy for that later - Maya pulled another arrow, very relieved that she had control of her own body and skills again. Stepping through another looking glass, she got the right angle.

She shot the clown straight through the leg.

"Oww!" The clown shouted, a heck of a lot like a recovering seven-year-old-with-cake-on-his-hands. "Like seriously! Oww! Did you not give me more than thirty seconds to get into position because oww!"

The clown curled up around his leg. Was he supposed to take the arrow out? No that would just make the bleeding worse. So stop the bleeding? Oh god touching the arrow made that hurt a lot worse. But if he took it out the bleeding would be worse--

The catch-22 of the recently shot. 

"Okay, when we get back to the Mansion? We are working on your teamwork skills." The clown's voice was high and nasal. He reached up, pulled off the big red rubber nose, and tossed it at her chest. He sure hoped Maya could put two and two together and figure out who was really talking here. "And you shut up, this is not funny."

The clown begged to differ. He was pretty sure their own mind was giving them a migraine, here.

>>"Oww! Like seriously! Oww! Did you not give me more than thirty seconds to get into position because oww!"

Okay, so maybe Jiri was inside the clown.
Whoops.

>>"Okay, when we get back to the Mansion? We are working on your teamwork skills... And you shut up, this is not funny."

Her teamwork skills?! It wasn't like there was a rule for working with teenagers who body-jumped while not entirely sure they were even awake. Maya felt kind of bad that the shot hurt the kid too, at least mentally, but she wasted no time handcuffing the clown in case Jiri decided to jump again.

"All right, the both of you" she said, hauling the clown up and propping it against the nearest mirror; the next minute, he was merged into the reflection.

"If the glass breaks you break with it. So if I were you, I'd sit still and wait for the MRC peacefully."

With that said, Maya hung the bow on her shoulder.

"All right, Jiri? You're done here. You can leave him now."

Jiri kept his whimpering to a manly minimum as Maya manhandled the clown.

"I could have just put my hands together if you had asked--"

And dragged him to his feet. "Do you not understand where you shot this guy?"

Having never been shot before, or had much worse than a sprained ankle, Jiri could say with a certain definitivity that oww this hurt. He had literally nothing worse to compare it to. Even when he'd been in Alex, the stab wound had been neatly distanced by blood loss. Forgiving, forgiving blood loss.

"Shouldn't you, like, wrap this guy's wound or something okay seriously stop laughing I'm allowed to be concerned." If he wasn't in himself he would punch himself because that laugh was the laugh of madness and it was echoing all throughout their head. On the bright side, insane clowns seemed to have the mental fortitude of drunk slugs, so he was pretty sure the guy wasn't an issue.

Even before his shoulders started sinking into the mirror.

It was like a scene from a horror movie, played in horrifyingly intimate detail. The glass was cold as their body sunk in. He didn't remember that detail, from when he'd stepped through the mirrors in Maya's body. Maybe it was a special effect reserved for her victims.

Suffice it to say that Jiri hopped ships like a drowning rat, crawling his way back into Maya's brain and shivering in a corner.

Give a guy a little warning before you do that, please. Your power is creepy. 

He didn't seem to have as much control this time. For one thing, he wasn't talking out loud when he talked to her. He experimentally wiggled their fingers, just to see if he could. Was this a partial-control-thing, like he'd had going with Ghost? ...Whose name was also Maya, come to think of it. Huh. Apparently he was collecting the whole set.

Moral of the story: he had no idea what dictated how much control he had, when he hopped. But staying in a psychotic clown hotel probably hadn't helped.

So. Umm. He did the mental equivalent of twiddling his thumbs. ...Can this count for class credit?

He really didn't want to fail summer school.