Morgan had just finished her shift and was waiting on her take out Chinese to be ready. It was always a little strange to be finishing work in the middle of the day, when others were taking their lunchbreaks. When the weather was reasonably warm, as it was today, she would buy her lunch and eat it outside from the container it came in. No need to take it home and dirty a plate when she could use the chopsticks and nom straight from the paper box. Today's fare was a mixture of chicken and shrimp in a garlicky, somewhat spicy sauce. Also dumplings, because who could have Chinese without dumplings?

The food bag clutched firmly in her hand she made her way to a low wall next to a set of stairs wide enough to sit on without disrupting the flow of traffic. She kicked her heels against the wall as she fumbled with her chopsticks, doing her best to de-splinter them without sending one flinging off into the sidewalk. It was a common enough occurrence that she had got two sets, just in case.

As she dipped the dumplings in their sauce she glanced idly out into the flow of foot traffic. It being the middle of the day there was a fair amount, mostly small groups of young people in between college classes, women walking dogs (or toddlers) on leashes, and men in suits walking with purposeful annoyance, like it was everyone else's fault that they chose to go two blocks further for their coffee than their lunchbreak afforded them time to. In general everyone looked normal, minding their own business, doing their own thing.

She glanced at the street signs on the nearest corners and was relatively sure she hadn't taken any calls about this location. At least not recently. But, she knew it was often a case of wrong place, wrong time. Violence or drama could pop up at any time. Then again, so could a flash-mob, or a spur of the moment proposal. This was New York, after all, and anything could happen, especially with the strange things that had been happening recently.

The gargoyle had a hankering for a smoothie. Thankfully, the city had no shortage of smoothie shops to choose from. Rather than flying to one of her favorites, Gina wandered just off campus. She'd followed a pack of classmates, but dismissed herself I the interest of getting a drink.

“I'll catch you guys later,” she called, disappearing into the shop. The process of acquiring a drink was punctuated by occasional peeks at her phone, a quick text to Nessa… but then the gargoyle was on her way again.

She took comfort in the frosty chocolate-peanut butter beverage, her tail curling with delight. This wasn't the kind of thing you could fly with. So, Gina found a bench and stepped up onto it. She settled into a seating position, crossing her legs beneath her. This was the good life. She took another sip. Maybe she could work on her sketches for fashion design?

She also didn't want to put her drink down, though. The struggle was so real.

Tall people knew they were tall. Yet people always felt the need to say ‘wow, you’re tall’ when they saw a tall person. It was the same with visible mutants. There were quite a few in New York she had seen, and always that same feeling came over her to say ‘wow, you’re a mutant’, as if they didn’t know. She was working on her social appropriateness, and so now made an effort to say something anything except the word ‘mutant’ if she twigged that someone was. It was, she had decided, the same level of rudeness as noting someone’s weight, or the colour of their skin (even if the colour of that skin happened to be grey and dappled, like the stones of an ancient church).

She would not say the m-word.

The girl (girl?) sat down on the bench near her and Morgan ran over her options for appropriate compliments in her mind. ‘I love your wings’ and ‘you have such cool horns’, were vying for equal first, followed by a simple ‘I’m Morgan, what’s your name?’. The creature seemed occupied with its smoothie, so she had a couple moments to mentally rehearse which she used to their full potential before turning and opening her mouth. But the words poured out in a jumble when it came to actually speaking them.

“I’m horny, your name is wings are cool? “

Why cruel fate why did she open her stupid mouth? With an audible groan she applied her palm to her face in one swift motion.

“Not what I meant to say. At. All.“

It took all sorts of people to make the world go round. Most people fell on some sort of continuum of tendencies and preferences, but sometimes you were met by different polarities of beliefs and values. For example, there were mutant-haters as well as mutant-lovers. Gina was mid-sip when someone who apparently belonged to the latter category addressed her... at least, using context clues, that's what Gina thought. It was hard to say, given how unintelligible the sentence was.

>> “I’m horny, your name is wings are cool? “

Whatever the desired effect had been... whether it was to compliment the features the gargoyle had been born with, or to announce that said features aroused the woman who had addressed her, was beyond Gina. Maybe it was their first time talking to a visible mutant? Regardless, the result was Gina choking on her smoothie. She clapped a hand to her mouth to hide the fact that peanut butter-chocolate smoothie was now dribbling down her chin.

>> “Not what I meant to say. At. All.“

Gina mopped at her chin, unable to stop the chuckle from escaping her.

"That's quite the introduction," she commented, no judgement in her tone. Her eyes passed over the girl who'd spoken. She had a small face, like Gina's, but was a little taller. Gina was no stranger to people getting tongue-tied around her... and she wouldn't condemn someone for trying to be personable.

"Gina," she said simply, touching a hand to her own sternum as a means of signifying an introduction, "Do you go to NYU?" It was a big enough school, clsoeby to where they were, and thus a distinct possibility.

The grey-toned woman sputtered and coughed. Great, now she’d choked her. Morgan riffled through her take-out bag and offered a handful of napkins to the girl. Thankfully the woman took pity on her and introduced herself. The accompanying gesture was somewhat ‘me Tarzan, you Jane’, but Morgan figured after her fumbled attempt at an icebreaker she deserved that level of conversation.

“Sorry about that. My mouth and my brain don’t always sync up. I’m Morgan. Some people call me Mo-mo.”

‘Some people’ meaning her dad.

“Do you go to NYU?”

Morgan knew that this was the campus nearby which most of the flocking young adults were going to or from, but she personally did not. She felt a fleeting impulse to lie- to impress the girl? To not look uneducated and, by extension, unworthy? The logical part of her brain informed her that that would simply lead to more lies, about what she was studying and how she liked the campus and maybe even other student-related things she hadn’t even thought of! She wheeled back to the truth.

“I don’t. I just came for dumplings,”

She held up the bag as an explanation, the delicious savoury scent wafting through the air between them. Some people would have offered to share, to give this new acquaintance a taste of the little packages of excellence. But that would have meant less for her, and she did so like dumplings.

“Do you? Go to NYU I mean?”

She thought she could spy the hard rectangular shapes of books or a laptop in the young woman’s bag. But then again, the city was full of location-bloggers, who liked to sit in cafes and tap away their life stories and people like herself who sometimes just couldn’t get the right flow of words in their fanfictions with their fathers blustering around in their apartment. Man, that made her sound like a teenager.

Gina wasn't trying to be patronizing. She just-- any attempt at speaking made her feel the need to cough, which was probably the result of trying to breathe smoothie. She gladly accepted the proffered napkin, mopping at her lips.

>> "Sorry about that. My mouth and my brain don't always sync up. I'm Morgan. Some people call me Mo-mo."

"Mo-mo," the gargoyle echoed. That was a cute nickname, "Nice to meet you."

She took another swig of smoothie, which seemed to do the trick of chasing away the urge to cough. Good.

>> "I don't. I just came for dumplings."

Gina surveyed the bag, which was shown as proof of the existence of said dumplings.

"Oo, is that from the place up the street?" the gargoyle said, ever the food-fixated creature. She pointed an approving finger at the dumplings as she spoke, "I don't blame you. They're delicious."

Gina would fly over from Honeycomb just to get Chinese food from that place. It wasn't overly costly, and it was good, and it didn't leave your insides feeling like the physical manifestation of regret.

>> "Do you? Go to NYU I mean?"

Gina nodded.

"Yeah. I'm a junior."

Not that she'd be out in four years, though. Four-year degree was a myth. She'd be out in six if she was lucky.

"I'm studying fashion," the gargoyle said brightly. She left the "and social work" out. No one liked an over-achiever.

“Nice to meet you too.”

And it was. She was good at meeting people. Sometimes she could even maintain the friendship for several months. It was the longer long-term bit that was tricky… The first unanswered text message, or missed engagement and it was hard to pick back up. That was part of what she liked about her job, the friends she had there were required to be there certain days of the week, it was like a compulsory social meeting a couple times a week.

“Yes! They make the best dumplings around, or at least in walking distance of work.”

‘The best’ was maybe too big of a call to be making, having never tasted dumplings made in an authentic Japanese kitchen, nor having cast her net wide after finding such a gem on the first or second try.

The gargoyle woman seemed to perk up after recovering from her smoothie inhalation in order to talk about her degree. Morgan had to admit, it did sound pretty darn cool.

“That sounds like fun! Though I’m guessing it’s a lot of work? Do you have special classes on designing special clothes for people with special…ness?”

Too many ‘specials’ in the one sentence. Plus that ending was lame. Special needs, while accurate for what she meant, did not give the same mental image which she was going for. She felt an indication of the girl’s wings was unnecessary. The mutant population wasn’t large, but it was somewhat obvious, and the types of clothing that they must need would pose all sorts of challenges for designers. Maybe they would get assigned a project where they had to make a costume for one of the ‘heroes’ that so regularly got in the way of her dispatch team. She knew they were technically part of the police force, and she even had a button to patch through to their fancy headquarters.

She’d never used it.

Gina nodded in agreement, "The absolute best."

Like many Californian ladies her age, she was very generous about declaring things "best" or "worst" ever, even if they really weren't. Gina shrugged at the follow-up question.

"Not really," Gina said, "That'd be really forward-thinking of them, sure, but like... there aren't a lot of... special?... people running around." She smiled reassuringly at Momo. Even amongst mutants, which was a small enough demographic as it was, an ever smaller portion was visibly mutated... and even less were visibly-mutated all the time. Just one of the perks of being her, Gina supposed.

"Though I guess I have plenty of firsthand experience with accomodating mutations, so I wouldn't really need a class," Gina murmured. This wasn't said boastfully, but matter-of-factly. She made and altered her own clothes, so having to take a class about altering clothes for mutants would be redundant. It'd be like taking a beginning ceramics class when you were already intermediate or advanced. So pointless.

But enough about her.

"What do you do?"

There weren’t that many special people running about. The ones there were sure caused a lot of fuss then. She supposed it was fair, minorities needed to make a lot of noise because there are less of them. Hence- minority. The world tended to take care of those who were making the most noise and whether that was a hundred people murmuring or a dozen shouting didn’t seem to matter. Except that it would be exhausting for the yellers.

Gina had experience. That made sense given that her clothes fit around her additional…bits. Even still Morgan was impressed. The most modification she had ever done was tearing holes in her jeans in a rebellious phase of her teens when her Dad wouldn’t let her buy the fashionably torn ones which were all the rage. They had looked terrible, for the record.

Gina asked the appropriate mirroring question just as Mo-mo shoved two dumplings that were stuck together into her mouth. She hummed a thinking noise as she chewed and swallowed.

“I answer the phone when you call 911.” She cocked her head and looked at the woman “not you specifically. But someone. When someone calls 911 then I answer the phone. When I’m there. Yeah.”

She was the best at explaining things.

“It’s a good job. A bit intense sometimes, but that’s ok.”

It was sometimes almost nice, to realise how good she had things.

“Your smoothie smells really good, where did you get it from?”

It smelled like a candy bar, but in smoothie form.

She didn’t mind to talk about her job. Enjoyed it even. But she knew some people got uncomfortable about hearing about the kinds of things she heard about every day. And sometimes it was tricky to tell when to stop talking.

The gargoyle sipped her smoothie, listening as Momo bumbled her way through an explanation.

"Oh, like an operator?" Gina clarified between sips, "Oooohh, I can imagine how intense that could be. People calling you in crisis and stuff. I wouldn't have the heart for it."

The attention turned to Gina's smoothie, so she stopped drinking for a moment, surveying the beverage.

"Oh, this?" he gargoyle mused, "There's a smoothie shop a few blocks thataway-" she pointed in a vague direction, "Two blocks down and two blocks across. It's good. Better than the chain stuff."

Not that the chain stuff wasn't good, but this stuff... was way better.

"It's peanut butter, chocolate and banana," the gargoyle explained, "It's hard to get right. But this smoothie-maker did pretty well."

Siiiip. Yup, still tasted good. The gargoyle took advantage of the natural break in conversation, and fished her sketchbook out of her bag, setting it on her lap.

It was an intense job, but Morgan found it pretty easy to leave it behind at the desk. There were only a few calls that truely haunted her, and she didn't talk about those.

"It's interesting how for a city so diverse everyone sounds the same when they need help."

Humans and mutants from every background when they needed them, they were there. True, sometimes the operators might get stuck for a bit figuring out the appropriate help to send, but nine times out of ten it was one of the big three: fire, police or ambulance. She had not received a call for any of the big deal incidents which needed the super special spandex crew to attend. Half the time they took it upon themselves to turn up anyway. Them or wanna-bes who thought they could join the crew just by sticking their noses where they didn't belong. They were probably right too, she had no idea how their hiring process worked.

The young woman described and appreciated the smoothie and it sounded as good as it smelled. She might have to take a detour there on her way home. As she was thinking what flavour she might order, perhaps the same as Gina, perhaps she would branch out and try something surprising, the grey one pulled out a sketchbook. Morgan felt no qualms about looking to see if she would open it. Some might glance away, try to look at anything except the page which opened in case it was a window into the soul of the artist. Morgan didn't care, really, about that social convention.

"What do you draw?"

She assumed clothes, but that could be a school-specific thing.

"I wish I could draw." She added as an afterthought.

She could visualize how she wanted things to come out. But the actual putting pen to paper bit seemed to always mess things up. She didn't take that discouragement well.

The gargoyle wasn't very shy about her sketchbook-- at least, not about her school sketchbook. Her personal one was still squirreled away in her bag, and typically not for polite company to see.

"Mm, this is a sketchbook for a class," the gargoyle murmured, cracking it open. Only about the first twenty pages had been used, so it was relatively untouched. It contained, as Momo had predicted, lots of practical sketches and concepts for different outfits/articles of clothing, "Kinda boring, tbh."

She fanned the pages, pausing at a few of the better ones to show her companion the proof of such. Literally... all... technical sketches...

"I hear all it takes is practice-" the gargoyle mused, "Practice, practice, practice- if you wanna get good."

Though the gargoyle had more drawing skill than someone who "couldn't draw", she didn't lump herself in the category someone who "could". It was the artist's eternal dilemma-- there was always someone out there who was "better" than you.