Julia had been staring at the glimmering great lake since noon. She didn't want to leave it even though she had decided that she had to go and leave the town that no more than a week ago she had came across. Had to. That had always been a dreaded phrase for Julia since it had always been a part of her life for not so pleasant reasons. So she had stared at the lake for the past few hours contemplating why is it that she always _had to do something, _had to hide something, _had to work, had to _go. That was her problem her current problem. She had to leave, or rather she felt like she had to. However this lake had been like an ally for her the week that she had been living in the adjacent town. It had been an ally that had helped her to have nostalgia that had allowed her to be at peace for once.

    She knew that if she had swam in it, or rather had tried to swim in it, she would not have felt the same way, but none the less the illusion of her past being her present had not been broken. The huge lake that  she had been staring at now had not shown her or forced her to see that her life had been changed. She had been allowed to stare at its depths, look at it as if it had been the lake near the town that she had been raised in. She honestly had been able to fool her mind to an extent into believing that she was back with her dad and brother looking at the lake. That she had been able to feel the heat from the sun radiating onto her sun deprived winter skin. That she had been sitting next to her family knowing that they were family and that one of them hadn't been dead for years, the other had fled her hometown and the last had been the cause of the former two.

    She was able to maintain this illusion for she had miraculously persuaded herself that she didn't need to swim. Therefore she had not fallen into the trap of struggling to swim, or of seeing her own feet in the water, and therefore she had been able to sit there in peace. The only difference between now and the time that she had been pretending to be in, was that she actually had been sitting on a log in a long sleeved shirt, while wearing a pair of jeans and boots on a hot spring day. She was not wearing a bathing suit nor appropriate clothing like she would have been wearing in the preferred time that she had been so desperately trying to act as if existed currently. It hadn't mattered however, for the heat had no effect on how she felt for she had no ability to feel it. So she had been able to pretend that nothing had changed, even though she knew that it had in fact changed, and it had been more than just a couple years ago by now. It ultimately had been the cause of her current predicament of feeling a need to leave but wanting to stay now. 

 She kept her arms wrapped closely around her legs as she sat on the dried up tree that was on the lake shore, looking out. 

Usually when visiting ‘someone in need’ Devon was taking a long plane ride. Thankfully this time he’d only had to head upstate to a lake he was already familiar with: Skaneateles. It wasn’t far from Syracuse but it was actually the town of Scott where the young woman had been temporarily residing. Apparently someone had noted her venturing out in the woods around the lake.

It was a beautiful place and one Devon had visited before. Of the Finger Lakes, it was said to be cleanest and the most beautiful. They called it the Roof Garden because of its altitude, which made quick visits easier as well… As far as natural excursions went, it was a safe one and well monitored by local officials. It had to be when it was use for drinking water, though that’d changed recently. Devon had read of the algae bloom in the large lake. Hopefully this young woman was careful in that regard.

But boating? Swimming? Dockside parties? Camping? Nature walks? All of that was easy on Skaneateles. Devon hadn’t been since last year; it was a bit embarrassing. He’d worked too much before the Spring, but that was something he was changing. A day for himself was wise; hard to take care of others when you didn’t take care of yourself. The drive and then the trek out reminded him of hanging at the beach with Grav Bomb.

The teenager – as Jack had referred to her – was avoidant, had a severe mouth, and was willing to display a little fire power to make her point. It sounded like she was either afraid to show any vulnerability or in denial of how her actions impacted others. As with most mutants, she was probably tired of the anger, the hate, the fear… Depression did terrible things to people.

Despite the warmth and the sunshine, which Devon didn’t encourage beyond normal, he spotted her in what most would assume was an autumnal outfit. She was seated a fair distance off any trail, quiet and contemplative. He knew that look, that posture.

“Hey,” a friendly voice called as Devon approached, though he didn’t intend to get closer than sixty feet. He stepped gently over the pine needles, small brush, and other low-living plant life. With spotty sunlight under the taller trees and occasional lake flooding it wasn’t too difficult to walk near where the fallen log and the girl were.

“My apologies if I startled you,” he apologized. He was dressed in jeans and a simple black t-shirt with black boots worn at the toe. “I really love this lake.”

Julia sat there reminiscing about her past. She thought only about the good parts, not the bad. She had learned to fish on a similar lake such as this. She had learned what it meant to have a family and love them even if part of her family was already dead. She learned a lot of things growing up, none of them included how to tell someone to F off when one is on a shoreline of a lake wanting to be alone.

Therefore Julia’s first reaction at hearing the ‘hey’ come from Devon was a jolting movement, given the surprise she felt at being taken out of her trance of a sort. She composed herself instantly, her legs now pulled away from her body as she was now in a normal sitting position. Her first reply came right after he said hey in that she said “Great, not another one of these f*****s.” with sarcasm and hostility laced throughout as she said it loud enough for Devon to hear but only if he was listening for a reply.

She heard his second sentence and again couldn’t help but have said. “ If you were f****n sorry, you wouldn’t have came here to begin with.” and lastly on the remark on really loving this lake she stood up and said. “ Enjoy the f****n lake f***jack.” she said, using her made up swear word that combined two other swear words. She started to walk away, her shoulders much more rigid and tense than she had been moments before Devon showed up.

She was walking towards the forest of course and not towards the lake, and not towards the area of the forest that Devon was standing in, but deliberately away from it. She didn’t give any more time to her response. It warranted no other responses, to Julia, she had been interrupted while enjoying herself and the interruption didn’t even deserve a glare.

Devon grimaced slightly at her jerking motion when he spoke. Clearly he really had surprised her, breaking her out of whatever reverie she’d been in. He’d hope she would’ve been at least partially aware someone was approaching, but that’s why he’d also announced himself from a distance away.

And then suddenly she was fine, adjusting her seating, and cussing. Ah this felt familiar. A flippant, annoyed tone - though he’d never been one for profanity - putting on airs and appearances while seeking the isolated control out in nature.

>> “Great, not another one...”

Devon’s eyes widened and he held back a grin. It was probably one of the most passive aggressive and yet indirectly targeted comments he’d gotten. He immediately thought of Astrid, which the city had unfortunately lost track of. She’d probably flown off, hopefully with someone kind. This girl had used some threatening tactics near Jack, but Devon was open to initiating contact. It was part of the job sometimes, especially mutants.

She continued in similar style, sniping with quick comments whenever he spoke. Someone wanted to be heard and Devon was much obliged. Sometimes all you did was listen.

>> “ Enjoy the f****n lake f***jack.”

“Thank you,” he replied quickly as she stood. “I always do, though I should be clear I apologized for surprising you, not for coming here. It’s public space,” he nodded, though she wasn’t even looking to him. She was trudging off, all jaded and angry. Hating attention but wanting it was a real conflict, difficult to live with. Mutants had enough time living.

“When I was homeless I was always annoyed by that too, so I’d move somewhere else until someone stumbled upon me there,” he spoke clearly, certainly loud enough for her to here. Devon sighed slightly and then stood before the log she’d been sitting on. “You found a great view here; I appreciate you sharing. But enjoy the rest of your walk!” he called out.

Julia tried her hardest to not listen to the stupid words being spoken by the stupid stranger who had stupidly came across her. It was moot, because ever since that stupid city she had came to with the… mutant robots, it all had made her on higher alert for just about anyone, or thing. One part of being on high alert for anyone, meant that she was on high alert for words spoken by anyone, even from the mouth of someone who was stupid enough to act all cheery and such to her. Her brain couldn’t block it out, not all the way at least and for the moment she perceived it as luckily because the man was insinuating he knew her as he exclaimed how he was like that when ‘he was homeless’ and the word ‘too.’ Parreleling Julia and himself as if going through the same thing. Or something along those lines that Julia wasn’t going to question as anything other than him assuming things about her.

Like what the f***, she wasn’t really homeless in the truest sense, but on paper… her mind jumped towards those mutant robots coming after her. She thought that maybe this wasn’t even a guy, but some weird Sci-Fy Android coming after her. It all made sense. On paper she didn’t even really exist… no one really knew who she was, more than likely her brother filed a ‘missing person’s report and since they never found her, she was probably dead on paper.

Furthermore her face was most certainly not attached to any house or apartment. She did live from motel room to motel room, content sleeping outside next to a fire as if camping when the motel room was either too expensive, too gross, or just not existent. To Julia it had made sense. She had less knowledge about electronics than a seventy year old in a nursing home. Her knowledge came from the few movies she had watched and the little interaction she had with it, back before she left her town.

Her town afterall was very isolated, and she herself had only recently bought a phone… as she thought about all of it, quicker than a bird finding a worm, the word phone had mad it all click, or rather had given her thoughts that she thought all made sense.

She assumed that the ‘robot’ tracked her using the refurbished minute phone. She stopped in her place and took the phone out. Over six hours worth of work for this stupid thing, she had used it once and she was going to have to destroy it. Julia regretted it a bit, but was too p*ssed to continue thinking about it as she threw it to the ground, stepped angrily on it and sent flames to the ground before turning around to set the trees behind her aflame. “ Stop tracking me f****n Android!” She said, or yelled. She had used her powers thinking that Devon was a ‘mutant’ robot who already knew she was a mutant. She was right that he knew she had powers, but she didn’t know that he wasn’t a robot.

It only took a couple seconds for what was a clear sky to become cloudy. Thunder echoed far above at the sudden conflict of pressure systems. He heard her stop trudging through the woods, assuming she was ready to throw a retort of expletives at his way. But rather than an attempt to whip him of his positive attitude, she shouted about androids. Was she calling him a robot?

Devon turned as she was yelling and saw red flame shone back in the darkness gathering in his eyes. Some forty yards away she’d thrown down her phone – oh Android, that made sense. He might have queried her, tried to express some rationality over her paranoia and anger but she turned deliberately away and in a fit threw her fiery temper upon the trees.

That was not something Tempest would tolerate.

Rain. Tempest pleaded with the heavens for a torrent. Light rain started from those gathering clouds above as he urged the prevailing breezes to complete silence. One bad gust and another tree could light. Thankfully the spring rains had been heavy recently, but it would not take much to consume even this lakeside wood.

“That is inexcusable,” Tempest called loudly. He didn’t shout, his voice projecting over the first crackling of the fire and the light sound of the rain. “You may assault others verbally to push them away, but burning this forest and threatening it and all within is too far.”

The stranger’s blue eyes were gone, replaced by solid black. His focus pulled the darkening clouds and all moisture to this area, but a downpour would take a couple minutes. Despite the stillness Tempest had commanded, an errant irregularly of shifting currents fluttered his shirt and hair. One move from her and he would act.

Julia would have kept trying to catch more trees on fire if not for the rain that had started to and continued to destroy the work that she had accomplished. Words were spoken from the robot, making Julia only more livid than she already was. The words were spuled eloquently from the robot’s mouth. To Julia this was all the more reason to stand on her presumption that this was a robot disguised as a human.

“F*** you and your stupid f****n creators!” She shouted before going to run off while she still had the chance. Her pace as usual was slower than she would have liked, especially as she tried to avoid slipping or stumbling over the various branches and shrubbery in her path that were being soaked from the storm that was called upon by the same person whom she thought was a robot.

This girl had a weird way with words. The incessant profanity was one thing. But damning his creators? Was that a roundabout way of calling out his parents or was she anti-Christian? Maybe she hadn’t been yelling at her phone and she really was calling him a robot? Confusing.

She finished yelling and started running off, but Tempest contemplate her words while focusing on the rain. It gained in momentum until rain pelted down upon the already smoking embers of those few trees. By then Tempest was swiftly running, letting small gusts pick him up and guide his jumps over rocks, bushes, and fallen logs. The wind picked up across the forest as the storm gained strength, but the rain continued in torrents.

The thunder held off as Tempest gained on the young woman. “Stop,” he called out. “I am not a robot if that’s what you’re saying. Let us talk,” his voice was firm as he swept up into a tree. The wind blew with him, rain coming at the girl from above and the side. “Please, I’d really like to talk.”

Julia was still trying to run when she heard the man following. She heard his words and therefore she had tried to speed up the best she could. She knew that she wasn’t ‘book smart’ by any means, but she was pretty sure that when someone or something says that they are not a robot, it probably means that they are a robot. Him or rather it telling her that it had wanted to talk and telling her to stop all just made Julia try to run faster.

Try was the key word. It was becoming more and more difficult. Her entire body was drenched in water. Her face was continuously being splashed with water as if the rain was targeting her and her fleeing ways. While her feet in soaked boots were trying to trudge through the water that was cascading off of the rocks, sticks and anything, making it more difficult to run. The weight of her physical mutations ever more showing themselves as a huge disadvantage to running away as she became drained quicker and was slowing down quicker than she would have. “ That’s what a f****n robot would say!” She shouted, taking the energy to give one more aggressive shout to keep it away from her.

She was slowing down even more however and Julia noticed her own steady decline and decided to put forth some more effort to go at a faster pace again. A decision made because she knew that he was still following her because it had not been more than 20 seconds from the last words he had spoken. She had focused on speeding up, but had forgotten to watch her step as she tripped on a rock and fell forward onto the ground, scrapeing her knees, hands and chin in the process.

A swear word that started with f and ended with a “n,” came from her mouth right after hitting the ground. It was not because of her minor, though still what would have been painful injuries. Julia didn’t or rather couldn’t feel the pain that should have accompanied the fall. The swear word instead was because of the fall itself and how she felt the eminent threat of the person who she thought was a robot. Therefore she didn’t take a second to compose herself as she went to stand in order to continue to run.

>> “ That’s what a f****n robot would say!”

What was it his grandmother said? Good grief! Yes, that was it. He’d ranted more than once, been a complete idiot, and kept running. As he spouted nonsense what did she say? Good grief! Well this all felt very familiar. Was that karma running away from him?

“Robots don’t have mutant powers,” Tempest answered in response as the rain continued. From tree to tree he went, riding on the winds and carefully ensuring they didn’t sweep up into a dangerous storm. A quick downpour for late spring wasn’t bad at all. She kept at it though, running and then charging a bit ahead.

Then she fell.

“Oh, geez, are you alright?” he asked urgently, hovering some 30’ ahead and above. Winds tossed his hair and shifted his clothing as the not-a-robot man alighted on another large tree limb. The branches and the trees bent to the gusts but they quieted as he urged. “Really, please. I’m sorry I had to drench you but you could have really hurt someone if the forest caught on fire.”

She was still on edge even as she remembered the words spoken right before she fell. ‘Robots don’t have mutant powers’ that sentence didn’t reassure her, for how was she supposed to know what a mutant can or can’t do, and if a robot can or can’t replicate that. She was getting up as he spoke sentences of apology, but also she felt like he was scolding her.

She was standing confidently when she responded instead of running, since she figured running was coming of no use and his words were really nothing her. “ Do you think I f****n care if I hurt or even f****n kill someone?” She said aggressively. “Because I f****n don’t.” She said or well lied.

She was trying to dry off her hands to hopefully use her powers again, even if it was just a scare tactic. She didn’t bother to respond if she was alright because that wasn’t his ‘f****n’ business and obviously she was alright. Or well she was standing as if she was. The inability to feel pain was a benefit right now, even if Julia wouldn’t admit that her being alright had anything to do with the inability to feel pain, it obviously was the case.

Devon inclined his chin as the girl ranted, swore, and tried her best to convince him of what she couldn’t even convince herself of. He wasn’t some common person roaming the woods for a camp site. He saw past the lie because it was almost painfully obvious. He saw the hurt because he was a human being, and even animals could sense such in one another. He understood the feelings because he too was a mutant.

His eyes betrayed nothing of their movement or where they focused being that they were solid black. She had no foundation but her anger. She had nothing but running and ranting. It was often difficult to allow yourself to feel, to accept, to try, and to hope. He knew that because he was trained to do so, but also because he’d been there. Unfortunately, the only understanding he had of physical mutations causing difficulty was sympathetic, but he still cared. He knew it was difficult.

“Thank you for not running further. Yes, I do think you care. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t live in remote areas avoiding people,” Tempest stated, still using a clear, controlled, but serious tone. “I’ve met people willing to kill, or those who have killed. Men, women, children.... and that’s not you.”

And even they knew regret.

“I’ve lived the same. I was angry, and sad, and afraid, and uncertain. I lived on my own, often away from people, and my favorite place was always the woods, especially near the ocean,” Tempest explained. “You want to head back to the lake? I’d appreciate it if we could go back there.”

In Julia’s mind the only words that she could come up with to describe the man standing in front of her were all negative ones. They were sarcastic, childish and aggressive. Yet, Julia was finding ways that they were all justified. She could go on a 70 page thesis rant about how much she detested the man standing in front of her before she even has been near him for 15 minutes. That is how aggressive her thoughts had been at that moment.

Even the truth she hated coming out of his mouth. The words spoken by him that had implied that she wouldn’t want to hurt people, that she wouldn’t kill someone purposely, and the fact that she was in unimaginable emotional pain. She paraphrased all of his words in her own mind similarily, but in the process they had lost the eloquence and the wholeness of what they meant in the process. Yet, it all still made her ready to fight a war that only Julia herself was only able to actually see that it was one that needed to be fought.

Her anger had augmented as he implied that he knew her, that he understood her, that he knew her pain. She didn’t care if his life was exactly like hers, her pain was her own and others trying to say otherwise made her want to scream, shout or really to crawl up and hide. She didn’t want others to feel like she has felt, and she didn’t need someone acting that they knew it, for deep down it made her feel guilty.

Guilty because she had her whole life ahead of her and yet she was just focusing on helping to live her own life... to escape her own past. As a result, she knew that she was avoiding helping the world and doing the good on the world that she should be doing. But she wanted to be selfish and to close herself off and so her words next wouldn’t be much of a surprise but more annoying for their redundancy and surprising for their brevity than anything else. “ F*** you.” She said. It’s all she wanted to express, that she felt comfortable expressing given his knack for insinuating that he ‘understood’ strangers. She didn’t want to give him more amno to use against her and so she didn’t.

Funny how profanity was a breakthrough. Well, it wasn’t the words. It was the tone. The biting, angry tone that said he’d hit a nerve or two of truth. Self-reflection and awareness were painful processes, easier to bury under hurt and anger until confronted as such.

“I won’t apologize for upsetting you, because these conversations are upsetting,” Devon furthered. “But I am sorry to surprised you like, to startle you as I did before. I figured you’d be happier to talk here than anywhere else. I would be,” he nodded.

The winds had quieted but the light rain still fell. His eyes – solid orbs of black – watched her from above. His brow was low and his lips turned slightly in a frown, betraying what his eyes could not. “I would prefer to talk further with you, calmly. I’d like to help you, whether you like it or not, because you deserve help. I don’t want anything from you, miss. I won’t blame you for being angry with me; that’s your right. I do believe you want something better ultimately and thus I’d like to help.”

Cliché, if Julia had known the word sufficiently enough to use it, she would have used it. That’s how she felt about the conversation even if she didn’t have the word cliché on her mind to describe it. The first and second sentences that he spoke only made her more angered. And the third just made her want to be more angry. Julia was an angry person and this guy was making it hard to be angry and whether it made sense or not, that made her angry.

Julia noticed the winds quieting down and the rain persisting, and felt as though it gave quite a good image to how she had been feeling. That is, her momentum of anger had no energy to continue to persist, but she herself wanted to persist with being angry. Even with the man in front of her saying all the right things, Julia felt like they were all wrong. Like she couldn’t trust a word he said and she didn’t want to trust a word he said because deep down she knew that if she did it would leave her vulnerable like she had been so many times before.

She glared at him as the rain continued to fall down. She wanted to know the perfect words to say. To make this interaction no more. She didn’t want to think about her wording or think about her next action but she knew that she had to. In order to get what she wanted, because what she thought she wanted was to be left alone. Once she had it articulated in her head, she let the words come out of her mouth without remorse.

“ Then I have a f****n right to be f****n left alone” she said given the mind games he was playing of saying that she had a right to be mad, to only scold her in the same breath and tell her everything that’s wrong with her. That being, that she needed help. She decided to use his wording against him and she was quite content with how it came out even if she was mad at her own anger dwindling as the rain continued to splash over her already soaked face and body.