Sunday, 29/11/2020
7:23am
The living room
Mason's first morning at the Mansion

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A handful of the mutants had gathered in the dining room. There was no good reason to join them; they might expect conversation from him. Worse, they might get the wrong idea and think this hellhole was anything more than a temporary stopover for him.

Mum and dad made the call for him to be here at all. They were right to do it. And they had promised that as soon as an alternative to the freak manor arose, Mason would be right out. Until then, all he had to do was not stuff things up and not let anyone outside mutie society know his shameful secret.

The coffee table was, as everything else here, opulent-looking. Mason's sneakers looked distinctly out of place against the wood of the tabletop. He rubbed his heel against the surface and rich satisfaction flowed into him at the sight of this perfect mutant table being scuffed. Rubber residue streaked across the surface like a snail's trail. 

"Occupied," he turned away from the tv and scowled at the door as it permitted entrance to one of them, "Come back later."

The episode had twenty minutes left. A purple beam of ki-energy whirled across the screen and struck the bulbous villain to the earth. Mason took a bite of his toast. 

It had been a lovely brisk day for a jog starting from her shared apartment to the Mansion to work get the blood flowing from its nightly bout of unconsciousness. Even if it was Sunday the reason for her destination was food. The Mansion served free food to its students regardless if they lived there or not (or at least never turned away). Seeing as how no one had cause to speak to the apparently English lacking foreigner she didn't even have to excuse herself so she could go sit in the tv room.

She didn't expect it to be occupied with anyone paying the least bit of attention and bit down a sharp retort as some grumbled out a vain desire for privacy, in the mansion!, in a community area. In a farm more diplomatic and in character move she just sat gracefully down on an adjacent sofa with a polite smile plastered on her face. Her omelet drizzled in super spicy curry, a taste developed from her travels. A certain elegance as she used a fork to work off a piece and eating it before smiling more at Mason and gesturing to the TV to speak in horribly accented Japanese. "Is good?"

Noting that somehow the attack wasn't strong enough as the villain clambered from the crater and revealed a trap as the Hero landed and began monologuing. 

Girls that dyed their hair made bad decisions and stuck with those decisions. Outside of the hellhole, Mason might have been encouraged by the girl's poor decision-making skills. Yet they weren't on the outside, and it wasn't hair dye. Her eyebrows carried the same cotton candy hue. This either suggested aberration or a level of wildly terrible judgement that granted wariness even to Mason.

He bet on aberration.

With narrowed eyes, he tracked the girl's movement deeper into the space he clearly had claimed. She ate something that, even at a distance, burned his nose hairs with the sheer spice, picking incessantly with a fork as she dumped herself onto another couch's cushions. 

"You're in America. Speak -" American. "-English."

Was she having him on?

The tension on the screen grew by the moment. A trap! This battle had been teased for weeks, and both the hero and the villain had implied that they'd be surprising the other. Neither plan had been explained to the audience and so Mason could only guess at how things would end. The hero had lost their last match-up, so all bets were off.

"You do speak English?" he demanded.

Maybe it was as simple as explaining that he wasn't here to make friends.

When it came to decision making skills HImari would be the first to agree when it came to people outside her family she was of a rather poor level of in how to act in a manner people would come to expect of her. So she instead wrote her own rules, life was more fun that way wasn't it? 

Her smile didn't even twitch as the man demonstrated his lack of knowledge of basic history. Himari didn't even pay attention in class and knew America was a land off immigrants of varying levels of English. An angry retort would have been.. very satisfying, but fleeting. The call of the kitsune was a flame tempered with martial discipline, but ingrained into her soul. 

Instead that porcelain smile remained firmly in place, fork delicately cutting into the omelette with a precision that she only saw in her mind, then.. a horrendous screeching tone pierced through the sound of the TV faintly reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard mated with the mangle cry of some feline creature. Drawing it out the maximum length she could muster before the bite disappeared into her mouth. "Sorry." She uttered in broken English.. only to repeat the entire process over again.. finished with, once gain. "Sorry." Managing to sound absolutely sincere everytime she uttered those two syllables, again, and again. At least until the man inevitably reacted to her actions.

God damn. She was for real. He knew New York was full of immigrants but hadn't expected to have to deal with the double-whammy of a mutie without the brains to learn English. That he couldn't express his distaste for the supplicating foreigner grated at him worse than the alien sounds wobbling out from the TV. 

She scraped her fork against the plate and all the hairs on his body stood on end. His shoulders stiffened as he braced himself for some mutant attack that never came. If she weren't so vehemently penitent, Mason would have suspected this were a trick they played on new arrivals. Send in the weird girl. As if any one person were the weird one in a house full of people that could kill you as soon as look at you. 

He knew the stories. Back in Arizona, Mason and the guys would send memes or gross stories to one another reinforcing what they all knew about mutants. The girl in Ohio who sucked all the air from the room. The exploding guy. The big bodybuilder guy who was ripped apart by a teenage girl. He knew everything about mutants he ever wished to know, except how to rip the curse from his body.

"Shut -- shut up," he commanded, "I'm trying to be alone. Do you know alone?"

An exercise in futility. He felt like the hero on the screen, beating fruitlessly against a villain that didn't even feel his blows.

Himari had the newcomer precisely where she wanted him. Fighting a losing battle with himself and her a simple stand in. Her grandfather had taught her long ago that angry people were like flames. Without oxygen or fuel they burned themselves out. Later that day she learned about chokeholds as well, funny how that worked out. 

So she would give the fellow teenager fuel and with oxygen and a bit of hope he would burn himself out and be more amicable to a real conversation. It wasn't entirely honest of her to go about without responding in English, but she hadnt said she couldn't speak it either. Assumptions were a terrible thing. 

What were she did speak were truthful enough. She was sorry he had to be treated in this manner as well as a minor guilt towards her impish glee in the situation as well. Once she finished and set down the plate it was immaculate and if someone didn't know better had never been used at all. A satisfying grin broke her normal polite smile as she showed her abilities to Mason, dispassionate of whatever his reaction might be.

Be quiet but answer his question? Happily. Did she know aloneness? Himari could never recall feeling alone in a bad way per se. Her ancestors and the spirits watched over her even if she was without human or mutant company . She often sought such times when training. Could she understand such a soul crushing feeling of abandonment? In a way perhaps. In all it was far too complicated a question to answer without words so a sheepish smile replaced her polite as she shrugged elegantly and folded her hands on her lap.

The last piece of toast may as well have been cardboard for all the appetite it aroused. 

She had done all he asked. Talking to people that couldn't understand words came awfully close to talking to pets. Sometimes pets obeyed, sometimes they cocked their head to the side. Mason knew in the deepest part of his chest that the figure across from him wasn't a human. None of them were in the hellhole. Just animals pretending at humanity.

The hero on the screen surprised the villain with an elbow from behind. Teleportation? No. The hero explained that he was simply moving so fast he couldn't be seen. A particularly emotional monologue revealed something that Mason hadn't so much as suspected - the hero was an alien all along. Just like all the bad guys. 

This girl had ruined what might be the emotional climax of the season with her intrusion. She looked at him dumbly, smiling as if nothing was wrong and nothing was ruined.

"Why are you here? The rest of the fr- of them are in the dining room. Go be with your kind."

She partially wondered what the fellow teenager was thinking and feeling. Irritation no doubt. It certainly wasn't her intention to ruin the boys day, but if he had said a simple hello or some other more mutually respectful or even an upnod he could have avoided his fate. Alas here they were locked in a game only one of them was aware there was one to be played at all. Even aware of it, however she had the more difficult job of staying in character around such a reprehensible person. It was the things he almost or didn't say which said were infuriating. She had met the type often enough on the streets of New York. A girl with pink hair and purple eyes was either really into cosplay or a mutant. Both of which earned their stares and jeers. Often enough to hear the worst word you could call a budding mutant. Freak. Even a non-american mutant had heard these words enough to discern their meaning.

Still it wouldn't do to give up the game so easily. Shoving down the anger she felt threatening to break the placid surface of her face and using a far too practiced smile she just sat politely. Cocking her head a bit and narrowing her eyes at him as if trying to understand the meaning of his words.. then she shrugged delicately. Looking over at the tv as the end credits rolled and the outro played she bounced a bit on the seat to the tune, humming to herself.