(open!)

Katrina stumbled her way down the stairs. Her depth perception was a little off because one of her eyes wasn't quite ready to be open just yet. If she had her choice Katrina would still be in bed. School, however, ran on a different schedule than her body. At Mondragon Labs, she could have slept in as late as she wanted, stayed up late if she wanted, taken naps, and generally gotten as much sleep as she wanted and still gotten her studying done, which was more than most of the other students who seemed to have taken that year off.

It seemed to Katrina that school schedules had been nefariously plotted to run at times contrary to a teenager's internal clock. Despite the earliness with which her days started, she still had trouble falling asleep at night. The nighttime seemed to give her energy that she could never have in the mornings, especially when she stayed up late doing homework... or working on small illusions to amuse her wakeful midnight mind.

Katrina yawned in response to a particularly loud stomach growl and walked through the swinging door into the kitchen. Without taking note of who else was scavenging for breakfast, Katrina made her way to the pantry. Surveying the contents, Katrina had to admit that there was something nice about having a mother who had decided that the kitchen was the place that needed her attention had its benefits. Not only were there hot meals on a regular basis, but the pantry was stocked with many of Katrina's favorite breakfast foods.

How her mother knew that she liked Honey Bunches of Oats when she hadn't previously been grocery shopping for years Katrina had no idea. She wasn't in the mood for mysteries though, and simply grabbed the box of cereal without giving it too much thought and headed back toward the table.

Fission woke up early this morning. It was earlier than he normally woke up. It was usually sometime closer to noon. He didn't understand it, he just woke up feeling fully awake. The best part about living in the mansion was the endless supply of food that was available.

Since he'd always had a big appetite from gymnastics he'd learned to cook breakfast for himself. He walked into the kitchen, wearing shorts and a muscle shirt. He wasn't paying attention to other people in the room. He walked up to the refrigerator, opened it, pulled some fruit out of it.

Setting the food down on the counter he noticed that there was someone else in the kitchen. "Oh, morning." He said to the young girl who was eating cereal. He'd never seen her here but that wasn't such a surprise considering he'd only been here a few days. It was the best he'd slept in a while. Chris continued to make his breakfast before going over the one of the tables and sat down. He could tell from looking at her that she was very tired and not used to waking up this early.

"How're you doin' today?" He said taking a bite of his food. He would probably end up eating for the next half hour or so cooking this and that and mixing this with that so that he'd feel like he'd eaten enough before going to work out.

>>>"Oh, morning... How're you doin' today?"

Well wasn't be chipper? Katrina stared at the new comer with bleary eyes (she had managed to get them both open just for staring purposes) for a moment before she realized that she was supposed to answer.

“Uhnm, good. Rr you a studen' too,” she mumbled, not bothering to enunciate all of her words. It took too much energy to properly pronounce things, and her mouth needed all it's energy for chewing. She ate another spoonful of cereal and began crunching again. Honey Bunches of Oats was a cereal that got soggy quickly, she planned on finishing the bowl before it ever got to that stage.

Surely he had to be a new student. They tended to show up randomly all the time. That and if he was up this early, he had to be headed for class. Going to class was the only plausible explanation for why anyone would be up this early. That or insanity. Or some sort of genetic flaw or loose screw in the area of the brain designated as the internal clock. He didn't look crazy, but then, the really crazy ones never do.

“Uhnm, good. Rr you a studen' too,”

Chris listened to the young girl talk and watched her eat her breakfast. He slowly at his breakfast with her. Between mouthfuls he said, "I guess so. I've only been here for a few days but I'm not sure I'm going to be taking classes here, just yet." he said thinking about what he could possibly do all day if he wasn't taking classes. The only thing that came to his mind was the danger room to practice his powers and gymnastics. Gymnastics seemed to make everything better.


He ate rather quickly, not because he was in a hurry, but because he was hungry. "So, what's your name? How long have you been here?" Chris asked her as he moved onto the next part of his meal. He was quickly finishing the meal that he'd placed in front of himself. He felt like he should introduce himself to the young girl, "My names Chris." He paused to take a drink of water before he continued eating his breakfast.

(sorry it's so short. I can't think right now)

Crunch... crunn... and swallow.

“Hi Chris. Mm Katrina. I've been here all summer, before that I was hiding with the resistance. My mom works here, in the kitchen.” She took another bite of cereal. Crunn... crunn... Despite herself, the talking was making her feel a little more awake now. She still wouldn't have “no” to another hour of sleep, but she was starting to at least feel human again... or maybe not human, but whatever the equivalent was in the mutant world.

“So, have you graduated, then? What brings you to live at a school? Will you be getting a job soon?” Summer had only ended a few weeks ago, but already she was starting to find it difficult to remember how she had spent all of her free time prior to having class all day and homework all night. For some reason, the teachers seemed to think that the students all needed extensive review because many of them had fallen behind a year in school.

Crun... runsh...
As a result they seemed to assign twice the amount of homework. While Katrina was finding all the review fairly easy, it was still time consuming to complete every single problem. Especially in math. They had to do the same type of problem over and over, but with different numbers each time. Math had been her most difficult subject, but now it seemed that her studies with Slate the past year had actually brought her farther ahead than she was supposed to be. She kind of wished she could skip her math class and keep studying with Slate.

Runsh... nsh.. nsh...
and that was the end of the Honey Bunches of Oats. The rest of the flake floating in the bowl were officially soggy. Katrina set her spoon back in the bowl.

“Hi Chris. Mm Katrina. I've been here all summer, before that I was hiding with the resistance. My mom works here, in the kitchen.”

Chris was shocked that Katrina had mentioned the resistance. "I remember hearing about that. I thought that was just a rumor the media was spreading." He said amazed. He didn't realize that it was actually true. Chris continued to listen to her as she talked. He knew the camps had existed because once the law had been revoked it was all over the news and you couldn't get away from it.

“So, have you graduated, then? What brings you to live at a school? Will you be getting a job soon?”

Katrina then started bombarding Fission with questions. He took a few more bites from his food before he answered her questions. "Ya. I just graduated. I came here mainly to get a better understanding and control of my powers. But after that I'll probably leave and get a job somewhere. I spend most of my time training, or exercising if the danger room being used for teaching." He said simply. Chris continued to eat hi breakfast. "Why are you here?" Fissions said after thinking for a minute. "Why'd you come here? Why didn't you stay where you were hiding?" He asked the young girl sitting there. He didn't want to ask Katrina to many questions because he didn't know if she had to get to class yet, or if she had time to chat.

Chris seemed shocked the rumors about the Resistance had been true all along. Katrina was surprised at his surprise. It hadn't ever occurred to her that something she had taken for granted for so long as being real could be something that someone else thought was only a rumor.

“It wasn't really a big deal. Mostly it was just a secret place to hide out, kind of a refuge. The older people eventually helped break out the mutants from the New York camp. I wasn't there for that part, since I'm not old enough to fight or anything. Not that I'd want to fight. I was mostly just worried about everyone the whole time.” Just like my mom was probably worried about me the whole time. She'd never thought about that angle before. It was just one more similarity that she had never noticed between her mother and herself.

As Chris explained his reason for coming to the mansion, Katrina tilted her head. Curious. She hadn't ever heard of someone coming to a school just to learn about their powers. To “train” her own powers, she mostly experimented with them on her own. She had gotten used to practicing them on her own during the period where she had been in hiding; there hadn't been many teachers around then to help her train or anything like that. Mostly she figured it was actually safer if people didn't know what she could do. The less they knew, the less likely it would be that some person would want to use her for her powers. She had heard one too many horror stories about mutants being locked up and experimented on. She wasn't even sure what the school's official paperwork said she could do, since her mother had filled out all the registration forms and such. Soon it was Katrina's turn to explain why she was at the mansion.

“My parents sent me here about a year ago because they thought it would be safe, I think. But it got attacked right after I got here, because of the Registration Law. Some teachers and students got captured and taken to the camps, and some of us ended up in hiding with the Resistance. Now that the law is gone and there is no longer a need to hide, everyone has returned to the school again. That's when my mom came to work here, too.” That, and the Labs are overrun with vampires now. It doesn't seem like such a safe place to stay. And the mansion no longer seems like it is going to fall apart around us.

Katrina was certainly getting talkative. There was nothing like an actual conversation to wake a person up. She was becoming much more like her normal chatterbox self, rather than the walking zombie she had been when she first woke up. She wasn't paying any attention to the clock, though.

Chris listened to the young girl talk. Their conversations seemed to be going along at a better pace than when they'd first started talking. Katrina seemed to be more awake, and Chris guessed that she was normally very talkative. That didn't bother Fission right now since he was in the mood to talk. "Huh, that makes a lot of sense. There's no reason for you to hid when you don't have to." He finished eating that was in front of him. He was surprised at how easy it was to make friends here. Surprised, but happy.

He felt like he was being a little vague and that he should explain a little bit about his powers and himself. "For me it was more like I ran away from home. I left them a note so it wasn't like they don't know where I am. But I was more worried that I would hurt them with my powers, and I'd heard that this place was a place to train mutants. I probably could have figured out my powers by my self, but I guess after what what happened I was afraid of hurting my family. I figured I wasn't the only one with this type of problem here and the teachers here could help me."

He wasn't sure why he was telling Katrina all of this but it seemed like a good idea none the less. Chris thought about other things he would tell her. She seemed to have a fairly easy time around here. She didn't seem at all afraid of her powers, like he was. He knew what he needed to do and was certain that he could accomplish what he wanted to accomplish while he was here.

He was another runaway. It seemed that being a mutant greatly increased the chances that a person would end up living on the streets, at least for a little while. Katrina was once again reminded that she was very lucky that at least one of her parents still accepted her and could still live in the same place with her. Lucky to have family. Though mutants tended to form fairly tight-knit family groups with each other, she was beginning to realize. Perhaps it came from sticking together to face all the adversity that seemed to surround a mutant's life.

“Your mutation must be pretty strong if it is a danger to people around you. You've probably come to the right place to learn control. I hear Neena, Ms. Nightowl that is, is really great with helping people gain control over their powers. I haven't had a class with her yet, but she seems really nice.”

Katrina wondered what his powers were, but figured that he would share if he wanted to share. So far she hadn't heard of anyone who truly fit into the category of “mutations that are dangerous to self or others”. She supposed that a pyromancer with a control problem could certainly be a bit dangerous, but the tamer powers like turning into owls or talking to animals seemed more common. Or having a tail. It seemed like everyone at the mansion had a tail. For Halloween Katrina was definitely going to do something with a tail.

“Your mutation must be pretty strong if it is a danger to people around you. You've probably come to the right place to learn control. I hear Neena, Ms. Nightowl that is, is really great with helping people gain control over their powers. I haven't had a class with her yet, but she seems really nice.”

"Ya I met her, and she was really nice." He stopped remembering how nice she was when he arrived a few days ago. He smiled also remembering how welcoming she was even after he told her about his most dangerous part of what happened to him and how he got his powers. "If it's strong then I need to learn to control it and make it work for me instead of against." He had a feeling that he'd peaked the young girls interest but he wasn't sure if he wanted to tell her what he could do. Chris was mainly afraid that she would be scared of him and not want to be his friend because of what he could do.

After thinking for a moment Fission decided to tell her what his powers are. "You seem like a nice enough person, that wont shun me if I tell you what I can do. I'm not completely sure the extent of my powers but I do know that I can control radiation and along the same likes create Electromagnetic Pulses. There may be more to my powers than that but as of right now I don't know cause I'm afraid to practice it in the open." He concluded looking around nervously again. After looking around he was satisfied that no one else was around he looked at Katrina to see how she took this news. He was hoping that she would be okay with the information and not run away from him right in front of his eyes so he asked her, "What are your powers?"

Long pauses, side ways glances to check for possible hearers over, and finally a sheepish look back at Katrina to see how she'd take the news. For someone who seemed to be so nervous about people hearing about his powers, he had told Katrina pretty easily. Katrina was flattered the he already trusted her enough to share them with her.

Why was it, that some people were trusting and some were not? Some would tell another person even a deep dark secret right after meeting them, while others would keep countless things bottled up inside hiding their precious information even from their very best of friends. Did it depend on the person telling the secret, on the receiver of the secret, or on a happenstance meeting of the two?

Katrina considered the information he had shared for a moment with a thoughtful look on her face. Radiation she knew about. It came from bombs and X-ray machines and could cause or cure cancer depending on how it was used. She was trying to remember the science book she had read about electromagnetic waves, but couldn't remember what they did. Katrina twirled her spoon around slowly in a circle in the center of her bowl as she though. The soggy flakes migrated to the outside edge of their milk ocean.

“I forget what electromagnet things do, is it control metal? Anyway, radiation could be really useful once you get the hang of it. People talk about getting radiation therapy and stuff. You could help cure people someday!”

He had shared his secret, but Katrina wasn't ready to share her own just yet. It wasn't that she didn't trust him in particular, but that she didn't want her powers to be general knowledge. Maybe she would have told him at some point, but since her induction into the mutant world she had learned to be secretive. Half truths were safer, she had been taught, than the whole truth.

“As for me, I can turn invisible, which is not nearly as useful.”

Why was he sharing all this information with someone whom he'd just met? Was it her looks? her way of talking, that had lulled him into a sense of security with this young girl? Or was it something else like the fact that he figured since he was at a mansion full of mutants it would be alright for him to tell people his powers and he didn't have to keep them a secret anymore. He wasn't sure what it was but he didn't mind telling her about them. She then said somethings that were encouraging to Chris. He'd never thought of his powers that way but since she said it like that he thought that it would be possible.

"Not really. Electromagnetic pulses are kind of like byproducts of a nuclear explosion. They shut down all electronic devices within a certain range. It sort of disrupts the flow of electricity in devices, buildings, and other things like vehicles on land, air and sea."

Katrina didn't seem particularly keen on sharing her powers. Or if she did, Chris felt like she wasn't tell the entire truth. He thought she may be giving him the abridged version of her powers. He didn't mind, turning invisible was still a pretty cool power even if she could do more than that. "Whada ya mean? It's very useful. Especially for getting out of tight spots. And sneaking around here." Chris told her. He wanted her to feel comfortable around him, after all she was one of the first people he's met here at the mansion.

Katrina nodded as she listened. Electromagnetic pulses were signals that shut of electrical devices. Okay, good to know. She filed that away in the Interesting Science Facts folder in her brain. It was one of those things she would probably never need to know, thus, she would probably remember it forever.

“Turning invisible can help if you need to hide or sneak or spy, but it doesn't really help anyone. I guess that's what I mean by it not being useful.” Katrina thought back to something Fausto had said about being invisible.

“It's a little lonely, too. No one talks to you if they can't see you. It's much nicer to be able to talk to people than to be ignored. Besides, around here there isn't much to sneak into. This place doesn't have a lot of secrets,” not like Mondragon Labs “and those it does have are behind locked doors.” Two of them: one containing the War Room and another one in the basement that was unmarked. The War Room carried the same name as a room in Mondragon Labs, both of them seemed to be nothing but meeting rooms with strangely morbid, but parallel, names. Whichever overly dramatic mind had named the Danger Room probably named the War Room as well.

“Being invisible doesn't help get through locked doors.” She had learned that searching behind locked doors was not always the best idea. Last time she had done it she, Calley, and Iris, had been chased by a green eyed vampire complete with foreign accent and a thirst for their blood. No more locked doors for her. At least not for a little while. Unless...

“Do electromagnetic pulses unlock security systems too?” Like retinal scanners, fingerprint identifiers, numerical keypads, and voice readers? As long as there was no physical deadbolt barring the door...

Chris was interested in listening to her. He thought that she sounded a little sad when she mentioned being lonely and people ignoring her. "Ya. I suppose being invisible can be a bit lonely." He agreed with her. She continued talking and he continued listening. He was happy that this young girl still having a conversation with him, even with the powers that he told her he had. He thought about what she said and once again she was right. When he arrived here they seemed pretty open about what was here, although, there were a few doors that he wasn't able to get into. Frankly he was a little curious about what was behind it. However, he wasn't curious enough to risk getting kicked out of the one place that seemed to take him in.

He was more interested in her question than anything he'd said yet. It was a little odd that someone would automatically ask something like that, unless they were planning on breaking into some place like a bank or other high security locked areas. "I think it would only render the security system unresponsive and and not work. So if you wanted to get into a place that was locked with high security then I don't think you would be able to get in, or out if you were stuck in. However, I haven't tried though." He told her. He wasn't entirely sure about his answer since he'd never tried it. Katrina had gotten his curiosity peaked and would have liked to try it out sometime; however, he didn't want to try it at the mansion.

Katrina wasn't too worried about getting kicked out of the mansion. As far as she knew, no one had ever been kicked out before. Surely there had been curious students long before her that had abilities that made it perfectly possible for them to visit the secret contents of the locked rooms in the bowels of the mansion. Possibly the teachers even wanted them to find the secret tunnels, hidden hangers, and fancypantsy dowhatsit-type machines that were hidden down there. It could be a cleverly concocted mental challenge to test which students were clever enough to join the X-men. If she ran a school, Katrina would definitely have secret passageways to test the students. First they would have to get past the palm reader, then use someone's powers to fool the eye scanner, then perhaps someone else would have to go through a wall to unlock a door from the inside and let in the rest of the group. It would help them learn to work as a team even! It was practically wrong not to go through those locked doors. Too bad Chris wasn't up for it.

Katrina sighed (just a little one), “Well, perhaps some other time then.” Looks like it was going to be another boring day after all. Skipping math certainly would have both enlightening and entertaining, she was sure of it. She probably would have learned more than she would have in math class, too.