For about nine months out of the year Locke armed himself for the day with a long sleeve undershirt, a t-shirt, some button up shirt, and the a pair of jeans. More often then not he also had a hoodie jacket on him as well. He simply could not stand the slightest cool breeze on his skin. For those other three months Locke showed some skin. Meaning that in the summer Locke would forgo the long sleeves and one of the shirts, sometimes kicking off his shoes. Today was a particularly nice day, which meant that Locke was outside, absorbing as much of the sun’s warmth as he could. In a past life he would have been a lizard. It had rained earlier in the day, one of those nice summer showers that even Locke didn’t mind getting caught in, so there were patches of mud scattered about the grounds.

And the mud felt as good as the sun to the Californian. It was soft and warm, cradling his bare feet. Locke had to smile, this was just one of those moments in life where everything felt… perfect. His struggles with math and science were temporarily put on hold, and finally the weather was decent. The palms of his hands itched. Strange as it might sound the mud was talking to him, saying that it wanted to move, that it wanted him to work with it. “Alright, alright,” he said. Mud was pretty good to work with, and this was more than he’d worked with in the laundry room. Locke slid his mind into the mud and gave it a little nudge, it lurched and burped, making him slip where he stood.

One week at the Mansion complete. Elise stared up at the ceiling of her room, her mind still adjusting to the its strangeness. It was amazing how different one plain white ceiling could be from another. Sighing, the teen rolled out of bed and stumbled onto her feet. Glancing over at the alarm clock on her bed stand, it took her a moment or two for the number on the screen to sink in. Holy… she stared dumbly at the blinking numbers for a few more seconds before she glanced down at her watch. Yup, she had definitely managed to take a three hour nap through mid day.

Rubbing her eyes into wakefulness, she peered out the window. It was obviously a nice day. Students were dressed lightly, their conversations spreading throughout out the grassy area. It would be a shame fore Elise to spend the rest of the day indoors. Moving towards the door she managed to step on a slipper that was out of place. Annoyed, she went to throw it back in the closet when the idea that the school may not approve of its residents wandering around in boxers and a tank-top hit her like a freight train. Despair seeped into her momentarily cheery mood. It was a day to be comfortable. It really was. Elise could just sense it, but she really did not want to learn the extent of the dress-code by breaking it if there was one.

Letting out a much longer sigh than her earlier one, she blindly rummaged through the closet, finally settling on some short jean shorts, their lack of impediment on her movement made them one of her favourite pieces of summer clothing, and a simple UCLA tee-shirt to cover her top half. Changing her clothing quickly, she knotted her hair into a quick bun at the nape of her neck, loose strands falling freely about her face. Finally, it was time to enjoy the beautiful weather.

Making her way to the outdoors, Elise barely restrained the urge to whistle, restricting her self to slight humming. Her steps were light and large, barely restrained skipping really, until she opened the large Mansion doors to the outside world. Slipping her flip-flops off, Elise let herself literally skip over to the grass, where she dug her toes in for the irresistible cooling feeling of dew rubbing between skin and long leaves of grass.

Opening her eyes to take in the Mansion’s grounds, she spotted a beautifully shaded spot up ahead. It was perfect. Strolling towards the tree she carefully moved to not disturb the boy that looked so peaceful there in the mud. The option was, however, taken out of her hands when the mud seemed to shake, causing the boy to slip. Without thinking, she reached out to catch him, her hand closing around his upper arm, while the other flailed around, barely allowing her to keep her own balance. “Whoa, you OK?” she asked, still loosely tensed from what her body had apparently interpreted as a near death experience.

It was Locke’s first instinct as he was falling to put out a hand to catch himself on something. His mutation however, which had developed to help him with the things he was unable to do physically, and it was meant to keep him safe. So when his hand went out to find something to hold onto, his mind, which was still in the mud, brought said material surging up. What knocked him out of the mud and back to reality was when someone wrapped a hand around his arm. It startled him enough that the mud splattered. When his connection to the earth was severed as sharply as that whatever Locke had been working with became scattered. No doubt that the mud which had been trying to save him got all over….

“Aw man,” Locke groaned, wincing. It was bad enough that he had just turned his arm into a mud pie, but he also had sent what might have been a golem flying at the person who had saved him. To make matters worse it was a girl, one of sufficient hotness that Locke’s ears burned and he blushed. He put his free hand on his face with shame. Squish. “I’ve got mud on my face now huh?” Well, you couldn’t call this a good start, but it certainly was normal for the Californian.

Having just caught her balance, Elise’s instinctive smile loosened into a slack-jawed looked of shock as a rushing body of mud rose from the ground towards the boy, before suddenly changing direction. Throwing her arm in front of her face in a useless effort to protect her face from the earth, Elise felt her flip-flops fly away from her hand. The sound of mud splattering seemed to echo within her head as the thick, warm liquid covered her unevenly from head to toe, in some areas only mild droplets while in others the a thick layer formed.

Dropping her arm and leaving a comically clean line across her face, Elise looked down at herself in shock. Well, there went not doing laundry tomorrow. Glancing back up at the boy at his question, a large smile couldn’t help but spread across her face. He looked absolutely adorable. “Yeah,” she said a light laugh bubbling at her lips as she wiped her hand on back of her shorts. They were the closest, reachable, moderately clean part of her body. “One sec, let me get that for you. You’ll just spread it out otherwise,” she said, her hand finally loosening from his arm as she reached up to wipe the mud away with the other.

“No, no, I got it,” Locke rushed to say, having to balance himself quickly before he fell completely into the mud. He couldn’t deny the fact that he was feeling jittery and nervous as was usually the case around girls his age, even if there was a tiny smile on his face. The mud that he was crouched in was shaking near his feet; his nerves making him unconsciously use his powers. Until he got calmed down there was a risk of yet another mud explosion. If she actually were to try and help him get the mud off things would be disastrous. In spite of his mud covered hands Locke adjusted his hair. “You’ll just make it more excited.” Locke chewed his lower lip as he focused on his little friend giving him a hug in the shape of his hand. Ok, time to get off of me,[/i] he commanded it, giving his head a slight shake. The mud reluctantly sluffed off of his face and his hair, and back into the puddle it had come from. The clothes he wasn’t worried about. After all he had a tendency to attract dirt, and more often then not there was a layer to get rid of with his laundry. It was the reason why his dirty clothes had to be washed separately back when he was still living in San Francisco.

“Dude,” Idiot, she’s not a dude, “I’m so, so sorry. I was falling and I just… acted out of instincts. Don’t worry, it’s just mud, it’s not clay. So it will come off pretty easily and the dust isn’t hard to get rid of.” Locke considered offering to get the mud off of her. It was after all the least he could do, and who better to get mud off of you then the Earthwalker? But that quickly got abandoned when he realized it meant that he’d have to ask her if he could grab onto her arm. The mud wasn’t going to listen to him when it was on someone else. There had to be a plus side to this somewhere, though Locke wasn’t looking for it other than the ease in which one would be able to clean themselves off. Had he been slightly optimistic Locke would have pointed out that now they didn’t have to ask the cliché question of what he did. Still, beneath his tan there was a red tint to Locke’s skin as he looked down at their bare toes.

Is she still looking at me? he wondered, daring a glance up. Oh crap she is![/i] And instantly his eyes went down.

“Oh, OK,” Elise said, letting her hand drop back down to her side, before she began to fidget. The perfectionist in her, was having a bit of screaming moment when she saw the boy run a muddy hand through his hair. Her hands were literally itching to grab his head and shake out his hair before arranging it back to how it should be. Yeah, sometimes she could be just that neurotic. Elise transferred her hand towards grabbing her elbow to keep herself from following the urge. Not only would that mean the boy would probably think her crazy, but also cause an incredibly awkward moment.

To her great relief the dirt seemed to just leave his hair in a fantastic motion that made all that had happened make so much more sense. He could work with dirt or earth, or whatever. That coloured, usually brown substance that made up most of the earth’s ground level. That was why the mud had jumped, and that was why a column/hand/person thing had risen from the ground. Elise felt like slapping herself in the forehead for not making the connection sooner.

“Hey, its OK. Accidents happen,” Elise still smiling while her hands rose up in the classic open palm, everything-is-forgiven pose. “Plus, this will just force me to actually do the laundry I’ve been putting off for days. You’ve done me a favour, really,” she added leaning forward ever so slightly as though she was sharing a secret with him. Leaning back into her earlier pose, her smile couldn’t help but widen. The boy really was adorable, even with the dirt smudge off his face now. His shyness gave her the irresistible urge to hug him. Biting down on the urge strongly, she held out her hand once more, but this time for a classic introduction shake. “I’m Elise, by the way.”

“Days?” Locke asked in disbelief. Images of piles of unwashed laundry strewn across the floor flashed through his head. He had to do laundry frequently, and not just because of the dirt. It was just something he was compelled to do, like make his own meals or play Doodle God on Addicting Games. If Locke did not wash his clothes on a regular basis he’d go insane. No, he wasn’t going to think of what stacks of dirty clothes had taken over the floor of the girl in front of him. Surely she couldn’t be one of those people who thinks that the floor is just one giant laundry hamper.

He wiped his hands on his shorts, partially to get rid of the last of the mud and partially to make sure that they were less… gross. Ok, he couldn’t help that for a second his mind went back to being five and the whole cooties thing. Chris and Mai were majorly concerned about that. “Still, not everyone likes to get dirty.” Elsie, for that was her name apparently, stuck out her hand to shake. “Locke, not like in Lost or Ness.” Not like the philosopher either. Hugo had been a geek and named his son after a video game character.

"Where did your shoes go?" he asked. The question really came out of nowhere. Mabye it was because he was staring down at the ground so much. His own high tops had been stashed in a bush near the door so that he wouldn't squelch mud all over the mansion if he came back in before the sun set. A part of him wanted to go back inside and hide before he did something even worse, like make Elise into Fluffy, but to do so would mean he wouldn't get any of this good day. And it was good, mud explosion put aside. And the increasing urge to yell at the mud for acting up as it made a bubble near his heel.

“Yeah, two whole days since my laundry hamper became half-full. Time has just slipped through my fingers and everything else seemed so much more important. I know, blasphemy,” Elise said her hands going to her cheeks in a way that showed just how rare it was for her laundry to sit there for so long. It was shocking really. Elise usually got mild worry attacks when she opened her hamper and saw it moderately filled. Being in a new place with new people and new habits had just thrown her. Otherwise, the thought that she might run out of matching underwear would have kept her up at might.

“Yeah, well mud isn’t hard to clean off as you said earlier. Plus, I would be in big trouble if I was a germaphobe and living in New York. That would suck actually. I mean, I wouldn’t even to be able to go on the subway without having a panic attack,” Elise said with a dismissive gesture. Before putting on a large smile at his introduction. “Well then, nice to meet you Locke not as in the Ness or Lost,” she said kindly, shaking his hand happily, before looking down at her feet in confusion.

Shoes? Oh! Right, she had taken them off when she had walked onto the grass. Drawing her eyebrows together, she looked around wondering what had happened to them, until she spotted them several feet away, thrown haphazardly in the grass. “Oh, yeah… I accidentally lost my grip on them when I got splattered with mud,” she said blushing lightly. Well, that was definitely not the most responsible moment of her life. Her mother would have been upset with her.

“I should probably go get them…” she said, her blush rising a little higher. She lifted one foot at a time, trying to unsquelch them from the mud. She was only moderately successful. She continued towards the edge of the mud pit in a movement that was mildly reminiscent of ice skating, before suddenly stepping on a sharp rock and reflexively stepped backwards. Woomph.

Elsie stared down at herself once more in mild shock. Now not only was she splattered all over the front but on the back too and sitting in a puddle of mud. Slipping seemed to be her mode of being at the moment. How attractive. A silent laugh couldn’t help but rumble in her chest at the whole situation. She had changed out of her PJ’s to look acceptable, and now, she couldn’t walk into a 7:11 without being glared at. Elise found herself unable to move from laughing so heard. She was nearly crying from something that wasn’t even that funny. Her face turned a dark crimson in embarrassment, but she couldn't stop laughing. Yes, she was definitely having one of those moments.

Again Locke winced. The guilt of hitting someone who apparently had to do laundry as much as he did with mud resurfaced when Elise mentioned it. “I am so sorry about that,” he reinstated, not that it made any difference now. Saying sorry at this point was a bit like saying “my bad” after throwing red paint onto a fur coat. It was done and unless Locke somehow mutated into a time traveler or gained a sudden understanding of theories of dimensional travel there was no way that he could prevent it from happening. The best that he could do is try not to be such an idiot from this point on and keep from splattering Elise again.

She was sort of gliding towards her shoes now, which Locke took to mean that he had done his usual thing and become the least interesting thing in a five mile radius, so he knew that he could not be blamed for what occurred next. It was only when a girl was looking at him did Locke’s brain suddenly seize up until a cheese clamp incident occurred. When Elise tried and failed at defying gravity Locke had been scratching his head trying to think of what he did wrong this time. Well one good turn deserves another, and while he was too late to catch her, the Californian at least was nice enough not to laugh at what had been a rather humorous sight. He slid his way over as fast as possible, holding his hands out to keep from falling yet again. She was red in the face now and he offered her his hands. “I didn’t do it,” was his rushed response, wrongfully assuming that the tint on her face was because somehow he had enraged Elise. After all girls didn’t usually blush around Locke unless something had been said by him that was incredibly awkward. But then Elise started to laugh, and Locke was caught off guard. In trying to pull her off he lost his own footing and this time nothing lurched from the ground to catch him.

“Oh, I know you didn’t do it. It was me being clumsy,” Elise said with a dismissive gesture as she successfully tried to at least stifle her laughter. Reaching up and taking his hand gratefully, Elise couldn’t help but smile and constantly mumble one sort of thanks or another. Finally beginning to get her footing, she felt the strength that had been Locke disappear with a loud splat, and… she was in the mud again. This time she had flecks of mud splattered across the previously clean line across her face.

Another giggle escaped through her nose. Elise sat back up and looked over at Locke in the mud. A large smile that bubbled with her earlier laughter spread across her lips. What a mess they both were. “You OK?” she asked scooting down to see how he was, her hands constantly slipping on the slick surface. The strands that had earlier framed her face in gentle waves had quickly turned into to dark, heavy spikes. Her blue eyes peered out of face that was liberally splashed with brown except for the shock of white that was her smile.

She looked down at his rather mud splattered form and was suddenly hit with an idea. Mud fight? Yes! It would be so much funner than a shaving cream fight. “Hey, while we are all messy and lying in the mud, do you want to play a game? Do you want to have a mud fight? Like a shaving cream fight, but better!” she asked, obviously excited by the idea.

“Yeah, just hit my buu…” Suddenly the word butt seemed too inappropriate to say out loud. There were several thoughts going through Locke’s head, the first being that Elise had almost directly quoted Jigsaw, followed shortly after by the thought that he was such a dork for thinking that. There was the big question as to what she was up to as she drew closer. No way was this happening to him, because this was just too awesome. Elise would be classified under the pretty girl category as proven by the blush that was increasing on Locke’s face, and pretty girls did not scoot closer to him or look him in the face. Locke’s brain froze up momentarily.

“Ah,” he hesitated, unsure of what he was suppose to say. When he had gone out earlier his intentions had only been to soak up the sun. Summer was meant for fun and for warmth. Ok so the idea of a mud fight was fun, and so was being this close to Elise, but could he do it? “M-mud fight?” Whoa, he could actually see her eyes. Was his hair arranged just right? Yes it was. “Y-yeah. A-alright that sounds good.” He had to give Elise an odd smile. “You want to have a mud fight with an earth manipulator?”

Locke had hesitating and stuttered. It made Elise worry. Had her suggestion been out of line, weird, unwanted? Had she done something wrong? Her smile began to falter and her eyebrows drew together ever so slightly. Was it because she was disgustingly messy at the moment? She didn’t think so, because they were both in the same boat there. Her mind, however continued to wander down a similar path of possible faults and failures. Could it be because she hadn’t put on any make-up? Were her clothing torn in any strategic areas? She figured no to all the above, but a little voice in the back of her head kept nagging at her.

Her mind barely registered his agreement with all her worrying, and so it took her a moment or two to absorb the information. “Really?” she said, a smile spreading across her lips in relief. Locke wouldn’t agree if she had done something wrong, right? It was, however, his odd-little smile that finally began to calm her down.

Taking a deep breath she assessed the boy carefully for the first time. He seemed just as he had looked when she had met him, absolutely adorable. Shoving down the voice in the back of her head, she looked him straight in the blue eye, and a small, silly smile danced across her lips. “Well, I wouldn’t say any earth-manipulator. I did say you, didn‘t I?” Elise said in reply, gathering a small bit of mud on her index finger before moving to smear it down his clean, long nose.

Locke’s jaw slackened and his mind momentarily shut down as Elise smeared mud on his nose. It was the closest anyone had gotten to his dead eye without eye drops or a glass jar filled with tongue depressors someplace in the room, and to be perfectly frank, it scared the snot out of him. For the last five years he had been growing his bangs out to hide behind them, and one’s nose is never very far from their eye. Things were waaay to nice right now for him to freak Elise out with his biggest insecurity. Should her finger move just slightly more to the side she’d see the scar. He had to do something before she saw anything. Well, I wouldn’t say any earth-manipulator. I did say you, didn‘t I?[/i] the small smile and the blush increased. Would this constitute as flirting? Even if it didn’t Locke would take it. His flirting skills were subpar, and it was hard to tell for sure if a girl was making a move on him for real or for whatever other reasons a girl might do so. In any case he now had mud on his face again and the mud fight had begun.

One hand went slowly up to his nose to wipe it clean, which might seem really stupid given that the point of a mud fight is to get muddy. But it really was meant only to be a distraction while his other hand smacked the puddle, making it splash up like water would in a pool. He already made up his mind not to use his powers excessively in this fight. He already had the advantage of height, though a couple of inches isn’t all that impressive. Besides which Locke wasn’t as competitive as others and really didn’t see why he should have to slaughter Elise. A hug from Fluffy would leave her more caked in mud than an ATV in a swamp.

"Here's mud in your eye," he couldn't resist saying, even if it was such a tired saying.

Elise could make out his smile easily now. Good. He had a nice smile. Locke seemed like such a serious character, but if it took Elise acting like a complete goof to make him smile, she would say it was worth it. Elise was quite honestly one of those people. If it meant taking the next subway car so that the stressed mother of three small children would smile just a little bit in relief, well then, she would do it. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily the main reason why she was trying so hard to make the teenage boy in front of her smile, but it definitely was one of them. Plus, if he was smiling that way, he was obviously having a nice good time, and if he was having a good time, Elise couldn’t have possibly done anything wrong. The girl was rather proud of herself. Her earlier worries all but disappearing.

She watched him move to clean off his nose with a smug grin on her face. Point one for Elise Bredson. The smugness, however, evaporated as she caught the hint of motion out of the corner of her eye. Raising her arms instinctively she was able to block a little of the mud, but most of it splattered all over her. “Oh, that was tricky. I’ll give you that one,” she said shaking her still muddied finger at him while her supporting arm, took a handful of mud from where it rested behind her back. Her grin widening back into its earlier position, she lobbed the handful of mud at his head while sitting up ever so slightly. Following her throw, she pushed with her legs to slide away from the boy and towards a new position.

“First law in the art of war blah blah blah,”. Oh the temptation was so strong to just throw his mind into the glorious mud and just make it leap out at Elise. She was getting him pretty well and he did have some level of pride. He had told her he was an earth manipulator and they were in his element. Literally. Elise had gotten his face even more muddy then he had when he face palmed. It wouldn’t make a difference all the time that he spent practicing or the hours spent trying to learn the different muscles in the body if he got little more than a splatter on her. Besides which she might take offence at him going so easy on her. Locke shook his head once quickly to get the worst of the mud off, but his mind was someplace else.

With his palms and bare feet in direct contact with the ground, along with his butt, Locke was getting a nice ‘view’ of where Elise was in comparison to himself. Water, he had learned, tend to blur the images that he saw. More contact, especially skin to stone, made for a clearer, sharper image. Like he had done months ago in the Danger Room Locke made nothing more of Fluffy than hands to keep Elise from getting too far away. His attention still in the earth Locke scooped up two handfuls of mud and flung them towards Elise. His depth perception usually sucked, but it was not like she was a mile away and in a bizarre way he could see her position better than had he had his mind out of the dirt.