So if there was no change in width her guess on numbers would be about right. Twenty-five promises big or small to fill up his arm. Interesting. His agreement to show her, despite a second’s hesitation, was not lost in her excitement. This was a slightly sensitive subject, and she inwardly made her own promise to treat it gently, for her own sake in not losing a friend as much as his.

His promise was sweet, and she found a smile touching her eyes as well as her face. The band’s progress was steady, spreading evenly rather than seeping like she expected. It didn’t seem to raise from beneath his skin, nor paint over the top. A tattoo was the best name for it, and as the ends met she found that she had been half holding her breath. She felt just the tiniest bit giddy.

“Awesome.”

And it was. The application thus-far escaped her, but the ability of the skin to do such things was certainly interesting, and the effect it had on the person carrying it must have been immense. She idly wondered if he had been this nice before his mutation made him guard his words. With a quick glance at him she decided he must have been. No forced mutation’s carefulness could make eyes as nice and unassuming as his.

Glancing at his glove she tried to place the reason for wearing it. When her mutation was going nuts, early in her move to NYC, she had worn gloves not only to protect her from the bite of the American winter, but also from accidental mutation exposures. It had taken a lot of practice to control the wormhole palms, but eventually she didn’t feel the need to wear them anymore. If it didn’t pain him to have things (such as her own, curious fingers) brush against the tattoo-like band, she couldn’t imagine why he would want to wear it on a warm day like this, much less once it got into the heat of summer. She nodded towards the garment.

“My roommate wears gloves, but that’s because she turns things to stone if she touches them.”

Perhaps he was embarrassed by his mutation, or didn’t want awkward questions from his college mates as the tattoos came and went. Despite the move to mutant rights after the registration act’s abolishment, there were still prejudices and biases against mutants, as a human-looking mutant it was easier not to bring up the issue, rather than complicate things.

Andrew couldn't believe anyone would be that interested in something like his promise tattoos. She was actually really excited to see it form. Verdy was cute when she was excited, he noted. She called it awesome. Maybe it was, if only in regards to the tattoos.

"I guess."

Verdy nodded toward his glove and mentioned that her roommate wore gloves. Only difference was that her roommate had to wear gloves because she turned things to stone. Yet another power Andrew was sort of glad he didn't have.

"I wear it to help cover the tattoos. It's just so much easier if people assume you're human."

That and he wasn't comfortable with the fact that he was a mutant. It was a fact and something he couldn't change. That should have been enough. Yet it wasn't. It was likely partly due to the nature of his mutation. It put him at the mercy of others and that was something he really didn't like. Most others were horrible people. Andrew counted himself lucky he'd met so many good people.

It was, so so much easier. She remembered nights (and days) during the Registration Act, where she had hung back, quivering in the shadows, afraid of the stalker-bots, yet so grateful she could pass as human. She saw some who couldn’t. It was awful. His mutation however had no ill effect when someone touched his hands, no turning to stone, nor anything else she had overheard in the corridors or around the mansion. Mutants or not the kids were still kids and they gossiped and supposed about mutations as much as any other normal children did about clothes or members of the opposite gender.

He seemed a little awkward and she suspected that, when possible, it was easier for him to pretend that he was human too. With such a bad rap the media gave mutants, as well as those mutants who, for whatever reason, contributed to giving X-gene carriers a bad name. Denial was an acceptable stage to be at, many were. Some tried to suppress their mutations entirely, others just ignored them, in the hope that they would go away. How many mutants lived out their lives like ‘normal’ humans without anyone ever suspecting their abilities was phenomenal.

“Thanks, for showing me I mean. You’re in a good place here, everyone is human, so we’re not perfect, but on the whole people at the mansion are usually pretty nice.”

Being around others, comfortable or not with their own mutations may help the young man come to terms with his own way of dealing with his. Even the atmosphere of acceptance, not necessarily spoken, but somehow in the air, was refreshing and reassuring. Here was safety. Let the bigots think they were protected from the mutants inside the walls. Let the mutants inside the walls be protected from the bigots.

“Are you staying here? Or you’re paying a visit only?”

For him to keep his promise of them seeing each other again some details would inevitably have to be shared. She turned and looked at the Mansion proper, frowning slightly as she counted the windows, before pointing to the one she recognised as her own with a friendly smile.

“That’s where I live.”

It was a good place to live, the Mansion, out of the way, but not so far as to make it impossible to get to and fro.

A nod was his first response to her comment about the people at the mansion. The ones he'd met so far were very nice.

"No problem." Andrew looked around and smiled, "It is a nice place. Not just physically but the people are good."

Her question of whether he was just visiting or actually staying was met with a smile.

"Staying. It's not as close to school as my apartment was but at least here I don't have to worry about what will happen if someone figures out my mutation. My two roommates were human and I have no idea what they would have done."

Craig in particular was the one that Andrew worried about. The two of them had never really gotten along. They'd been civil and had been decent roommates but since Andrew had mostly kept to himself neither of them knew him very well. Craig tended to try and bully him somewhat. Andrew figured it was leftover from Craig's days as a high school jock and king of his school.

Verdy turned and showed him the window to her room. He sort of grinned at that. That she could pinpoint the window to her room like that was cool in a way. Andrew certainly couldn't, at least not yet.

He was staying, her own smile matched his and she nodded. While some people would understand, others would judge or be biased, using a mutation like Andrew’s for their own gain. Often she felt the similarities between mutation and sexuality. A little difference and for some everything changes.

“Yes, sometimes its hard to tell.”

And sometimes it was all too easy. It was good that he was staying at the mansion though, perhaps a little inconvenient for schooling, but on the whole it lent itself greatly to their meeting more often, or at least again. While it was possible to go for weeks or even months without seeing the same people, but once you knew a little about a person, or they were easily recognisable, you could usually hunt them down. Her green tips made her a little different, and perhaps his single glove would catch in someone’s mind, but she suspected they were more likely to meet by chance or prior arrangement than by asking other mansion dwellers.

Prior arrangement, that reminded her. Rummaging in her bag for a moment she produced a scrap of paper (a receipt for the bag itself, along with assorted other stationary items) and a pen. Scribbling her number and the number of the room she shared with her green-skinned Andrea she grinned and offered it to him.

“As you saw my phone has a habit of running out of batteries, but usually I’m contactable one way or another.”

Like bashing on the door at midnight, or bumping into each other in the kitchen or simply around the grounds again. It could happen, and odds were it would happen eventually, especially if she gave it a little help now and then.

She gave him her cell phone number and room number both on the back of a receipt. Andrew chuckled, borrowed her pin, and scrawled his information on an empty bit of the paper. He ripped it in twain, careful not to lose part of her details, and handed it to Verdy.

"I don't generally turn my phone off so it's probably the best bet for finding me. If I don't answer then I'm probably too busy to answer. At any rate, I'm findable."

If that job for Sam ever ended up coming about then the comment about being busy would probably be justified. If Andrew was going to work as an assistant then he sure as heck wasn't going to be one of those assistants that spent more time taking care of their own stuff than whatever their boss told them to do.

"Anything else you want to know or talk about while we adventure?"

Andrew was willing to talk about almost anything. Within reason anyway. Anything to keep the conversation going. This was probably the longest and easiest conversation he'd had in a while that didn't have extenuating circumstances behind it.

Carefully folding her half of the paper and tucking it away in her pocket she smiled at the young man. She would figure out this texting thing and send him a text sometime. She almost had it down pat, yet used full words, rather than the chat-speak she didn’t really understand. Too busy sounded intriguing, yet private, and she decided to let that one be and choose a different topic. Asking if he had a girlfriend was too forward, and family was sometimes a touchy subject too.

“Hmm. Do you have any pets? Or brothers and sisters?”

Small talk could reveal a lot about a person, and she was finding talking with him, whilst having an adventure, to be quite an interesting endeavour. He was an interesting person, after all, and it was nice to make new friends. She herself had no pets, although she had been meaning to get a dog at some stage she hadn’t yet got around to it. By now her brother back in Hawaii would be nearly old enough to look after himself, but she knew nothing more than what she had known when she disappeared from there years before. Perhaps when she found the right words she would go back, explain things, but for now she was ok with the way things were.

“My roommate had a piglet, for a while, but not anymore.”

A rather strange pet, but its bad behaviour wasn’t missed, nor its snoring.

Andrew shook his head.

"No pets. No brothers or sisters. I'm Kevin and Lillian's only kid."

That wasn't to say Andrew wouldn't consider a pet. He liked animals though mostly only the domesticated ones. Wild animals were too dangerous to like as far as he was concerned.

"A piglet? Well that's...interesting. Nothing bad happened I hope?"

Accidents involving pets or just plain old pet death were always sad. But a piglet was a strange animal to keep as a pet. Pigs were food and not particularly pleasant creatures to look at. Not overtly ugly but not beautiful either.

"I've never actually had a pet. I like dogs but we didn't have room for them back home."

Sure they could have gotten a small dog but small dogs were annoying. They tended to bark constantly and hated everyone that wasn't their owner. A big dog was much better in his opinion.

“Well… It got turned to stone.”

Was that bad? It was a far nicer pet as a stone ornament, however she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it. She regularly had qualms and considered vegetarianism, but liked meat too much to give it up. Although the creature’s death had been painless, and its life wasn’t brilliant before it came into their room she still felt a little queamy when she thought about it.

“On purpose I think, as a gift to someone… I’m not sure. It wasn’t really a pet though, more of a work in progress.”

Like bacon waiting to be fattened, or hens fooled into double-laying. Yep. Really sick. Dogs were a far nicer subject, and she found herself nodding. She had befriended the occasional mongrel on the street, but having a dog was both impossible and inconceivable. She barely had enough food for herself, a dog would have overstretched the little amount she had. Perhaps now she had a more stable income and more time not occupied with surviving she would get a dog. Then again, there were several pets already in the mansion, however one needed to be careful patting them, as there were shifters as well.

“Do you like particular breeds? I like Labradors, and Mutts.”

The ones of questionable background were generally a mix of temperaments, and having a dog that wasn’t specifically ‘a breed’ made them both more affordable and less pretentious. If and when she bought a dog, she would choose one from the animal shelters throughout the city, rather than a breeder or shop.

Andrew winced and was about to apologize for bringing it up but Verdy then said she thought it had happened on purpose. Was that better or worse? Either way it was creepy and he really couldn't suppress a shudder. He was glad to move past that topic and onto dogs.

"There isn't really any particular breed I like better than others. You could say I like big dogs better than the small ones but other than that I don't really have a preference."

Maybe now that he was here he'd see about getting himself a pet. Clearly there was plenty of room to let a dog run out here in the grounds if he got one. Andrew wasn't sure about it. It was something to think about at least. Heck the responsibility would probably be good for him.

"Maybe I'll look into getting a pet of some sort. At some other time. Between school and that job coming up I don't know if I'd have time at the moment."

The last part was more thinking aloud than speaking to Verdy but he'd said it loud enough for her to hear so if she decided to respond or ask a question he couldn't stop her. Andrew hadn't meant to mention the job. He hadn't even seen Sam about it yet.

Big dogs definitely had their advantages, asides from space, cost and ‘cutesy’ complexes, she wasn’t sure why anyone would want a small dog over a large, but each to their own. She had enough time (she was sure someone had said two to four hours per day) but she just hadn’t worked up the courage to visit the shelter which reminded her so much of the homeless shelters she had graced with her own presence. She wasn’t certain she could walk down the rows of pleading faces and choose one out of a possible hundred who needed a home, someone to love and take care of them.

Even thinking about it shook her up a little. She would probably have to take someone with her, to hold her back so she didn’t end up taking the entire shelter home, not that she could afford it. Someone… like Andrew?

At some other time, he said, when school and work wasn’t an issue.

“Hey, you should come with me to choose a dog sometime. I have the time and energy, and in your spare time you could come and walk it with me!”

It was exactly the type of thing to jump into. While it wasn’t exactly unplanned, in that she had been considering and planning a dog for some time, the timing was a little sooner than she had been idly contemplating.

“What kind of a job do you have planned?”

She herself was a receptionist in training, but the pay was good and the hours suited her. Her boss was nice too, but she hadn’t seen much of him lately, and thanks to meditation sessions with Hunter, he didn’t hang around in her dreams either. Nothing quite like a three-year-old telepath for a boss.

Verdy suggested they get a dog together. That actually made a lot of sense from his point of view. Andrew couldn't be certain he'd have enough time to properly look after it. Verdy could take care of that and Andrew could help whenever he could. It sounded like an excellent idea to Andrew.

"That sounds like a plan to me."

Verdy asked after the job and Andrew debated whether he wanted to tell her the whole story or an abbreviated version. Maybe an abbreviated version first and then the details if she asked? That sounded good to him.

"I'm actually going to be working for Sam Johnson here in the mansion. If the interview comes off right that is. He helped me out of some nasty business and then offered me a job. I didn't come right away but then I met Kealey and ended up here."

Mind you the nasty business was a near cafe robbery committed because of his mutation. Not his finest hour or something he wanted to share with Verdy if he could help it. But if she asked he'd probably tell.

“Oh that’s handy, it’s good to work near to where you live. Do you know when your interview is?”

Travel time could be a real pain in the butt. The potential boss’ name rung a bell somewhere in her mind, but she couldn’t quite place it. It wasn’t really important though, of course, to Andrew it was, but to her it was simply a name she filed away to ponder on later.

She couldn’t remember any interviews (not successful ones anyway), her job with Slate had just kind of… happened, so she couldn’t really provide any advice on the matter other than the clichéd ‘be yourself’ and ‘wear something nice’. So, in absence of anything intelligent to say about the matter she switched topics again.

“Are you doing anything now? Do we want to go dog-shopping? Or do you want to meet up on the weekend or something?”

Either was fine by her, but she was determined to at least get a dish and water bowl before any potential canine was chosen. Probably some food too, although that might have been provided by the shelter at a slightly higher price to cover their costs of caring for the animal, which made sense.

“I’m good either way.”

Andrew just shrugged.

"No idea. I haven't seen Sam since he offered me the job. Busy guy. At least I assume as much."

If that wasn't the case then he was just plain avoiding Andrew. Or possibly had no clue he was here at all. The mansion was a big place. Surely he couldn't oversee everything. Probably why Sam had offered him the job. Someone to take care of some things so that Sam could do more. Of course that nasty voice that constituted his paranoia whispered that he probably also meant to use Andrew's mutation. Andrew squashed the thought. Sam wouldn't do that. At least he thought. Kealey considered him a friend at least so he couldn't be too bad.

Andrew gave another shrug in response to Verdy's query.

"Not really. We could go shopping now if you like and hit the shelter on the weekend."

That way they could get the necessities for the dog now and actually get the dog later. It would have to stay in Verdy's room most of the time. Probably wouldn't hurt to have a food and water dish in his own room though. Andrew started to think of all the things they might need for a dog.

Andrew’s idea sounded good, they could get the basics now, and then there would be time for adjusting to the idea before the weekend, when they would go and get the dog itself. A quick check of her bag reassured her that her wallet was contained within, as well as a light hoodie should the weather change its mind and turn inclement.

“Do you need to grab anything before we go? I’m pretty much right.”

While she considered throwing on better shoes she decided that flip-flops would be sufficient for this outing, with more solid shoes for the weekend trip. A medium to large dog was what was planned, so that made choosing items a little easier. A dog-bed shouldn’t be needed, since she was fine with sharing her sleeping quarters with a canine, or the carpeted floor was a suitable alternative. But a collar, lead and the bowls were a must. A name couldn’t be decided until the dog was chosen (who chooses a name before they see the pet anyhow?) so that was something to think of on the weekend rather than now.

“What do dogs really need?”

She fell into step beside him, he had a comfortable gait she noted, and tried to remember where she had seen pet stores, or which stores stocked such things. Probably their best bet was one of the malls.