The second woman’s display of paper manipulation was… fascinating, really. It was somewhat gratifying to know there were other, equally unuseful powers out there, though the paper bird was quite a bit prettier than anything Allison made.

And both women were coffee addicts, apparently. How… totally expected, really, considering 90% of the human race was, and 80% of the rest was under the age of ten. “I’m alright. Being outside’s nice.” Also a bit… concerning, considering why she had the time to be outside now, but still nice. She could worry about finding a new job later, when there were less distractions and she could actually do something at the time.

And some of us would prefer we couldn’t. Allison did not think that comment would be very welcome, however. “Blending in can be convenient.”

“Blending in can be convenient.”

Kitra couldn't help but grin, "It is indeed convenient. And outside is quite beautiful." She eyed Skydancer's coffee and stood, "I shall be right back." Kitra walked over to the coffee vendor yet again to get another cup. This whole lovely process took about 5 minutes as the young man was intent on flirting with her, horribly that it. She also got the feeling that there was some sort of tension or awkardness between the two other ladies and wasn't sure if they needed a moment of privacy. Even if they didn't, she really did need another cup of coffee.

Skydancer found the paper crane to be enchanting and she smiled down at it. It reminded her of her aunt who animated origamis and her memories of the times she had spent with her favourite aunt were almost all fond ones. It was the magnificent gift her aunt possessed that lead her to desire to become a mutant and had shaped so many of her hopes and dreams growing up.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," Skydancer stated genuinely. She didn't want to see anyone suffer who didn't deserve it and, as far as she could tell, the woman didn't deserve it. Now, evil slug mutants that worked to enslave the minds of others, they probably deserved it and she had no problems helping out with the whole justified suffering thing, if it was necessary.

When Kitra left Skydancer gestured to the other side of the bench for the woman to sit down. "I'm really not that scary. Honest. Normally I'm actually quite nice although I've been accused of being a bit intense at times." It was her attempt at being friendly and welcoming. Awkward situation or not, she hoped it would work.

“Okay.” The paper girl’s sudden departure left Allison blinking, wondering if she’d somehow offended the woman. She wasn’t sure how she could have, though; paper didn’t have any connection to mind reading that she could think of, and blending in was convenient. Unless the degree of obviousness had made her think Allison was being patronizing? She was pretty sure she hadn’t used a patronizing tone… and most people tended to react to patronization with snark or anger, not walking away. So Allison really had no idea why the woman had left. Oh well.

“Yeah.” Allison shifted slightly, not entirely sure what to say. She was not particularly fond of the memories the woman was involved in, or the way she must have appeared to everyone there at the time. So she was less than comfortable talking to someone who reminded her of things she’d prefer had never happened, and probably had an impression of her that was far from what she wanted it to be.

Allison grinned ruefully at the invitation and sat. “I’m not scared. Just… not that good at socialiazing.” Which was sort of, partially true. She didn’t often come off as normal, anyway. That just normally didn’t make her hesitate at all. Seeming a bit odd was often useful.

Seeming weak and immature and easily scared could be useful too, technically, but Allison was much less willing to tolerate giving off that impression.

And Kitra had gotten yet another cup of coffee. Complete bliss, yes blissful indeed. That was until she got back to the bench with Skydancer and the other lass. She had walked back to awkwardness, yup, awkwardness and grinning in a welcoming way. Kitra held up her coffee before sipping it again, "Coffee is a necessary evil."

She grinned again, she was in a grinning mood, er non threatening grins that is. Her grinning face quickly turned upside down as she spotted quite a few couples and other random folk pointing towards Skydancer. And they did not look to be curious or merely amazed by her skin color. No, they looked furious and angry, and also looked to be picking up tree branches.

Oh dear, not good, definitely not good. It wasn't a problem for her to take down stupid idiots, mutant or non. But, violence? In a park? A very public park? Yeah, not so good. "Hey Sky, you don't mind me calling you Sky do you? We might want to vacate if we wish to not be part of the violence the normal people seem to wish to start." Kitra had been grimacing slightly, not even 24 hours into being back in the states yet, and already there was a fight brewing within her vicinity. Quite lovely indeed, except she really was not in a mood for violence yet, she hadn't even finished her second cup of coffee!

Awkward was the perfect word to describe Skydancer's conversation with Allison. It was understandable, she supposed; after all, if she had been seen acting like the other woman had acted, she probably wouldn't want that remembered either. Perhaps a new conversational direction was the best choice, all things considered.

"I'm not always great at socializing either," Skydancer agreed. It wasn't one of the skills that had seemed particularly important to her Olympic dreams and thus it was one of those skills that often got neglected. "Not much time for socializing when practising for Olympic try-outs. She shrugged without the least bit of modesty. It was what it was and she had been damn close to making the biggest stage of them all.

It was with some relief that Kitra appeared, putting a halt to the incredible awkwardness between the other two women. It was with somewhat less relief that Skydancer listened as she mentioned the negative attention she was bringing to the three of them.

Skydancer glared daggers at the small group with anger in their eyes and tree branches in their hands. She felt her own anger rising in response. There was a time when she simply would have done her best to disappear but that time was past. "Why should we be expected to leave?" she demanded of no one, the question meant to be rhetorical. "We haven't done anything wrong." She felt her tubes twitch under her skin, itching for her to allow them out.

Allison smiled automatically. Of course the woman who rescued Allison would also be an Olympic athlete. There were just so many Olympic athletes around, it was inevitable. It wasn’t like Allison had ever intended to be a professional athlete. The woman wasn’t directly superior to her at anything she’d ever tried to be the best at.

...She still wasn’t ever mentioning her running to Sky. “What event are you trying for?”

Paper girl’s return was welcome, even if her expression did seem a bit exaggerated for just coffee. “I don’t think coffee’s evil. Necessary might fit, though….”

Allison turned when paper girl pointed out the less than friendly group that was starting to gather and eyed them, vaguely annoyed. Did they really think they could get away with harassing a group of mutants in the middle of the day, surrounded by other people, at least one or two of whom were glaring at the group? Even if the mutants didn’t retaliate, there were plenty of people who could, and some who would, know and tell others that the bigots had started whatever happened.

“Because people are absurd and illogical,” Allison said, still eyeing the group. They weren’t moving, yet; a few were talking, with most of the rest listening, and only a few still glaring at Sky, paper girl and Allison.

So they were debating or deciding something, or at least being given instructions that they weren’t sure of yet. Allison had some tattoos, but they were mostly on her arms or mistakable for overdone makeup.

Allison grinned, then shook her head to mess her hair up, fixed her expression into something more childlike, stood, and all but skipped over. When she got to the group she took a breath, made sure her voice was a bit higher than normal, clasped her hands behind her back, bounced on her toes and began talking. “Hi! How are you? Have you been here before? I love this park, it’s awesome, my cousin used to bring me here to fly kites all the time even though we had to walk really really far, but that was okay because there’s this ice cream store halfway home and we’d always stop there and the kites would take up more chairs than we did.” She took another breath and kept going, keeping her arms firmly behind her despite the urge to start gesturing.

“There need to be more kite parks around, don’t you think? Kites are fun, but it’s hard to fly them if there isn’t a good park. My other cousins live in Michigan, we used to go see them every summer, and we’d go camp at this really awesome place that had a playground and the biggest field ever so we could spend all day flying kites, and one year there was a hot air balloon festival nearby so we got to go up in one but we couldn’t fly the kite while we were up there because it’d, like, dive bomb the hot air balloons or something and it was kinda scary being that high off the ground anyway so I didn't mind that much. What's your favorite type of kite? Can you get them to do tricks? I can't, but I can keep them in the air for a really long time, and that's sort of a trick too, isn't it?”

Allison really hoped this would work. She was going to look like a complete idiot if it didn’t. And probably get another concussion.

Kitra nodded at Sky's words. "Quite right, we shouldn't have to leave." Kitra's eyes narrowed a bit in thought but before she could even think about doing anything the other lass had gone in. The young lady had mused up her hair and had put on her face what seemed to be a childlike, happy expression. Whatever she was doing was working apparently.

After about a minute of her being over there, the seemingly violent wanna be group had put down their branches oh so nonchalantly and had become not so violent and feeling rather sheepish and silly. An older gentleman cleared his throat, "My apologies little lady, I'm not one to fly kites but its good that you are." As the older gentleman had finished speaking one of the girls screeched, "But she was talking with them! How can she like kites and how do we know she isn't one of them!" The little non violent group had regained their violent tendencies it seemed. Much to the older gentleman's dismay the little group was now arguing on whether to hurt this cute little girl in front of him and he made shooing gestures towards and whispered, "Get out of here!"

Kitra couldn't hear what was going on very well however it was clear that whatever the lass had done, it had worked, then stopped. She grimaced and looked at Sky, "I don't mind putting a few up in trees, at least the more violent ones if they attack. But I have no idea what you seem to think about violence and I'd rather not attract unwanted attention." Kitra fell silent, all the while she kept a close eye on the group that had brought an annoying end to a good morning.

It was quite something to watch Allison work her magic. Skydancer felt quite positive that there was going to be no other option but to either flee or have the situation degrade into violence and she knew she wasn't about to flee. But, as she started going on about kites and kite parks, it seemed the group was actually warming up to her and they were actually seeming to forget their hatred of only moments before. It was definitely a better light to know the woman by and she vowed that, in the future, when she thought of Allison she'd think of this event instead of that shameful past one.

When one of the girls made it clear that she, at least, hadn't forgotten Skydancer, her hear nearly broke inside her chest. It was one thing to see such blind hatred exist in adults, but when it happened in children that was so much the worse. They were supposed to be the next generation and better than the generation that came before, but sometimes they were just as bad as their elders. It was a very sad reality.

"I can defend myself, or others, if need be," Skydancer spoke with a sad shake of her head. "I hate that we should even have to consider such things, to either flee like cowards and have the hatred win in the end, or to hurt others in order to teach them not to mess with mutants. Its not fair for anyone."

Allison managed not to snarl at the girl that set the bigoted group back against her, barely. It took a moment to force the venomous glare down into something more like a confused pout, but fortunately most of the group were looking at the girl and not Allison. She ignored the older man’s advice. “I don’t know them, I just met them now and they invited me to talk to them.” She crossed her arms and added annoyance to the pout, directing it at the girl. “You could ask me. Who are they?”

That was not the right question to ask. It was especially not the right question to ask when letting them see her arms. But Allison had a point to make, safe or not, and forgotten about her arms entirely.

“Mutants!” the girl screeched back. “That’s obvious!”

“You should go,” the older man urged. Allison ignored him.

“So?” Allison let the pout go, idly twisting the hair tie she had around one wrist, and giving the girl a look that questioned her intelligence.

“They’re mutants!” This time the snarl came from an older boy, who seemed vaguely familiar. “Filthy, abnormal--”

“So?” Allison gave up the innocent act entirely, shifting her posture slightly to something not quite yet aggressive, letting her expression fall into disdain and a bit of a threat into her tone. “They’ve done nothing. Is it wrong to sit on a bench? Is coffee illegal now?”

Someone slapped her. It wasn’t particularly hard, to Allison; just enough for her to acknowledge. She turned, raising her arm in time for the next slap to land on the back of her and saw the woman. She’d have looked like a favorite aunt, if her face hadn’t been contorted with fury and disgust. “Vile, freakish mutants should not be allowed to exist!” Her hand caught Allison’s squeezing hard enough to be significantly more painful than the slap.

“...Let go.”

“You’re one of them aren’t you! You filth--”

“Let. Go.” Allison twisted her hand, digging her nails into the woman’s hand. “Of me.” The woman didn’t seem to notice, still spitting out insults. She tried slapping Allison again, and when Allison blocked it the same way, clawed at her arm. “Now.” Allison pushed ink up to the surface of her skin, letting it leak out like blood and making both arms slippery.

The woman shrieked, instantly letting go. “You--!”

“My name is Allison. And you’re a bigot. Now go back and hide in your shrinking, paranoid world of limitations and don’t speak to me.”

Turning her back on the group of bigots to walk back toward the bench was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and Allison knew it. But she felt like she had a point to prove, even if she didn’t know what that point was, and she had always been inclined to do reckless things for the sake of a point.

Kitra was watching the entire exchange with the group and Allison and had felt herself start moving at the point Allison got slapped. Kitra was about half way to Allison and that nasty violent group when Allison had turned her back on them and had proceeded to walk back towards her and Skydancer.

Kitra grimaced and opened her bag flap so it was completely open. Just as she did that she opened her mouth to say something and the aunt like woman, who looked horribly distorted in her face due to her screaming profanities, grabbed a heavy tree branch from the ground and ran straight at Allison aiming for her head.

Kitra reacted and paper flew out of her bag making a quick beeline for the woman and curling up into a whip that looped around her wrist. Using her paper whip, Kitra snagged the offending tree branch out of the woman's hand. She dropped it and her paper whip wrapped itself around the woman's waist and deposited her in a nearby tree.

Kitra was pissed and her expression was one that would make any sane person, mutant or non, come near her. She snarled up at the woman, "You can stay there and chill." She eyed the rest of the group with their mouths all hanging open and looking quite fearful now. Her voice was cool and level, "Any other takers? You didn't really think that any of us would allow one of us to get hurt and not step in did you?" Kitra left it at that, though she was faintly amused to see her actions hadn't fazed the older gentleman there that had been trying to help Allison out.

Kitra then turned and looked at Allison, "You alright Allison?" She had heard the lass introduce herself to that nasty group and decided that it would be better then saying hey you. She kept her eye on the group and noted that they hadn't decided on what to do yet.

Allison's attempts to garner peace, it seemed, were not quite so successful as they first appeared to be. Skydancer couldn't help but cringe as the woman's friendly discussion took on a darker turn as the others realized that she was also a mutant. It took more willpower than it probably should have to keep herself where she was and not simply rush over there and start showing people exactly why it was a bad idea to hold such blind hatred towards mutants. She knew, however, that it wouldn't do any good. Reacting to violence in self defence was one thing, but instigating violence was quite another and would only make things worse.

It was when one of the group dared to lay a hand on Allison that Skydancer got truly angry. She got half way to the group before Allison turned her back and started walking in the opposite direction. It wasn't, she knew, the smartest thing to do in the face of potentially dangerous enemies, but not everyone had experience in those sorts of combats. She herself was only just learning and half of that learning was occurring in real life combat situations, which probably wasn't ideal.

Kitra, it seemed, had similar thoughts and for now Skydancer was content to be her backup. Two tubes burst from her chest and she held them, tips out offensively towards the group, while standing just behind Kitra. She was impressed by the paper whip, though now wasn't quite the time to state as much. "She's the nice one," Skydancer nodded towards the paper whip wielding mutant. "I'm not. So you can either listen to her or you can meet my tubes and I'm pretty sure none of you will like them." She smiled, allowing the razor sharp tips of her tubes speak for themselves.

No one made any immediate attempts to challenge her words, so Skydancer half turned back to Allison. "You all right?" She wasn't quite ready to let down her guard just yet, in case the idiots actually decided they had more guts than brains.

Not looking at the people who want you dead was a stupid idea. Allison knew that. But she was willing to take getting punched or tackled or whatever, since she probably would be anyway if this became an actual fight. Knives or guns, well, she was less willing to be hit by, but a fight with knives was a similar guarantee to get hit, and seeing a gun certainly wouldn’t let her dodge it, either. And there was no way she was going to cautiously back away from them like they scared her.

Tree branches, though, had been totally outside her calculations. So it was a bit of a shock to see the paper whip coming at her (clearly the paper girl’s abilities were not as useless as Allison’s), turn, and see the tree branch fall as the woman was left in a tree. (Fitting.) She eyed the branch, the woman, and then the group with exasperation. “Really? A tree branch? And you say you’re civilized?”

She heard the paper girl and Sky’s comments to the group, but didn’t look at them. “I’m fine.” That did remind her, though, to grab back control of what ink was still in her range, pulling it back to flow over the skin of her arms. Totally harmless, but it’d look creepy.

...Which maybe wasn’t really what she should be doing. Or definitely wasn’t; creeping people out wasn’t really a good idea for making people more tolerant in the long run, even if it would make them less likely to attack immediately. Of course, she really couldn’t think of a way to not make the ink look creepy to them, either, so she may as well at least make it obvious. Redemonstrating that many mutants could easily pass for nonmutants was not likely to make them happier.

And Kitra was totally backed up by Skydancer, which was awesome. The two tubes sticking out of Skydancer's chest? A tad creepy and rather lethal looking. 'Definitely do not want to piss her off,' Kitra mused inwardly. And then there was Allison, who was pulling ink from a short range towards herself and it seemed to absorb back into her skin. Definitely creepy, Ok. creepy cool, er but definitely still eye catching creepy.

Kitra eyed the now not so violent group, they seemed to be the shocked group. Kitra couldn't help roll her eyes as an obvious couple stepped forward, as they were clasping their hands and wearing matching rings.

"We're sorry."

The couple looked really nervous, and they should be by all rights. As they were part of a group that had just attacked a mutant, quite stupidly truth be told. Kitra stared at them unblinkingly for about a minute before moving her gaze to the others in the group. Then her gaze traveled upwards to the woman she had deposited in a tree. She was crying, scratch that she was sobbing and holding on to said tree for dear life.

Kitra sighed and wrapped her paper whip around the woman's waist again and then coughed. "You need to let go if you want to be brought down." The woman stared at her with fear and then realization.


"Thank you."

The woman was deposited gently on the ground and Kitra's paper whip unwrapped itself from the woman's waist. Said woman made a very audible swallowing sound before turning to Allison.

And still had tears streaming down her face and with much stuttering, "I, I, r really am s s sorrry. I always let my my temper g g get the better of me."

Kitra kept her face as impassive as she could, though the woman's apology wanted to make her giggle. She turned her attention to the rest of the group, "Please do keep in mind something. If someone had just randomly been slapped and had they not had mutant abilities. Well, that wouldn't have stopped them from attempting to kick your butts."

Her voice had been rather cold as she said that, if she had tried to sound normal she might have really started laughing as the group seemed fearful yet apologetic at the same time

Allison taking the ink back into her skin was fascinating in a creepy sort of way. Then again, Skydancer knew her own power could be considered a bit on the creepy side as well, so who was she to judge? Not that creepy was necessarily a bad thing; after all, sometimes simply creeping out a potential enemy was enough to prevent things from degenerating into actual violence.

Despite the words of contrition and the repeated statements that the little gang was oh so sorry, Skydancer couldn't quite squash the feeling of wanting to go and physically show them the error of their discriminatory actions. Instead, knowing that it really wouldn't' accomplish anything, she had to satisfy herself with glowering in their general directions.

"You all are very lucky that I'm the type to think before I act," Skydancer spoke in a low growl. OK, so maybe a little threatening speech might be added to her death glares, but no one could begrudge her that could they? It wasn't like she was actually going to do anything regretful. Besides, her words were true. There were some mutants who wouldn't care how sorry they were, they'd just start maiming and killing and maybe some of them even deserved it. But she wasn't that sort.

Skydancer half turned from the group of humans, preparing to take her leave of the situation. She managed to keep them in her peripheral vision, just in case they should try something stupid one more time, though she thought by now they might have a little more sense than that. Her tubes she kept in a loose circle around herself.