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Hero Maya seemed offended or maybe shocked. "I know they are pretend people, but I want them to have heads." She found them incredibly disturbing. So disturbing that she had to stare a lot and her head turned to follow them whenever the headless ones were around. So creepy. She didn't trust them.

But that wasn't why they were here. Maya encouraged Kalos to look at the clothes so she did her best to keep one eye on the mannequins and one on the clothes.

For the most part, they looked really much the same to Kalos. Very fitting and covering and not at all flowing like what she was used to. And also... "These are very boring. Oh!" She spied an offensively orange shirt and hat in a store that also sold pretend animals and clothing made to look like plants. Why the bright orange was in there, Kalos couldn't say, but she did love how eye-catching it was.

"I like the bright one?" She asked as the pointed to the hunting gear through the glass store window, almost as if she was wanting permission to have her own opinion.

> “The X-Men went to Atlantis? You mean the new country, Atlantis? Or the mythical underwater city?”

"Yes?" Kalos had some confusion about what was being asked. Those were the same place, right? "Atlantis was under the ocean for my entire life until one day we were not. Then the X-men came to Atlantis and dethroned the mad king who was a demigod of terrible psychic power. They very nearly did not prevail by their own account. The guard captain Paci even set the X-jet on fire and stabbed the X-man hero Mirror." Honestly. Did he not pay attention to what the X-men were doing? Kalos had found that most students whispered about the hallowed heroes between classes and she could easily track their heroic deeds.

He didn't seem too keen on her explanation, instead opting to go for a pool trick. It was no trouble for Kalos to witness a demigod in his element. She felt privileged for the honor, in fact. any powered mutant in their element was a joy to observe.

> “Okay, here I go,”

He swam away, disappearing beneath the aqua tinted waters. The pool, however, was very clear. So if he was hiding, he was not actually doing a very good job. After a few breaths, the boy came jolting out of the water at quite a rate. He went up far more than Kalos would have expected to be possible. Then he tucked himself together and yelled about being some kind of ball.

Kalos knew the consequences of sitting idly when someone else jumped into a pool, but she remained where she was. What did it matter if she got wet? She'd just been in the pool as well.

The water sloshed and slapped at the walls like it was trying to claw its way out of the pool, one wave slapping at Kalos' legs.

She blinked, both impressed and unconcerned. As far as tricks and showy powers, this was a good one, but she didn't quite understand how it might work. If he needed water to do it, it seemed about as useful as her power which was to be pink. Being pink was not useful at all.

Kalos clapped which was more of a grinding clatter of coral fingers than anything else.

"Very good, Andy Bubblehead. Do you have more tricks?"

It was incredibly helpful that hero Jorge had been to Atlantis. He knew some degree of where Kalos was coming from in her experience. He didn't belittle her for wanting to run around stark naked, he instead helpfully explained why it wasn't a great idea. The peoples of her land and the people up here had grown disparate over the thousands of years that had passed since their mingling.

"There are many more things here that are dangerous for a body. Many bugs." Her grave nod was meant to indicate that she understood how important clothes were in regards to keeping bugs off of skin. Frankly, the little crawlers were similar to crustaceans, which was acceptable. But the flying ones... "I don't like the bugs that have wings. They can come at you from anywhere."

Yes. She had just talked herself into wearing clothes. In fact, maybe more clothes were needed after the cake was done.

Every movement that Jorge made was closely studied by Kalos. It was more than just picking things up, it was a set of clues that informed her what things were okay to do and how certain things were to be treated.

She did her absolute best to copy him. When he used a little spoon to cup the grains of powder, so did she. When he slid the bag of white powder close to his bowl, Kalos did the same after he had finished. He tapped the handle of the cup onto the rim of his bowl three times. She made sure to hit her rim the same number. This cake making was like a magic ritual and she did not want to mess up a single aspect.

> ”Now, just like you saw me do it, pour all the dry stuff into the bowl and mix them with your spoon until they are all combined.”

She got her spoon and waited to see how hero Jorge mixed. Was the direction important?

"There is a boy who has the name Chase." Kalos ventured quietly as she stirred the dry things together. She was not alarmed that it was not a cake yet because it still looked the same as her hero's bowl. "He knows many things about cooking and some things he showed to me. His teacher Miss Terterner has taught him. You are the teacher for me today, hero Jorge."

Miss Terterner was not nice. But he was still effective, Kalos assumed, since Chase knew some things about cooking. This was evidence that a person could be mean, and still correct. It was also the first time Kalos had heard of a 'Miss' being a 'he.' She had thought of those were gendered words. Kalos was trying her best to catch up on the changes to the English language, so this was an important thing to note, she figured.

Chase worked on making the coral girl a mug and she was happy to note that while the boy did things as the grown ups expected, he sometimes did not. He sometimes did things they expressly did not like, in fact, since he confessed to eating powdered chocolate rather than always blindly following their wishes. It was good to question authority. Blind following of rules was how she and her ilk had ended up as the lowest and least desirable caste.

"Can I have some powder?" She was trying to try everything, right? Kalos tried to play her request cool by stirring the barely bubbling pot next to her. It needed no stirring, but she had a spoon. Spoons were for stirring. "Just the powder. I promise to drink your chocolate cow milk too." Would he help her in this small rebellion? Or would CHase stick with what the grown ups wanted?

"There are animals here." Kalos noted. "There are many dogs and cats. And smaller creatures sometimes in the children's rooms. Insects, too. There is a child that can turn into an animal, I think. Can he turn into a cow for milking?"

What one more thing? The man-boy dove into the water and when he surfaced, he seemed to have a better mood. He was still mostly naked, so it must have been the water or perhaps the dive that made him smile.

That was yet another person to say 'by the way' after they said their name. It must have been a cultural thing, and since she wanted to practice Kalos decided to adopt this strange superfluous phrasing.

"Andy is a lovely name." Yet another nicety Kalos had observed. That was what people said to her about her name almost every time she introduced herself. "Bubblehead is... also... lovely." She lied with the best smile on her face. Bubblehead was a dumb name. She would never tell him that unless pressed.

"I have the name Kalos, by the way." And it may never sink in that the name was hers, despite the fact that she picked it out herself. "How are you finding the water? It is well?" She was downright pleasant when she wanted to be.

Kalos flopped down onto the bed face first and rolled around a bit, breaking off some chunks of coral here and there. The bed was HUGE. Three of her could lay across it and at least one more in how long it was. After some amount of wiggling and marveling at the finery, Kalos and pulled the cleanest, coziest covers up to her chin. The covers were lumpy from the tenting that her coral protrusions made, but it didn't seem to bother the girl.

"Hero Maya?" Little blue eyes locked onto her target, suddenly nervous. "When I grow big... can I marry you?"

"I will always say thank you."

He could tell her she didn't have to each time. She still would. Because no one had ever done anything for her since the day her parents died. And now they were. Everyday. Thank yous weren't even enough.

The hero could not be more wrong about the scared-ness of others. "You are big. You are brave. And you are a demigod hero with powers beyond the dreams of most children and adults. You would not have the scared-ness the way others do." If he wanted to talk about being scared, he needed to know what it was like to feel powerless. If he wanted to know what scared looked like in other people, he needed to know what it was like to come from somewhere else and look different and insist that everything said was true, no matter how fantastic.

She wanted to push him to get him away, but he was sitting. Hero Jorge was just too nice. Just... too perfect to say that he wasn't. How dare he compare them?

"Maybe you should practice to say some wrong things. Make it a small amount more true." She grumped, but in the end didn't even touch him. Gawain would have been proud, she thought. No one got pushed. She nodded to his assertion that people would be there for her. So far, besides the odd hours where she slipped away just to be away, she'd rarely been alone. Whether by accident or design, people had reached out to help her. Like now. And here. She'd tasted his bad chocolate. And she wasn't even in trouble.

> ”Would you like to help me?”

She started to formulate what she thought would be a polite decline of his request. Now that he was taller again, he did not seem so friendly.

Unless. He said the magic word.

> ”...cake...”

She breathed in, clearly excited, and then clamped down on that excitement. He was not making a cake for Kalos. She was already sure of that and the idea of making a cake was torturous if it went to someone else instead.

But maybe... she could learn to make cakes for herself.

Her eyes went wide and wider as she realized that, if she knew how, she could make cake.

"Can I learn to make a cake with you? You teach me?" She needed to negotiate up front about this knowledge. It would not do if he claimed later on that she had stolen it from him unfairly.

"I will get a chair." Because he was too nice to say no, wasn't he? Like all the people who lived here. Kalos went around to the seating area and grabbed a wooden chair. She had to bend back at the waist to get the bulk of it lifted, but she was moving it. Chairs were the best way to see u high, now that someone had told her that feet were not allowed up on the counter tops.