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"You could be both... Are witches real?"
Susan's eyes narrowed as she looked at him. The fact that they were still balancing on blades, quite literally, seemed to be forgotten at the moment.
Was he serious about that question?...
"Depends on how you define 'witch'" she answered cautiously "Abilities, acquired knowledge, or attitude?"
Because she had two out of three. So far.
"Most people around me did think witches are real." she added "Demons, too. Don't you think most mutant abilities would have qualified as magic, a couple of centuries ago?"
She leaned against the wall gracefully, and slipped, sightly less gracefully. Holding herself up, she found her balance again.
If I were a witch...

"You know, putting a hand over your mouth doesn't really cover up the fact that you are amused" Susan smirked, black eyes watching ice-blue tendrils of laughter leaking through Slate's fingers "Quite the contrary."
She didn't mind though. She had a vague sense of how amusing she must have looked, sitting on the ice. Besides, she was sure she would have a lot of opportunities to repay said laughter with her own. Slate was doing so great either.
Thump seemed to be the word of the day.
"...As for stopping, it seems that some absorption of momentum is necessary..."
The witch nodded, stretching out her legs while smoothing her skirt down. It proved to be a difficult piece of garment, for skating.
"That would explain why the rink has a wall around it." she nodded, with slightly more seriousness than the statement itself required.
"I believe this is safe now. What is synesthesia?"
Susan took the offered hand, not without hesitation, and pulled on it carefully before accepting the support. You can never know, with men learning to skate... once she was back on her feet, she steadied herself against the wall. It was a very nice, supporting wall.
"It's a neurologically-based mutation. Basically, the stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to automatic experiences in a second sensory pathway." she expained in the words that started to sound like an eternal mantra, usually followed by some mortal-friendly explanation. Susan's eyes turned red, and she tilted her head, watching the patterns of body heat under his skin, and the puffs of crimson-and-pink breath between the two of them.
Shaking her head, Susan blinked the touch away.
"Umm." she added very elaborately, pulling her hand back "Sorry. So. Well. Yeah, it basically means I can combine my senses with each other."
It's not always appropriate.

Witch Hunt (Arrival thread - Pluto)
Susan is accused of being possessed by a demon and promised a thorough exorcism by her idiotic schoolmates. She gets rescued by a demon who claims to be a mutant. She finds out what a 'mutant' is.

Bookstore switcheroo (Elli)
Susan runs away from home and meets a cop-in-training in a bookstore. Elli offers her a place on her couch till she figures out what it means to be a mutant.

The Princess, the Witch and the Gargoyle (Henrietta, Gargoyle)
On a snowy day in Central Park, Susan meets two fellow mutants, and hears about the Mansion for the first time.

A sermon to all who should hear (Martyr, Juka)
The witch rescues a preacher from a band of punks, just to run into a weird Japanese guy and have a shouting match over different definitions of sin.

The Interpretation of Details (Noel)
Susan follows a weird lady who turns out to possess similar powers to hers. Not to mention a similar attitude.

Who you gonna call? (Meld)
Susan is taken home to her foster family by the police, and is grounded. She calls for help... and ends up moving into the Mansion.

Terror Time (Juka, Mirror, Twyla, Raina, Emerald)
Witch decides to go and visit a haunted house. Bad idea.

Mutants on Ice (Slate)
Susan goes skating. Slate does too. Whump.

Wings of terror (Aura)
Susan gets attacked by a parrot.

(Thanks Maya for doing my archives for me )

One would have thought that after finding a new home in a school full of mutants, a teenage witch wouldn't have to find comfort in wandering around a city that assults all senses with a flood of annoying noise, colors and smells. Well, one would have been wrong. Susan found that out not long after she moved into the Mansion.
Being a mutant? That's genetics.
Being a student? That's all right too.
But sharing a living space (however big it might be) with dozens of children with freaky powers...
Yes, that's annoying.
So, Susan returned to the place where she used to find peace, and occasionally some adventure: Central Park. On a nice end-of-winter days like this one it was filled with people, but it still had some calm, quiet feeling about it even though not a corner of the park was actually calm, or quiet.
The witch sat on a bench, idly shifting her senses around. when the parrot attacked.
It came out of nowhere, which of course was a figure of speech, birds can't appear out of nowhere. Besides, somebody was definitely chasing this one. Susan could hear a voice in the distance, it rang out in a childish way, but it had an edge to it, an edge that could cut through feathers. It was strangely pink too.
All that barely registered in Susan's mind as she tried to push the hysterical ball of feathers away from her face; claws were scratching at her hands with a sound of nails dragging over a blackboards. The voice of the parrot was painfully bright flashes of light, and everything smelled like... bird.
The witch backhanded the parrot.
The bird landed on the bench beside her, dizzy from the hit and ruffled beyond recognition, sturggling to flip around. It managed to get as far as raising its wings before it slid off the bench onto the grass. That stunned it further. Susan made a face, blowing stray locks of dark hair out of her face.
And now comes the part when the whiny little girl starts crying over what I've done to her pet.
Susan went on the offensive before she actually turned to look at the girl.
"FYI, one: it attacked me. And two: you can't play with parrots. They are not smart enough for that. Got it?"

"But I am older. So... it's at least a little warranted."
Susan nodded, the smirk still playing on her lips, but didn't comment. She watched with curiosity as Noel took some notes; she wondered what they were. Probably something about the witch's people skills. Who cares?
"Does that work? Tasting the pictures? Would the picture taste like the food or like the ink that makes the picture?"
"It would taste like ink and paper" Susan nodded "Same as if I actually licked the menu. I'M just doing it with my eyes." now that probably sounds weird to a normal person "I don't sense anything that's not already there for at least one of my natural senses. Except for the X gene." she added "That's a different matter."
Noel didn't press the topic of being either a mentor or a research topic. Considering her memory problems, that was probably for the better too. Susan would have felt weird if she had actually offered to help...
"What about you? You taste words, and modify memories? What is the connection between the two?"

"What is it, precisely, that a witch does?"
Susan's eyes were shifting colors again, and now that her feet were on the ice, it didn't seem like the right time to go into some long explanation.
"Um, she gets chased around for being different from the majority?" she ventured with a smirk as her vision cleared up once again. It was as good an answer as any. It was also one of the very few things she did have in common with real witches. If they existed at all, that is.
"That was my thought, as well. The method of propulsion seems quite akin to normal walking, except that... both feet seem to move. Or so I have observed.... I cannot seem to remain upright while doing so, however... It is somewhat aggravating."
The demonstration proved to be quite useful; Susan observed it with intense curiosity, tilting her head to the side. To her surprise, it was also strangely amusing, and she bit back a laugh as the young man called Slate landed on his backside once again. At least he was not afraid to experiment. That was a very good trait in a person.
Not laughing and making faces at the way she talked was another one. It was also very, very rare.
"Well, from this point of view the problem seems to be your feet." she pointed out, balancing with both arms. It was not bad, as long as she didn't trie to move her legs "I don't think you are supposed to keep them paralel to each other. I think they are supposed to go... more like... this..."
Moving the blades on her feet carefully, she managed to rearrange them so her heels were closer to each other. It was progress, but it didn't feel much steadier.
"Excuse me for not helping you up. I don't think I am steady enough."

It was not easy, holding him up like that; Susan could feel the strain in her arms. He apparently had serious problems finding his own feet, and arranging them on the ice to support his body.
In the meantime, she stared at him with mild confusion. He didn't seem shaken by her comment on his mutation.
"Your eyes are beautiful. Do you know how to skate?"
And then she dropped him.
She pulled her hands back to her body in a hurry as the boy disappeared from her line of view, landing on the ice with a thud. Susan blinked down at him. Was he making fun of her? Or, even worse, was he serious? Her eyes? Wasn't that something guys said and her roommates giggled over for endless hours?
On to the second question.
"No I don't." she answered with dignity, and burning cheeks "But at least I don't go around pretending that I do."