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Laundry had proven to be a safe topic for them, other than Twyla potentially thinking he had implied she sweat a lot. Unfortunatly it wasn't that big of a topic and Locke couldn't think of anything else to say on the subject. The dryer sheet bit had been about the only advance clothes cleaning technique and tip he knew of. There probably weren't all that much anyways. Not only was the topic limited, it was also incredibly dull. Even a couple of ninety year old grannies could find something more entertaining to talk about. Locke stared at the laptop screen as if it could give him something to say. The programs he had open weren't all that inspiring. Cursor blinking at him, the blank word document seemed to be a mirror of his mind. He sighed. "Close word" Locke said automatically. His laptop had been programed to open and operate programs by voice, just in case the day arrived in which Locke could not do so on his own, and he'd gotten use to it. Maybe it was a bit lazy, but he had to admit that it was cool. Besides which people would hit a button to open a handicap door all the time rather then open the door themselves. One media player was cranking out the Beatles, while another had Evil Dead paused. His desktop was uncluttered with a picture of Alcatraz as the image. He'd been staring at that when Twyla asked him how long he'd been here.

Locke couldn't help but laugh at the timing of it. Just a short bark though. Did she know that it sounded like a question from one prisoner to another? Or was it his mind was stuck on what he was looking at? "Since New Years. Ran off a few days after Christmas from San Francisco," he told her. Best to get out where he was from now before that inevitable question popped up. The Eaan part of his brain reminded him that he should ask her the same question. "You?"

Well, it never said how many words he had to use.

Stop going into the city. The Californian had liked going in to New York City, even if the weather was never all that great before. The subway was by far his favorite part. Being underground felt as great as when he worked with the dirt. This however was not a good sensation. He had not been lost, as being lost means you care about where you were going, but at least he knew that where he was couldn't be the best place for him. The first gunshot had figuratively hit him with at least that much. In the reverberating echo Locke was reminded that he had things to do still, and that he was young, and that anyplace where someone was shooting was a very bad place to be.

He hit the ground like he'd been army trained to do so. Well, maybe not the army, but that Danger Room does cause one to develop reflexes otherweise not used. Like tentacle dodging. For Locke this meant that should he be forced to drop down, making sure to brace himself for impact, his mind went into the ground, finding whatever workable materials there was available to him and using them. He'd gotten faster at making the golem, and the upper half of the concrete and dirt that was underneath the sidewalk formed a good bunker to hide behind.

I'd like to get involved somehow, but don't know how to go about doing so.

She heard![/i] It was bad enough that Locke had even said that nonsensical gibberish. Even he had no clue where cheese clam had come from, let alone what it was suppose to be. The girl had heard him and repeated it back. Locke couldn't even play it off as her mishearing him. What could he claim to have said with "cheese clamp"? Please damp? Sneeze champ? This was even worse than the conversation with Henri. A small amount of mercy had been granted to him in that he had been too tired to remember much of that fiasco. As warm and cozy as it was in the laundry room Locke wasn't about to drift off to dreamland. Had he known that he was now making an idiot out of himself in front of Henri's best friend Locke would want to throw his arms up in exasperation and to confirm that fate liked to sucker punch him. At least he had come to terms with his amazingly horrid lady skills. "Uh..." he started in response to her cheese clamp but had nothing to say. She was just so casual about it, like cheese clamp was the new "wassup?!". Strangely it brought a wave of homesickness to Locke. Something about the girl made him think of his friend he had left behind. Probably the confidence and the hair streaks. Why can't they bottle that stuff up and sell it to people like me? The confidence that is.[/i]

He thought over this as he watched her toss her laundry into the dryer. "You shouldn't use those things," he commented when she tossed a dryer sheet in. His focus went back to his laptop's screen, fingers resting on the keys as if he had just been momentarily distracted rather than watching her. "With towels it takes away the absorbency. Just imagine what it does with shirts and stuff." To be honest Locke wasn't sure if all that was true. It was for the towels, but he didn't know about the rest. About the only good that came from being topless was Twyla wouldn't see how worn out his clothes were and call him a hypocrite. AS was his jeans were faded and the knees almost ready to have holes in them. Thank fashion for the concept of "vintage" clothes. Locke tapped his fingers lightly on the keys to the drumming of the song. "I'm not aiming to be perfect," he explained, grateful that his laptop gave him something to hide behind. Of course his claim was going to sound as crazy as that whole cheese clamp thing. "Just perfectly proficient."

The girl wasn't leaving after she tossed her clothes in. In fact she had settled herself down on the dryer, trapping Locke. He couldn't leave, who knows how many people he'd run into in his half dressed state. Nor could he ask her to book it and leave him in peace. For one thing that sounded incredibly rude. And though Locke could think of ways to say it that would be tactful, he was sure that he'd some how flub it up and the words wouldn't come out right. "Locke," he said. That much at least he couldn't screw up.

Say something you dweeb, Locke's mind commanded him. At least the part of his mind that could understand that teenage girls were nothing to be intimidated by. Strange how much that inner voice sounded like his friend, and how it politely reminded him that he had to tilt his head down to look her in the eyes. Not that he was really doing so. His gaze was lower than that, resting about hip level, staring at the laundry basket. Why would she need a dryer for clothes that were already dry? The clothes were wrinkled, but Locke wouldn't have thought to toss them in the dryer. Generally speaking he took his clothes out of the dryer and folded them right away, thus avoiding the wrinkles that plagued the girl's clothes. It occurred to Locke that his apparent fascination with her hips, (really it was just the wrinkled laundry he was staring at... well mostly, after all he was only human,) could come across as disturbing. Especially as his computer loudly sang out "We do the weird stuff!" in such a cheerful and perky voice that you knew it wasn't talking about something innocent or even his mud golem. Locke spurted the first thing that came to his brain just to diffuse the moment. "Cheese clamp," however was probably not going to help with anything.

He moved out of the way, gesturing at the dryer with one hand and fiddling with the hair at the back of his head with the other. Cheese clamp?[/i] No point in her having to wait until he got all his stuff done. If all she wanted was the dryer Twyla would get done before it was time for him to switch the wet stuff out. Well, there might be a little bit of time where his shirts would be left to soak, but the laundry room was warm, and he liked it in there. This sort of time management was a regular occurrence to the teen and he'd hate to delay someone else's day. "Just using the washer now," he ventured. Thankfully his trusted laptop ended the song with the freaky fan girls (and boy) and faded into Hey Jude. If the songs from Dr. Horrible weren't so dang catchy he'd remove them from the playlist just to avoid running into a situation such as this. At least The Beatles was a safe choice. Nobody could say that they hated the Fab Four and really mean it. You were bound to know at least one of their songs, like how you can't go through life and be slightly frightened by Richard Simmons. "So go ahead," he finished, hopping up onto the washer.

Perhaps Twyla and everyone else at the school had grown accustom to mutations on display, but like the whole three hour difference there were still things that needed to become adjusted to. Kendra dealt with having a mutant step-son by never speaking about it, so of course Locke had become rather quiet about it himself, much against his will. It was a little strange for him to now be in an environment where somebody other than himself showed interest in what he did. "Thanks" he mumbled, looking at the mud fondly, much like an owner might look at their pet, "It's not perfect though."

So far Locke had one opinion of the state of New York. It was too cold for any sane person to want to venture outside. As a result of not wanting to go out where the largest amount of workable material was, Locke got to be very familiar with the layer of dirt that liked to stick to his clothes. The more time he spent at the Institute the greater the amount of dirt that managed to find him. Each potted plant that he had walked past gave him a bit of materials. A pinch here, a little handful there. Of course this meant that he had to laundry more frequently then you would think a teenage boy would do. Yes he now had more then just three days worth of clothes thanks to the packages Kendra had sent, but unless he wanted to walk around looking like a molehill, Locke needed to do a load every couple of days.

Which was perfectly fine with Locke. Laundry rooms tend to be very warm thanks to dryers running, and he liked the hum of the machines. Late at night when other students had gone to bed Locke would make his way to the laundry room and enjoy the warmth and peace that was offered to him. As usual he was running a little later in the day. A period of re-adjustment the doctors called it, time to re-teach your body how to function under new circumstances. The last five years had been nothing but one perpetual period of re-adjustment for Locke. In five years he had lost the ability to tell depth, lost hours of sleep to keep two screaming babies happy, quit playing in a band with his best friend, and learned ten different ways to make hot dogs tolerable eating options. He was now in a new period of re-adjustment, one that had lasted for days now and did not seem to be going so well. Oh yes he had less problems at night now, living with a mass of people rather then three others kept the silence away, and yes, he no longer felt the stress of not opening his mouth about who he really was, (though it was still very much quiet on the Locke front), but he had not gotten use to one simple fact.

Three hours.

Locke's inner clock had for the past sixteen years been set to Pacific, so a few days was still not nearly enough time to convince him that it was later then it actually was. If inner clocks could actually be seen, the Californian's would have the hour hand running backwards, the minute had going around triple time, and the second hand always stuck one second before twelve. It did not help that he would get instant messages from his friend when he was trying to settle down, or that he had no watch to look at and keep track of the time. Three o’ clock was the official time. To him it was noon, and time to get the first load going. Locke paused for a moment as he stared at the clothes he had tossed into the washer. There was still some room in there for a few more things. Since it had been fairly quiet he stripped off the three shirts he wore placing them aside on a dryer. His hand still in contact with the shirts it only took a bit of focus to pull the dirt into a pile that he had been working on. In this new environment it was about as close as he had gotten to a friend, not counting that Tarin guy from the medium shop. There was just enough there for a small golem and he wanted to test something out. With a hiss the washer started up.

A small sink was in the room for people to do some delicate hand washing. Locke turned it on and used his hands to transfer some water onto his dirt pile. Would a mud golem be easier to work with then a dirt one? He took a deep breath, held it for three seconds and then breathed out for the same length of time, settling his mind into the dirt as music from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog played on his computer, stirring the water in a bit.

A nudge here. A prod there, and the mud started to take shape. Two lumpy hands, two tumourous looking arms, a blockish chest… Locke’s focus was so much on the golem, that he failed to really notice anyone or anything else. The machines weren’t a problem. He couldn’t feel their shaking.