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That was helpful. Slightly painful where the nails dug into Persi's wrist, but helpful. Especially if any more surprises decided to appear.

...Unless those surprises were in the form of more arrows, anyway. Hopefully they wouldn't be; Persi couldn't dodge anywhere close to fast enough. He didn't attempt to free his hand until after he'd carefully turned so he was sitting sideways on the branch, facing toward the source of the arrow and sort of toward the cat girl, and closed the sketchbook so he could hold it. "Yeah, thanks." His eyes kept darting up to the arrow.

"...You know... him?" Cat girl didn't seem to be fond of arrow boy, which made some sense if he made a habit of shooting arrows at her. How she would have gotten to know him--relatively well, apparently, from the way they argued--was less clear. Persi was pretty sure that people didn't normally get to know their enemies well enough to banter like that, at least when the enemy was of the attempting-to-kill-you level.

...Apparently these two did know each other, however. There weren't many ways for that to happen, that Persi knew of. He looked between them a few times, came to an entirely logical conclusion, and turned toward arrow boy. "Is she your ex or something? I promise I'm way not old enough to hit on her!"

"Um...." Persi still wasn't convinced about this going looking for the pink haired guy thing. Generally the solution to a bully was to avoid or ignore them, not to go looking for them and yell at them. Among other things, they tended not to like being caught, and telling on them made you a wonderful target for any resentment they had over being caught.

Andrea seemed not to be concerned with that though, and explaining it never worked, so Persi followed. No need to upset her too.

...Or perhaps there would be a distraction. Persi did hear Andrea's stomach--and briefly wondered if it was his, due to the volume--but tried not to look too amused. "Sure, a snack sounds good." Actually, once he thought about it, he was fairly hungry.

People had two general responses to being annoyed, eventually. Either they got angry and attacked, or they gave up and tried to avoid whatever annoyed them. Well, or they cried, but the brat wasn't a girl, and seemed to be much more angry than anything else, so that wasn't likely. Persi wasn't too worried about being attacked--among other things, the kid had turned into a kid by falling, Persi was pretty sure he could make that happen again. And as for avoiding... well, that was Persi's goal, after all. And he wasn't hard to avoid, really, so all he had to do was give the brat a reason to avoid him.

So Persi reached up to flick the brat in the forehead. "Shoo."

What... that... no. Just, no. Persi could not deal with that. Lesbian guys were well beyond what Persi's brain could handle anyway; lesbian guys that were also women were just not an option. "That... what... that's not possible, that makes no sense."

At least being called a jerk was something Persi could understand. Or was familiar enough with not to be confused by, even if he didn't really understand it, exactly. "They're not... well, a few are jerks, they're people, but they're mostly not jerks. They've never bullied me about being a mutant." Not that they were happy about it, of course, but they hadn't known. And anyway, they didn't deal with mutants in such a petty way as bullying.

"Okay." Not that Persi knew where the offices were, but they couldn't be that hard to find, and he had no intention of going to them before he had to anyway. What sane student ever willingly went to a school office?

Okay, them having guns was not entirely surprising, considering what Mirror had just said. The arrows... made less sense, but considering the name Gawain, Persi probably should have expected them anyway. Or, well, something other than guns, anyway. Swords were probably more illegal than arrows, or something.

Persi frowned. Arguing with Mirror still didn't seem like a good idea, but he didn't like being called a fanatic. Religious, sure, but not fanatic. That meant crazy, and generally evil. Even if Mirror's description was right, mostly. Telling him that 'think' ought to be 'know' seemed like an even worse idea. "...I guess."

And then Persi's brain stopped working. Or, more specifically, it was hit by incomprehensible objects, went into overdrive, and still came up with nothing. Persi was pretty sure that 'lesbian' was not something that could have 'half' attached to it, not relating to one person. Also, that lesbians were girls. "...What?"

Oh, things that Persi could comprehend again. And he was still too bewildered by "half lesbian" to start thinking about the comment and end up feeling weird. "They didn't find me, it's my church."

...Why could he not just leave? Granted, Persi preferred that Mirror be farther away; questions from across the room were probably preferable to glaring from two feet away. Assuming Mirror didn't manage to think of another question like that, but Persi couldn't think what other questions would be like that. So questions were probably better. Persi would still really prefer that Mirror left.

That wasn't happening, apparently, so Persi drifted a few more steps into the room--it still didn't seem like his--before hovering.

...Why was Mirror talking about a girl who threw up bugs? Because if that was an attempt to convince Persi the Mansion was a normal place full of normal people, there had to be a better way to start than that.

Oh. That... was more related, anyway, even if it didn't particularly make any more sense. "Um... they would not ever work with a mutant. They have guns." Why anyone would when they were trying to cleanse the world of mutants was beyond Persi's comprehension. "I guess... I don't know what you need to know. Most of the time when they find mutants they just protest, or boycott them or something." Persi knew exactly how those went. Normally, and when they went as wrong as they possibly could. "There are too many mutants to kill, so mostly it's just when a mutant is close to the church or really offends them that..." telling Mirror that mutants were a sin seemed like a bad idea, "that they're more active."

Okay, so Mirror no longer looked like he was going to hit Persi. Or... whatever mirror-people did. Probably stab, going by the name. Or challenge to some sort of honor duel, and then stab. Anyway, Persi still wasn't totally sure that was an improvement, considering what Mirror was saying. Anger was predictable, he could deal with being hit and yelled at pretty well. It was annoying, but not really a problem. But instead now Mirror was being all emotional and... and whatever. Like he was trying to give a movie everything-is-happily-ever-after-we're-all-friends speech, but was really bad at it. "I haven't done anything," was muttered, probably loud enough for Mirror to hear.

And it was true; Persi hadn't done anything. Except draw, go to school, stick pencils in the ceiling, get a few detentions when he slept through class, and sometimes pretend he was sick so he could sleep in instead of going to church.

...It was probably that last one that was the problem. Persi felt kind of guilty about it. And kind of angry, because that was a really stupid, tiny thing to damn him for. And then guilty again, because it wasn't God's fault that Persi was bad.

Leaving emotional stuff for the guidance counselor sounded good. Persi wouldn't ever go, but then, that was why it sounded good.

...Until Mirror said that. Sure, technically it was easy; Persi knew that answer years ago. Or, well, every part of it that didn't involve himself; if he'd bothered guessing his own actions, he could've figured it out. So he'd known. It still took a minute of staring at anywhere that wasn't Mirror to make himself say it. "...If they knew where I was they'd've shot me before I got here. They don't know this place exists." If they did, they'd have either burned it down, or died trying already. "I don't think they'll find me." He was certainly doing everything he could to make sure they didn't.