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"Yeah, probably." Persi gave up, folded his arms, and leaned back to glare at the ceiling in annoyance. "I've heard like four studies that say the smarter people are, the better they are at deluding themselves." He'd been spending entirely too much time staring at this ceiling recently. He could probably draw a perfect photograph-like replica of it once he got back. It'd be hard to check though.... Chances were if he failed again he wouldn't happen to be in exactly the same room.

"I don't know, okay?" Persi snapped. It probably wasn't entirely justified, but Aiden was being stupid and Persi had spent years trying to figure it out. And anyway, it wasn't like Persi had ever had good self control. "I tried figuring it out and I can't but the priests all agree that being a mutant is a sin and they know God better than I do. That's why they're priests."

Persi got the point.

That did not mean that Persi was going to acknowledge the point.

"You mean visiting people so you can yell at them for having a different religion than you?"

Persi never had managed to grow up enough to not be called a brat.

Apparently some was acceptable. Or at least close enough that she'd pretend it was acceptable, anyway. Which might not actually be what Persi wanted; she was leaving and not yelling at Persi yet, but she'd be back. If Persi had said something even worse then she'd yell and maybe leave and not come back. Being yelled at might be worth it if he was left alone. Persi couldn't just ask her to do that of course, she never would if she knew he wanted her to, asking her to leave earlier might have been too obvious... he couldn't undo that though, so Persi would just try to be polite. That would probably end up offending her enough to make her leave. That was what normally happened; there was no reason Gemma should be much harder to offend than other people were.

She was leaving for a little bit anyway, so Persi waited for her to be out of sight and let himself relax. Or he did for about ten seconds, before he remembered that Gemma would be coming back, and he'd really better not look like he was ignoring her. So he opened his eyes again and went back to staring at the ceiling, except he was tired and his eyes didn't want to stay open so he needed something to focus on. There wasn't much; he probably couldn't be reasonable yet so trying to figure out why he'd failed wouldn't work, and he shouldn't be crying in front of Gemma anyway. Gemma didn't make sense, and he really didn't know enough to figure out why she was there... she was getting food though, right? Persi had no idea what food hospitals had, but it probably wasn't anything he could eat while he was laying down. Not much food fit that description.

Sitting up... was not easy. The sheet was too tight, to start with, so first Persi had to get that loose, which meant moving his arms, which hurt. Especially his left hand, which turned out to be covered in bandages and wasn't really useful. He probably should have expected that.... He did manage to sit up eventually, though. And before Gemma got back, if not by very much. Which was probably best; he didn't have time to possibly fall asleep, and he probably didn't look any different since presumably he'd already be fairly pale... er than normal.... Anyway, it was annoying that he didn't get to relax, but probably better.

The food looked... like food. Which meant Persi still had not miraculously become a gourmet chef that could tell good food from bad, and his stomach was still twisting at the sight of it. And the smell; he leaned away from it automatically before he realized what he was doing, and tried to turn it into sitting up straighter instead. "...Thanks." That would maybe be convincing if he could stop eyeing the food like it was going to poison him, but his stomach was really convinced it would... his stomach was wrong, though; a hospital was the last place where poison might be in the food, and anyway who would bother?

Music, it turned out, was the sort of thing that seemed like Jude was really familiar with it, up until he tried and realized he didn't even know what he was supposed to look for. He'd probably spent years watching Irri mess with his computer and drums and.. and doing music stuff, which was about as detailed as Persi knew, and the problem. It turned out that knowing what he saw and knowing what Irri actually did were entirely different things.

Persi didn't know where else to start, though, so he wandered around until he found the music room he'd heard about and snuck in. Someone had left the door open; someone had also left the TV on, but Persi felt more than slightly like he didn't belong so be ignored the overly enthusiastic laughter and not apparently funny comedy lines and started wandering around the room.

The music room... looked like the music room he'd had chorus in in middle school. Probably like the one in high school, too, but music classes hadn't been required then so he'd never been in it. There were chairs and a piano and music stands, cheap instruments put away... probably put away; they were in corners or on shelves and mostly starting to get a bit dusty. There was, also, nothing that gave Persi any better an idea what to do.

He'd half completed a second circle around the room when the TV was over his head, and commercials interrupted the comedy with a burst of volume. Persi jumped, looked up, and then backed away a few steps to see better.

That... was Persi. On the screen. Singing. With the crazy guy and wow, he'd almost forgotten about that. That phone was still in his room somewhere, wasn't it? Maybe he could sell it to someone.

First, though? Persi needed to stop staring at the TV. That might have been easier if the commercial had had anything at all to do with reality. Reality did not involve slow motion, or glitter, or floating hearts, or....

...Or autotune. Persi glared once he figured out why it sounded wrong. "I do not sound like that!"

Persi... had no idea what was going on. Which was probably why he was going back to something closer to an automatic smile and nod than criticizing the brat like normal, but the brat hasn't attacked him yet, or attacked himself and blamed Persi, so that was... good? Sort of? Persi was way too confused to tell.

Or maybe the kid was confused too. Maybe there really was an invisible mutant nearby, and they just broadcast an aura of confusion or something instead of talking to the brat. Or... something. Persi's head hurt. "Okay...?" Well, shaking the kid's hand wasn't any more confusing than the last few minutes had been, anyway. "You really don't make any sense."

Persi did, in fact, refrain from attaching Brat to his comment. Permission or not, the kid wasn't being a brat now, and Bewildering Crazy Child didn't fit nearly so well.

Persi shrugged. "Dunno. It's a school full of mutants, there could be invisible people all over the place for all I know.

"So if you're just talking to me, what're you all freaked out about?" Maybe the brat thought Persi was someone else? That shouldn't be difficult for an illusion to do, right? Maybe Persi should start finding people with different mutations and actually figuring out what they could do....