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Where oh where could they be? That corner looked familiar - had he been there today, yesterday, or last week? Nothing. Gah! Oh, what about there? Hadn't he just read that book? No sign of the sunglasses.

Um, was that someone in front of him?

Aiden stopped short, gradually realizing that the stranger in front of him wasn't completely unknown. And then eventually that she was talking. "I looked there," he said, quietly but with a certain degree of desperation before blinking abruptly and dropping his head. Ohgodohgodohgodhestaredatherwithoutsunglasseswhatwasshethinkingnow

... Okay, apparently nothing? He slowly peeked back at her, his nerves fighting to try to close his right eye. ....What? This was... what'shername. Something like Eevee. It had been a while. She... didn't seem to be staring? Oh. She probably couldn't stand to look at it. That was all. He figured.

It had been a good day. It wasn't too hot. The mansion was pretty quiet now that everyone was settling back into the pace of the school year. He seemed to have found something to at least put off the whole go-to-college-and-find-a-career deal, if it didn't prove to be as long-term as he expected. Whether or not it proved to be long-term might have something to do with him getting better at being able to hit people, awkwardly enough. At least he had been able to improvise as needed up until now, even if he really needed to learn how to use something more versatile than something he had taught himself to use entirely because it looked cool and was hard to draw. Great logic, that, but it had done the trick so far.

And then he'd spent an entire day reading in various corners of the library, meandering through different sections until something caught his eye, reading for a while, and then moving on. That had been wonderful, right up until the moment that his brain broke.

Why did it break, exactly? Simple.

He had taken his sunglasses off while reading at some point, and he couldn't find them.

So now he was running around the library, doing his best to dodge the few people hanging around this late in the afternoon, and desperately trying to remember all the different places he had spent time at previous points in the day. His sunglasses had to be at one of them, right?

Acceptance speech. Yes, he knew the theory. Yes, he saw that tails and horns and wings blended in quite well. Those were symmetrical, though. He got a headache trying to figure out which eye to look at in the mirror, and then having the contrast glare at him from his peripheral vision.

Quietly sliding past the whole dying for people deal, Aiden found himself growing just a bit apprehensive as Saphirus's mood leapt upwards. Amusement like that probably didn't bode well, and he found out soon enough that he was completely correct.

So.

Much.

Pink.

Was this what a girl's room actually looked like? He'd never been in one, not having sisters and definitely not having any female friends. He prodded a toy with one toe, only to have it balloon and grow. Um. Right. Smash-happy guy at the controls of a room that could make anything. And somehow he came up with a giant princess room littered with toys.

OH GOD THE TOYS WERE ALIVE.

Aiden didn't even notice the nickname; he was tossing his (fixed) swords to their appropriate hands and looking for somewhere he could narrow the shambling group down. There may have been a continuous stream of muttering in his head, but though his face was a little pale his mouth remained closed. Okay. Not much he could rely on for protection or use to bottleneck them. Okay. There weren't... too many of them... Right?

He'd deal with the logic of a giant animated Barbie doll holding onto a butcher knife later. And hopefully forget about what it suggested about Saphirus' mind, to have come up with such a scenario. Okay, Barbie was moving like its joints were where they appeared to be. How were they made? What would keep them down? Dismantling them? Hopefully not; his swords would be rather useless for that. Wrenching Barbie's head off a few times over with his bare hands didn't sound very appealing, though.

... Okay, he had an idea. Which was good, because the first Barbie was right in front of him.

Ohcomeon. Aiden sidestepped the doll's attack easily, marking the direction of movement its arm appeared to be capable of. No guarantee that taking the thing's head off would stop it, but if it had no arms it shouldn't be able to hold a weapon. That was a start. Surprisingly good time to have a rapier; no sharp edges along the length of it! Aiden shifted his grip on one, lodged the hilt in the Barbie's armpit, and tried to wrench it out of its socket.

There was indeed an effective point to all of this. That was definitely a good sign. Intelligent people did generally make for better environments, and if he really did have to work with people to get by in this horribly large world, well, he'd much rather work with intelligent people than incompetent idiots. People were stressful enough to start with; who needed extra aggravation?

Which Saphirus seemed bent on providing regardless of the intelligence of the current system. Why did people have to comment on his sunglasses? Staring was one thing, a little extra attention. Generally there wasn't anything to hold that extra attention, so he could tolerate it until it passed. It was better than all the flack he'd undoubtedly get for going around without them, even if he wasn't going to set people on fire with his gaze or anything dangerous like that.

"Some things just make everyone awkward." Like bringing up topics that people clearly didn't want to talk about. Being a mutant was one thing, and he was doing pretty well with that. Being a mutant with his powers completely on permanent autopilot was another thing, and though one of those mixed blessing-curse things, he was mostly over it. Being stared at because the pressure of his gaze was so lopsided was quite another, and even here people weren't going to treat him the same. To be completely and utterly honest, his light-dark eyes were downright creepy.

Those sunglasses had better not get broken. He couldn't count on replacements as readily as he had managed last time.

Okay, scrap his thought. Saphirus... moved into range to shield his left? That was very interesting. Aiden wasn't so interested a moment later, though, when his opponent traded hands with his crowbar... and snapped his blade. Normal people would have just hit it with the crowbar. A proper strike from that would be plenty to ruin a weapon designed for rigidity.

Excellent time to use two, and to avoid that happening again. Or not, as Saphirus disengaged and disarmed. Was that enough for him? Evidently. Aiden shifted his grip on the intact blade and passed the shattered one's hilt to it before walking past Saphirus to reclaim his sunglasses... and move out of the snow for a while. Better to cancel things before they got too far.

Tucking his glasses back into place, he was facing away from Saphirus when he began to answer but turned back to him soon enough. "You're really obvious that you don't want your left side getting hit," he said bluntly, less than impressed by the nickname. "Good enough at deal with it that it's permanent and long-term, but still." He paused, sorting through his collected details and trying to assemble them into a proper image. The mangled car was quite happy to intrude, and the blade that normally would have had to be forced into bending considerably before snapping like that. "Force. Applied and... absorbed?" he finished hesitantly, thinking of the blade tip catching on Saphirus' chest and feeling like he was trying to cut through fog.

Aiden did not have a chip on his shoulder just because he didn't appreciate his name being insulted. If it somehow improved Saphirus' opinion of him, though, there was nothing he could rationally do to get rid of the description. Was it an insult if arguing against it was what would reduce his perceived standing?

This was why he didn't like socializing. People and their interactions were too complicated.

Okay, two things. That didn't sound too bad. And the first he had known was coming; it was kind of hard to be part of a defensive force if you couldn't defend yourself. There wasn't any question about what he was going to ask for either, although he had a hard time getting over the idea of talking to a room, especially with other people present.

Aiden closed his mouth and looked back at Saphirus. His choice of eyewear was none of anyone else's business. Still, actually making Saphirus mad was probably one of the stupidest things he could come up with, at this time or at any other. Except maybe hunting down Isabel and making her mad. Hm... at least he knew he'd die in that case. He wasn't sure if he'd survive an angry assault from Saphirus or not. He didn't want to find out, though.

"I don't wear them to look cool," he said, forcing a dry touch to his cool tone. Now. Details to counteract a crowbar and someone who could clearly supply an immense amount of force. He couldn't withstand sheer force. Trying would be stupid. So. Deflection and speed. He eyed Saphirus for a moment longer. Just speed. A lot of force could make even something as clumsy and unaerodynamic as a crowbar move fast and with potentially high dexterity, and it was probably a regular tool of Saphirus'; he'd be very used to wielding it.

So. Durability in terms of taking a blow was probably useless. They only needed to be strong enough to land a solid blow. How long was the crowbar? Saphirus looked to be about the same height, and unless he had some unusual trick for lunging with a crowbar, Aiden should have a basic advantage in reach. So. "Blunt french-grip rapiers, one slightly heavier," he said shortly, forcing his concentration to override the awkwardness of talking to a room. When the weapons appeared, he caught one in each hand, but almost immediately swapped them. With the heavier blade in his left hand, he gave his wrists a moment to work out their balance.

He may have briefly forgotten about Saphirus then. These blades were infinitely better balanced than his ratty old imitation things, even if they were made of light and didn't really exist. It was going to suck so bad going back to his real ones. Oh, right. Saphirus. He shuddered at the thought of attacking him, but didn't he have to trust that a xman could take care of himself - against someone like Aiden especially - and that even if he somehow couldn't, the danger room would handle things? He was trying to prove he could handle himself; Saphirus had, by virtue of his position, already proven that.

So he walked towards him, blades held neutrally tip-down. He really didn't want to have to do this -

but he pivoted his rear foot when he was close enough, found his balance, and struck: right bladetip to just below Saphirus' left collarbone, left curving in and up for Saphirus' right wrist.

The door opened. There wasn't anyone immediately inside.

Then all hell broke loose.

To his credit, Aiden didn't bolt, and it wasn't because he was rooted to the floor in abject terror. Sure, the resounding crash was seriously unsettling, and definitely unexpected, but this was the Danger Room. Things went boom. Plus no one was screaming.

Nevertheless, it was still with some trepidation that Aiden stepped into the room. It gradually morphed into mild confusion at the sight of weights and... were those anvils? Seriously? apparently anvils littered everywhere. The lone person inside seemed to be fine with the chaos, though, so that was reassuring. Even if physical strength was obvious one of the teacher-guy's virtues, and one Aiden wasn't known for.

"Aiden," he replied warily as he approached. This Saphirus guy didn't look particularly intimidating, so the crashing and destruction and utterly mangled care was probably mutation-related. Yay. His gaze slid back to Saphirus at the man's alternate name, though. Did he really want to know where that name had come from?