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Aiden's brow furrowed slightly as Allison moved, a touch of curiosity getting the better of him (there was indeed a little bit of common sense trying to suggest that he just open than door and take his chances, but curiosity and mild terror at going back out into that ground it into the dirt as quickly as it could grow).

Oh.

OH.

Yeah, he really should have seen that coming. Distraction, 1, observation, 0. Cue audience laughter at character idiocy. Right.

But seriously, controlling ink? And he thought that healing was useless. Well, he supposed she wouldn't have to worry about a pen exploding and getting ink everywhere, or getting air bubbles in a pen and having to scribble and tear paper until the ink flowed past it. That would be kind of welcome.

He really should give his observation score a boost. "Is that why...?" Trailing off, he gestured to Allison's general colourfulness, or at least tried to. He could notice things! He was just kind of distracted lately. Distraction was a fair enough state to be in, all things considered, wasn't it? And being distracted kind of negated anything his observational skills really picket up on, so.... All right, fine, he was totally trying to justify not putting the giant colourful twos together.

Right. Better than getting lost in those winding hallways filled with undoubtedly lethal mutants. Questions were unpleasant, but not lethal. Probably. Hopefully.

Darn it. She wasn't going to drop the other question. Now what? Tell her that he could heal himself - evidently only while unconscious - and nothing else? Really? That'd probably get him laughed out of the place. It would actually kind of almost be nice to be able to say he was some powerful, useful freak. At least then he'd be, well, useful. Instead of not. And lying would only work until she asked him to demonstrate, which she undoubtedly would if he said he was something cool and interesting. Like that would turn out well.

So instead he shrugged. Better boring than a bald-faced liar. "I dunno. I guess I kind of heal or something." He self-consciously rubbed the part of the scar running from his eye onto his ear before catching himself and shoving his hands in his pockets. They were just going to draw more attention to his scars. He didn't want that.

The further into the building the girl took him, the less certain Aiden was that this was really the best way to replace his sunglasses. Seriously, he was in a horribly run-down and undoubtedly extremely dangerous part of town, and now stuck in this building and its winding hallways and surrounded by undoubtedly extremely dangerous mutants. Whenever they passed one in the halls, the girl nodding or waving to some of them, Aiden did his best to just walk past them. He did succeed in not jumping at the sight of any of them - though to be fair he intentionally didn't look at any of them, and couldn't have described many, if any, of them - so hopefully that would satisfy the girl.

When they reached her room, Ai was relieved. Very relieved. Rooms had doors that could close. With the door closed, he could stop thinking about and noticing all of... that. After a moment of relaxing (had he really been that tense? he hadn't thought so at the time) he looked around while the girl dig in a dresser drawer. The room was reassuringly normal. Books and paper and clothing. Normal. Normal was a nice change from all the recent insanity he had been subjected to.

At the sight of the sunglasses on offer, Aiden couldn't help but wince a bit at the rhinestone-studded one. Now that was one gaudy bit of eye protection. No wonder it was buried and unused. "Thanks," he said quietly, and picked up a far more sober pair to try on. Well... they were kind of tight in the temples and dug into his ears. Hopefully one of the other two sane pairs was a bit larger.

Allison? Aiden paused in the middle of taking a second pair to try on, and actually looked at the girl's face for a moment. Y'know, other than the weird colours, she really did seem pretty normal. Maybe the colours were just some city fashion thing. City people were weird like that. He studied the glasses in his hands for a moment before responding. "Er... I'm Aiden," he eventually said.

Go to where the strange, potentially-mob girl lived? That sounded like an absolutely perfect opening for some big dramatic, probably lethal incident. Any half-decent storyline would have something big happen, unless the author wanted to be really sneaky and suspenseful, in which case nothing would happen but it would keep seeming like something would happen, over and over, until everyone starts to give up and relax, and then everything explodes in their face and was actually there all along.

But she said she could replace his sunglasses.

Maybe those movies where people walked right into the trap weren't so stupid after all. Ai was already moving, and not away from the girl. Well, if things started to look dangerous, he could always make a break for it. It wasn't like he was horribly out of shape, and there was nothing wrong with his legs, despite the weirdly frozen state his jeans were in.

The mansion? It almost sounded like she was verbally capitalizing the word. Trying to think of important mansion-like places in the city, Aiden could only thing of the sweeping grounds and building his parents had condemned him to. She wouldn't be referring to that place, though, could she? No, there must be something else. "Does it have another name?" he asked, hesitated, and continued. "I haven't been in this city long." As they kept walking, Aiden started to notice less and less well-kept properties, more damage and vandalism, and a general decrease in projected safety.

Glancing nervously around him, Aiden did his best to stick fairly close to the girl. He might not know anything about her, but she clearly knew where she was going, and even if that was into something horrible and nasty he would really, really, really rather not get lost in this part of town. Whatever part this was. He didn't have the slightest cue where he was anymore. Finally catching sight of Sanctuary - or at least noticing a distinctly better cared-for building with excessively ostentatious doors - he hesitated for a moment before catching up with the girl again. With all the damage around, the building's relatively good repair kind of stuck out like a sore thumb, even without the brightly painted doors.

Aiden shifted uncomfortably. Well, someone was unnecessarily perceptive. How was he supposed to respond to something like that? His brother would just laugh it off - no. No. Dealing with this person and this place was better than thinking of that. Anything was better than thinking of that. Anything.

He forced himself to breathe, to talk. Only... he still didn't really know what to say. Sarcasm? He was trying to be polite-ish. Sarcasm didn't really fit with that. He certainly wasn't going to do something crazy like burst into tears and whine and moan about how this was ruining his life. Besides, it wasn't ruining his life - it had already been ruined. This was just the icing on the cake to keep his life from ever getting better.

How about dry humour? There were worse options, and Ai really couldn't think of any better ones right now. "And here I thought I was keeping that hidden pretty well." As he spoke, though, he quickly realized that he couldn't keep his tone from flattening out, for all that there was almost some levity at the start.

Jacket.... mind... reading... kid? The phrase wasn't an easy one to process. What did jacket mind reading have to do with fixing sunglasses? How was someone supposed to go about jacket mind reading? Shortly before he managed to make the connection that the brightly coloured girl was involved with mutants and thought nothing of it, she continued, and he shrugged automatically.

"Wait, you do?" he said, surprised and more hopeful than he would have liked to admit. He dropped his head again and shifted slightly. "They're nothing special or anything... I just... don't like going around without them." That wasn't giving her anything new; she'd already seen what he was hiding, at least superficially. Why would she give replace his sunglasses, though? She didn't break them and didn't know him; in what way could she possibly feel responsible enough for the problem to give material aid?

Wait, what? Ai blinked at the girl and belated realized how heavily dressed she was, and then took a closer look at the ground around him. Sure, he was wearing a jacket himself - he'd have to be stupid to not grab one when heading out for who knew how long in this weather - but it did kind of look cold out. Except he didn't feel cold. At all. Even where his pants were obviously soaked and looked like they might be starting to freeze solid. What was going on?

He'd have to try to sell or trade some of his computer games or something, he decided. It would be sad, but he could survive without a few of them. Just enough to cover the cost of some cheap sunglasses that would cover his eye. He'd have to find some way to sell them online or something, though, because he couldn't just walk into a game store and see how much they'd pay for his games.

"That... doesn't look very repairable."

"You think?" he muttered automatically. Wait, was that the girl from the tree? She was on the ground now? Ai quickly dropped his head and glance to the side, trying to hide his eye without being insanely obvious about it. Hopefully. "Er, sorry," he said after a moment. Being rude wasn't going to help the situation. Besides, city girls were supposed to be tough. What if she were part of a gang, and that was what all the crazy colours were for? Bad as things were, Ai really didn't feel like getting lynched in some back alley.

He closed his fingers over the broken sunglasses, more than a little unnerved by the idea. "I must have stepped on them," he said quietly, and then pushed himself to his feet. As he did so, the sheer amount of wet mud clinging to his pants finally made a bit of an impact, and he sighed again. "At least it's not that cold today," he muttered. Never mind that what snow was on the ground really wasn't melting, or that there were still ice crystals in some of the mud from overnight. It didn't feel cold - to Ai - and that would do.