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Enter guilt trip. Additional, unexpected, bonus guilt trip. So he'd probably played a starting role in giving his new roommate a seizure, did he? That was... that was wonderful. A wonderful, sickly punch to the gut.

"So are you basically... trying to exercise more control in your head? Brain calisthenics, or something? Get more experience so you can handle more strain like that?"

The rules all sounded good. Reasonable. Totally solid, like things did when he was awake. When he was asleep... things always became a little more squishy around the logic-edges, and he wasn't entirely certain he'd remember them. Or care. Should he... mention that? But it wasn't like Alex hadn't met him while he was sleeping. The other teen knew what he was like. And he sounded so confident that he or Ace would be able to keep things under control. 

It gave Jiri hope. As much hope as getting permission to repeatedly violate his roommate's brain could give him. ...He was going to stop thinking so hard about all this, and just take it at face value. His new roommate was cool. His new roommate who he'd almost gotten murdered had forgiven him and was cool. This was not something he should poke too hard at.

Any questions. Any.

...

Jiri rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. "Umm. What was up with that cabin? I got a hint of something while I was in there. Like... there were bullet holes? And stuff?" And bodies, and blood. It was just a flicker of a scene, but he remembered, as well as he remembered anything from that night.

*points to Aura as a case-in-point of why the stop-and-frisk and indiscriminate on-sight-braceleting should be nixed *

Jiri didn't point out that mauling did not necessarily mean killing. If Alex hadn't thought of it, and Mary was a part of his mind, then Mary probably hadn't thought of it either. Hopefully. Jiri wasn't going to be the one to open his mouth and get his roommate crippled by his own power.

Still. He wasn't going to call the giant lioness a baby.

"I'm sure that mountain lions mature faster than people," Jiri said, in a blatant attempt to stay on Mary's good side. "Two years old probably makes her a fine young lady." 

God. Yep. Jiri remembered saying that, in the dream. Possibly several times. He'd been hoping that Alex--and Ace, for that matter--wouldn't remember. "Yeah. That's, ah, fairly accurate. I didn't really think about it, that it might be real, until I woke back up. I tried to look it up..." He gestured towards his closed laptop. "But... yeah. By then... everything had already happened."

The teen's offer left him blinking. This was real, right? Not a dream? The guy he'd basically gotten stabbed was offering to help him?

"That's really decent of you," Jiri said quietly. "Like, really decent." He wasn't sure he'd be that forgiving, that willing to help, if their places had been reversed. Was that what the mutant community was like? Was it just taken fore granted that they helped each other out like this? He wanted to ask, but didn't want to cheapen the guy's offer by doing so. Whether it was the way mutants worked, or just the way Alex worked, it was still... pretty much the most helpful thing he'd heard since he came to this place.

"I'll make sure to keep bringing tea, when I barge into your dreams." He flashed a little grin. "You are going to get really sick of tea."

This dream involved a very excited voice at the back of his head. It was a strange mix of young and old: now it sounded like a kid who'd just learned he lived in a candy store, now it sounded like a Professor Emeritus of Candy.

"None of the above. We're asleep," Jiri explained, when the voice asked. He said this out loud as he walked down the street. No one particularly seemed to mind that he was talking to himself. After a moment, he conceded that to be fairly realistic for a dream--with earbuds, it was hard these days to tell who was crazy and who was just on a cell phone. "Specifically, I'm dreaming of you. Don't worry--it'll be painless when I wake, and you disappear."

He assumed it would be, anyway. He'd never heard his dreams screaming as he woke, and he hoped he never would. He smirked as the guy complimented him--not too evil, eh? And in threat of dying rather quickly? His eyes scanned the street while he listened, smirk still firmly on his face. It was past rush hour, and cars were actually moving. A rarity in New York, to be sure. He liked the sound of the horns, the quick slap of wind as they raced past him, better than he did when he was awake.

That looked fun.

That looked fun even before the trippy colors began to overlap everything. 

Jiri laughed, a sound of rich masculine delight, a the rails of blue light appears under his feet. In the way of dreams, he felt surreal, like he was seeing two strikingly different scenes at once, but they harmonized. A dark room, strands of lightning, flashes of electricity--they arced and connected and shifted over the electric meters, the cars, the animated billboards. All of it flowed together, flowed off the screen, flowed to and from the same source. All of it made sense, and not at all, all at once. It didn't bother him.

"Not too worried about the dying," he reassured the voice, because it did seem concerned for his health. Very sweet of it. "Or the brain frying. The way out of a lava flow is just to surf the surface." 

This made sense to him. He didn't know if it made sense, but it made sense to him. There was something to the lines, something hot, something that threatened to burn; there was a depth to things that was dark, and might sink him if he went too deep; nooks that might disappear him from himself. But there was was a cool breeze tonight, and it smoothed everything over. He felt like reaching out his hands, and thrumming the chords; he felt like...

...like stealing a car.

A beauty was parked near the corner, in ten minute parking. A purple lotus convertible. In the passenger seat, wearing a doggie safety belt, sat a black and white shih tzu. It wagged its tail as he leaned over. He offered his hand for a sniff, it woofed and licked the back of his hand. Jiri walked around to the other side of the car, and hopped over the door and into the driver's seat.

"Can you see how this works?" Jiri asked, taping the steering wheel. " 'Cause I've always wanted to hot wire a car." 

Woof, the dog repeated. In his dream, it seemed pleased about the prospect of going for a cruise.

Keeping in mind that the (stated) goal is presumably to keep cops and the general public safe...

Stop and frisk—seems like it would just get a lot of cops killed by A) putting them in close proximity to unknown mutants, and B) ticking those mutants off. Purpose-wise, what would they be looking for? Stop and frisk controversially targets minorities in some cities because said minorities are suspected of carrying guns/drugs. Among mutants, our powers are our weapons, and drug dealing/using rates haven't been played as being higher among mutants. So... what reason do they have to implement this? I'd say ditch this.

Inhibitor bracelet--In arrests I've been playing it as if they already are standard. If you really do mean stops, that gets us back to the same problem as stop & frisk--it's going to get cops killed for no reason. Why would they want that risk? I'd say ditch this as well, though with the work around below for people who want their characters falsely arrested/given bracelets...

Stalker bots—-ehehehehehehehehehehehe YES eheheheheheheheeh. This one makes sense to me--if robots deal with dangerous mutants, it takes cops out of the line of fire, which saves lives. Specially designed robots are arguably better at dealing with mutants than human cops, as well, thus they'd also protect the public. That's a win on all counts. Also: who doesn't love getting their character chased by a stalker bot? It sounds like your bots use the name but not the ridiculously over powered attributes of the original stalkers, which I like. These ones are tough and targeted, but not game breaking. I would suggest that the code behind them be a bit buggy at first, leading to false arrests of mutants who were, say, just witnesses to a crime. Something that could be easily sorted out once human cops arrive, but in the mean time we'd be getting a lot of innocent mutants hauled off to lock down with inhibitor bracelets slapped on 'em...

Curfew--I like the idea, but believe we'd need some sort of incident to trigger this/sell it to the general public. Back when there was rioting in the streets this would have been good, but it seems like the streets have been fairly calm lately. So what can we do to trigger this all into effect? The false arrests and claims from the mutant public that it's being done on purpose to get mutant information stored in the legal system (ie, an unofficial implementation of the Registration Act) could serve neatly here. Especially if a few innocent mutants resisted their false arrests, and ended up in the hospital.

(If you've got a Big Bad behind the scenes for future stages of this plot, they could intentionally have programmed in the AI bugs, either to get an unofficial Registration Act going, or for their own nefarious reasons~)


In conclusion: I like it. Let's make sure it makes sense on all counts, but I like it. Buggy AIs could fix most of the logic issues while leaving your key points intact.

I may have to bring Calley back for this... he's with the NYPD, as one of their rare mutie beat cops. <3



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Alex smirked. Jiri didn't know what he'd done that was smirk-worthy, but his shoulders relaxed a little. If his roommate was smiling, then he probably wasn't dying of remorse. Or of mountain lion induced cerebral hemorrhaging, for that matter.

Then it was his on turn to smirk. "Did you just call the giant prideful mountain lion a baby? Is there a betting pool for when she mauls you, or does Vegas not give odds for that?"

On the matter of the teen's things, Jiri took a long moment to think about it, and noted with relief that he wasn't responsible for that. Alex hadn't had much on him, by the time Jiri had possessed him. "If you need to borrow some hoodies or jeans until you get new stuff, just ask," he offered, sizing Alex up with his eyes. "They might be a little big, but whatever." Jiri was taller, but they were both beanpoles. Wear a belt, call it good.

"So, I think I have... a decent idea of your power." Blood wasps came to mind. And intestine snakes. Part of him, the rational part that cared about his survival, was just as happy not to meet Mary right this second. "I'm a... I guess you could call it a body snatcher? That's what some of the other kids have been calling it." One of the older teens had downloaded Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and shared it on the Mansion's network a few days ago. Jiri now had the younger kids squealing and running from him in the halls. Having a five year old sister back at home, he'd determined the best way way to react to this was to hold his hands over his head like bear claws and stomp dramatically after them as they ran. "I'm just going to apologize in advance. I've been working with some of the staff, but nothing's really helping, so if you wanted to get another room I wouldn't hold it against you. Umm. Whenever I fall asleep, I possess someone nearby." Implication: as his roommate, Alex would be nearby. "And just to make it better, I've apparently got narcolepsy now."

Yep. Being a mutant was awesome.

>> "New powers smell? Is that what that is? I was just about to ask what smelled so nice.”

Jiri flushed a bright red, from his checks to his neck. Had that been directed at him? He wasn't sure if that had been directed at him. Maybe it was just a general comment, about... the lawn smell... and stuff. And there was definitely the tinge of flowers in the air. 

Most of Jiri's experience with girls were of the athletic types: the soccer girls, the track team, the rare-but-terrifying hockey girls. The kind of girl who would full body check you when the coach wasn't watching, by way of showing their interest.

Was this how normal girls did it? Or was he reading way, way too much into this?

"A fairy mutant," he said, looking at the lanterns with a discriminating eye, "would make a killing working birthday parties. I feel like the people with glitzy powers are the ones who really lucked out--they'll rake in a fortune before they're thirty."

Someone turned a dimmer switch on Janelle's demeanor when the first dance was announced. Jiri looked at her in surprise--from how confident she'd been a moment ago, he'd unconsciously pegged her as a fellow "new at the Mansion, old hat at the dancing"-type. The timidity with which she accepted his hand dispelled that impression before she even spoke up.

Jiri's flush slowly faded. He flashed a grin, and gave her hand a quick squeeze. "Then you picked the right partner. I may be new here, but I've been doing this since I was a wee little boy." He switched into a heavy Irish accent for that last bit, grinning. The accent was a bit disjoint with his mostly Iranian features, but his green eyes sparkled while he said it. Though Janelle had no way of knowing it, he was channeling his mother when she'd had a wee little bit to drink.

He led her to the circle, making sure she stood to the right of him. As the joke went: women were always right... and occasionally correct. 

"Golden rules of Irish dancing," he told her as everyone partnered up and got into place. "If you go forward, you're going to go back next. If you go right, you're going to go left. Don't worry about the footwork until you know where your body's going. If you don't know where your body's going, look at the people who do know the footwork. They're the ones who know what they're doing. Trust me. You'll know them when you see them."

His rules quickly came into play as the announcer girl joined the circle, and started calling. "Everyone join hands. Forward three! Forward again! Back three! Back again! Circle right! Circle left! Turn to your partner, straight line right! --" 

It was one of the easiest dances in the ceili repertoire. Jiri tactfully avoided mentioning that. To someone truly new to this sort of dancing, it was still a whirlwind of group circles and partner spins. Jiri noted that the older members of the club had spaced themselves out throughout the circle, intermixing with the newcomers. Though perhaps "old" wasn't the word he was looking for--one girl, with heels flashing from under her long skirt and perfect grace, couldn't have been more than eight. Experienced, then.

If Janelle had taken his advice, she'd be able to spot the pros just as easily as he did. For the most part, the force of the circle pushed and pulled even the newest of dancers to where they needed to be, with only a heartbeat's delay--that was what made it perfect to open a dance night with. Starting with a bonfire dance let the caller see what level the group was at, and adjust the next dances accordingly. But the people who made it easy, the girls who added those little flourishes of heel and the boys who stepped in perfect time, those were the ones who actually knew what they were doing.

Jiri was comfortably part of the latter.

For the rest, the announcer continued to call out the steps throughout the whole dance, shouting merrily over the music. And Jiri whispered forewarning of the next steps to Janelle, until the dance naturally spun them apart. He'd see her again, on the other side of the circle.

((ooc: For reference, a bonfire dance! One round of it. They keep going for a few rounds--you switch sides with your partner during that last spin, and dance with a new person. For dramatic effect, I vote the Mansion's version of the song last juuust long enough that we switch partners until we end up back with each other. <3))