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And there we go. The teen lifted his arm, stared, and then--

>> "What the hell are you talking about? You shouldn't know-"

--Joined the same conversation Jiri was a part of. 

"I, ah, checked that you were in an ambulance? And I came back to say that you'd made it to the hospital, but you were already pretty out of it by then. I don't know if you heard me." As help went, he knew it had been rather lacking. He kept his hands clasped tight together, to keep from fidgeting any worse. What was he supposed to say? That from where he'd been sitting, it had just been a mostly pleasant dream were someone happened to be dying? "I'm not really sure what else I could have done. My power, I... don't have very good control over it."

Very poor control. Alex didn't even know the half of it. Jiri didn't notice, but his voice was growing more faltering, more quiet with every word he spoke.

"Can they hear me?" He asked. "If they can: hi? There's a whole observatory up on the roof with a telescope, if Ace didn't know. And it's definitely not my place to say, but you probably hate me already, so I'll say it anyways--you should let Mary out more. Ace says she gets cramped in there, with how little you use her, that's why she wanders. Also I'd like to know if she's that pretty in real life, or if that was just the dream, so it would be cool to meet her."

It was almost impossible to hear him by the time he got up the nerve to fully confess. From the tone Alex had used... he was angry, but he wasn't angry enough. Which meant he hadn't figured out the worst of it yet. 

Jiri helped him there, before he could put two and two together and murder him in  his sleep.

"Also I was possessing those guys who attacked you sorry my name's Jiri I guess I'm glad you didn't die."

...And this is how he would get murdered, in his first week in the Mansion, by his new roommate. Imagining the look on Ghost's face when they found the body was a little hilarious, in a giddy, panickingway.

Jiri really wanted to put his head down and groan. It was the kind of dramatic gesture that felt appropriate, and might just make him feel better. But if he put his head down, he'd probably fall asleep. The less he did that, the better. 

Ghost must have said something to the rest of the staff about him, probably something not very flattering and including the words jittery and liable to panic. With that sage advice in mind, one of his human teachers had pulled him aside yesterday, and delivered the news as pleasantly as possible. A fair warning, with enough time that he wouldn't freak out about it: he was getting a roommate.

By the time class ended today, the guy would probably already be in his room, in his space, hanging up posters of bands he didn't like and... and shedding, or something. Wasn't that what the tiger kid's roommate kept complaining about? Fur everywhere?

He'd had twenty-four hours to work himself up over this. Thank you, teachers. Thank you, Ghost. 

Jiri sat in his last class of the day, leg twitching spasmodically under the table. Someone had thought it was a good idea to sign him up for summer school, too. Probably to push him out of his comfort zone, and help him make friends. 

Well, they'd certainly succeeded on one of those counts.

Also, he'd pretty much failed his spring semester at his old school. Sleeping through midterms and being on suspension during finals hadn't helped. It might have something to do with that, too.

Yep.

twitch twitch twitch twitch

From the desk ahead of him, the kinetics absorber tossed a grin at him, eyes glowing a cheery yellow as he picked up the vibrations of Jiri's leg through the floor. Which meant he was storing up the energy Jiri was producing. Which was creepy. Jiri forced himself to stop twitching.

...His self control lasted for all of thirty seconds.

twitch twitch twitch twitch twitch

Finally, remedial quiz on Huck Finn done and comparative essay of racism v. genetic discrimination acceptably outlined, Jiri was permitted to leave. His room was about a minute away. 

He took twelve to get there. But there was really only so much time he could kill without socializing, and he was still easing himself into that. Talking to the regular-looking kids was easy, but when someone eight feet tall with razor claws casually joined the conversation, Jiri still got wigged out. He took it as a sign that his survival instincts were still functioning. Honestly, he was going to be a little worried when they stopped.

He stood outside his door, and took a deep breath. Finger-combed his dark curls, and forced himself to relax into the properly unconcerned teen boy swagger. All right. Time to get this over with. Here's hoping whoever the guy was, he didn't have tentacles.

Jiri turned the knob and walked in. A few things hit him simultaneously.

Fact one: the guy was on his bed, playing videos on his computer. Personal space issues, great.

Fact two: the guy was playing a video Jiri was very familiar with, and really sick of seeing, even though he couldn't seem to stop himself from repeating it.

Fact three: the guy had starred in said video. Co-starred, if Jiri counted himself.

He stopped dead in the doorway.

"Oh shit. You're alive." Maybe these were not the best words to greet his new roommate with. Or the guy he'd actively helped put in the hospital, for that matter. Someone might even mistake his shock: Oh shit, you're alive, how unfortunate rather than oh shit, you're alive, that's good.

To be entirely fair? He wasn't sure which way he'd meant it.

((OOC: Italics reference the events from Mister Sandman, with Alex.))

There was something wrong, bad, fundamentally incorrect with the universe and him and everything.

Jiri was dreaming he was a hawk.

(No he wasn't, he wasn't dreaming, he was a mu--)

He'd been flying over a large building set on a larger tract of land. But he'd landed when the confusion had started. He perched on top of a chimney stack, tail flicking for balance, his gold eyes searching for the source of his intense unease. The sun painted his feathers in red and gold as it eased down to the horizon. 

(He had been researching. He'd avoided the news for days, but he had to know, had to check. He'd gone online, searching. Mutant crimes--no, hate crimes against mutants, mutants taken to the hospital. He wished he could remember which hospital.)

In the dream, the hawk's mouth was open, its tongue tasting the air, its breathing fast. 

(Ace. Ace was a hawk. In the other dream, about the kid named Alex, with the animal people in his head. It had been crazy; it had to be a dream. 

But he couldn't stop thinking about it. How he'd cornered the kid on the bus. Tried to stab him. Watched him bleed out as he knelt over him and then they were in that house with the stars and there was an ambulance and everything had blurred together--

If it was a dream, then everything was fine. There would be nothing online about it, because it wasn't real.

He found the post in the first forum he checked. Audubon X, a mutant spotter site.

"Video of mutant v. douches. Help ID power? Snake intestines are a new one"

His hand shook as he played the video. He remembered. He remembered everything it showed, but from a different angle. 

"Anyone know what happened to him?"

"--friend works the night shift at Mercy General, he told me the police had the kid collared. He was in pretty bad shape, don't know if he made it--"

It had been real. The whole thing, it had been real.

He was so tired, so tired, he couldn't deal with this--)

The hawk's breathing gradually slowed as the minutes ticked past and no threat presented itself. Jiri couldn't remember what had upset him; maybe this was the sort of dream that had transitioned from another. From a bad dream to a good one. He tilted his head back, feeling the wind combing through his feathers. Tested his wings. The lingering unease was almost gone now. It was only a dream. Nothing could hurt him here.

(But he could hurt--)

Jiri took wing, leaving whatever had been preying on his mind behind him. 

It felt amazing to fly--he stuttered a bit here and there as the wind shifted, catching him unawares, but it grew easier as he went. More intuitive. It was like there was something in the back of his mind willing him to fly right, something that really didn't want him to fall. It was a good feeling. A secure feeling. 

The suburbs stretched out before him, then the city. His wings began to feel tired. Not gliding enough, something in his mind put forward, wasting energy. They weren't really words--just thoughts, images, feelings. Not gliding enough, huh? He'd remember that for next time.

For now, he was tired of flying. He swooping down lower, winging between buildings, only thirty or so feet from the ground. Things were louder down here. City sounds: voices and cars and the electric hum of signs. He didn't think too hard about it. Just waited until something caught his eye.

There--the man with the frameless glasses. It was very Matrix, very cool. Jiri didn't want to be a hawk anymore.

Just like that, as easy as thought, he wasn't.

Jiri was dreaming he was an Asian man, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Now. What to do, what to do? A guy like this should be up for a little fun, right?

The voice in the back of his was rather undeniably the same voice as Ghost's. And that was definitely him on the table, breathing deeply and evenly like he wasn't actively ruining this for himself. 

It was really hard to be in denial at moments like this.

"So." His heart--her heart--was beating a little too fast, but he tried to keep his/her/their voice steady. "This is my power. Apparently. Don't worry, I go back when I wake up. I think. Just, ah, let me--"

He stood, reaching over to his body. Shake shake shoulder shake. "Umm." Yeah that was not working. And he would feel really, really stupid slapping himself in front of a staff member. Slapping himself with a staff member? 

Blood was rushing to their cheeks. His embarrassment had surpassed mortification to such an extent he'd apparently required a second body to express it. Oh crap oh crap. He tried waking himself again, shoving a little harder, and accidentally knocked himself straight off the stool. He hastily caught his body by the shoulders, easing it to the floor. His body slept on, content to let him deal with this mess alone.

"Oh not good. Not. Good." Her voice was really well suited to panic, he noted.

I can hear you, he admitted, because it would be more embarrassing if he kept pretending he didn't, and she found out later. Am I going to get kicked out for this?

There was something like hope tinging that question. As if somewhere in the back of his mind, he was still thinking he could go back to his old life, if his new life would just stop being crazy. She would be able to feel the whole kaleidoscope of that emotion, just as easily as he could feel hers.

Should he say something? Try to make her feel better? The look on her face was about as bad as he felt. There really wasn't a point.

Hope. Crushed.

“Yeah,” he admitted, joining her in sitting down, an empty stool between them, “you kind of did. Not your fault.” The last came out as a bit of a mumble.

Normally? Normally he'd be at soccer camp for the summer. But he hadn't even signed up this year, hadn't even been able to go through the motions. With his narcolepsy, with all the meds he'd been trying, his coach had asked him to sit the summer out. Just until you're through this, the man had said, Just until you're better.

He wasn't much of a reader. Didn't really play video games, either. He had to be outside, he had to be moving. He could text his friends, but half of them were still wigged out about what he'd done at school, half of them would be at camp with nothing but soccer stories to talk about, and half of them were in both categories. He could just picture them talking with the other teams.

Hey, where's Jiri? Not coming this year?

Didn't you hear? He stabbed a kid with a plastic knife and got hauled away to a mutant boarding school.

Normal. She kept using that word: find your normal, new normal, what you normally do. He felt like he was living in the Princess Bride. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Jiri ran a hand through his hair, his fingers briefly tangling in his curls. And the worst part? The worst part was he couldn't even vent about it, because every other kid here was going through the same thing. It would just be stupid self-pity if he did.

He crossed his arms, put his head down on top of them. Maybe it would be easier to talk about this if he wasn't facing her.

“I'm so tired, all the time. And I just feel like I need to scream, but that would be like saying I'm special, and I know I'm not, I know we all go through this. I'm not special--”

--I'm just a mutant.

He was halfway through speaking when he realized he was looking down on himself, from a seat away. He raised a hand in front of his face, splayed the fingers. They were white—whiter than his mom in winter white.

“Oh,” he said, in a voice distinctly more refined, and distinctly more feminine than his own. “Shit.”

She was apologizing. Oh god why was she apologizing, what had he done--

He gripped the water glass between his hands. "No, don't--I'm sorry, I'm not upset, I mean I should be the one apologizing for what I said--"

He was babbling and that was probably making it worse. Somehow. If he knew what he'd done, he'd at least be able to fix it. He settled for drowning his awkwardness in water.

glug glug glug

He'd just finished the cup when she ruined his life.

No soccer. He'd been assuming she'd say yes. Or maybe no, and he could get something started. It wasn't like he didn't know the local leagues; he could have talked to his coach, maybe, see what it took to join. But no. They didn't have a team because they couldn't play other schools. Because regular kids couldn't trust mutant kids not to cheat.

His mouth opened and closed for a moment. When he finally forced the word out, it was a little squeaky, a little bit of a throwback to puberty. "Okay."

Okay. No soccer. Okay.

There went his last tie to normal.

"So what do your kids do to stay out of trouble? Costume making and vigilantism?" He shut his mouth, flushing a slow crimson. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean that..."

Except he kind of did. He could follow the news like anyone else, and there were those mutant-watching blogs, like the Audubon X Society. It didn't take a genius to know the X-Men were based out of Xaviers.