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The air goatee was amazing, and could not be overused. Nonetheless. She kind of gave him a funny look, so he ceased and desisted, trying to look casual about it. Yeah. Definitely not an awkward teenager, here. Especially not after she called hypothetical him hypothetically stupid. As if all mutants were supposed to be super-smart, above and beyond normal sixteen year olds when it came to thinking things through..

...Was he supposed to be super smart? If he could finally sleep, would he be, or had he gotten the short end of the mutation stick in more ways than one? Or did humans just have this idea that all mutants were strong, fast, and smart, even though powers didn't work like that? He had to remind himself, this was a human he was talking with. A human whose hobby was idolizing mutants in the photography medium. Hardly an unbiased audience.

>> "If I were a mutant, I wouldn't be so incredibly stupid or make such a big deal out of a couple pictures. No, but seriously, in my- actual- opinion? It's not victimizing. If you think this is victimizing, what is do you call the club across the street that writes up a monthly mutant hit list?"

"Dicks," Jiri responded promptly, with a nervous grin. That had been a joke, right? The club-across-the-street line? Like, it was a hypothetical club, not one that had specifically bought an office across from a successful mutant business just to make trouble? Right? "But it's like my first grade teacher always said: just because someone else is doing it, doesn't mean it's right for you to do. What if we just treated humans like they were normal people and didn't stalk them with weapons or cameras? Like, just treated them like any other random person on the street? Normal people get creeped out if they see people stalking them with a camera. Even if the person behind the camera is a a cute girl."

Oh god, he was such an awkward teen and this was such and awkward teen smile. Quick, get out of here, escape. "So what are you drinking? I need a refill, I could grab something for you."

And good job, self, he'd made it worse.

The kangaroo girl was forced to the very tippy-tops of her long fuzzy toes as she was bodily hauled up by her shirt. The other children, the Queen's wards, fell into a state of stunned horror at seeing such violence against their leader. Like any playground group, they waited, breath held, for that deciding moment in every kindergarten leader's existence. The Ultimate Test.

Would she cry?

The girl's brown eyes grew overly large and shiny. Her breath hicked once, twice, as she drew in a big giant impossibly large breath. Then she stealed herself. For her subjects. For her young nation.

Her shout was loud enough to wake all the heroes of yore.

"LISTEN UP DRAGON! IF YOU SLAY THE EVIL SORCERESS I WILL GRANT YOU KNIGHTHOOD IN MY KINGDOM!"

Someone had to be the hero in this tale, and clearly it wasn't the big mean scary lady who was not acting like a very nice adult at all.

"Take her luggage, it must have secret evil jewels that-are-the-source-of-her-villainy! To the forest! To our scaly protector!"

Good and evil was very fluid when you were seven (or currently inhabiting a seven-year-old). The Kangaroo Queen helped one of her (his) minions grab the end of a suitcase, and together the tots all ran, screaming and whooping, towards the forest's edge.

Well, except for Jiri's body. That was still pretty much an unconscious lump on the lawn.

It was Thursday night and Jiri was a bat. So he flew barefoot--

wait what.

The bat promptly fell out of the air, and Jiri was hard-pressed to figure out where his panic ended and the animal's began. Bats were apparently pretty smart (he thought irrationally, as they plummeted towards the floor), because he hadn't felt this much emotion when he'd possessed dogs before (or maybe it was just the fact that they were going to hit in three two one--)

FLOOR.

(...Oww.)

The bat tittered a stream of chirps that Jiri was forced to interpret as exotic cursing at his parentage because when they reflected off the walls and couch and that succulent moth in the air that was getting away and they came back to his brain as a massive, crippling headache.

(Da f***, would be a lose interpretation of the bat's thoughts on this matter. Damn bipeds, damn big house, damn open window it had flown in through.)

Echolocation: not for novices. Tentatively, Jiri tried stretching his wings and flapping. Flight, go! Go? Yeah no he had no clue how that was supposed to work, especially starting from the ground. On the bright side, nothing seemed to be broken. A lot of things were ache-y, but none were sharp-stab-y.

Also, he was pretty sure this critter needed glasses. Maybe a flashlight. He could see, but it was like seeing when you wake up at 3AM and your eyes are covered in eye-goop and everything is dark fuzzy shapes. This was... not helpful. And when he thought of seeing better, one of those streams of chirps left his mouth again and with very little delay returned to his big wide ears and hit him across the frontal lobe with CHAIR WALL PIANO DOORWAY MOTH, which was like waking up at 3AM and your eyes are covered in eye-goop and your roommate has flipped on every light in the world and pointed them directly at your retinas. Everything was crystal clear and oww and maybe you'll adjust in a few minutes or maybe you'll be horribly blind for the rest of your life because that's what it feels like.

Chirp, he tentatively said. Just the one. Like squinting through fingers.

Chair leg five wing beats away West by South West, his brain returned.

Yeah. That was going to take some getting used to. For now, he should maybe... not be in the middle of the floor? He was pretty sure he was in the middle of the floor. Getting stepped on did not appeal to him (and the bat-brain concurred). Slowly, getting his little claws stuck in the fibers of the carpet far more often than he would later admit, Jiri worked his way under that West-by-South-West Chair. And there he huddled, really hoping he'd wake up soon, please, and occasionally chirping to himself.

So to recap: It was Thursday night and Jiri was a bored bat.

That is, until his hesitant chirps picked up on someone moving towards him. Unerringly, like they knew were he was, and he had a sudden moment of terror wondering if anyone in the Mansion had some sort of bat-eating mutation when suddenly--

The girl pulled the chair a little out, and sat down.

To his bat ears, the noises that came next where beautiful. He sat under the chair, enraptured, as notes followed each other. Sometimes her voice filled in a gap in harmony he hadn't known was there, and sometimes it left that void flitting through the air, a counterpart of silence.

Bat ears and bat brains were well suited to appreciating pleasant sounds.

Without even realizing it, he crawled a little closer, bit by bit, until he quite accidentally brushed against her leg. He realized it too late, and tried to scurrying back under the chair, but the claw on one of his wings was stuck in the carpet again and struggling didn't help and she was going to step on him, he knew she would--

The little brown bat lay cringing against the carpeting, waiting for the inevitable scream-and-stomp.

((ooc: Sorry for the late reply! Somehow this thread disappeared from my Participated list. I didn't know that could happen. o.o *adds it to Bookmarks, instead* ))

He let out a surprised laugh at her description of the first time her power manifested, then clapped a hand over his mouth. Had that been rude? But it was so easy to picture--a smaller version of the girl in front of him, maybe twelve or thirteen, scrawny as a stick and blushing just as cutely as she was now, sitting across from a red cheeked boy her own age as the whole party ooo'ed at the spreading flowers. In Jiri-o-vision, the scene was lit by quaint fairy light.

"That is the cutest thing I've ever heard," he said, grinning through his fingers unrepentantly.

He dropped his hand when it came time for his own story time. His smile slipped a fraction--how he'd found out about his own power had involved an escort from a school cop and a trip to the psych ward. He cast around for a better story to use.

To his surprise, he found one. He didn't even have to look hard. The psych ward thing was what his mind always went to when he thought of getting his power, but it wasn't. He'd had his power for weeks before that. And not all those memories were bad.

"I don't know about more punch," Jiri looked down at his own cup. "Another cup of this, and I might end up in a sugar coma. Umm. But really, it's not as great a story as yours. I didn't even realize it was happening at the time, I thought it was a dream."

He scratched the back of his neck. His smile came back, a little softer, a little less cheeky. "I drew with my sister. She was sitting on the living room floor with crayons scatter all around and way more construction paper than she needed--typical five year old--and she was trying to draw her school, but she'd gotten frustrated because one of the sides was wrong. Don't ask me what was wrong with it, all the sides looked just as wobbly to me. But she'd started scratching it out with her crayon. And I remember thinking, well if we're going to destroy the building, might as well make it cool. So I took the crayon and I drew in a T-Rex. Maybe a godzilla? I kind of suck at drawing, too. And then she took the crayon and drew in flames, and I drew in a fireman trying to put them out, and she drew in a bird--I think it was dropping something on the fireman?--and we had this whole drawing war over, like, five sheets of paper. It was epic."

He kept looking at his cup. "The thing was, whenever I drew? It was with her hand." He glanced over at Janelle, and flashed a nervous, self-deprecating smirk. "Jiri O'Leary, body snatcher extraordinaire. Feel free to faint in dramatic horror, I promise to catch you."

His power was not as cute as hers, and he couldn't picture anyone ooo'ing at it. Running away screaming was more likely.

>> "Mutants know what they're getting into, and by mutants I don't just mean the ones with bat ears."

Jiri tried not to raise his hackles. His mutant-defending hackles. He'd been a mutant for, what? A few weeks? He shouldn't have mutant-defending hackles. But seriously.

The Iranian teen put an elbow on the arm of his chair, and leaned in closer. "Let's play devil's advocate. Let's say I was a mutant. And, like, I'd cleverly infiltrated your not-so-secret photography society. Would you still say that to my face?"

Because seriously. No. Just no. How could a mutant--any mutant--'know what they're getting into'? He hadn't even known he was a mutant, not even when crazy things started happening to him. How much worse would that be to wake up with, like, horns? Or with red skin and a salamander tongue? She made it sound like this was some kind of choice, like their x-genes had an off switch, and being camera bait was their hobby.