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Act normal. Just... act normal. Deep breaths. Be cool.

Jiri was finding it really hard to be cool when Leo was making total sense (but it was a weird sense that felt wrong and he didn't know why), and Alex was making total sense (in a way that felt right but made him feel wrong, and he knew exactly why).

>> "But you did just complain about what is essentially a shelter that doubles as a school not paying for your stay."

Everything in that statement. Just... everything. It was like someone had taken his head and made him turn it, and now he had a whole new perspective on what he was seeing, and not in a good way. Like when he'd been a kid and they'd been driving to the Jersey shore and he'd gotten all excited about the hills they were passing, until his mom had told him they weren't hills. They were trash heaps, with sod rolled over the top to make them look palatable from the highway. Like that.

Xavier's was gorgeous, and had tons of cool stuff. A pool, every sports field ever, its own private woods, a hedge maze, and that was without even touching on the Danger Room (and some other kid had told him there was a jet in the basement, and he wouldn't even be surprised if it was true, that's how cool this place was.)

But the only reason he was here, the only reason he'd even considered coming, was that whole mental breakdown thing. He'd have gladly tried sticking it out as a mutant in a human's school, if that hadn't happened. Because--even though no one really talked about it, even though he hadn't seen it until Alex had put it into words--the Mansion was a shelter first, and a school second. That's why so many adults were still hanging around, even though they'd graduated. If they'd ever gone to school here at all.

>> "You okay, man?"

>> "Do you need to lay down?"

"No, I'm cool. Just realizing that I've managed to be entitled and a racist. Never thought I had to worry about either," because yeah. Cultural, ethnic, and religious minority here. "But here I am, same conversation, foot it my mouth no matter who I talk to. I've been at this school for like three weeks, and somewhere along the line I started breaking things up as humans and mutants. That's... freaky."

Which he'd always done, he guessed. But he used to consider himself in the first camp, and he would have defended mutants on principle, one minority to another. But being a mutant locked up in Mutant Manor here... he'd shifted his worldview, and he hadn't even realized it.

He wasn't even going to get started on his casual entitlement. Because in the world Leo and he came from, smart phones and data plans and knowing what the internet was were pretty much the norm. What could he even say to Alex, about that? Or half the other kids in this school, for that matter.

Why were they doing all this talking? This is not why they'd come out here.

"You know what? This is too much thinking. I'm getting a soccer ball and I'm kicking it." Jiri declared, and started marching towards the equipment shed.

Leo--the human--was spilling words out of his not-a-mutant mouth. Very sensible, informative words. Words Jiri should really be focusing on.

Forever if you're in range, uh-huh. (...How many times had he used the phrase 'creepy humans'? It was just the once, right? Because just once was okay. Oh god.)

YouTube video. Guy going from Hulk-red to Hulk-Hogan-pink. That was... that was very demonstrative, and (and he'd met this kid's mom. And promised to be nice to her boy if they met in class. And accepted her coffee candy, which was like, he didn't even know, some kind of pact and he'd just broken it.)

Adapted humans which were not mutants because there was apparently a third contender in the gene pool now and financial aid and grades.

Jiri burst out laughing at the teen's Taylor impression. A little too loudly. He clapped a hand over his mouth. Quick think of something to say, change the subject--

"Your mom is really nice."

--oh God why did he say that. His other hand clapped over his mouth, too, but there were not enough hands in the world to cover the flush on his face.

>> "I swear I'm not here for pictures or whatever."

"Of course not." Jiri's voice came out with a little bit of a nervous prepubescent crackle to it. Which was really just the icing on the cake, and he was just going to quietly curl up and die here, thank you, the other two could keep walking if they wanted.
 
Alex was saying things. Probably he had been saying them for awhile. But they only just began to register in Jiri's mind. He nodded at all the fine points his roommate made, because the more Alex talked the more everyone was going to forget that he had talked. Even if Alex was coming off as a little defensive. Or skeptical. Or whatever.

Jiri had a fleeting thought: I should offer him a coffee candy.

This thought did not help. He kept both hands over his mouth, for good measure.

The X-Woman's obvious discomfort as the clip played was, in a word, hilarious. Maybe Jiri was a bad person. But maybe Maya was the bad person, for obviously lying about the whole thing.

>> "I hope Disney gets them for copyright infringement. Sleeping Beauty is a classic."

Her lies were, in another word, also hilarious. Once the camera was off, he needed to ask her about this. Maybe she'd be cool enough to level with him. And if not... he was sure someone around the Mansion knew what was up. Maybe even Leo. Though Leo's theories on mutant powers always needed to be taken with a grain of salt. He was the one who'd come up with the whole 'Gawain and Maya aren't twins they're (dun dun DUN) the same person!' conspiracy in the first place.

...He really needed to stop asking any parent-related questions in these interviews. People always asked, but he was starting to suspect they asked because they knew the answer wouldn't be great. The general rule seemed to be 'accepting parents,' 'no one dies in your backstory,' pick one. Jiri had thought he was pretty normal before coming here. At the Mansion, he'd come to appreciate that there was human normal, and there was mutant normal.

All right. They'd been going for awhile, so time to bring in some of the more serious stuff again. So far it didn't look like she was going to punch him for any thing, so that was awesome.

"Do you think that mutants are an evolution of humanity, or just an aberrant mutation?"

"Do you believe humans and mutants can co-exist?"

"What would you do if the government tried another mutant registration? Would you still work with authorities and help them register people, ie do the legal thing, or would you help humans, ie work against the law?"

Leo cringed sufficiently enough to mollify Jiri's sense of inner justice. Clearly Jiri had pegged him wrong--he wasn't the same age as him and Alex, he was younger. Like, fifteen. There were worlds of difference, whole vintages of experience, between fifteen and sixteen. 

So he'd let the kid's insensitivity slide. For now.

"I've been here... about three weeks? God that went fast." And so far he was managing to barely pass summer school, and make no forward progress on controlling his mutation. Woo. Go him.

Dill weeds was his new favorite swear.

"We really need to put up that notice," he said, mostly to his roommate. "The whole 'Attention School: Creepy Humans Are Creepy, Stay Off The Front Lawn.' " They'd talked about it the last time they'd seen photographers, but it was the sort of thing you say and then forget about. A complimentary Don't Feed the Mutants (and No Photos) sign may or may not have been discussed, for posting on the front gates. Given the trouble they had just dodged with the administration... maybe it was better if that idea stayed forgotten.

"Did I tell you I snuck into one of their club meetings the other day? 'The 50-something-th Meeting of the New York Chapter of the Audubon X Bird Photography Club.' " He did his best to imitate the hipster guy who'd started the meeting off. "It was weird. I felt like I was playing human-dress-up the whole time, and they might mob me if they figured out what I was. Mob with cameras." A shudder. What could be worse?

To Leo, he commented, "I'm having a hard time getting a read on Ms. Taylor. It's like she's all..." Making Alex almost cry. But he was not going to say that. Instead, he waved his hand ambiguously. "But at the same time she's cool with us doing more AMAs. So... I dunno. Weird lady. Plus I heard she denied some human's financial aid when he wanted to come here, and you know how liberal they are at handing that stuff out with everyone else. So probably racist."

He'd heard this from the kid's mom. Cool lady. She obviously had a weird kid, if he wanted to come here, but he couldn't fault her parenting. Anyone who gave him coffee candy was all right in Jiri's books. 

Alex was way too forgiving. Ms. Taylor and the Morris had just about given him a nervous breakdown, had almost made him literally made him run screaming from the place to whole up in a cave somewhere.

"We are going to agree to disagree about our definitions of 'good people,' " Jiri said. And he was totally going to pretend that a little too much for some people's tastes hadn't been a jibe at him. Maybe Alex really didn't know how bad he'd looked in that room. "She's a Responsible Adult."

Capital R, capital A, capital Meh.

>> "Just out of curiosity, what's your mutation? If you don't mind."

Jiri turned his attention on the kid, too. No doubt he knew Alex's already--he'd admitted to seeing both videos. So for Alex to ask was totally fair turn around. Plus, it just seemed to be a normal greeting question in the mutant community, as weird as that still felt. 

>> "And everybody knows Alex. Sorry, man. You're a psuedo celebrity after both the YouTubes and your AMA."

Dude. Not cool. If Jiri knew this kid better, this would be the time to whap him upside the head. Because dude. Not cool. Who brings up a guy's most traumatic moment, by way of introduction? Leo O'Sensitive, apparently. Alex was defending himself just fine, so Jiri didn't step in, but he couldn't help but shoot the other teen a look. A dude, not. cool. look.

He shouldn't judge, though. Maybe this kid was someone like Alex, who'd run away from home because his mutation manifested when he was four and he'd lived in a cave since then and that's why he was being the exact opposite of chill right now.

The whole 'getting on his phone in the middle of a RL conversation thing' didn't support the cave theory. That was the same sort of thing Jiri expected from any of his regular friends.

So. Probably just the kind of guy who found out where is foot was by shoving it in his mouth.

At least Leo was encouraging on the soccer front. If he'd made some kind of crack about Alex not knowing, that would have been Jiri's cue to ditch him. 

Wait. Why were they bringing the kid along? ...Because Jiri had physically dragged him along. Yeah. Okay. Made sense. And he was probably new at the Mansion, too--lots of students seemed to be turning up, now that the school year was about to start.

Which was a decent enough topic.

"You new around here?"

The basketball courts were just around the side of the school. They'd need to cross the lawn to get to them--

The Iranian teen stopped in his tracks. "Umm. Let's go the long way. Apparently there's this whole club of mutant spotters that likes to walk by the gates and take pictures." He'd been to their club meeting. It was a subgroup of the Audubon X forum; the people who actually left their computer screens once in a while and got photos for the rest of the forum to fawn over. Jiri had resolved to not step foot on the front lawn ever again, if he could avoid it.

They'd go around the back of the school, so they could avoid the pesky humans.

>> "Uh. Guilty."

"Thought so." At least the other teen was leveling about it. That was cool. Everyone came across interesting conversations in deserted hallways that they dragged their heels walking past, but not everyone admitted to it. And the other kid didn't resist booking it the heck away from The Man, so he knew what was what.

"Jiri O'Leary," the Iranian-Irish-god-his-parents-made-introductions-sound-weird teenager said. He didn't offer to shake hands because he'd already kidnapped one of the Latino guy's arms, and the other looked like it was holding his nose on. "Did you need to go to the doctor? I hear he can insto-heal but he's creepy and he sees how you were injured when he does it, and I've got no clue if he's cool or if he'll squeal. And I think the Morris clone is looking for someone to vent on, after that meeting. So your call."

Go running to Big Brother Doc, or be a man and put up with his battle injury. One way lead to administrative action, the other to soccer.

Speaking of: the other kid knew where they kept things. Maybe. Probably. It gave them a goal, anyway. Plus, still settling in?

"Us too," Jiri said. Agggh that reminded him: classes were starting soon. For real. Lame. Also lame was that he was still holding two guys' arms, so he released them back into the wild.

...Alex sounded way more stressed about soccer than anyone had any right to be. It was soccer. Football, of the non-American-variety. How had he never played soccer? Sure there was the running away from home stuff, but there should have been games at his elementary school, right? Though to be fair, elementary school games didn't run off of rules, per se.

"Don't worry," he said. "You can't actually play with three people. This is more like 'let's kick a ball because it's a nice day and because then we can avoid the adults in their natural indoor habitat.' "

He'd had plenty of adult influences today. It was high time he socialized with his own.

'More or less the same skill set' translated in Jiri's mind to 'don't stand next to mirrors when her brother was around, either.' Noted. Though he was starting to feel a little more comfortable with the idea of Maya than he was with Gawain. That guy had tried to shut down the AMA idea, and even when he'd agreed to it, he'd still pulled this at the last minute: totally bailing on things.

Wait, was that what this was? Had his sister caught wind of Gawain being a total flake, and come instead? He could practically see the argument that had lead to her stealing his T-shirt and marching over here instead.

...If that's what happened, if Maya had taken Gawain's place not because he'd asked but because he was a dick, then Jiri was grateful to her. And he was definitely going to keep filtering the worst of the internet. A young woman did not need to hear half this stuff. A young man didn't either, but that was Jiri's own fault for doing this.

"How is what the X-Men do different than vigilantism? Did the cops only agree to work with you because they couldn't stop you?

"Would you be comfortable if things were reversed and humans who specialized in taking down mutants were authorized by the police?"

...Heh. He'd allow this next one, even though they were clearly trying for something dirty. He wanted to see how she'd spin it back at them.

"So Invasion is filtering out the sexy questions. Think of the most awkward question you can and answer it."