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Post by Crypt on Jul 21, 2006 15:52:42 GMT -5
Liam opened the door to the computer lab quietly, poking his head inside and glancing around. Of course no one is here, he chided mentally. They're still sleeping, just like you should be. Stepping through the entryway, he moved toward the first computer desk in the row.
Pulling out the chair, he sat down carefully, his wings unconsciously folding out of the way with years of muscle memory, and he stared at the screen. Squinting at the small orange light near one of the buttons, he leaned forward slightly, racking his brain to remember what all of the switches and lights meant.
His eyes drifted to the box sitting under the desk. The little lights are flickering. His mind struggled to recall what he'd been told weeks before, the first time he'd touched a computer, but nothing was making its way to the front of his thoughts. Growling in frustration, he slammed his hand down on the desk next to the mouse.
The jolt that shook the desk jiggled the mouse, and his eyes widened in surprise as the little orange light turned green. Tapping the mouse with one sharp fingernail, he licked his lips nervously and watched the screen slowly brighten.
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Post by haxxor on Jul 21, 2006 22:57:29 GMT -5
"Aaaaaaand... it's Istanbul, not Con-stan-ti-nople, now it's Is-tan-bul, not Constantinople, now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople..."
While not an early riser by any stretch of the imagination, it was hard to sleep through cool female voices echoing about emergencies in your first night in an unfamiliar bed. Sam had returned to consciousness immediately, gasping and sitting up in bed, the LCD alarm next to her shorting out immediately and the lights in her room flickering on briefly.
Thankfully, the brief little fear sparks that had appeared around her head had gone out immediately, leaving the flammable curtains and bedclothes unscathed. She breathed deeply, running a hand through her hair and slapping at her table for the black plastic-framed glasses she still wore when she didn't feel like messing with her contacts.
Of course, as always happens, she couldn't get back to sleep, so Sam ended up just getting up and dealing with the day. That was how, after a shower and clothing (old jeans, a black button-up mechanics' shirt that was actually from a real garage she'd really worked at, and her new fuzzy red wristbands from the Hot Topic she'd hit on her way through New York) and some serious eyeliner, she found herself with They Might Be Giants stuck in her head on her way to the computer lab.
"Why did Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's business but the Tuuuuuurks'..."
Though the Mansion did, as promised, have wireless, she'd left her good speakers at home, and Sam was so not going to listen to anything through her laptop's crappy little tinny things. Not even when she had songs stuck in her head and no other option. So she was going to steal some.
Hey, she lived here now, right? It was almost like stealing from herself. Almost.
Still humming (Now if you've got a date in Constantinople, it's in Istanbul, not Constantinople, buh buh buh something), she pushed the door open carelessly, the handle hitting the wall behind it as it swung harshly. For a moment, she didn't realize she wasn't alone; and for another, she didn't realize what exactly her companion was.
"Hey," she said vaguely, before the double-take fully registered. She stopped short just a few feet beyond the first desk in the row, blinking at the boy, her laptop still clutched to her chest.
"Wow," she said. "You're funny-lookin', you know that?"
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Post by Crypt on Jul 22, 2006 1:44:54 GMT -5
(ooc: Good god, you just earned major cool points with the TMBG reference!)
Liam leaned forward, watching the screen brighten and cause the exact opposite in his goggles. His finger was just curling to tap on the screen when the door to the lab swung open, slamming against the wall loudly. The sound echoed loudly in his ears and he gave a startled cry, jumping out of his chair and sending it careening backwards against the next desk in the row.
His black eyes focused on the petite girl walking down the aisle next to him, and he curled one wing in out of her way as she passed. Head tilting curiously as she stopped, he turned his entire body towards her slightly just before she spoke.
"Wow," she said. "You're funny-lookin', you know that?"
Liam's mouth opened slightly in surprise, the tips of his sharp teeth just showing below his upper lip, and his dusky-red skin darkened to a deeper red with embarrassment. What do I say to that? He was aware that most people thought it, but this small figure of a girl was the first one to say such a thing. His eyes widened even more than before as he heard his own response slip from his throat.
"You're not normal yourself."
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Post by haxxor on Jul 22, 2006 9:48:41 GMT -5
(ooc: eh heh heh. Actually, I have awful taste in music. I just get good songs stuck in my head.)
He looked surprised. Maybe she'd startled him by coming in so quickly. Or maybe she was being tactless again. Without Joy hovering over her shoulder to tell her so, sometimes Sam just lost track of what was pleasant and what was not.
"You're not normal yourself."
Sam finally collected herself and continued down the aisle to a little teacher-desk-looking-thing and set her laptop down, popping the lid open and hooking it up to the wall with a fluid ease evident of far, far too much practice. "Well, I mean," she said, "you've got - you know, wingy things. And goggles, and you're red and stuff. And it was an objective statement, anyway. I never said I was normal-looking, just that you weren't. And you're not."
All of it was in a matter-of-fact tone, spoken over rapid keytaps as she logged herself into the system and closed out of her various messenger programs, if for no other reason than she didn't want to deal with Ohio right now.
"Do you know where they hide extra speakers?" she asked. "Or broken ones or something? I need to steal a couple. Can you fly?"
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Post by Crypt on Jul 22, 2006 15:55:20 GMT -5
Liam's jaw bobbed up and down reflexively as she spoke, looking for all the world as though he was trying to speak but the words had gotten stuck somewhere deep in his throat. The words were flying at him almost faster than he could follow, and the sounds of keys clacking on the keyboard as her fingers flew weren't helping either. His toes slowly curled against the hardwood floor, the nails clicking anxiously.
Something about wings and red and what extra speakers? He made a frustrated grunt and focused on her last words, the question he had actually managed to catch. "I can fly," he said quietly, keeping his mouth as closed as possible.
"Could you..." He paused for a moment, running a long hand through his hair. "Could you maybe... speak slower?" She was way too confusing, this girl.
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Post by haxxor on Jul 22, 2006 22:24:47 GMT -5
The guy was definitely giving her the crazy eye. What had she done to merit the crazy eye, Sam wondered? If anyone deserved the crazy eye, it was him. He had wings, after all. All she had was maybe an eyeliner smudge or something.
"I can fly."
"That's pretty bad-A," Sam said, deciding to ignore the Eye. Tapping a few more times at the Return key with one black-Sharpied nail, she turned around, opening and shutting bottom-cupboards as she passed them, but finding nothing more exciting than a pile of broken hard drives, a dead cockroach, and a lot of basic supplies.
Damn. She'd hoped they were somewhere she could actually, you know, reach.
"Could you..."
Sam turned around, straightening from where she'd been searching for a foostool from behind the edge of one counter.
"Could you maybe... speak slower?"
"Um," Sam said. Yeah, she talked fast, but she hadn't been going that fast, had she? "Do... you know..."
She moved her mouth clearly, as if speaking to a small child.
"Wheeeere... the speeeeakeeers..."
How did you make a gesture for 'speaker'? Sam made an awkward box shape with her hands before giving up. "Are?"
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Post by Crypt on Jul 23, 2006 14:13:34 GMT -5
Liam felt completely lost as the girl spoke. What is a bad A? He scratched his head, watching her search through cupboards and cabinets as she moved around the room.
His long feet shifted slightly and he forced his body to relax. His eyes closed behind the goggles and he focused his attention on the her footfalls, letting the relatively soft repetative sound calm his mind. She wasn't here as a threat... she was just another student.
His eyes opened again as she started to speak, and Liam grunted as her words slowed down, her mouth moving at a snail's pace. "Not that slow," he huffed. "Just not too fast. I'm learning."
His eyes drifted around the room, but the only speakers he could find where the ones attached to the various computers. "Why not just use these?" he questioned, pointing to the ones at his own workstation.
Suddenly his head tilted to one side and he looked at her quizzically. "Who are you?"
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Post by haxxor on Jul 23, 2006 21:51:50 GMT -5
"Not that slow. Just not too fast. I'm learning."
"Fine, fine, don't get bitchy," Sam said without rancor, still rifling through cabinets - though her speech had definitely slowed down, moving away from her usual wasp-fast and -sharp monologuing to a rate of speech considered normal by actual normal human beings.
Even Southern ones.
"Are you an exchange student or something?" she asked. "Like, from another country? Why can't you speak English?"
Didn't exchange students have to learn it before they came?
"Why not just use these?"
"Well," she said, "first of all, those are yours, seeing as they're plugged into your monitor. Second of all, they're gross." She eyed the workstation speakers with distaste. He'd picked one of the old white sets. From the nineties, probably. Blegh. "And third of all, I can't just rip a pair off a station. Then that kid won't have any. I need spares so no one notices I stole them."
Wait, weren't exchange students supposedly freakishly honest, in order to get in good with the American school systems? Well, whatever. Too late now.
She climbed awkwardly, with the use of the footstool, onto the counters, and leaning carefully away from the topmost cabinets, started pulling them open, wavering on the edge of the two-foot precipice. (When you were five feet tall, a two-foot precipice was a considerable drop.)
"Who are you?"
"Sam," she said, not looking up from her search. Old floppies. Ew. Her laptop didn't even take floppies. Was this the temple of obsolete technology or something? "New kid. Who are you?"
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Post by Crypt on Jul 23, 2006 22:27:45 GMT -5
Liam sighed as she continued to throw phrases at him that he didn't know yet. She continued searching through the cabinets, and he slowly moved forward, keeping his face turned to the side to appear less threatening. At least her speech slowed considerably, and he was finally able to catch all of the words that were coming from her mouth.
He placed his hands flat on the counter next to where she was kneeling and looked up at her, his eyes barely visible behind the goggles. "I'm from Scotland, but I didn't speak." His tongue wet his lips and his mind locked onto a phrase she'd used. "What's an exchange student?"
He looked back at the speakers attached to the workstation in the front of the room. Personally he could see nothing wrong with them, but he'd only seen his first pair of speakers less than half a year ago. Still, she seemed to be well aquainted with technology, so he believed her. "But if the speakers leave the station, won't they just get another set to replace them? You'll be taking speakers anyway."
"Sam. New kid. Who are you?"
"Liam. I'm Liam." He watched her search through the top cabinets, and he instinctively pressed a hand against her back as she wobbled on the ledge. She may have been new to him, but they were part of the same colony now, so he didn't want her getting hurt.
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Post by haxxor on Jul 23, 2006 22:52:44 GMT -5
The Jaws music sounded in her head as she heard the guy behind her closing in cautiously, but she paid it no heed. Even if he had fangs, he probably wouldn't chomp on her. She was too stringy, after all, though she could probably be marinaded.
"I'm from Scotland, but I didn't speak."
Sam glanced down at him, a hand full of floppies and the other gripping the side of the cabinet door, wearing a quizzical expression. "You didn't speak?" she asked. "Why?"
"What's an exchange student?"
Apparently he hadn't spoken because he'd lived under a rock.
"It's like," she said, putting the floppies back and trying to explain in small words, "like... a school sends one of their kids to another country to study, and the other school sends one of theirs back to study at the first school. It's just, like, a student swap. It's supposed to make things more diverse - um, like, more different people in one place, so they can learn to understand each other and live together in peace and harmony and love."
She stacked up the floppies and moved them to one side, digging hopefully through a pile of wires.
"It's bullshit, though," she said cheerfully. "It just means you get weird Korean kids running around getting stuffed in trash cans because people are jerks."
"But if the speakers leave the station, won't they just get another set to replace them? You'll be taking speakers anyway."
"Well, yeah, but they'll be all "rawr, who took speakers" first. They'll know I took them and they might get mad." It made perfect sense in her head, anyway.
"Liam. I'm Liam."
"Lee-um," Sam said, sounding out the strange name and committing it to memory, though she'd forget it anyway in about ten minutes. "Cool."
Then he stuck his hand on her back and Sam arched awkwardly before remembering that he seemed like a simple soul and probably wouldn't take well to a slap and 'hey bucko, get yer paws off the merchandise.'
"Thanks," she said instead.
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Post by Crypt on Jul 23, 2006 23:39:51 GMT -5
Everything in the room flickered off and back on again, and Liam growled nervously as the computers restarted. "Is that normal?" he asked quietly, his head turning to glance at the screens.
"You didn't speak? Why?"
His eyes were still focused on the monitors as he answered. "Because there was no one to speak to." His tone was calm, normal, as though it was a regular state of affairs, not something out of the ordinary.
He turned back to Sam as she explained exchange student programs, listening curiously. He had thought the world was diverse enough as it was - it was difficult to keep track of all the different people around him.
"If it doesn't work, why do they keep trying?" Such perseverence was out of Liam's nature; if something didn't work, you moved on to something else. Anything else was just a waste of energy.
"They'll know I took them and they might get mad."
Blinking at her reasoning, Liam's head cocked to one side and he watched her search through the wire. "But if they see you with school speakers... won't they know you took some anyway?"
He winced as she arched away from his hand, cursing mentally. Personal boundaries were proving the hardest thing for him to grasp, even moreso than appropriate conversation, and he pulled his hand back, closing it to hide the long nails. "Sorry about that."
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Post by haxxor on Jul 24, 2006 11:51:59 GMT -5
Sam froze as the computers all shut off and turned on again, the Windows startup noise dinging simultaneously and the Mac chimes ringing from the little graphics station on the other side of the room. She hadn't, had she...?
"Is that normal?"
"Power surge," she said simply. "Either a wiring problem or someone got a little freaked and lit up the grid. Not my fault," she grumbled at the end. Honesty. Just because she threw sparks and blew out the lights at home when her sisters pushed her too far, everyone always thought 'oh, this electrical thingummy is broken, it must be Sam's fault.' Pah.
"Because there was no one to speak to."
Hmm. Apparently he actually had lived under a rock. Possibly several. "Why not?"
"If it doesn't work, why do they keep trying?"
"Because they're not very bright," Sam said. Poor Wun Lo. She couldn't even remember the number of times she and the boys had had to extricate him from the lockers, sometimes with the assistance of thousands of little Country Crock butter packets from the cafeteria. At least his presence had meant fewer of her friends were getting stuffed in lockers, though they were more used to it and more nimble at getting out by themselves.
"But if they see you with school speakers... won't they know you took some anyway?"
Though it seemed like an incredibly dumb question, Sam considered the answer carefully, since she was, after all, talking to someone who'd lived under a rock. "They don't mark them," she said, gesturing at the computers hooked to his own monitor, which were blissfully free of Sharpie-marks. "And companies produce a lot of the same kind of speaker - the school can't possibly have bought them all. Plus, I'm not exactly going to tie them around my neck and dance around in the streets with them. They'll just go in my room. They probably won't even mind; I just don't want to have to make somebody rehook a monitor."
Liam shrank back the second she twitched, and she immediately felt a little guilty. It wasn't so much that she had a problem with people touching her as it was that she hadn't been expecting someone to touch her when they didn't know her. Perhaps due to her usual punked-out appearance or because of her general attitude towards the world, those who didn't know Sam well tended to cut a wide swath around her, even in crowds. Which was sort of nice, since short people usually got trampled, but also sort of lonely.
"Sorry about that."
"No, it's cool," she said. "I just wasn't expecting it."
She scooted precariously down a little, to the next cabinet, and opened it to find - Hallelujah! - actual decent spare speakers, though they were in a box marked 'BROKEN'. She could fix that. She pulled the box down out of the cabinet and set it on the counter next to her, selecting two mostly-unharmed black-and-silver Altec Lansing surrounds and popping the back covers off with a fingernail to inspect their innards.
"These aren't even really broken," she said absently, rehooking the volume knob's bolt on one to its connection inside the speaker. "They're just a little tweaked. I don't get why no one takes the time to actually figure out what's wrong with 'em before throwing 'em away."
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Post by Crypt on Jul 24, 2006 12:21:34 GMT -5
Liam could feel her tense beside him, and it answered his question even before she spoke. So many people... so many different abilities... something is bound to happen, he reminded himself, listening to the whirring of all the machines.
She had already been staring at him as though he was crazy enough, so he didn't even bother asking what she meant by grid. One eyebrow arched as she continued speaking, though, and he remembered that if she was here, she had something special too. "Do you have... el-ek-trical... powers?" he asked, choking out the word that had only been explained to him recently.
"Why not?
Her question caught him completely off guard. "Because..." He paused and thought about his answer. Why hadn't there been anyone to talk to? "Because I was alone."
Her speech began to speed up again, but he had grown more accustomed to her pattern already, so he had less difficulty catching her words - even if he didn't completely understand her meaning. The only marking he knew was what the wild dogs in the highlands did, and he was fairly certain the school would frown upon that sort of behavior.
Shifting to one side as she set the box of speakers down, Liam watched curiously as she popped the speakers open. He stared at the tangle of wires inside that made no sense to his eyes at all, even though she was apparently having no trouble repairing them at all.
"I don't get why no one takes the time to actually figure out what's wrong with 'em before throwing 'em away."
Squinting at the wires again as her fingers moved around inside the casing, Liam muttered under his breath. "I do."
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Post by haxxor on Jul 24, 2006 12:48:30 GMT -5
"Do you have... el-ek-trical... powers?"
"Sort of," she said. "I mean, yes, I do, but they're not like... like this kind of electricity. Not unless I get pushed too far."
Even the thoughts of her previous power surges made her stomach contract. She hated doing that. The feeling of all-consuming power was incredible, better than any high, but the charred flesh and barfing for the next day was... not so much.
"Mostly I'm just kind of a healer," she said. "I have the power that keeps people running. Heartbeats and brainwaves are a kind of electricity. It's just - finer, I guess. Really delicate. People with power over big electricity would have a really hard time doing what I usually do, and I have a hard time doing what they do."
Ramble ramble. "And you can fly," she said. "Anything else?"
"Because... Because I was alone."
"Duh," Sam said. "I meant why were you alone?"
Belatedly, Sam remembered to start slowing down again. She snapped the cover of the speaker back on and twisted the volume knob experimentally. It seemed like it'd work, but she'd obviously need to plug it into her laptop first.
"Wanna grab me my computer?" she said to Liam. "It's the - um, the kind that folds. It's called a laptop."
Remember eighth-grade science, she thought. When detailing your procedures list, pretend you're talking to an autistic four-year-old that's been raised by mute wolves in the dark. A really stupid one.
"I do."
"Well, why then, Mr. Societal Insight?" Sam asked. "You're like my sister with all the freaking metaphors. Or similes. I can't remember any of that literary junk."
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Post by Crypt on Jul 24, 2006 16:18:41 GMT -5
Liam tried desperately to follow what she was saying about electricity in the body, but his mind was having trouble wrapping itself around the concept. The only type of electricity he'd seen before coming to Xavier's was the lightning that split the sky on cloudy nights in the Highlands, so he'd believed that taming fire that fell from the clouds was impressive enough, but that the same type of force was rocketing around inside his head? He found it difficult to believe.
"And you can fly. Anything else?"
Liam considered his answer carefully. The first student he'd told about his eating habits had run away with a disgusted look on his face, so he knew better than to talk about his physiology with the others. Instead he focused on the other positive mutations he had.
"I can hear very well. And see in the dark." He tapped his goggles ruefully. "Though light does hurt my eyes."
"Why were you alone?"
Liam grunted, sticking his hands in his pockets. "I was alone because no one wanted me around." His wings curled unconsciously towards his body as though protecting him, like the question actually stung.
He was glad for the change of subject when she asked for her computer, and he turned to the desk she had been sitting at, looking at the thin computer curiously. Reaching tenatively, he pressed the top down, closing the laptop with a click, and turned back happily, holding it out to her.
Her tone blindsided him and he nearly released the computer in surprise, but he held it firmly and set it down on the countertop. "I mean... well, how could anyone know what was going on with that?" He pointed at the speaker with a long nail. "It looked like a bunch of tiny vines to me."
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Post by haxxor on Jul 24, 2006 16:50:35 GMT -5
It didn't take a genius to figure out that Liam was trying to phrase his mutations carefully. Must be something to do with the fangs. Maybe he POISONED people! That would be so cool! Even if it would make his private life a little... difficult. Not that anyone would probably want to be macking on a red dude with wings that had lived under a Scottish rock for his entire life, anyway.
"I can hear very well. And see in the dark. Though light does hurt my eyes."
"So you're like a giant bat," Sam summarized. "Cool." She'd have to practice on different people in the Mansion to figure out how to adapt her power. Maybe bat-people's brains ran on different frequencies than did people-people's. She didn't want to fry anyone, after all. Not unless she meant to do it.
Her question appeared to make him uncomfortable. Sam couldn't think why on earth it would've.
"I was alone because no one wanted me around."
"Aw," she said. "Well, you are kind of scary-looking. I could see that. Demon, get thee hence and all that. But it's cool now, right? You're learning pretty well."
At least he could talk without that annoying Scottish brogue making everything sound like it was being spoken through a severely drunken mouth full of marbles. He was a better orator, even, than some of the Kentuckians in her town who'd come up when they'd inherited a small fortune from a wealthy relative. No one in town could understand a single thing anyone in that family had said.
He brought her the laptop, but didn't hand it to her; she picked it up off the countertop and sat it on her lap, turning so that her legs dangled off the counter (couldn't even reach the freaking floor).
"I mean... well, how could anyone know what was going on with that? It looked like a bunch of tiny vines to me."
"Well, to you," she said. "But if you take a few minutes to figure it out, nothing's really THAT complicated. Especially wiring. It's almost always color-coded, first of all. S'just that most people don't even take the few minutes to figure out how something works so they can make it work again, which is really annoying, because they end up wasting all kinds of parts. It's lazy, that's what it is."
She plugged the speaker into her laptop and the green light at its base blinked on clearly when she reopened the lid - she had it set up so it only stood by when you closed it. Clicking the song from earlier up on iTunes, she turned up the volume on the speaker until the song was audible, crystal-clear and in much better quality than it had been through the little laptop speakers alone.
"There," she said, unplugging it and pausing the song to pick up the other back-opened speaker. "There's one. This one just needs..."
She pushed a few wires aside and found a dead bug nestling between magnet and tape.
"I don't know how that thing even got in there," she said, and dumped it out onto the counter before putting the speaker back together and testing it. It worked just as well as had the other.
She clicked her laptop closed again in triumph and wrapped the speakers' wires around themselves into little bundles. (There was always enough time for hardware management.) "See?" she said. "Good as new."
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Post by Crypt on Jul 25, 2006 0:50:07 GMT -5
"So you're like a giant bat."
Liam's toes curled against the hard floor nervously, and he was just about to respond when the announcement blared over the speakers, catching him unawares. He winced and moved to cover his ears, but it was done almost as soon as it had begun, and he shook his head and glanced at Sam.
"Sounds like they're looking for us." He was headed for the door before he finished talking, his long legs taking him out of the room in quick strides.
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