Assigned

[oracle]

Sibyl stepped lightly into the kitchen, looking around. She'd heard Candice call someone named 'Piotr' over the communicator, she'd asked him to show Sibyl around.

She could only assume the massive man sitting at the counter was he.

"Hallo?" She said in her thick accent, smiling shyly. "Are you.. Colossus?"

[tingrin]

Since the return from Baltimore, Piotr had pretty much been keeping himself to himself. He hadn't even spent any time with Kitty. He'd been spending time purely on his own. He'd come down to the kitchen out of his room simply because, as the phrase went, his belly thought his throat had been cut.

He looked up as the newcomer entered the room.

"Da," he said. "I am Colossus. Piotr Nikolaeivitch Rasputin." He stood up, politely. "Although around here, they simply call me Peter."

He gave her what he hoped was a welcoming smile.

[oracle]

She blinked. There was surely a reason Candice sent her to him.

"Piotr." she smiled, obviously a bit in wonder. "Sibylinka Petulengro." she spoken then in a soft russian. "You are not from America originally, are you."

Walking over to the counter, she curled her thin arms around herself, bangles jinglingon her wrists. She was obviously of gypsy decent, evenif her last name hadn't given it away.

[tingrin]

Piotr had been at Xavier's for just over two years now. And in that time, not one person at the Institute had pronounced his name correctly. They had tried, certainly, but not one of them had ever properly got the inflection right. But this newcomer...

"Niet," he confirmed. "I am from the Ust-Ordynski, a farming collective based near Lake Baikal in Siberia." He had slipped with ease into his native language without even noticing it, so happy was he to have the opportunity to speak of it. "Where are you from originally, Sibylinka?"

He did not choose to use the diminutive of her name. He was well mannered enough not to do such a thing until invited to do so.

[oracle]

"Dragomiresti," she said, blushing against her white skin. "How fortunate for me that you are here, I have not met anyone from that part of the world since coming to the United States."

She looks around, laughing softly. "I... I think Candice asked you to be my guide, intentionally."

[tingrin]

"I am sure," said Piotr, with another of his smiles. "It would be my great pleasure. May I get you a coffee? Something to eat? I am in the middle of eating - if you do not mind waiting, I would finish first, then show you around. There are many spare rooms, so you will be able to select one that you like best."

He indicated the Piotr-sized cheese salad sandwich on the table. A good four slices high, it was packed to the brim with lettuce, cheese and tomato and would have fed the average student at Xavier's for a good two or three days.

To the big man, it was a snack.

[oracle]

Sitting on a stool opposite him, she folded her arms in front of her on the counter. "I do not mind at all."

"I came to the United States a few years ago." She brushed her long pale blue hair out of her eyes. "I went to school in Texas, but the students there did not like me. They were cruel." She didn't seem too hurt by it, as if, as a gypsy or an albino, she understood why.

"So my adopted father, he sent me here. How did you come?"

[tingrin]

"The Professor, the man who founded this excellent school, he traced me to Russia and came to visit my family personally." The big man managed to puff himself up even bigger than he was already. "He offered such opportunity - my father practically begged me to take the chance to come here." He took a big bite out of his sandwich.

"I have been here for two years," he said. "I write daily to my little sister, Illyana. But I have not seen them in that time. It is a most complicated business as I am sure you know yourself to get in and out of the United States when you are not a citizen."

He sighed momentarily. Not an hour in a day passed when he didn't miss his family.

[oracle]

Oracle nodded, watching him. Hearing him talk made her miss her own family so strongly.

"It is, yes. If I knew where my family was, I am unsure I'd have the means to visit." She looked at her hands for a moment.

"You are very... tall." She paused, then laughed at herself. "What is it... you can do?"

[tingrin]

He laughed warmly. "I am six foot six tall," he said, adding a somewhat cryptic "Now" to the end of the statement. "My older brother, Mikhail, he was also tall, but I believe not as much as me."

When she asked what it was he could do, he held an arm out and she watched as he armoured his arm up. The control Piotr had begun to exert over his ability to convert to organic steel was much more focused than it used to be, back in the days when it was change all or nothing.

"The skin is organic," he said, "so the tests have show. It makes me very strong. And taller. I am some seven feet when fully armoured. When I am so armoured, I can assist and protect those weaker than myself. I am very resistant to heat and can withstand a number of attacks without any poor side effects."

Rather shyly, he asked, "What about you?"

[oracle]

She reached out, without shyness, and just barely touched his arm with her fingertips. She could see herself in the reflection. It was a strangely beautiful power.

Smiling, her pale pink eyes looked up at him. "I have visions." Opening her mouth to say more, she blushed as pink as her eyes, and looked down. "Sometimes in my sleep. Sometimes waking. Of the future."

[tingrin]

His brow furrowed only briefly, barely perceptible to anybody who wasn't paying close attention. There were many tales of the gypsy folk back at the farm, but Piotr, who more powerfully than most never believed gossip and rumour had never truly believed much of it. He was not the kind of man to dismiss another out of hand simply because of their heritage.

"That must be difficult," he said, which was different from many other reactions she must have had in her life. Who wins the World Series? Will it rain next Tuesday?. "The future is never concrete though, surely? Do you have accurate visions, or merely flashes of what might be?"

[oracle]

She hadn't expected his reaction, and looked up, fair eyebrows raised. Then her face lit with a radiant smile.

"What I see seems to be a potential future. But our future changes by the moment. If I tell you you will hurt your toe in the doorway, you will take care not to hurt your toe when you pass that way. But -some- things, some things... they cannot be changed." She shakes her head.

"I could not tell you which ones those were. They all come as dreams, and often are unclear."

"Not many would accept that I can see the future but then say they could change it." She tilted her head, wondering about him.

[tingrin]

"My mother used to swear by her set of Tarot cards," said Piotr, revealing something about his family's past that he'd never talked about before. "After my older brother died, she visited with a local woman and learned to read them. She became very superstitious and swore that she would not lose me or Illyana to Fate again if she could predict it."

He smiled slightly.

"My mother has some very strange notions at times," he said, fondly. "And Illyana believes everything she says without question. It can be very frustrating for my father, who is nothing more adventurous than a simple farmer."

He ate some more of his sandwich and washed it down with the best part of a whole pint of milk.

[oracle]

Sibyl watched him, tilting her head. He really could eat a great deal. She wasn't sure she'd eaten that much in her entire life, at least at one sitting.

A slow smile spread across her face.

"Your family sound like good people. Superstition rarely hurts anyone." Having said that let him know she didn't always believe the divinatory powers of her own blood, the gypsies having hoarded that mystery away for as long as time allowed.

"What do you intend to do once you leave here Piotr?"

[tingrin]

"What do I intend to do? This is a question I have been asking myself a lot lately." He finished his milk and sandwich and got up, washing up the crockery and utensils he had used, putting them away neatly in the correct cupboards. "I have considered becoming a teacher here at the school, or perhaps finding employment, if I can, as a commercial artist."

He looked out of the window briefly.

"I wish to make enough money to bring my family to America from Siberia. They would have a better life, I am sure of this."

[oracle]

"I am sure you will be able to, one day." She nodded, then laughed. "I mean- that's not- I'm not saying that for sure, but..." her blush was pretty as she slid off her stool.

"I might as well be saying it is, hmm? Do you think your family -wants- to come?"

Walking over to him and rubbing her hands together, she looked up into his face, listening to him speak.

[tingrin]

"My sister does," he said. "This I know. We write every day to one another and every day she expresses - jealousy is the best emotion to describe it - about the life I lead. It is not all so glamourous as she seems to think though. We have recently returned from Baltimore..." Here, his face grew noticeably dark and a little angry. "A one-time student now leads a group who are determined to destroy those who are not like us. It was a difficult fight and many of us were injured or hurt in some way. We are…recovering."

He sighed.

"I am reluctant to expose my sister to that side of my life, I suppose."

[oracle]

She frowned.

"A student here?" Oracle curled pale hair around her finger and thought on it.

"But this place seems full of tolerance and wisdom. From what my father and Ms. Monroe have said. How could a place like this make someone who would hurt others just for being different?"

[tingrin]

"John Allerdyce never truly accepted his place here amongst us. He was more interested in what he could burn or destroy than learning how to use his powers to help." The big man's face grew uncharacteristically angry.

"I no longer care for him," he said, curtly. "It goes against every bone in my body to wish ill of someone, but him, I no longer care about. The damage, the death he dealt in Baltimore, at Alcatraz, he is no longer worth my time. I will crush him if I ever see him again."

He closed his fist as though emphasising the point.