Bored!

[Loa]

((OOC: This thread takes place before the X-Men come back from Baltimore. It's supposed to be bonding for the younger students, and can possibly show their reaction to the X-Men's not-so-triumphant return. So come on in, kids!))

Alani was so bored. After that big meeting with all the students, teachers, and assorted X-Men, she thought the excitement at the mansion would be out of control.

But aside from a late night AIM conversation with Bobby and a few new arrivals, the mansion was dead. She wondered what was happening in Baltimore, but when she went downstairs to the main lounge, Sam was playing video games. The other girl was so in the zone that she didn't even notice Alani come in and then leave. Upstairs, she glimpsed a tall dark-skinned boy and a blonde chatting in the hallway. The two looked nice, though they seemed a little older than her. The boy was very cute, too, and she hoped a little that the blonde wasn't his girlfriend.

Alani stopped by her room and picked up her bookbag, then went to the dorm lounge on the second floor, hoping someone would be in there. If not, she'd just do her math homework.

Ugh.

[Crypt]

Liam circled lazily above the mansion grounds, reveling in the cool air as the sun was setting. His sharp ears could hear the stirring squeaks of bats down below him as occasional wing beats stirred the trees.

Turning back towards the huge brick building, he blinked his black eyes behind the goggles and swooped down low, his toes stinging as they brushed against the treetops. This is life, he thought with a rare broad smile, long teeth shining in the waning light.

Landing on one of the balconies on the second story, he stepped through the open window, wings folding behind him, only to find himself looking at one of the other students. He'd seen her around before - she was hard to miss, covered in tattoos - but he'd never actually spoken to her. His foot slid forward cautiously, sharp nails clacking on the wood floor. "Hello?"

[Loa]

Alani was just getting through the second set of math problems when she saw something pass by the window outside. It startled her, but with no shortage of flying students and teachers at the school, it didn't scare her.

She reached into her bookbag and brough out a beat-up Discman. She slid the headphones over her ears, hoping the block out any more distractions. As the first song ended, a voice from behind her made her jump.

"Hello?"

Her mechanical pencil crumbled to pieces in her hand as she reacted sharply. She turned quickly, taking the headphones off. She put her hand over her breast and sighed with relief.

"Oh, you scared me!" She laughed nervously.

Alani wasn't a great conversation starter, but she thought she'd make the effort since he was the only one she'd bumped into tonight. "So...what's up?"

[Crypt]

Liam's body tensed as she turned swiftly, his wings flaring slightly searching for the wind currents in the room. He had just started to turn back towards the window when her words stopped him. Glancing back, he gave her a small, apologetic smile, keeping his mouth closed as much as possible. "I'm sorry... I do that."

Tenatively moving farther into the room, he pulled a chair out from the other side of the table she was sitting at and turned it around, sitting down on the chair backwards to let his wings flare out comfortably.

"So... what's up?"

He looked at her curiously for a moment before remembering what the strange phrase meant what was going on. "Nothing." He winced mentally for being so brief, but what else was he going to say?

His eyes behind the goggles roved over the texts on the table. "What are you doing?"

[Loa]

Loa laughed, seeing that she scared him as well. She took the headphones all the way off and slipped the Discman back into her bag.

His short reply was confusing as he took a seat near her. She briefly wondered why he'd act uninterested but still sit with her, then realized she'd done the same thing a hundred times. Maybe he's afraid to let people know he wants to be their friend too.

"What are you doing?"

Alani looked down at her homework. "It's more what I'm trying to do. What I'm actually doing is completely failing this homework. What I'm trying to do is at least get a C on it."

She looked back up at him. "Who do you have for math?" she asked.

[Crypt]

He looked at her as she laughed, confused slightly. She obviously thought something was funny, but he couldn't understand what. He watched as she slipped the strange object gripping her head off and put it away in her bags. He had heard music coming from it before, and he had seen so many students wearing them before, but he wasn't sure exactly what it did. All he could tell was that it was technology, and so it wasn't actually alive.

He caught a slightly confused expression as it crossed her face. Body language was easy to read for him; he'd spent so many years relying on being able to tell what another creature was going to do that humans and other mutants, who rarely realized just how much their bodies gave away, were almost too easy. She appeared to come to some kind of conclusion, and then she was talking.

"Who do you have for math?"

His toes curled nervously. He had only started learning basic math, and numbers didn't seem to be his strong suit. He'd made it through addition and subtraction with relatively little trouble, but multiplication and division were starting to give him problems the larger the number became. Instead he decided to employ a wonderful technique he'd been working on lately: tact.

"The blue one is teaching me. The one with the strange talk." Well, that was about as tactful as he could be.

[Loa]

Alanie giggled when he called Mr. Wagner "the blue one". As for funny talking, she thought this guy talked pretty funny himself. This guy...She realized she couldn't remember his name. Oh, God.

She bit her lip and briefly thought that maybe she should just go back to her homework and forget all about making friends for the night. But if she did that, she might never get to know anyone her. It had been almost a full school year now, and she barely had any friends. Cal had seemed really cool, but she hadn't seen her since the meeting, and besides that talk, she didn't think she could call anyone else at the school a real friend.

So she sucked it up.

"I'm sorry, I don't know your name!" She held out a hand to him.

"I'm Alani Ryan."

[Crypt]

Liam's head canted curiously as she giggled. This one seems to find humor in everything, he thought ruefully. But perhaps that's normal.

Glancing out the window at the darkening sky, Liam almost wished for the life he'd had where he didn't have to worry about figuring out all these rules for interaction... but it wasn't worth being lonely, and he had been so alone.

He looked at her hand in surprise as she held it toward him, his own stretching out slowly and tenatively as he took it, being careful not to scratch her.

"Liam. I'm Liam."

[Loa]

Alani noticed his sharp claws as she shook his hand, but it didn't scare her. Okay, maybe a little. But since her powers developed, she found herself less and less afraid of things that at one time would have terrified her.

"Nice to finally meet you, Liam." She said as they released each other. She brushed the crumbled pencil off the table and reached into her bag for a new one.

"I've seen so many people around here in the last year but I don't really know anyone...How about you? Who do you hang out with?"

[Crypt]

Resting his forearms on the back of the chair, he curled his toes on the rub set beneath the table legs, watching her carefully. "It's nice to meet you too."

He nodded as she spoke, understanding all too well. There were so many unfamiliar faces here, many more than he'd ever seen before, and he knew almost no one. This was partly because he had only just begun to warm up to the idea of other students, and partly because it seemed like the other students had only finally begun to warm up to him.

"Who do you hang out with?"

It took him a moment to realize she didn't mean literally. Cal had suggested a day or two ago that they do just that, but he had yet to take her up on that offer. "Um... I don't hang out with anyone, really."

[Loa]

"Yeah...me either," Alani said with a considerable amount of regret. There was a time when she was the most popular girl in her school, whether she wanted to be or not. Her surfing had brought her a great deal of local fame, until her accident changed the fame to fear.

"I had fun talking with Cal at the meeting before, but I haven't seen her around since."

The one thing Alani knew all the students liked to talk about were their powers, so she thought it couldn't hurt to ask.

"So...obviously, you can fly...do you have any other powers?"

[Crypt]

Cal again. Did Alani read minds? It was a curious coincidence, to be sure.

"So...obviously, you can fly...do you have any other powers?"

Liam felt his stomach turn slightly, his wings folding up close to his back in anxiety. His hands curled, hiding his nails against his palms. I say what? Can make people keep bleeding if I bite them? Just like before, he found himself searching through everything for the positive aspects to his... abilities.

"I hear well... and I see in the dark." He found his thumb at his mouth again, not having even realized his hand had moved from the tabletop. His dark eyes behind the goggles glanced at the bandage wrapped around it from the last time he had slipped and bitten himself.

[Loa]

"Those are pretty cool powers," she said as she nodded.

She noticed the small bandage on his thumb as he put it near his mouth.

"What happened to your finger?"

[Crypt]

Self-consciously shoving his hands down into his lap and out of her sight, Liam glanced down at the thumb. "I slipped. Bit myself."

He was fairly sure that it wasn't a problem other people had to deal with, but he had sharper teeth than most, and he wasn't the most graceful creature all the time.

"Bled very much."

He wasn't sure about his diction, but he was still learning about it all. He had finally started to think in nearly complete sentences; speaking them would come soon, he was confident.

[Loa]

Alani was still unsure whether or not Liam wanted to be there talking with her since he said so little. But as long as he stayed, she figured he must want to be in the room, at least.

She also didn't know how to respond to what he said. He bit himself? She wondered if he did it on purpose. She had a friend back home who used to cut herself, and when people asked about it, it was always an "accident". The thumb would be a weird place to take that habit to, but she bet it wasn't out of the question.

"Do you have any homework you have to do? Cuz I'm totally sick of this math, and I still have history and English. Maybe we could be study buddies?" She laughed at the words.

[Crypt]

Liam licked his lips nervously, his tongue sliding very carefully between his canines. He could see the strange look on her face. He couldn't quite understand her confusion, but he decided to explain further anyway. After all, it wasn't the first strange look his thumb had gotten.

"Biting my nail. Thumb slipped and cut itself." He let his lip pull back to show the long, sharp canine and razor incisor next to it. "My..." What was the word Xavier had used? "... sa-li-va keeps wounds bleeding."

He closed his mouth again, blinking behind his goggles. It wasn't supremely wonderful conversation, but he was feeling a lot less self-conscious than a week ago, and that was improvement worth his time.

"Maybe we could be study buddies?"

His brow furrowed again at the strange phrase. He knew the words, but the context she was using was one he'd never heard before. Reasoning it out as quickly as he could, he started and looked at the texts in front of her.

Much thicker than anything he'd even considered reading yet. Studying with her wasn't likely.

Looking back at her, he shook his head slightly. Should just tell her. Taking a deep breath, he glanced around and leaned in closer to the table. "I just started learning."

[Loa]

((OOC: I just want to say a BIG thank you again to you, Crypt, for joining me in this thread!!!))

Alani nodded as he told her about biting his thumb. She definitely understood nervous habits like that. Before her mutation, she used to shake her feet constantly, in class or whenever she was bored. Now, she liked to use her power to crumble pieces of paper or garbage when she was anxious.

"My... sa-li-va keeps wounds bleeding."

Alani almost blurted out, "Like a vampire bat?", but thankfully caught herself. Liam probably wouldn't like being compared to a bat, as he most likely had heard that more than once in his life - and probably not from his friends.

When she mentioned that they should study together, he became even more uncomfortable than before. At first she thought that he just didn't like her and didn't know how to say it. But then, he said,

"I just started learning."

If that's a blow-off line, it's an original one, at least, she thought. But I'm betting it's really the truth.

"That's alright, Liam. If you want...I could help you sometime. Not that I'm student number one here, but maybe?" She smiled and shrugged her tattooed shoulders.

[Crypt]

(ooc: It's my pleasure, really. I'd been looking for something to do with him lately.)

Adjusting his goggles as she seemed to reconsider something, he glanced out the window. the sky had darkened enough that if he was out there, he wouldn't have to wear the damn things. His ears could already hear the nocturnal creatures stirring, and part of his wished for his old life again, but he hadn't felt complete then, and he knew it would even worse now.

Turning back to Alani, he gave her his friendliest smile, something that turned out still rather animalistic. He'd had little practice, and as such he wasn't used to using the muscles around his mouth for such strange movement.

"That's alright, Liam. If you want...I could help you sometime."

He watched her shoulders bob up and down. He'd seen other people around the mansion do the same thing, but he still had no idea why. Need to ask what that means. "Would like that. Some of it is confusing."

[Loa]

Alani blushed when Liam said he would like her to help him. When her face got warm, she blushed even more, realizing that he could probable see, even with her tattoos.

Oh God, why am I blushing? I mean...I guess he's cute, but? But what, Alani? Her mouth locked up and made as if she was looking for something in her bag. My heart feels like...Not like that since the Homecoming dance back in Hawaii.

She looked back up at Liam and flushed even more. Oh my God, I have to get out of here before I turn red all over!

"Ummmm...Liam? Do you have a cell phone?"

[Crypt]

Liam watched Alani curiously as she started to flush, suddenly feeling unsure. Had he done something inappropriate? The skies above knew he'd been the cause of plenty of discomfort since his arrival.

Adjusting the bottom of the thick leather around his torso, he glanced around nervously, his toes scratching at the floor. The red on her face was deepening, and he found his eyes drawn back to her as she searched her bag. She seemed... anxious.

He almost tensed when she looked up at him, and his brow furrowed as she flushed even more. He scratched his head in confusion. Part of her abilities?

Her question caught him off guard, and he felt his pockets before remembering that he hadn't even known what a cell phone was until a few months ago. He shook his head, looking at her apologetically.

"Are you all right?" The words made it a question, though his inflection was slightly off. The end of the sentence barely tilted up, but his head tilted slightly as he waited for an answer.