Logs: Storm, Cessily, Noriko, "Dinosaur"
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Sunday, November 23, 2008, 12:00 AM
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=XS= Storm's Room - Lv 3 - Xavier's School
Spacious and furnished in sable and sand, the room is airy and draws light from the broad glass windows. The decor is subtly modern, suggesting sleek efficiency in its smooth lines. There is art in the room -- minimalist, a single piece of African art on one wall. The clock that hangs above the desk serves as complement to it, blown glass black and marked with golden Roman numerals.
[Exits : [O]ut]
[Players : Storm ]
In the relative peace and quiet of her room, Ororo is taking a break. Although it's not that late, it has been a long evening in, and she looks mostly ready for bed. Dressed in nightclothes that consist of a soft white tanktop and red plaid flannel pants, she leans the tip of her head against the wall and looks out the flung-open window into the wintry dark. The sky is clear and sparked with starlight, and she is inattentive to the cold. There is barely a hint of a breeze, not enough to ruffle the piled papers of her juniors' and seniors' essays laid out half-graded on her desk. She is holding her cell phone loosely in one hand, arm loose at her side while her other hand curls lightly over her forearm. Her air is one of distraction, almost wistful as she lets her thoughts wander through the cold.
Jean has been little seen above ground today. Even the advent of bedtime for one Nate Grey-Summers didn't serve to draw her out of the basement, although that a lad of five would be more interested in a look at the resident velociraptor in trade for storytime is, perhaps, not unsurprising. But even science (-Especially- science, at times.) comes with enforced wait periods, and so soft footfalls sound on the runner carpet in the hall, pausing outside of Ororo's room just ahead of the knock on the door. Jean has lost her heels somewhere on the way up, and stands stocking-foot along with the stylish black dress that's been covered with a lab coat most of the day.
"It's open," Ororo calls, despite physical evidence to the contrary being that the door is shut. She tips her head away from the wall and ruffles her fingertips through the long loose mane of her silver-white hair, blinking away from what reverie held her as she turns in a slow pivot on her bare heel, away from the window.
"Glad to hear it," says Jean, as she brings truth to the statement by letting herself in. There is a smile to her voice, made manifest in flesh as she closes the door behind her and spots the cell phone in the other woman's hand. "Call from Chris?" is wondered, with the affectionate nosiness of a best friend.
Ororo looks down at the phone, and her mouth quirks at one corner. She drifts a few paces away from the window to set it down atop a pile of ungraded essays, and then hitches a hip against the desk, leaning on the balance of her palm against its edge. "You wouldn't think Salem Center to Brooklyn would qualify as a long distance relationship," she answers, humor's drape heavy on her low voice.
"Or possibly the relationship just works best borrowing from 'long distance'." The words could carry a sting, but Jean's voice is rueful and warm, and paired with a crookedly understanding quirk of her mouth. "You're both pretty busy people for the traditional sort of dating, after all."
"You're telling me." Ororo flicks her fingertips against the piled papers, and then moves away from her desk to fold herself down into a seated perch on the bed, hands loosely over her knees as she tips her glance up at Jean. Brows arching slightly, she says, "So."
"A needle pulling--" The joke is aborted too late to spare Ororo from the lame humour, and Jean snags herself a leaning-spot against the wall near the bed. "So," she agrees. "Can you think of a good name for a female velociraptor that's looking more and more like it used to be a dog?"
"I can't remember why, but I seem to think I'm not supposed to name things we find," Ororo says, dredging through her memory as she lifts her hand to press two fingertips against one temple. Smile slow but crooked, she shakes her head slightly as she looks at Jean, brow crinkling under the weight of mild incredulity. "A /dog/."
"Mammalian organ structure on the necropsies the government's done," Jean ticks off on a fingertip, even as her own brows crinkle in a memory-search of her own. "Leonardo Maxwell bringing me a vial of blood that the 'David Black' fellow swears is from a raptor and tested as dog -- although take -that- as you will. The behavior seems to support it, my PCR amplifications for birds and reptiles are all hitting blanks... and she tried to sit when I told her to, and prompty fell over." There's a pause and a crooked smile. "-That- amused Tobias. I've fired off an order for ASAP primer assembly on some dog-specific genes, so I'm not confirming 'til then, but..." Pause. "Woof woof."
Ororo closes her eyes and breathes out a low, "Gods," with more of a buried laugh than a divine invocation in her voice. She shakes her head and then drops her hands again as she opens her eyes. "That would have made Jurassic Park a very different film," she observes, faux mild in tone with a slight uplift of her eyebrows.
"Indeed. Packs of raptors distracted with nothing more than a box of dog treats," Jean muses, a twinkle in eyes that show the bags of too little sleep collecting beneath them. "Although God help Dr. Grant when the supplies ran out. If I can confirm that she should still be a dog, though, that brings about the question of how she came to be a velociraptor. It doesn't really seem like Valkyrie's -style-, you know?"
"How," Ororo repeats, with a slight inclination of her head, and then, with a faint crinkle to her brow she adds in baffled intonation, "not to mention /why/. It seems to me like a great deal of effort to go through, dinosaur manufacturing, and to what purpose?"
"How may lead to who, who might be able to tell us why?" Jean suggests, with a hopeful uptalk to the end of the sentence, and a shake of her head. The hand used to prop herself against the wall lifts, duty being taken over by her shoulder, and she rubs gently at a temple. "Maybe the lone, earnest DHS agent that called me today was right and these -are- terrorist dinosaurs. Maybe they're an escaped science project."
"Or maybe it is a cult. Possibly even a sex cult." Ororo is helpful, her tone shifting bland as she shifts her weight, palms balanced on the slightly slick dark comforter on her bed, head canted to one side as she hides a smile behind the close press of her lips.
"Having -seen- that clip of 'dinosaur' porn that was being snuck around the student emails last year," Jean drawls, looking fine and pained. "I could really have done without those mental images. But in any case, we may have a pet dinosaur, if she -is- a dog underneath."
"I bet that would be a great P.R. campaign. We could put her picture in our brochures." Ororo flops back suddenly onto her bed with a 'whoomph!' of air past her lips, and looks at the ceiling with her hands folded lightly over her stomach. "This job would never work without a sense of wonder and a sense of the ridiculous," she muses.
"I'm vaguely tempted to see if she can be leash trained well enough to take her to that round table meeting," Jean murmurs, and tires of leaning on the wall. Over she crosses to perch at the foot of Ororo's bed. "Be civil in discussion, or we feed you to the velociraptor."
Ororo grins, and rolls her head to the side to look down the length of the bed at her friend. "You concerned about the crazies?" she asks.
"Always," is Jean's answer, given with a sigh, and a dimming of the earlier levity. "I can make them mind, but that brings with it its own set of problems -- I pushed for the telepathy laws, but I now find I may have to see what it says about mitigating circumstances." The levity sparks briefly, but with a black edge to it. " I assume the police would prefer a riot -not- happen. Incidentally, I need to confirm with the NYPD that they'll have some officers nearby, just in case things get too heated."
"I think if we go in with our eyes open we'll be all right," Ororo says thoughtfully. She props herself up partway on her elbow, and purses her lips after she swallows. "But I am sure that the authorities will have their eye on crowd control nonetheless."
"I hope you're right," is Jean's answer, a crack in her outward confidence shown in the safety of the room and the company. The dress is a barrier to being able to tuck her knees up to her chest and hug them, but she can pull them up beneath herself, and does so, looking pensive. "This has to happen. It -needs- to happen. I'm rapidly coming to believe that an outreach center absolutely can't work without community involvement, even if it's just tolerating it. But... this is taking things to where I can't predict the outcome."
Lifting a hand to turn her palm outward, Ororo's smile is slight as she drops it back down to fall over her hip. "Sometimes you have to roll the dice," she says. "If what we do weren't frightening or new, no one would need to do it. So we try, and if we fall down, we get up and try again." She crinkles her nose, grimace wry. "I just hope that there is a minimum of collateral damage to our community outreach."
"God, yes," Jean sighs, and scrubs at one eye with her palm. "So far we're looking at two firebombings and Purgatory's intense security and limited spectrum of interest for openly mutant spots, and the Wee Book Inn and Sweet Basil just being quietly welcoming. The track record is... interesting."
Cheek and jaw balanced on the splay of her fingers, Ororo arches her eyebrows up at Jean. "Oh?"
"Let's just say that I've been looking into ways of stopping a brick through a window," Jean answers, with a soft snort of a laugh. "They're doing interesting things with plastic films. Very popular in Israel and Afghanistan."
"Mmph." Ororo draws a deep breath through her nose, mouth twisting with quiet rue. "Fear finds a way even without bricks," she murmurs, with the faint ripple of a shiver down her spine.
"So the legal morass of my insurance claims for my apartment proves," Jean allows, with another snort. "I know we can't make the place missile-proof, but if we can build it with an eye towards shrugging off the lesser stuff-- hell, that's important just in terms of a space for powers training."
Ororo shifts again, this time hiding her closed eyes in the crook of her elbow. "Maybe we can build below ground," she says. "Or. I don't know. I've never set foot in Purgatory," she admits after a pause, "but I suppose we could go for a girls' night and check out their ... 'digs'." Air quotes!
"I could do with a girls' night," Jean admits, eyes drifting shut for a moment. "I missed my own birthday this year, caught up in--." She doesn't finish, instead studying her hands as if fascinated by the fact that she has a hangnail on her pinkie. "Well," she continues. "I missed it, anyways."
"I didn't do much about mine, either," Ororo recalls dryly, catching her lower lip in her teeth although she still leaves her arm slung over her eyes. Wind curls chill fingers over the sill of the open window, and she mutters something under her breath as it starts to riffle at the pages of piled essays on her desk, and rattles the window to try to close it using the wind without the bother of getting up. It doesn't really work. "--Getting to be around that age where birthdays look to me like tickmarks on a mortality chart more than something to celebrate." Then she laughs suddenly, as though her ears are catching up with her words.
"Bah," says Jean, with a crinkle of her nose. "Looking at the role models for old and powerful mutant we have around, not to mention my grandfather Grey, -I- fully expect to see a hundred. And I insist you be there too, or I'll refuse to speak to you," she informs, with a wag of her finger and an amiable illogic.
"We're almost forty, running around in all that black leather. And I have a cape. I am sure it's not respectable." Ororo sniggers, thoroughly undignified.
"Not by my mother's standards, at least. But we have yet to tip over from the envy of the students to traumatizing them, so..." One hand tips in an even gesture. "Besides. Logan is even older."
Ororo puffs a breath of air past her lips and drops her arm away from her face, slanting a slightly pained look in her friend's direction. She rolls over onto her stomach, kicking her legs up behind her, and folds her arms before her with another snorted breath. "Does that never bother you?"
Jean looks thoughtful a moment, a breath drawn in and slowly exhaled as she studies the wall across from her. "I think it would bother me more if he remembered it all," she admits. "If he had a coherent timeline since the 1880s. As it is, his timeline starts when I was fifteen."
"Mmm." Ororo's noise is one of acknowledgment. She is silent for a moment, thoughts spinning off and away from Jean's romantic life, more towards her own. As the moment slips by in a fresh frisson of chill from outdoors, she rubs at her eyes with thumb and forefinger. "I guess the chronology is not that important."
"It's what you do with the present," Jean agrees, likewise moving from the specific to the more general, or at least more inclusive, of romantic musings. Ororo may be as impervious to the chill as ever, but Jean rubs absently at arms and shoulders as the latest puff of wind peeps in. "I should probably go get some sleep and hope that the dinosaur in the basement doesn't get separation anxiety."
Laugh quiet, Ororo tips her head in acknowledgment. "Sleep well, Jean," she says, a whisper of something pensive still reflected in her expression. She pushes herself up to a more upright position, shaking back her hair. "I'll see you tomorrow. And so, I'm sure, will the dinosaur."
"She's really quite endearing, in her way," Jean reflects, pushing herself to her feet with a few cracks and pops from a spine that's spent too much of the day sitting at a lab bench. "You should come meet her. G'night, Ororo," is bid, and Jean pads her barefoot way back to the door to let herself out.
The kids, at least, would love it.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Sunday, November 23, 2008, 12:55 PM
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The dinosaur looks a little less bad than it might have looked on camera, now--it has drying water around its mouth, and it has collapsed with head in Cessily's lap, rather than on its side, prostrate with the heat, but it still looks a little listless compared to its earlier manner.
Cessily is leaning backwards against the wall, a sack of treats by her side and a large raptor in her lap. She strokes gently over its head, smiling down at the creature. "All better now." She whispers, blowing down at the raptor's noggin', fairly glad its keeping its teeth hidden away.
WHOOSH, click, click, click. This is the sound of a Dr. Grey coming in through the sliding doors of the lab, and making straight for the isolation room. Her expression is not particularly tranquil, although the intense gleam to green eyes dims somewhat as it becomes apparent that the dinosaur -does- look a lot better in person. Thus, her first question to Cessily is less snappish and more dry. "Breaking the dinosaur?"
The dinosaur lifts its head in response to the newcomer, but it knows Jean, so it lays its head back down again, and gives her a simple tail thump.
Silver eyes widen as Jean enters, Cessily peering up at the professor with a little gasp. "Its okay now. I mean, no.. I mean." She pouts slightly, looking rather nervous all of a sudden. "I heard some of the students talking about it. I just wanted to see it for myself. 'Sides, its perfectly safe! It just got a little hot and I fanned it down and now it seems a bit better." Cessily's apologies come like machine gun fire. "I'm really sorry.."
"I see," says Jean, sounding perhaps a touch unconvinced, and crouches down beside Cessily and dino to take a look for herself. "I'm not a veterinarian," she caveats. "But assuming that overheating is the same across higher organisms, I can probably manage -something-." One hand reaches out and over, patting the Silver Student (Galactus not included.) on the shoulder, before it settles to get a feel of the raptor's skin temperature.
The animal it still hot, though not feverish. Its mini-feathers seem to be fairly decent insulators, as the heat is hard to feel unless one is touching bare hide.
Cessily seems to calm down a touch with the tap to her shoulder, each shoulder gently slumping as she relaxes. Her own fingers continue gently stroking along the head of the raptor. "Do we know if its a girl or a boy dino yet?" She asks, raising an eyebrow and peering up at Jean.
"She's a girl," Jean confirms, although her tone is a little bit vague as she traces her fingers to the join of neck to head, and feels around for a carotid pulse. (Even dinosaurs have to have -something- carrying the blood to their head, after all!) "Not that I can tell visually, but her chromosomes are using X/Y sex selection, and she's XX." A pause. "I think she also needs more cooling down. Are you OK to keep holding her?"
In the same way as its temperature, the dinosaur's pulse is a bit fast, located in the same place as other mammals.
"Ah, well hello there dino-ette." Cess chirps at the raptor, before tilting her head at Jean's request. "I'll keep stroking her, yeah. But to be honest, she seems to be the one holding me at the moment. She has a bit of a heavy noggin'." Says the mirrored teen, smiling widely and gently scritching across the raptor's head.
"More confirmation to the theory that she's not -actually- a dinosaur," Jean admits, raising her voice just enough to carry as she drifts into the medbay proper, and pulls on a lab coat over her sweater and jeans. "Evolutionary genetics would expect them either to have Z/W determination, like birds, or something that's temperature sensitive rather than genetic, like a lot of reptiles. X/Y is for mammals." There's the sound of a tap running, as Jean sops disposable compress cloths in a metal bowl of chilled water.
Cessily watches Jean, looking a touch confused at her words, before slowly nodding her head as she starts to understand. "So.. what is she?" She asks, peering down at the possible-dino, gently blowing some of the feathers atop its head. "A mammal-lizard?"
"Well, the current theory leading the pack is that she's a dog that someone's altered to look like a velociraptor on the outside," Jean explains, picking her way back to the isolation room carefully, but not quite able to avoid dripping little splotches of cool water from the bowl. Down she crouches again, talking as she wrings the excess water from one cloth, and then considers what the least-feathery areas of the raptor are. "I can't confirm that until some supplies I've ordered for running a test come in."
The dino leans into scritchings, exposing a belly clear of feathers, helpfully for Jean.
Cess just stares up at Jean when she announces that theory. "A.. dog?" She asks, blinking a few times, before peering down at the raptor. "How would you make a dog look like this? It has sharp teeth and everything. Maybe there is a mutant who can, I dunno, reshape animals?" She actually snickers a touch at her own suggestion, still happily patting the puppyraptor.
"Got it in one," is Jean's answer, crooning a "-Good- girl," to the nameless quasi-dino as the belly is exposed. Cool cloth number one is laid on, followed by a layering of others. "I can actually think of two mutants who could have done something like this. Both with the Brotherhood, and one's dead, though. And the other... isn't likely to make dinosaurs. So it's probably someone new."
The dino wiggles a little, and bites at the closest cloth, but subsides after a moment, since it is feeling more comfortable.
Cess' fingers gently pat at the dino's side, peering up at Jean still. "Um.." Cessily begins, before gaining a touch more confidence, peering down as Jean applies those cool cloths. "I think we should keep her here until we found out who did it." Suggests she, before smiling slightly. "Maybe when we find them, they can make her a dog again."
"Assuming they can. It's often harder to put something back the way it was before... but I admit I felt bad watching her try and s--. S-I-T," Jean opts to spell out, with a glance at the dino. "The tail got in the way, and over she went. Either way, I think I'd like to keep her, though." With a steady pat to the dinosaur's flank, Jean layers on the last cloth of the first set, and then settles back on her haunches to wait for them to dry out.
The dino would look very dog-like, lolling on her back, but for the fact that there are wicked sickle-claws on her back feet, now up in the air. She closes her eyes, just chillin'.
Cessily /beams/. "If she gets to stay, I'll totally take her out for w-a-l-k-s in the garden and feed her and stuff!" She says, rather quickly. "We can get her a big collar. She'll look so cool!" Its clear the prospect of walking the dinosaur has gotten the silver girl more than a tad excited.
"I believe I may have to take Tobias up on his suggestion that I poll the student body for a name," Jean muses, gently reaching over to finger the non-sickle edge of one of the claws with a slight lift of her eyebrows. "The amount of, well, craftsmanship is the best word I can think of, that's been put into making her..."
Cessily nods her head, still gently stroking at the dino. "Well, i'd certainly not have thought she was a dog. So, yeah, I think they did a really good job." She happily scritches at the raptor, before nodding her head again. "Yeah, i'd be all for a poll. Just get some big names on a list and see how many votes each one gets."
Jean takes a moment to peep at the cloths, fingers stuck beneath one edge to see how the skin feels. "Nobody was thinking dogs. Hell," she says, with unteacherly language, "If I didn't have a blood sample, some government reports, and a whole bunch of really very canine behavior sitting here, -I'd- never believe it."
The dino is now apparently feeling well enough to be grumpy with liberties taken, and it rolls over, clothes falling off, and shakes itself. A few pin-feathers float up and away and the drift down from it.
Cess clambers up to her feet once the fauxlociraptor rolls away. Silver hands reach down to gently pat down her lap, most of the water having dried now. "Good girl!" She chirps, patting the raptor on the head with a wide smile. "Well, she seems fairly harmless." Cess says, turning back to Jean. "Will we be allowed to have her wandering the halls?"
"Maybe," Jean says definitively, and collects the fallen cloths. "She's still jumpy around new faces, sudden noises and movements, and for better or for worse, she can do a lot more damage now than she could as a dog." Dropped into the bowl of chilled water, they prompt her to glance at the dino water bowl, assessing the levels in it. "Incidentally," Jean notes, in Teacher Tones, "That's why I'd prefer students not play with her unless there's someone to watch. She'll need some behavioural training before I'd feel comfortable letting her roam around on her own."
The dinosaur has an overheating problem, but also a new fan.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Sunday, November 23, 2008, 5:21 PM
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=XS= Kitchen - Lv 1 - Xavier's School
A relic of Victorian times, this kitchen is vast, with more than one oven and several stainless steel work surfaces taking the space once claimed by coal hoppers, cooking hearths and cast-iron stoves. Walls still done in period plaster and tile, and the floor still the original fieldstone, fluorescent lights have been installed overhead to bring the lighting up to modern level. At meal times, kitchen workers scurry to and fro with pans and food and various other sundry items, under the watchful eye of the aging head cook, but once past, order is restored, with copper-bottomed pans hanging above the kitchen island, and a tray of cold snacks left out for foraging students and staff alike. Folding wood doors screen off a pantry capable of holding food for an large household's weekly meals -- or three days' worth of teenager food.
[Exits : [H]allway and [B]ack [P]atio]
Dinnertime is only a half hour away, and the kitchen at Xavier's is bustling accordingly. The dining room is starting to fill with little knots of solitary students, who just -happen- to have picked spots near the kitchen doors to study, read, or stare intently at the tiny screens of handheld games. There is a reason for this: Tonight, there is roast beef. Jean is not in the dining room. Jean is not helping cook, either. Jean has been portioned out a small corner of counter space for herself, and is waiting obediently under Madame Vargas' watchful eye for a take-away plate. She -will- be eating dinner, she has been informed.
Noriko is not really among the clumps. She has taken a different tactic to waiting for dinner. She has been pacing a seemingly random route around the dining room, coming in and out of doorways as if she were in some Escher painting. With winter weather having settled in, she is a lot more comfortable in the combination of a hoody with sleeves long enough to cover the metal gauntlets on her lower arms and a knit cap. Tufts of blue-dyed hair stick out around the rim of the beanie. Spotting Jean lingering in her corner, she paces in that direction with a rebellious teenager's style of seeking attention. Walk nearby and pretend you don't notice them.
Jean is not entirely alone in her corner. She has got the notepad from the kitchen phone, and a pen to keep her company. She is most decidedly not an artist, but a series of doodles have sprung up while she waits. There is a stick-figure walking a stick-dinosaur on a leash. There is a flower of which an eight year old would be very proud. As Noriko wanders closer, her pen is currently sketching out one of those doodles that starts with a squiggle, and morphs into whatever the mind's eye takes it to. Today, it is a kidney glomerulus. She looks up at the walk-closer-don't-look, and fulfils her part of the attention-seeking by offering a "Hullo, Noriko," of greeting. "Counting down for the roast as well?"
Fulfilled in adult attention, Nori's gaze is granted magnanimously to Jean. "Hi." Her shoulders shrug as she tucks her metal-clad thumbs into the pocket at the front of her sweatshirt. "Kind of. I skipped lunch today because I was all wound up from practice." That admission comes with the heel of one of her shoes scraping a little circle on the floor.
"I sort've forgot that lunch existed, since I was in the middle of science when noon came and went," Jean admits, with not so much sheepishness as self-deprecation, mad scientist in her blue jeans and light grey cable knit sweater. "Yours sounds like a better reason. What have we got you at now?" she wonders, curious about said pratice and its progress.
"I was working on... putting out a steady voltage instead of just going..." Both hands go up in the air and Noriko shakes them around while going, "Aaaah! Bzzzaaaap!"
"Steady and controlled output of any power is tricky to master," Jean murmurs, eyes twinkling at the sound effects. "I'm impressed that you're working on it this quickly." A 'well done' would likely be overkill, as well as running a 50/50 chance of setting off teenaged patronization detectors, but there's a glimmer of pride in her voice as she says it.
"Well, yeah. It isn't like I've mastered it. I pretty much just grunt a lot and it comes out fast anyway." A hand comes up to rub awkwardly at the back of her head, mussing up the blue hair beneath her cap. Nori takes a lean beside Jean's seat, not sitting down, because that wouldn't be cool. "I think doing science is probably better than standing there and electricing a volt-meter-thing."
"Well, if you'd ever like to learn lab work, you're welcome to come down some time," Jean offers, studying her blue haired student sidelong. "But I'd say that being able to ping off a voltmeter simply by thinking about it is pretty cool. How are you doing, though?" Although the question is left ambiguous enough for touchy teens to pick and choose what they say about it, her intonation makes it clear that there's more than just voltages being asked after.
The shrug of Noriko's shoulders is a little thing, small and understated in a way that probably means there is a lot more than is being said. "I'm fine." She looks over toward the kitchen doors, as if expecting a Vargasian rescue.
"Anything I can do to help upgrade that?" Jean wonders, as, oh faithless creature, the cook provides no such rescue. (A suspicious mind might wonder if the telepath and the mama of nine/grandma of twenty are conspiring.) "I'm not going to pry," she assures, tapping her pen lightly against the pad of paper. "But we pretty much turned your life upside down to bring you here."
"I don't know," Nori says, the standard of teenage avoidance. She is looking down at her shoes, the fingers of her gauntlets wiggling slowly where they rest against the front of her sweatshirt. "I just don't even really... know where I stand on anything. There's class and stuff, but... I don't know."
A chair beside Jean's nudges out with the touch of a toe and a slight scraping noise. "I may not have all the answers," she warns. "But if you want to ask a few questions, maybe I could help with the not-knowing."
There is a hesitation of a moment or two before Noriko plops down. She rests her gloved hands on the table, palms down as she looks across at Jean. "I don't even know where to start asking. What hapens with me?"
"Well," says Jean, dropping her hands to rest on the table in front of her. "In the short term, and in the legal term, I'm your legal guardian. So basically, you live here, go to school, hang out, and for the most part you're just like the other kids that are and have been wards of the school. -You- get the added advantage of being able to hit me up for added pocket change, and my mother has also informed me that you're coming to her Thanksgiving Dinner."
Metal-covered fingers drum awkwardly on the tabletop as Noriko nods her head slowly along with that. The last bit makes her look pretty flustered. "So I... just stay with you until school's over? Then I'm on my own, right?" Brace for the worst!
"Only if you want to be," is Jean's answer, with a sidelong look to try and catch Noriko's eye.
Noriko is mostly trying not to look up, because she is hardly feeling certain or confident at the moment. She lets out a little chuckle. "Heh. I'm school property."
"Or perhaps the school is -your- property. Although I suppose you'd have to be Charles' ward for that," Jean muses, eyes twinkling, until the levity passes into something quiet and thoughtful. "In all honesty, Noriko, although I know I can't replace your family, I do want to see you as happy and secure as possible. And I want to see you heading out into the world after you graduate with all the resources and support I can give you."
"I don't miss them," Noriko blurts. There are definite signs of ruffled pride there. And a very, very loud << Except Keitaro, >> in her head. She pushes up a faint little smile. "I said I'm fine anyway. I just need to get used to stuff how it is now."
<< There are ways of getting word around stubborn old men. >> Outwardly, Jean doesn't bat an eye, giving instead a steady nod. "There's varying degrees of fine. But I do want you to know that if you need a chance to get away from the whole institutional feel of living here, just let me know. My mother isn't the only one who'd love to have you to Thanksgiving Dinner."
Nori looks a little hopeful at that telepathic message, nowhere near as good at keeping a poker face as Jean is about it. But she does answer to the spoken words instead, "I don't know if that would be creepy and stuff. I don't wanna be all out of place and make your family feel weird."
"Between my father's grad students, my mother's tendency to acquire foundlings," (Jean shares -nothing- of that with Elaine Grey. Totally.) "And my own history of bringing people home, I think it would be weird if we -didn't- have you, Noriko." Jean is firm on this point, albeit with a twinkle in her eye. "You wouldn't subject my aging parents to weirdness would you?"
Noriko holds up her hands, to show off the palms of the gauntlets and thick dark rubber to keep her from leaking electricity (or sucking it up). "No, there's nothing weird about me." There is also a glance spared upward for her choice of hair dyes.
"Excellent," Jean notes, with deadpan solemnity. "In that case, it is your solemn duty to find a way to eat enough turkey and pecan pie to satisfy my mother."
A hand goes down to Noriko's tummy, which is not quite as skinny as she had been when she was first located running wild through Westchester County. "I don't know... I guess I could try?" she smiles meagerly.
"Very good, soldier," Jean murmurs, with a sketch of a salute. "Together, we shall take that hill of mashed potatos."
Noriko laughs a little, though she is still being fairly awkward and uncertain about things. One can't really blame her. "Yeah, I guess so." She looks toward the door again. Dinner yet?
Dinner indeed. Here comes Madame Vargas, with a plate for Jean, as her helper-bees begin carrying more industrial-sized (If charmingly styled) serving dishes out into the dining room. Shoo, bids the cook. Dr. Grey is to -eat-. With a flash of the little girl she used to be hanging sheepishly in her smile, Jean gives Noriko a small nod of farewell. "I think I've got my orders. Come see me any time, Noriko."
Dinosaurs are not the only things that get to call Xavier's home. Noriko is less inclined to bite, at least.