Hedgehogs and Karaoke:
From: drgrey@x-school.edu
To: STAFF@listserv.x-school.edu
Subject: "Penance"
We really have to come up with a name for her. And no, Hedgehog Girl isn't going to be it, no matter how apt, thank you very much.
In any case, she seems to be a lot more willing to trust, after a night indoors and after some food. Still verbally uncommunicative, although I haven't done more than a surface scan to see if it's neglect or trauma behind it. It's out of my league anyways. Charles?
But anyways, I went up and did a little initial observation of her over lunch, and then ended up with my own little shadow for the afternoon as a result. She seems to like company, so long as she feels secure, so whether it's desire for human contact or simply curiosity, she at least seems to have some level of raising amongst humans -- no wolf children here, Rahne aside. She also has a very strong negative reaction to the name 'Penance', complete with images of a man who seems to fit the descriptions of our mutant serial killer calling her that. Again, Charles, that's an area of delicacy I leave up to you.
She seems to like drawing scribbles, although the unique structure of her hands means she goes through pencils pretty quickly, but she's quick to pick up on and mimic behaviors, so teaching her some finer control is within the realm of possibility. Once she's a little more comfortable and trusting, I'd like to see about running some medical tests.
Also, the Ivory Bedroom is going to need to be redecorated.
Jean
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 7:58 PM
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=XS= ComSys Room - Lv B3 - Xavier's School
The Communications Systems are located just off to the side of the infamous Danger Room, a plethora of beeping, flashing, ever-working computers used as the X-Men's unofficial headquarters and briefing room, as well as linking into the Danger Room master control. A well-oiled grid of collected global information concerning and helpful to the mutant activist team, and even mutants themselves, displayed in enormous monitors stretched across the walls linked into television broadcasts, with smaller rows of viewscreens stationed between them for relaying security camera images. The whole of the unit seems to run just fine on its own, although occasionally a staff member runs to and fro checking the systems with the area being totally off-limits to students, and most anyone but the X-Men.
[Exits : [H]allway and [D]anger [R]oom]
[Players : Scott ]
From the looks of it, Scott has been here for some time. He has a small remote in hand that likely will need the pause and rewind buttons replaced in short order. A still-frame shot of the two girls in question is splashed along one of the giant wall monitors. The color inversed, and their /three/ assailants show clearly aginst the eerie backdrop. Creed, Alligator, visible on the tape, and giant snake in a wide underwater coil around their feet. Scott, though, has his glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.
From the looks of it, Jean's not unaware that Scott's down in the Comsys Room. It's two coffee mugs she carries with her, rubber stack heels clacking firmly on the cool tiles of the sub-basement hallway, and two of Madame Vargas' lovingly handcrafted pastries that accompany them, all arranged on a tray. Tucked in the crook of her arm, a laptop and a manila folder are along for the ride as well. Clop, clop, clop, and then the smooth schuss of the door sliding open breaks a pause in the rhythm. Silently, watching over his shoulder, she approaches. One coffee mug with a circled-X logo lifts to float over and bump once against his hand, demurely questioning. Drink me?
On go the glasses at the sound, which are settled into place by the time the mug connects with Scott's hand. "Jean, you're a lifesaver. Like you read my mind, or something," he says, an exhausted attempt at humor as his hand coils around the cup, removing it from the air in front of him. He stops to inhale deeply, taking in the scene, before the first drink.
"Well," says Jean, awarding him a small smile for the efforts, "I -am- a telepath, you know." But that said, she says no more, tired unto terseness, if not yet to collapse, and simply takes the next seat over, with laptop and tray arranging themselves where they will. Her own coffee is taken, and she cradles it for a moment's comfort, before her eyes turn again to the screens after a brief, discreet transit across Scott's features. Assessing. "What's on the menu for tonight?"
"We should send your friend a giant chocolate basket or something for Christmas," Scott says, shying away from the image in front of him for the moment. "She did us a favor with this new girl. Have we had any luck getting her name? Or, in a more logical order, have you met her yet?"
"Haven't had a chance yet," Jean admits ruefully. "I've got emails from Leslie sitting unread in my inbox, and I know I've got to get her a proper roommate assigned, but between my second Latin midterm, more mutant mice and Jubilee, I haven't had a chance to go looking. Or reading." Rather than shying away, she seems intrigued by the images on the screen, staring at them intently to see what secrets they might reveal. "What's she like?"
"Quiet," is Scott's first observation. "I don't think she speaks English. And easily spooked. By hands especially, so likely there's abuse somewhere in there. Maybe when her mutation developed. The claws might make book teaching difficult." He sends a mental visual floating into the ether. He stands, crossing the room toward the monitor, his free hand gesturing toward the underwater form. "I'll need the diagnostics to confirm, but it might have been the safeguards kept /this/ from attacking. I'm not sure we'd've been as lucky if it had."
Jean's thoughts focus, a mental pricking of ears as the image is recieved and processed. "If she can get fine control with them, we could try a tablet PC with a touch screen," she suggests, feeding images back down across a mental link old and established, if grown somewhat thinner and unpracticed as of late. "If not... a stylus. It shouldn't be hard to OCR bits of texts as neede-- -Jesus-," The alligator seems to have derailed Jean quite firmly. "Jareth?"
Scott nods, without commenting as the images register. "At my request," he explains, hand moving between the gator and the snake. "Natural enemies. Get people thinking outside of just the human assailants. Not to mention, when we /do/ train younger students, they're much more likely to find a need for their powers against nature than, say, the Brotherhood."
"I had some ideas about setting up a Project Serve-style volunteer mission to do some disaster relief, over either Christmas or spring break," Jean murmurs, a tangented aside over the rim of her coffee mug. "Storm's trip to do some work over in Africa started it. Fancy what, say, Nisa and Averillix could do to help out a drought-stricken region. Although," she admits, "That's not very martial. Have you thought about disaster area scenarios, though? Natural hazards and man-made."
"Once upon a time," Scott says, turning to lean against one of the counter tops and face her. "Not recently, although I did have this idea for a forest fire scenario... Lately, though, I've been focused on...the urgent." His gaze strays over to the image before glancing around for where he left the remote. He returns to his chair, scooping it up, before adjusting his stance in front of the monitor. "Watch this," he says, fast forwarding past the next part until Rogue begins flinging paffs of her own.
"Could be interesting," Jean murmurs further, absently angling her chair to get a better look at the screen. Fine features creased with analytical thought, she leans back to try and bring the screen into sharper focus, eyes narrowing as she watches Rogue begin to show Jubilee's powers. "Play that back again, half speed?" she wonders.
Scott obeys, hitting the rewind button, and waiting for the right moment, then hitting the play button combo for the slowed speed. "Here I've been wracking my brain, trying to figure out how to go about training Rogue. Then they pull one of their crazy stunts," he falls silent as the tell-tale action approachs, waiting for it to pass before picking up his thought. "And it's the very answer I've been looking for."
"What?" Jean wonders, giving Scott a swift look that suggests she's wondering if the crazy hasn't spread a bit. "Have her run around grabbing people's hands and getting copies of powers to play with? I'm not so..." She pauses of a sudden, then stops all together, lips compressing and brows knitting in thought. "If there was a way to do it where she didn't have to hold on quite so long... she's already got her first boyfriend, Logan, Magneto, a couple bits of me, a jerk from her job, and now Jubilee rattling around in there, to varying degrees."
"I think we've /all/ admitted we've taken the wrong approach with Rogue," Scott says, pausing to sip at his drink while it still remains hot. "And I've been trying to figure out how to help her get past her fear of herself. They've just taken the first step. Well, half-step backwards, full step forwards," he corrects himself, collapsing into the chair behind him. "So...we experiment. It's a risk for her, a risk for all of us, but it's the only way to help her." He pauses again, before wondering aloud. "Could the personality bit be a psionic effect?"
"I always -have- been curious to try and establish some activity curves and thresholds for her powers," Jean admits, nibbling at her lower lip and setting down her coffee, the better to think with hands free. As Scott sits, she rises, pacing behind him in a slow and steady slink with hands clasped behind her back, punctuated by the heels of her boots. "I've given up on trying to figure out -how- her powers work, although I think Hank still pokes at theoreticals on occasion. May as well go back to good old empirical observation."
"The nursing staff will, I'm sure, curse me behind my back. Well, maybe to my face, also," Scott concedes, "But I think it's the way to go. At least movement. And, of course, this success will make my little lecture all the more difficult."
"For the sake of the nursing staff's sanity," Jean picks up that conversational thread, chin tipping firmly as she dons Chief Medical Officer Dr. Grey's hat for a moment, "-And- my own, I'd like to see a formal test protocol drawn up before we do anything, assuming Rogue's agreeable. We start small and work up, not pare down, and I want people monitored and teams standing by." Shoulders square, jaw firming, she seems braced for argument on this point -- rather oddly, perhaps, considering who she's talking with.
"Agreed," Scott begins with, before elaborating. "But from the medbay. The last thing we need is for Rogue to feel she's some sort of lab rat. Calculated risks."
"We're all lab rats," Jean points out with a wry laugh and a pause in her pacing to wander back to Scott's chair and rest her hands on the back of it. "Each and every last special snowflake of us. I just try and cram as much as I can into yearly physicals, and spend the rest of the time praying nothing horrible goes wrong. But I'll see what I can dream up for remote monitoring. If we can figure out a safe threshold, and some sort of sliding scale to adjust for power levels, it might be good to give her some basic training in controlling various classes of powers."
"Right as always, of course. And Jubilee? How is she doing?" Scott asks, attempting to reign in his thoughts to match what he actually says aloud. "I haven't been to see her since she woke."
Jean is attempting to keep -her- thoughts from seeing just what Scott's are up to, even as fingers flex against the synthetic cloth of the chair back. "She's... drained," she sums up, deciding against a full medical-technical explanation. "I'd say give her the rest of the week to recover before tossing her into training again -- you remember that it took Logan's healing factor a while to kick back in after Liberty Island?" she questions, mostly rhetorical. A speck of lint on Scott's shoulder seems to have her eye now.
"I'll see if she decides she's ready first. And give a push if I need to," is Scott's solution. "First medbay visit and we haven't even left the mansion." He cranes his neck, to glance up at her. "It's their decision as much as mine. I just hope I eventually stop wondering if it's the /right/ decision."
Jean's fingers twitch. They have, they inform her, had lint-plucking privileges for many years now, and there is lint -right- there. She stills them with a look before meeting Scott's lenses, a small half-smile crooking her lips, equal parts wistful and wry. "It's been eight years since Charles brought the Blackbird home to roost," she points out, "And I still wonder, sometimes."
"You're not very encouraging," Scott says, but there's a slight humor to his tone. "Eight years," he muses. "Just about their ages. Don't they seem so much younger than we were?" And all the while, he remains oblivious to the lint.
Lint. Lintlintlint. Jean focuses her attention firmly on the bridge of Scott's glasses, in lieu of easily-accessible eyes. The lint remains, taunting her. Absently, she clears her throat before focusing again on what's actually being said. "What?" she wonders, before answering anyways. "Oh... a little, I guess. But I -was- a lot older than they are now. And I'd gotten out, gotten away..." Trailing off, she sidesteps and heads back to her chair, pensive for a moment. "I do worry about how they all seem to be coming back. Jackson's doing some TA work now."
"I'd heard," Scott nods, breaking eye contact for a more comfortable neck position looking back in front of him. "Which means we're either doing something really right or something really wrong. I guess the question is /Can/ they make it on their own? Even if they choose not to."
"At least Wesley's still sticking it out. And there are all the others," Jean admits. Rahne, Drake, Sam, Siryn... the names and faces of former students float to the forefront of her mind, on the fringes of projection, a tickle in the mind. "I just worry. We're supposed to teach them integration, so why aren't they integrating, dammit?" she wonders, injecting a little mock-severity into her tone and mustering up a smile.
"It's my warm and personable nature," Scott quips. "Keeps them coming back for more." With a click of the remote, the image on the wall fades. "I'm not sure I like the idea of them using the Danger Room unsupervised," he says, the picture left in his mind's eye bringing back another thought. "But I'm not sure I /should/ be watching over them at every moment. Much as it kills me to say it."
"You're just a big ball of fuzzy kittens inside," Jean agrees, finally giving in to the lint's taunts and reaching over to brush it away with a flick of her fingertips. But the joke is a thin one, and Jean is soon thoughtful again, picking up one of the pastries it to pick at it. "No reason we can't lock the programming down so that only specific authorizations can take the safeties off. They're all legal adults, and trained. We should probably trust them."
Scott glances at her hand as it removes the lint. "Oh, thanks," he comments. "And maybe some training on /how/ to train as well. Each other. Danger Room or otherwise. I've been thinking we should have a meeting with everyone. So we're all on the same page."
Jean shrugs a shoulder at the thanks, idle acknowledgement before offering him the other pastry on its own litle plate. Something involving both cream cheese and a blueberry filling, from the looks of it. "Could be useful," she agrees.
Scott takes the treat, turning it over carefully in his hand, looking at it from the various sides. "It looks too good to eat," he comments. "Then just to figure out people's schedules. It's one thing to make everyone rearrange to train. To listen to me talk..."
"If you don't eat it," Jean informs, her own pastry oozing blueberry blood from savage bite marks, "I will. But why not try something informal? Drinks and discussion, something in the city. We could do karaoke."
Scott laughs out loud at that. "Wait, you're not serious, are you?"
Jean looks completely innocent. Dangerously innocent. She smiles at Scott over her pastry, pretty and sweet.
Scott escapes answering by biting into his pastry. And chewing. Slowly. "Karaoke," he says, shaking his head in amusement. "I don't think medbay has enough beds to handle the heart attacks that would occur."
"I will," Jean promises solemnly. "Bring a portable defibrillator and some adrenaline shots. You know you're just dying to sing 'Mandy'." Nibbling at her own pastry, and then licking clean a fingertip afterwards, she nods towards her laptop. "I have to go do some fishing amongst our sources -- you don't mind a little company down here, do you?"
"I'll be in and out of /there,/" Scott says, with a nod toward the Danger Room, "Checking schematics and such, so if the back and forth and infinate tape looping doesn't distract, then not at all." He makes no comment about the karaoke, but files the idea away for Future Thought.
As if to encourage this line of thought, the mental aether is suddenly alive with the sounds of Barry Manilow live and in concert. Jean herself merely nods and turns to her laptop, which boots up with a pleasant WinXP chiming and starts chugging away importantly as a thumbprint scan lets her into her account.
Scott rolls his eyes, an action that certainly is also conveyed into the aether, even if the movement is blocked. He finishes off the pastry, brushes his hands off, before heading next door to see what there is to see.
Jean and Scott plot. There are sewer alligators, hedgehogs and karaoke involved.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Thursday, November 16, 2006, 10:13 AM
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=XS= Jean's Room - Staff Wing - Lv 3
Large and airy this end of the hall room; the door from the hallway bisects one wall. To the right, an office area complete with overstuffed bookshelves and a desk with computer, docking stations for peripherals, and piles of papers both research and student. To the left, privacy screens in black lacquered wood and white rice paper enclose a sleeping area containing a bedside table and lamp, and a double futon with many pillows and an addictively comfortable duvet. The outer wall features two bay windows with cushioned window seats on either side of a small fieldstone fireplace. An oriental rug stands in front of the hearth, with a small cream coloured sofa perfectly placed for a quiet evening in. There are two additional rugs in the sleeping and office areas, otherwise the parquet floor is bare. Walls hung with gray-blue wallpaper and with acccents in black and white, the simple empty space allows for both visual and mental tranquility, aided and abetted by candles scattered about on black worked-metal stands. A door on the left wall leads to a fairly nice bathroom, and a matching one on the right opens into a large walk-in closet.
[Exits : [O]ut]
Logan arrives from Staff Wing
The sun has risen, but only just; the morning glow touching those windows that face east is still rosy. It is the perfect time of morning - nocturnal animals shuffling back to their dens, diurnal animals just stirring, the world turned to soft, quiet stillness. Also, it is a point in the morning at which no teenaged animals, of any species, tend to be about. If it is before the point where civilized folk would wish to wake, well. More's the pity.
This morning sunrise brings a Logan, rapping once on Jean's door before reaching for the knob. He is wise enough to bring a peace offering in case the telepath is still abed - breakfast, consisting of pancakes, fruit, and most importantly, coffee.
Fortunately, the telepath is not abed. Although trapped behind the door for most of the school's population, the scent of lit candles travels down the hall, sandalwood and other mellow spices. Arranged in a large triangle on sconces, they and the rising sun provide the main light in the room. In the middle of the triangle, Jean sits in a loose lotus position, hands on her thighs with palms up. The morning meditation, an hour early due to sunrise. Around the room, a few things are floating, and the door opens gently at the rapping. Jean doesn't open her eyes, but there is a sense of greeting, restrained and carefully balanced.
Logan smiles, a faint quirk of his lips that is the only external sign of the warmth that meets that sense of greeting. He sets the tray holding food down on coffee table, skirting the satellites orbiting Jean as he makes his way to do so. There's a brief, reflexive glance around for the cat that cohabits the room as he settles against a wall, out of the way.
Curie is happily not floating. Initially curled on the foot of Jean's bed in a puddle of long-haired calico fluff, the middle-aged cat soon pours herself off the bed and twines her way around Logan's ankles. Foods? Foods for the cat? Jean, meanwhile, is slowly unfurling herself back into less meditative mindsets, perking up at the scent of food as much as her kitty. The candles are snuffed, things stop floating, and Jean gets to her feet to follow the tray, wondering "Going to stay and help me eat that?"
His expression that mix of resignation and carefully hidden amusement common to all who adamantly claim they are -not- cat people while being beset by cat, Logan bends to give Curie a hello scritch around the ears. Any cat treats surreptitiously set down to distract the calico from the human food is purely illusory! "I could give you a hand," he allows as he straightens from his cat-greeting duties and moves forward to greet Jean with a quick hello kiss.
Illusory or not, what the treats soon are is -gone-, vanished in a series of wet snarfling sounds on the heels of an imperious miaow. Good human. Curie soon wanders off to set up an angle for sniping any stray pancake bits, leaving the humans to greet each other as Jean wraps a hand briefly behind Logan's head to make the kiss slightly longer than 'quick'. "Good," she pronounces. "That way, we can catch up on the morning news. Or the nightly news -- did you really find our newest student out running around the woods?"
Logan is not displeased by the lengthening of the kiss - especially as, being Jean-initiated, it doesn't convey the risks of coming between a hungry omega mutant and breakfast. "I did," he confirms. The intervening time has been enough to dull his frustration, though the thought that had come with said time has only heightened his sense of disquiet regarding the girl. "Why do we have a mutant hedgehog?"
Eventually, the siren call of the pancakes is too much, even for a Jean amorous in the early morning (Likely a result of being, temporarily, rested.) She sidles over to the food, trailing fingertips across Logan's arm, and by the time she's gotten her pancakes buttered and a peach sliced, she's got enough focus shifted from somatic to cerebral to offer up an intelligent "...what?" at this description of Penance.
Logan rolls one shoulder in a shrug, humour at Jean's response dampened slightly. "It fits. She's got spines." His faint grimace suggests he has had slightly more contact with those than just line of sight. "Does she have a name?"
"Y'know, there's actually a gene complex--" But Jean, despite a mind bright-crackling and full of tangents after an hour's navel gazing, restrains her urge to talk about sonic hedgehog homeoboxes. She has pancakes. And a Logan. She smiles at both before letting her face fall smooth and serious again. "Not that we've been able to figure out. Scott was the one who picked her up, but he didn't have any luck getting her to talk, although she doesn't test out as deaf. It could be trauma, or it could be mutation, or it could just be a language barrier."
Logan's eyes prepare to glaze over at the mention of gene complexes, familiarity with Jean's geeking informing him ahead of time that he will likely not understand the subject matter, despite any attempts to educate him. He is not, however, terribly relieved when the subject switches back to the girl. "It isn't language," he replies quietly, reaching over to snag the second of the two cups of coffee he'd brought up. "We could try testing her - got a varied enough language base here that something should be at least familiar - but I don't think it'd turn anything up. Didn't get the impression she figured any of those strange sounds I was making counted as communication."
"You'd know," Jean murmurs, nodding her head to Logan's expertise in both languages and, potentially, feral states. Her coffee is considered, before she begins slicing the pancake into neat bites, vanishing it with the haste of your average telepath who's just put in an hour's work of getting their mental barriers set for the day. "Charles and I had best take a light hand, if we try and communicate telepathically, then," she muses. "Scott's email says she's very physically skittish, I can only imagine her mind." Cutlery clinks against ceramic, before pausing as Jean dabs on a little more butter.
"Still might be worth giving it a shot. Even if we can't communicate, if something sounds familiar it might give us some idea where the kid comes from." Logan takes a sip of his coffee, eyes and mind both going slightly distant, the latter turning over the previous night's encounter. "Skittish isn't the half of it. She bolted like a spooked cat."
Jean glances involuntarily at Curie, currently curled up at the end of the couch and licking at her back toes in one of the strange stretches that only cats are capable of comfort in. Her lips move soundlessly, before she closes them on what she wa going to say, and instead nibbles some more at some pancakes. "From what little we know of her background, I'd say she's got good reason to. She's tied up with that serial killer that's been loose, the one targeting mutants and stealing their bone marrow?"
"Him." Disgust coats the word, not quite masking the hint of a growl that has crept into Logan's voice. The Pointy Hedgehog Kid is still, after all, just a kid. That makes it worse, somehow, than if she'd been older. "Think that's what fucked her head up?"
"Him, her... it." Statistically, 'him', but Jean spins out other possibilities with a wave of her fork, and frustration clear in her tone at How Little They Know. "All we get is aftermaths. Aftermaths, and a traumatized little girl. I can't say what's wrong with her until I meet her -- maybe not even then -- but it sure can't have helped."
Logan shrugs, dismissing possibility - until they're sure of the correct pronoun, any one will do. "She seems to understand gestures," he offers. The frustration's creeping back in, though it doesn't quite mask the unease that still sits on the surface of his mind, resilient as pond scum. "Or she repeats them, at least."
"Mimicry is good... it shows there's something happening up there," Jean murmurs, and then lapses into mindspeech as good manners war with the need to talk more and the need to eat her peach. (The pancakes are now crumbled crumbs, ruins of their once great empire of breakfast food.) << Damn... I -really- need to book time to see her. Maybe I can throw Latin at Hank or Charles for a day. >>
"You got a grudge against them?" Logan asks, followed after a moment of pondering that particular lesson by, "Or against the kids." He is not eating, and thus has the luxury of speaking aloud. He does take another sip of his coffee, and eyes the fruit speculatively for a moment.
<< Well, unless Latin's another language you don't know where you got it from, >> Jean points out, chewing industriously, and then washing the fruit down with a gulp of coffee. "Then I'm kind've out of options for replacements. -Someone's- got to teach the little darlings their ests from their sunts." Idly, a peach tumbles off the fruit, and bounces over to go join Logan. Apparently, the fruit has considered him, too. "Maybe I can eat lunch in the lab... although the lab might not be too inviting. The barns? Horses are nice and reassuring, right?"
"Not that I know of," Logan replies, regarding Latin. He eyes the visiting peach for a moment, then leans down to pick it up with a shrug. If it -is- self-propelled, well. Mutants, mutant fruit. It fits. "For us? Yeah. Who knows what she thinks of anything. Can't hurt, though. Want an assist?" Because while he has no doubt that Jean could wrangle the girl if she were to spook, wrangling both spooked girl and spooked horses might be a different sort of feat.
"Any time," Jean assures, cutting another slice of her peach and nibbling at it delicately. The kitten-fuzz surface is apparently more manageable in smaller doses. "But for now... I should probably get going. Or get dressed, anyways." A glance downwards takes in scrubs pants and tank top, suitable sleepwear in a room always kept just a few degrees too warm -- Jeans are, after all, very slender things and susceptible to chills as a result. "Our new student goes on the to-do list, since Jubilee and Rogue are Scott's problem, not mine, now that they're both on their feet."
Logan bites into his peach, not worrying about such niceties as slicing. A thin trail of juice's attempted escape is blocked by a quick swipe of his tongue. Mmmm, kittens. "He any closer to figuring out what the hell happened in that simulation?" Because if Jean knows, he doesn't have to track down Scott! He looks Jean over, mock-appraising. "Could always claim it's casual Thursday."
"A little closer," Jean agrees, before tacking on a "You could always ask him," over her shoulder as she rises and pads barefoot towards her bathroom. Because making Logan track down Scott is one of her small pleasures in life. "And hah, that's an idea, but I think I can do without hearing the thoughts of the teenaged male portion of the school if I showed up without a bra on." Volume rising a bit as she vanishes, the door to the bathroom nonetheless remains mostly open. It's a large room, after all, and it's not like Logan has illusions to be shattered if he catches her with a toothbrush in her mouth.
Jean and Logan breakfast. There are hedgehogs here too. Also, cats.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Friday, November 17, 2006, 12:20 PM
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=XS= The Ivory Suite - Visitors' Wing - Lv 3
Long lines of gauzy ivory fabric form the first impression of this room, from the breezy canopy over the queen sized bed with its silvery frosted metal fittings to the light drapes which billow in breezes when the graceful windows have been opened. The furniture present, a dresser and vanity, workstation desk, an entertainment unit and a few chairs in a sitting area, all posesses clean and simple lines, rather Scandinavian in origin. The walls are washed in a watered dove gray, and black trim around the doorways denotes exits to a walk-in closet and a private bathroom.
[Exits : [O]ut]
[Players : Yvette ]
Yvette has apparently tried to sleep at some point, because the bed is rather in a shambles. Pillows cannot withstand the spikes of hair that potrude from Yvette's head, or the roughness of her razor-like skin. The lovely, billowy canopy was a curious object, worthy of her attention and has been pulled down with just shreds hanging off the fittings. A good deal of it is still wrapped around Yvette too, as she sits on the bed and tries to unravels and pick the fabric off.
Undoubtedly, the housekeeping staff will be horrified. More undoubtedly still, someone somewhere within the accounting labyrinths of the Xavier empire will sigh exasperatedly, and cut another check for interior decorating. Jean Grey, however, is so far spared any glimpses of such chaos. Jean, you see, is still marching down the hallway with fine head held high, and her arms full of everything from a sandwich to a thick pad of paper to a little red rubber ball. She doesn't bother to knock at the door before slipping in, not wanting to startle their newest, oddest student. And so there's nothing, and then there's something: the handle turns, the door begins to creak open.
Yvette peers upward curiously toward the door as it opens, for now abandoning the task of unraveling herself from the once-pretty hangings. She sits up, eyes cast firmly on the door, torn between a desire to try and run through it while she can and to see what is coming through. Since she does not make a run for it, the latter wins for now.
Jean at least looks reasonably unthreatening. She leads with the sandwich first, peanut butter and strawberry jam, held out on a little plate as she rounds the door. The rest of her emerges next: one (1) tall redheaded woman with one (1) reassuring smile firmly in place. "Hello," she greets. "My name is Dr. Grey. I'm one of the teachers here."
Yvette watches as the sandwich on a plate enters the room...oh, and then a woman too. Yvette's gaze quickly takes in the red-headed teacher, all the while quiet as ever without even an inkling to her expression that she understood Jean's words. She does slide down from the bed now, and now more eagerly tears at the remainder of the light fabrics that get in her and is soon free of it.
With an eye towards keeping a certain hedgehog containerized for the moment, Jean shuts the door behind her. She approaches the bed, but stops just out of reach, extending the sandwich in front of her as, perhaps, a more welcome ambassador of goodwill. There's a brief look at the tattered curtains, and a pained wince resulting. The cleaning staff is -not- going to be happy. But down she crouches, wiggling the sandwich plate hopefully. "Hungry?" she asks. "I just ate lunch, myself, and thought you might like some." Not expecting a spoken reply, she intead drops mental shields, trading off the sudden inrush of teenaged angst and delight surrounding the mansion mindscape for the chance of picking up something useful from the silent little stranger in front of her. Idly, she toes at a bit of curtain on the floor.
Yvette looks from Jean to the offered sandwhich. with a little bit of wariness, she glances around the room once before her gaze again settles on the food. Lifting a clawed hand, she edges forward and snatches the sandwhich. Her eagerness in doing so is going to leave some deep etches in that plate. Hoarding the food a little, she holds it close and sits down on the floor to examine it briefly before taking a large bite. At the moment, the only thing on her mind would be eating which only brings the reminder of how hungry she is.
Jean rocks back on her heels once the sandwich has been taken, crouching still. "I take it that's a yes," she says, conversation empty and one-sided, but at least something to fill the air. "Now, Professor Logan and Professor Summers both say you don't really talk much," she continues, setting down the pad of paper and resting the red rubber ball on top of it. "But you seem to at least notice what's going on. When you've eaten, I'd like to try a few things and see what else you can notice."
Yvette just continues to eat until her sandwich is all done and only then does she lift her gaze back to Jean with an expectant state. If Jean's ever owned a pet, that kind of stare might be familiar as: more? At least she's got the young mutant's attention.
Somewhere down the hall, a fluffy calico cat turns that look on Jean with great frequency. Jean has come prepared, producing a second sandwich from amongst her pile of things and setting it on the plate as well. This time, however, she doesn't hold it out so far. Gentle empathic projection reinforces what words and a pat at the space beside her convey. "Come and sit beside me, kiddo. I won't hurt you."
Yvette sits up a little at the sight of the second sandwhich but when it's held at bay, she looks back to Jean, a little unsure. Her gaze follows Jean's hand as it pats the ground. It takes her a moment to process but she does move closer to the woman, sits again and repeats the gesture by patting the floor next to her.
"Yes," Jean encourages. "That means 'come and sit here'." She pats the ground beside herself again, shifts to sit where she patted, and then shifts back, beckoning with the sandwich.
Yvette watches this action curiously. Once again she pats the ground and then goes to sit where Jean had previously been and looks up at her. And to the sandwhich, which she has not forgetten.
Food rewards work equally well on animals and teenagers, Jean has found. Yvette's moving to sit beside her results in Yvette becoming the proud owner of a new peanut butter and jam sandwich. "There," awards Jean along with the food. "See? I won't hurt you, and I -will- feed you. Good deal?"
Yvette happily takes the sandwhich, eating it with the same fever as the other. Munch munch munch. She has no problems now with sitting next to Jean although she doesn't pay much attention to the woman until after the food is done. At that point, she appears satisfied and turns her curious gaze back to Jean. Lookie, she's got that funny removable piece of face. Yvette lifts a hand toward Jean's glasses, although only partly so, not actually attempting to touch them, because of Scott's previous reaction.
Jean's reaction isn't quite so alarmed as Scott's, but she does lift her own hand to very carefully take the glasses off and hold them, the better for Yvette to look without touching. "These are glasses," she explains. "They let me read things more easily. Do you know what reading is?"
Yvette smiles happily as she gets the reaction that she wanted from Jean, that being the removal of the glasses. Now she can see the rest of Jean's face better and gives the woman a studying look and without much regard for etiquette or personal space. Once satified with that however, she gets a little bored and begins to looks for something else interesting.
Jean turns her face right and left, the better to be inspected, and then returns the glasses to the bridge of her nose, where they promptly slide downwards. Yvette's wandering interest teases a smile from the mother of a three year old that is Jean, and she abandons an assessment of literacy in favour of picking up the big thick pad of drawing paper. There is also a very large and thick pencil, of the kind meant for first graders with questionable fine motor skills. "Here," she calls, trying to get attention in the face of not knowing a name. "Try this." The pencil is brandished. Jean, inexpertly, draws a circle. The then offers it over for Yvette to try.
Yvette looks back to the teacher as she produces the new objects. She watches the circle being drawn, canting her head curiously at this. It quite obviously makes her happy as she not only smiles, but eagerly taps at the paper pad with her fingers, foregoing the pencil. This however, does not produce a circle, it just tears the paper.
Poor paper. Jean eyes it with mild bemusement, before admitting that "That's a good start... but unless you've got a really weird mutation indeed," Or maybe weird/er/ "You need to use the pencil to draw with." With a crinkling rattle, she flips the torn paper until she finds an intact page, and then holds out the pencil after another demonstration. Triangles, this time. "See? Use the pencil." Carefully, quietly, she projects an image of Yvette using the pencil, telepathy presented as harmlessly as possible.
Yvette frowns at the torn paper and then sits back to wach as Jean finds another page. Again she watches but with less patience this time since she really wants to mark on the page too. The image in her head..now that's different. She quirks a brow, looking around as if expecting to see something to explain it. As there is nothing, she returns her attention to the paper, this time taking the pencil clumsily in her hand. With it, she scribbles lines on the paper successfully.
"Well done!" Jean praises, both for the scribbles, and for the fact that Yvette seems disinclined to freak out at telepathic pictures, at least. "If you can get the hang of that, I think we'll have to try pencil crayons. And I'll have to go get some reading done on early childhood education... how about this?" she wonders next, picking up a second, smaller pencil, and carefully drawing a square. She motions for Yvette to try one too.
Yvette is too content with just her scribbles to bother with trying anything more complicated. She continues with the task, enjoying it completely, until even the thick pencil reaches it's limits from her tight hold and snaps. Yvette drops the remainder of the pencil from her hand, resting her arms in her lap with a sad look toward the paper.
"That's OK," Jean assures. "We can get you more pencils." Possibly, she muses to herself, pencils encased in titanium.
"And we can work on getting some better control of your grip." But for now, another large pencil of the non-titanium kind is prestidigitated and offered over solemnly. "What's your name?" she wonders, aloud but mostly to herself. "We really -can't- call you Hedgehog Girl, I don't care how apt it is."
Oh! More pencil. Yvette reaches over to take the newly offered writing utensil in just the same way as the last. She scoots closer to the paper and ads more scribbles to it. Unfortunately, there is still no acknowlegement of Jean's words or an answer to her name, save for the one word etched into her unusual outft to give any clue on the strange mutant.
Yvette
There is a female shape to the being before you. Her physique is thin and wiry, almost delicate in appearance, but definitely female by the slender curves and modest chest. That noticeable fact might be the only thing to keep one from considering her a person and not just a creature, for the rest of her appearance is not human. She has deep, ruby red colored skin that barley looks like skin at all. It's smooth as glass with a radiance when caught by the light. Her eyes, from the iris and pupil to the sclera are all the same shade of crystal blue. The rest of her facial features match her physique, being small and feminine. Her fingers and toes are long and have grown into flat, sharp claws. Her hair (one might assume it's hair since it begins on her head) is not strands, but several long tendrils, also sharp and pointed.
She is not dressed in clothing, but rather tightly bound straps of thick black leather. They wrap all around her form from her neck, down to her wrists and feet. Each strap has a buckle to keep it attached and tightly bound to her form. They criss-cross each other and, on one strap just below the nape of her neck is a word etched into the leather: Penance.
She is awake and looks alert.
"And 'Penance," Jean murmurs musingly about that lone word. "God knows if that's a name, a nickname, or the clothing label for a fetish gear company. We'll have to think up something, because you're clearly either a feral child, deeply traumatized, or both. Charles'll probably have a better idea than me." In the meantime, Jean rambles. And supplies pencils.
Yvette looks up, for the first time, in reaction to a spoken word. She stops her drawing, letting the deeply etched pencil down as she eyes Jean warily again. The reaction to this 'name' isn't one of warm familiarity, but of fear.
"What's the matter?" Jean questions, aloud, as mental probes slip out and across the space between the minds, tasting that fear and trying to find the source of it. "Penance," she says again, not unkindly, but with definite purpose. "Is that your name? Or is it something else?"
Fear spikes again and in her mind is a somewhat scrambled image. Like a vcr tape that's been played to many times it's fuzzy and jerky, but seems to be a memory none-the-less. 'Penance' spoken in a rough male voice, and hands...hands with visible, sharptoothed mouths on the palms reacting outward toward her and then pain.
Yvette back up, eyes darting toward the door, although she doesn't seem to want to go past Jean in order to get to it.
Jean's reaction is swift, mind reversing from observation to projection in a steadying wash of calm, peace, tranquility. "Shh," she encourages. "It's all right, you're safe here. Shh, there. He's not here, he can't get at you." Firmly, the Phoenix informs that "I won't let him."
Yvette eases off, relaxing her posture and all that returns to her mind is the normal constant 'static'. She still doesn't look quite happy, despite the calm and sits back upon the ground, eyes going back to Jean with a silent stare.
Jean responds by turning the drawing pad to a new page, pristine and white bar for deep indentations from the pencil on upper layers. She offers it back again, with a hairbrained notion about art therapy she'd read in a paper once.
Yvette edges forward to retake the pencil and then settles back to a seated spot in front of the pad to contently produce another scribble masterpiece. It's not quite up to even Nate's par, but it makes her happy to do it.
The little red ball is collected, along with other things. The pencils and paper remain. Jean rises. "I need to get going now," she explains, for far below, the mental sounds of a teenager hobbling to the medbay after doing something Really Dumb are pricking at sixth senses. "But I'm going to leave you that paper and these pencils. And I'll make sure someone comes by to see you later."
Yvette looks up only briefly as Jean stands. She sets the pencil down and stands, moving forward, to follow.
"Ah." Jean glances backwards at her newly-appointed shadow. She stops. "Huh. Well... if you want to come with me you can, but you'll need..." She lapses into images and thoughts, telling a story. Yvette will need to be careful and quiet, where they're going. "Although I guess I could see if Logan or Scott wouldn't mind watching you while I work," she concludes.
Yvette looks around again, still not quite understanding the mental pictures, but, as they don't frighten her, she pays it little mind and patienctly waits to exit thrhough the wall-hole with Jean.
"I guess you're probably tired of being alone anyways," Jean says, once again chatting for two. She steps aside to let Yvette out through the door as well, before heading down the hallway with a bemused shake of her head. "I raised a telekinetic two year old," she tells her. "How much harder can you be?"
Jean gets a new shadow! It is a small and pointy girl, who is definitely no longer in the woods.
To: STAFF@listserv.x-school.edu
Subject: "Penance"
We really have to come up with a name for her. And no, Hedgehog Girl isn't going to be it, no matter how apt, thank you very much.
In any case, she seems to be a lot more willing to trust, after a night indoors and after some food. Still verbally uncommunicative, although I haven't done more than a surface scan to see if it's neglect or trauma behind it. It's out of my league anyways. Charles?
But anyways, I went up and did a little initial observation of her over lunch, and then ended up with my own little shadow for the afternoon as a result. She seems to like company, so long as she feels secure, so whether it's desire for human contact or simply curiosity, she at least seems to have some level of raising amongst humans -- no wolf children here, Rahne aside. She also has a very strong negative reaction to the name 'Penance', complete with images of a man who seems to fit the descriptions of our mutant serial killer calling her that. Again, Charles, that's an area of delicacy I leave up to you.
She seems to like drawing scribbles, although the unique structure of her hands means she goes through pencils pretty quickly, but she's quick to pick up on and mimic behaviors, so teaching her some finer control is within the realm of possibility. Once she's a little more comfortable and trusting, I'd like to see about running some medical tests.
Also, the Ivory Bedroom is going to need to be redecorated.
Jean
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 7:58 PM
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=XS= ComSys Room - Lv B3 - Xavier's School
The Communications Systems are located just off to the side of the infamous Danger Room, a plethora of beeping, flashing, ever-working computers used as the X-Men's unofficial headquarters and briefing room, as well as linking into the Danger Room master control. A well-oiled grid of collected global information concerning and helpful to the mutant activist team, and even mutants themselves, displayed in enormous monitors stretched across the walls linked into television broadcasts, with smaller rows of viewscreens stationed between them for relaying security camera images. The whole of the unit seems to run just fine on its own, although occasionally a staff member runs to and fro checking the systems with the area being totally off-limits to students, and most anyone but the X-Men.
[Exits : [H]allway and [D]anger [R]oom]
[Players : Scott ]
From the looks of it, Scott has been here for some time. He has a small remote in hand that likely will need the pause and rewind buttons replaced in short order. A still-frame shot of the two girls in question is splashed along one of the giant wall monitors. The color inversed, and their /three/ assailants show clearly aginst the eerie backdrop. Creed, Alligator, visible on the tape, and giant snake in a wide underwater coil around their feet. Scott, though, has his glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose and shaking his head.
From the looks of it, Jean's not unaware that Scott's down in the Comsys Room. It's two coffee mugs she carries with her, rubber stack heels clacking firmly on the cool tiles of the sub-basement hallway, and two of Madame Vargas' lovingly handcrafted pastries that accompany them, all arranged on a tray. Tucked in the crook of her arm, a laptop and a manila folder are along for the ride as well. Clop, clop, clop, and then the smooth schuss of the door sliding open breaks a pause in the rhythm. Silently, watching over his shoulder, she approaches. One coffee mug with a circled-X logo lifts to float over and bump once against his hand, demurely questioning. Drink me?
On go the glasses at the sound, which are settled into place by the time the mug connects with Scott's hand. "Jean, you're a lifesaver. Like you read my mind, or something," he says, an exhausted attempt at humor as his hand coils around the cup, removing it from the air in front of him. He stops to inhale deeply, taking in the scene, before the first drink.
"Well," says Jean, awarding him a small smile for the efforts, "I -am- a telepath, you know." But that said, she says no more, tired unto terseness, if not yet to collapse, and simply takes the next seat over, with laptop and tray arranging themselves where they will. Her own coffee is taken, and she cradles it for a moment's comfort, before her eyes turn again to the screens after a brief, discreet transit across Scott's features. Assessing. "What's on the menu for tonight?"
"We should send your friend a giant chocolate basket or something for Christmas," Scott says, shying away from the image in front of him for the moment. "She did us a favor with this new girl. Have we had any luck getting her name? Or, in a more logical order, have you met her yet?"
"Haven't had a chance yet," Jean admits ruefully. "I've got emails from Leslie sitting unread in my inbox, and I know I've got to get her a proper roommate assigned, but between my second Latin midterm, more mutant mice and Jubilee, I haven't had a chance to go looking. Or reading." Rather than shying away, she seems intrigued by the images on the screen, staring at them intently to see what secrets they might reveal. "What's she like?"
"Quiet," is Scott's first observation. "I don't think she speaks English. And easily spooked. By hands especially, so likely there's abuse somewhere in there. Maybe when her mutation developed. The claws might make book teaching difficult." He sends a mental visual floating into the ether. He stands, crossing the room toward the monitor, his free hand gesturing toward the underwater form. "I'll need the diagnostics to confirm, but it might have been the safeguards kept /this/ from attacking. I'm not sure we'd've been as lucky if it had."
Jean's thoughts focus, a mental pricking of ears as the image is recieved and processed. "If she can get fine control with them, we could try a tablet PC with a touch screen," she suggests, feeding images back down across a mental link old and established, if grown somewhat thinner and unpracticed as of late. "If not... a stylus. It shouldn't be hard to OCR bits of texts as neede-- -Jesus-," The alligator seems to have derailed Jean quite firmly. "Jareth?"
Scott nods, without commenting as the images register. "At my request," he explains, hand moving between the gator and the snake. "Natural enemies. Get people thinking outside of just the human assailants. Not to mention, when we /do/ train younger students, they're much more likely to find a need for their powers against nature than, say, the Brotherhood."
"I had some ideas about setting up a Project Serve-style volunteer mission to do some disaster relief, over either Christmas or spring break," Jean murmurs, a tangented aside over the rim of her coffee mug. "Storm's trip to do some work over in Africa started it. Fancy what, say, Nisa and Averillix could do to help out a drought-stricken region. Although," she admits, "That's not very martial. Have you thought about disaster area scenarios, though? Natural hazards and man-made."
"Once upon a time," Scott says, turning to lean against one of the counter tops and face her. "Not recently, although I did have this idea for a forest fire scenario... Lately, though, I've been focused on...the urgent." His gaze strays over to the image before glancing around for where he left the remote. He returns to his chair, scooping it up, before adjusting his stance in front of the monitor. "Watch this," he says, fast forwarding past the next part until Rogue begins flinging paffs of her own.
"Could be interesting," Jean murmurs further, absently angling her chair to get a better look at the screen. Fine features creased with analytical thought, she leans back to try and bring the screen into sharper focus, eyes narrowing as she watches Rogue begin to show Jubilee's powers. "Play that back again, half speed?" she wonders.
Scott obeys, hitting the rewind button, and waiting for the right moment, then hitting the play button combo for the slowed speed. "Here I've been wracking my brain, trying to figure out how to go about training Rogue. Then they pull one of their crazy stunts," he falls silent as the tell-tale action approachs, waiting for it to pass before picking up his thought. "And it's the very answer I've been looking for."
"What?" Jean wonders, giving Scott a swift look that suggests she's wondering if the crazy hasn't spread a bit. "Have her run around grabbing people's hands and getting copies of powers to play with? I'm not so..." She pauses of a sudden, then stops all together, lips compressing and brows knitting in thought. "If there was a way to do it where she didn't have to hold on quite so long... she's already got her first boyfriend, Logan, Magneto, a couple bits of me, a jerk from her job, and now Jubilee rattling around in there, to varying degrees."
"I think we've /all/ admitted we've taken the wrong approach with Rogue," Scott says, pausing to sip at his drink while it still remains hot. "And I've been trying to figure out how to help her get past her fear of herself. They've just taken the first step. Well, half-step backwards, full step forwards," he corrects himself, collapsing into the chair behind him. "So...we experiment. It's a risk for her, a risk for all of us, but it's the only way to help her." He pauses again, before wondering aloud. "Could the personality bit be a psionic effect?"
"I always -have- been curious to try and establish some activity curves and thresholds for her powers," Jean admits, nibbling at her lower lip and setting down her coffee, the better to think with hands free. As Scott sits, she rises, pacing behind him in a slow and steady slink with hands clasped behind her back, punctuated by the heels of her boots. "I've given up on trying to figure out -how- her powers work, although I think Hank still pokes at theoreticals on occasion. May as well go back to good old empirical observation."
"The nursing staff will, I'm sure, curse me behind my back. Well, maybe to my face, also," Scott concedes, "But I think it's the way to go. At least movement. And, of course, this success will make my little lecture all the more difficult."
"For the sake of the nursing staff's sanity," Jean picks up that conversational thread, chin tipping firmly as she dons Chief Medical Officer Dr. Grey's hat for a moment, "-And- my own, I'd like to see a formal test protocol drawn up before we do anything, assuming Rogue's agreeable. We start small and work up, not pare down, and I want people monitored and teams standing by." Shoulders square, jaw firming, she seems braced for argument on this point -- rather oddly, perhaps, considering who she's talking with.
"Agreed," Scott begins with, before elaborating. "But from the medbay. The last thing we need is for Rogue to feel she's some sort of lab rat. Calculated risks."
"We're all lab rats," Jean points out with a wry laugh and a pause in her pacing to wander back to Scott's chair and rest her hands on the back of it. "Each and every last special snowflake of us. I just try and cram as much as I can into yearly physicals, and spend the rest of the time praying nothing horrible goes wrong. But I'll see what I can dream up for remote monitoring. If we can figure out a safe threshold, and some sort of sliding scale to adjust for power levels, it might be good to give her some basic training in controlling various classes of powers."
"Right as always, of course. And Jubilee? How is she doing?" Scott asks, attempting to reign in his thoughts to match what he actually says aloud. "I haven't been to see her since she woke."
Jean is attempting to keep -her- thoughts from seeing just what Scott's are up to, even as fingers flex against the synthetic cloth of the chair back. "She's... drained," she sums up, deciding against a full medical-technical explanation. "I'd say give her the rest of the week to recover before tossing her into training again -- you remember that it took Logan's healing factor a while to kick back in after Liberty Island?" she questions, mostly rhetorical. A speck of lint on Scott's shoulder seems to have her eye now.
"I'll see if she decides she's ready first. And give a push if I need to," is Scott's solution. "First medbay visit and we haven't even left the mansion." He cranes his neck, to glance up at her. "It's their decision as much as mine. I just hope I eventually stop wondering if it's the /right/ decision."
Jean's fingers twitch. They have, they inform her, had lint-plucking privileges for many years now, and there is lint -right- there. She stills them with a look before meeting Scott's lenses, a small half-smile crooking her lips, equal parts wistful and wry. "It's been eight years since Charles brought the Blackbird home to roost," she points out, "And I still wonder, sometimes."
"You're not very encouraging," Scott says, but there's a slight humor to his tone. "Eight years," he muses. "Just about their ages. Don't they seem so much younger than we were?" And all the while, he remains oblivious to the lint.
Lint. Lintlintlint. Jean focuses her attention firmly on the bridge of Scott's glasses, in lieu of easily-accessible eyes. The lint remains, taunting her. Absently, she clears her throat before focusing again on what's actually being said. "What?" she wonders, before answering anyways. "Oh... a little, I guess. But I -was- a lot older than they are now. And I'd gotten out, gotten away..." Trailing off, she sidesteps and heads back to her chair, pensive for a moment. "I do worry about how they all seem to be coming back. Jackson's doing some TA work now."
"I'd heard," Scott nods, breaking eye contact for a more comfortable neck position looking back in front of him. "Which means we're either doing something really right or something really wrong. I guess the question is /Can/ they make it on their own? Even if they choose not to."
"At least Wesley's still sticking it out. And there are all the others," Jean admits. Rahne, Drake, Sam, Siryn... the names and faces of former students float to the forefront of her mind, on the fringes of projection, a tickle in the mind. "I just worry. We're supposed to teach them integration, so why aren't they integrating, dammit?" she wonders, injecting a little mock-severity into her tone and mustering up a smile.
"It's my warm and personable nature," Scott quips. "Keeps them coming back for more." With a click of the remote, the image on the wall fades. "I'm not sure I like the idea of them using the Danger Room unsupervised," he says, the picture left in his mind's eye bringing back another thought. "But I'm not sure I /should/ be watching over them at every moment. Much as it kills me to say it."
"You're just a big ball of fuzzy kittens inside," Jean agrees, finally giving in to the lint's taunts and reaching over to brush it away with a flick of her fingertips. But the joke is a thin one, and Jean is soon thoughtful again, picking up one of the pastries it to pick at it. "No reason we can't lock the programming down so that only specific authorizations can take the safeties off. They're all legal adults, and trained. We should probably trust them."
Scott glances at her hand as it removes the lint. "Oh, thanks," he comments. "And maybe some training on /how/ to train as well. Each other. Danger Room or otherwise. I've been thinking we should have a meeting with everyone. So we're all on the same page."
Jean shrugs a shoulder at the thanks, idle acknowledgement before offering him the other pastry on its own litle plate. Something involving both cream cheese and a blueberry filling, from the looks of it. "Could be useful," she agrees.
Scott takes the treat, turning it over carefully in his hand, looking at it from the various sides. "It looks too good to eat," he comments. "Then just to figure out people's schedules. It's one thing to make everyone rearrange to train. To listen to me talk..."
"If you don't eat it," Jean informs, her own pastry oozing blueberry blood from savage bite marks, "I will. But why not try something informal? Drinks and discussion, something in the city. We could do karaoke."
Scott laughs out loud at that. "Wait, you're not serious, are you?"
Jean looks completely innocent. Dangerously innocent. She smiles at Scott over her pastry, pretty and sweet.
Scott escapes answering by biting into his pastry. And chewing. Slowly. "Karaoke," he says, shaking his head in amusement. "I don't think medbay has enough beds to handle the heart attacks that would occur."
"I will," Jean promises solemnly. "Bring a portable defibrillator and some adrenaline shots. You know you're just dying to sing 'Mandy'." Nibbling at her own pastry, and then licking clean a fingertip afterwards, she nods towards her laptop. "I have to go do some fishing amongst our sources -- you don't mind a little company down here, do you?"
"I'll be in and out of /there,/" Scott says, with a nod toward the Danger Room, "Checking schematics and such, so if the back and forth and infinate tape looping doesn't distract, then not at all." He makes no comment about the karaoke, but files the idea away for Future Thought.
As if to encourage this line of thought, the mental aether is suddenly alive with the sounds of Barry Manilow live and in concert. Jean herself merely nods and turns to her laptop, which boots up with a pleasant WinXP chiming and starts chugging away importantly as a thumbprint scan lets her into her account.
Scott rolls his eyes, an action that certainly is also conveyed into the aether, even if the movement is blocked. He finishes off the pastry, brushes his hands off, before heading next door to see what there is to see.
Jean and Scott plot. There are sewer alligators, hedgehogs and karaoke involved.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Thursday, November 16, 2006, 10:13 AM
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=XS= Jean's Room - Staff Wing - Lv 3
Large and airy this end of the hall room; the door from the hallway bisects one wall. To the right, an office area complete with overstuffed bookshelves and a desk with computer, docking stations for peripherals, and piles of papers both research and student. To the left, privacy screens in black lacquered wood and white rice paper enclose a sleeping area containing a bedside table and lamp, and a double futon with many pillows and an addictively comfortable duvet. The outer wall features two bay windows with cushioned window seats on either side of a small fieldstone fireplace. An oriental rug stands in front of the hearth, with a small cream coloured sofa perfectly placed for a quiet evening in. There are two additional rugs in the sleeping and office areas, otherwise the parquet floor is bare. Walls hung with gray-blue wallpaper and with acccents in black and white, the simple empty space allows for both visual and mental tranquility, aided and abetted by candles scattered about on black worked-metal stands. A door on the left wall leads to a fairly nice bathroom, and a matching one on the right opens into a large walk-in closet.
[Exits : [O]ut]
Logan arrives from Staff Wing
The sun has risen, but only just; the morning glow touching those windows that face east is still rosy. It is the perfect time of morning - nocturnal animals shuffling back to their dens, diurnal animals just stirring, the world turned to soft, quiet stillness. Also, it is a point in the morning at which no teenaged animals, of any species, tend to be about. If it is before the point where civilized folk would wish to wake, well. More's the pity.
This morning sunrise brings a Logan, rapping once on Jean's door before reaching for the knob. He is wise enough to bring a peace offering in case the telepath is still abed - breakfast, consisting of pancakes, fruit, and most importantly, coffee.
Fortunately, the telepath is not abed. Although trapped behind the door for most of the school's population, the scent of lit candles travels down the hall, sandalwood and other mellow spices. Arranged in a large triangle on sconces, they and the rising sun provide the main light in the room. In the middle of the triangle, Jean sits in a loose lotus position, hands on her thighs with palms up. The morning meditation, an hour early due to sunrise. Around the room, a few things are floating, and the door opens gently at the rapping. Jean doesn't open her eyes, but there is a sense of greeting, restrained and carefully balanced.
Logan smiles, a faint quirk of his lips that is the only external sign of the warmth that meets that sense of greeting. He sets the tray holding food down on coffee table, skirting the satellites orbiting Jean as he makes his way to do so. There's a brief, reflexive glance around for the cat that cohabits the room as he settles against a wall, out of the way.
Curie is happily not floating. Initially curled on the foot of Jean's bed in a puddle of long-haired calico fluff, the middle-aged cat soon pours herself off the bed and twines her way around Logan's ankles. Foods? Foods for the cat? Jean, meanwhile, is slowly unfurling herself back into less meditative mindsets, perking up at the scent of food as much as her kitty. The candles are snuffed, things stop floating, and Jean gets to her feet to follow the tray, wondering "Going to stay and help me eat that?"
His expression that mix of resignation and carefully hidden amusement common to all who adamantly claim they are -not- cat people while being beset by cat, Logan bends to give Curie a hello scritch around the ears. Any cat treats surreptitiously set down to distract the calico from the human food is purely illusory! "I could give you a hand," he allows as he straightens from his cat-greeting duties and moves forward to greet Jean with a quick hello kiss.
Illusory or not, what the treats soon are is -gone-, vanished in a series of wet snarfling sounds on the heels of an imperious miaow. Good human. Curie soon wanders off to set up an angle for sniping any stray pancake bits, leaving the humans to greet each other as Jean wraps a hand briefly behind Logan's head to make the kiss slightly longer than 'quick'. "Good," she pronounces. "That way, we can catch up on the morning news. Or the nightly news -- did you really find our newest student out running around the woods?"
Logan is not displeased by the lengthening of the kiss - especially as, being Jean-initiated, it doesn't convey the risks of coming between a hungry omega mutant and breakfast. "I did," he confirms. The intervening time has been enough to dull his frustration, though the thought that had come with said time has only heightened his sense of disquiet regarding the girl. "Why do we have a mutant hedgehog?"
Eventually, the siren call of the pancakes is too much, even for a Jean amorous in the early morning (Likely a result of being, temporarily, rested.) She sidles over to the food, trailing fingertips across Logan's arm, and by the time she's gotten her pancakes buttered and a peach sliced, she's got enough focus shifted from somatic to cerebral to offer up an intelligent "...what?" at this description of Penance.
Logan rolls one shoulder in a shrug, humour at Jean's response dampened slightly. "It fits. She's got spines." His faint grimace suggests he has had slightly more contact with those than just line of sight. "Does she have a name?"
"Y'know, there's actually a gene complex--" But Jean, despite a mind bright-crackling and full of tangents after an hour's navel gazing, restrains her urge to talk about sonic hedgehog homeoboxes. She has pancakes. And a Logan. She smiles at both before letting her face fall smooth and serious again. "Not that we've been able to figure out. Scott was the one who picked her up, but he didn't have any luck getting her to talk, although she doesn't test out as deaf. It could be trauma, or it could be mutation, or it could just be a language barrier."
Logan's eyes prepare to glaze over at the mention of gene complexes, familiarity with Jean's geeking informing him ahead of time that he will likely not understand the subject matter, despite any attempts to educate him. He is not, however, terribly relieved when the subject switches back to the girl. "It isn't language," he replies quietly, reaching over to snag the second of the two cups of coffee he'd brought up. "We could try testing her - got a varied enough language base here that something should be at least familiar - but I don't think it'd turn anything up. Didn't get the impression she figured any of those strange sounds I was making counted as communication."
"You'd know," Jean murmurs, nodding her head to Logan's expertise in both languages and, potentially, feral states. Her coffee is considered, before she begins slicing the pancake into neat bites, vanishing it with the haste of your average telepath who's just put in an hour's work of getting their mental barriers set for the day. "Charles and I had best take a light hand, if we try and communicate telepathically, then," she muses. "Scott's email says she's very physically skittish, I can only imagine her mind." Cutlery clinks against ceramic, before pausing as Jean dabs on a little more butter.
"Still might be worth giving it a shot. Even if we can't communicate, if something sounds familiar it might give us some idea where the kid comes from." Logan takes a sip of his coffee, eyes and mind both going slightly distant, the latter turning over the previous night's encounter. "Skittish isn't the half of it. She bolted like a spooked cat."
Jean glances involuntarily at Curie, currently curled up at the end of the couch and licking at her back toes in one of the strange stretches that only cats are capable of comfort in. Her lips move soundlessly, before she closes them on what she wa going to say, and instead nibbles some more at some pancakes. "From what little we know of her background, I'd say she's got good reason to. She's tied up with that serial killer that's been loose, the one targeting mutants and stealing their bone marrow?"
"Him." Disgust coats the word, not quite masking the hint of a growl that has crept into Logan's voice. The Pointy Hedgehog Kid is still, after all, just a kid. That makes it worse, somehow, than if she'd been older. "Think that's what fucked her head up?"
"Him, her... it." Statistically, 'him', but Jean spins out other possibilities with a wave of her fork, and frustration clear in her tone at How Little They Know. "All we get is aftermaths. Aftermaths, and a traumatized little girl. I can't say what's wrong with her until I meet her -- maybe not even then -- but it sure can't have helped."
Logan shrugs, dismissing possibility - until they're sure of the correct pronoun, any one will do. "She seems to understand gestures," he offers. The frustration's creeping back in, though it doesn't quite mask the unease that still sits on the surface of his mind, resilient as pond scum. "Or she repeats them, at least."
"Mimicry is good... it shows there's something happening up there," Jean murmurs, and then lapses into mindspeech as good manners war with the need to talk more and the need to eat her peach. (The pancakes are now crumbled crumbs, ruins of their once great empire of breakfast food.) << Damn... I -really- need to book time to see her. Maybe I can throw Latin at Hank or Charles for a day. >>
"You got a grudge against them?" Logan asks, followed after a moment of pondering that particular lesson by, "Or against the kids." He is not eating, and thus has the luxury of speaking aloud. He does take another sip of his coffee, and eyes the fruit speculatively for a moment.
<< Well, unless Latin's another language you don't know where you got it from, >> Jean points out, chewing industriously, and then washing the fruit down with a gulp of coffee. "Then I'm kind've out of options for replacements. -Someone's- got to teach the little darlings their ests from their sunts." Idly, a peach tumbles off the fruit, and bounces over to go join Logan. Apparently, the fruit has considered him, too. "Maybe I can eat lunch in the lab... although the lab might not be too inviting. The barns? Horses are nice and reassuring, right?"
"Not that I know of," Logan replies, regarding Latin. He eyes the visiting peach for a moment, then leans down to pick it up with a shrug. If it -is- self-propelled, well. Mutants, mutant fruit. It fits. "For us? Yeah. Who knows what she thinks of anything. Can't hurt, though. Want an assist?" Because while he has no doubt that Jean could wrangle the girl if she were to spook, wrangling both spooked girl and spooked horses might be a different sort of feat.
"Any time," Jean assures, cutting another slice of her peach and nibbling at it delicately. The kitten-fuzz surface is apparently more manageable in smaller doses. "But for now... I should probably get going. Or get dressed, anyways." A glance downwards takes in scrubs pants and tank top, suitable sleepwear in a room always kept just a few degrees too warm -- Jeans are, after all, very slender things and susceptible to chills as a result. "Our new student goes on the to-do list, since Jubilee and Rogue are Scott's problem, not mine, now that they're both on their feet."
Logan bites into his peach, not worrying about such niceties as slicing. A thin trail of juice's attempted escape is blocked by a quick swipe of his tongue. Mmmm, kittens. "He any closer to figuring out what the hell happened in that simulation?" Because if Jean knows, he doesn't have to track down Scott! He looks Jean over, mock-appraising. "Could always claim it's casual Thursday."
"A little closer," Jean agrees, before tacking on a "You could always ask him," over her shoulder as she rises and pads barefoot towards her bathroom. Because making Logan track down Scott is one of her small pleasures in life. "And hah, that's an idea, but I think I can do without hearing the thoughts of the teenaged male portion of the school if I showed up without a bra on." Volume rising a bit as she vanishes, the door to the bathroom nonetheless remains mostly open. It's a large room, after all, and it's not like Logan has illusions to be shattered if he catches her with a toothbrush in her mouth.
Jean and Logan breakfast. There are hedgehogs here too. Also, cats.
X-Men: Movieverse 2 - Friday, November 17, 2006, 12:20 PM
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=XS= The Ivory Suite - Visitors' Wing - Lv 3
Long lines of gauzy ivory fabric form the first impression of this room, from the breezy canopy over the queen sized bed with its silvery frosted metal fittings to the light drapes which billow in breezes when the graceful windows have been opened. The furniture present, a dresser and vanity, workstation desk, an entertainment unit and a few chairs in a sitting area, all posesses clean and simple lines, rather Scandinavian in origin. The walls are washed in a watered dove gray, and black trim around the doorways denotes exits to a walk-in closet and a private bathroom.
[Exits : [O]ut]
[Players : Yvette ]
Yvette has apparently tried to sleep at some point, because the bed is rather in a shambles. Pillows cannot withstand the spikes of hair that potrude from Yvette's head, or the roughness of her razor-like skin. The lovely, billowy canopy was a curious object, worthy of her attention and has been pulled down with just shreds hanging off the fittings. A good deal of it is still wrapped around Yvette too, as she sits on the bed and tries to unravels and pick the fabric off.
Undoubtedly, the housekeeping staff will be horrified. More undoubtedly still, someone somewhere within the accounting labyrinths of the Xavier empire will sigh exasperatedly, and cut another check for interior decorating. Jean Grey, however, is so far spared any glimpses of such chaos. Jean, you see, is still marching down the hallway with fine head held high, and her arms full of everything from a sandwich to a thick pad of paper to a little red rubber ball. She doesn't bother to knock at the door before slipping in, not wanting to startle their newest, oddest student. And so there's nothing, and then there's something: the handle turns, the door begins to creak open.
Yvette peers upward curiously toward the door as it opens, for now abandoning the task of unraveling herself from the once-pretty hangings. She sits up, eyes cast firmly on the door, torn between a desire to try and run through it while she can and to see what is coming through. Since she does not make a run for it, the latter wins for now.
Jean at least looks reasonably unthreatening. She leads with the sandwich first, peanut butter and strawberry jam, held out on a little plate as she rounds the door. The rest of her emerges next: one (1) tall redheaded woman with one (1) reassuring smile firmly in place. "Hello," she greets. "My name is Dr. Grey. I'm one of the teachers here."
Yvette watches as the sandwich on a plate enters the room...oh, and then a woman too. Yvette's gaze quickly takes in the red-headed teacher, all the while quiet as ever without even an inkling to her expression that she understood Jean's words. She does slide down from the bed now, and now more eagerly tears at the remainder of the light fabrics that get in her and is soon free of it.
With an eye towards keeping a certain hedgehog containerized for the moment, Jean shuts the door behind her. She approaches the bed, but stops just out of reach, extending the sandwich in front of her as, perhaps, a more welcome ambassador of goodwill. There's a brief look at the tattered curtains, and a pained wince resulting. The cleaning staff is -not- going to be happy. But down she crouches, wiggling the sandwich plate hopefully. "Hungry?" she asks. "I just ate lunch, myself, and thought you might like some." Not expecting a spoken reply, she intead drops mental shields, trading off the sudden inrush of teenaged angst and delight surrounding the mansion mindscape for the chance of picking up something useful from the silent little stranger in front of her. Idly, she toes at a bit of curtain on the floor.
Yvette looks from Jean to the offered sandwhich. with a little bit of wariness, she glances around the room once before her gaze again settles on the food. Lifting a clawed hand, she edges forward and snatches the sandwhich. Her eagerness in doing so is going to leave some deep etches in that plate. Hoarding the food a little, she holds it close and sits down on the floor to examine it briefly before taking a large bite. At the moment, the only thing on her mind would be eating which only brings the reminder of how hungry she is.
Jean rocks back on her heels once the sandwich has been taken, crouching still. "I take it that's a yes," she says, conversation empty and one-sided, but at least something to fill the air. "Now, Professor Logan and Professor Summers both say you don't really talk much," she continues, setting down the pad of paper and resting the red rubber ball on top of it. "But you seem to at least notice what's going on. When you've eaten, I'd like to try a few things and see what else you can notice."
Yvette just continues to eat until her sandwich is all done and only then does she lift her gaze back to Jean with an expectant state. If Jean's ever owned a pet, that kind of stare might be familiar as: more? At least she's got the young mutant's attention.
Somewhere down the hall, a fluffy calico cat turns that look on Jean with great frequency. Jean has come prepared, producing a second sandwich from amongst her pile of things and setting it on the plate as well. This time, however, she doesn't hold it out so far. Gentle empathic projection reinforces what words and a pat at the space beside her convey. "Come and sit beside me, kiddo. I won't hurt you."
Yvette sits up a little at the sight of the second sandwhich but when it's held at bay, she looks back to Jean, a little unsure. Her gaze follows Jean's hand as it pats the ground. It takes her a moment to process but she does move closer to the woman, sits again and repeats the gesture by patting the floor next to her.
"Yes," Jean encourages. "That means 'come and sit here'." She pats the ground beside herself again, shifts to sit where she patted, and then shifts back, beckoning with the sandwich.
Yvette watches this action curiously. Once again she pats the ground and then goes to sit where Jean had previously been and looks up at her. And to the sandwhich, which she has not forgetten.
Food rewards work equally well on animals and teenagers, Jean has found. Yvette's moving to sit beside her results in Yvette becoming the proud owner of a new peanut butter and jam sandwich. "There," awards Jean along with the food. "See? I won't hurt you, and I -will- feed you. Good deal?"
Yvette happily takes the sandwhich, eating it with the same fever as the other. Munch munch munch. She has no problems now with sitting next to Jean although she doesn't pay much attention to the woman until after the food is done. At that point, she appears satisfied and turns her curious gaze back to Jean. Lookie, she's got that funny removable piece of face. Yvette lifts a hand toward Jean's glasses, although only partly so, not actually attempting to touch them, because of Scott's previous reaction.
Jean's reaction isn't quite so alarmed as Scott's, but she does lift her own hand to very carefully take the glasses off and hold them, the better for Yvette to look without touching. "These are glasses," she explains. "They let me read things more easily. Do you know what reading is?"
Yvette smiles happily as she gets the reaction that she wanted from Jean, that being the removal of the glasses. Now she can see the rest of Jean's face better and gives the woman a studying look and without much regard for etiquette or personal space. Once satified with that however, she gets a little bored and begins to looks for something else interesting.
Jean turns her face right and left, the better to be inspected, and then returns the glasses to the bridge of her nose, where they promptly slide downwards. Yvette's wandering interest teases a smile from the mother of a three year old that is Jean, and she abandons an assessment of literacy in favour of picking up the big thick pad of drawing paper. There is also a very large and thick pencil, of the kind meant for first graders with questionable fine motor skills. "Here," she calls, trying to get attention in the face of not knowing a name. "Try this." The pencil is brandished. Jean, inexpertly, draws a circle. The then offers it over for Yvette to try.
Yvette looks back to the teacher as she produces the new objects. She watches the circle being drawn, canting her head curiously at this. It quite obviously makes her happy as she not only smiles, but eagerly taps at the paper pad with her fingers, foregoing the pencil. This however, does not produce a circle, it just tears the paper.
Poor paper. Jean eyes it with mild bemusement, before admitting that "That's a good start... but unless you've got a really weird mutation indeed," Or maybe weird/er/ "You need to use the pencil to draw with." With a crinkling rattle, she flips the torn paper until she finds an intact page, and then holds out the pencil after another demonstration. Triangles, this time. "See? Use the pencil." Carefully, quietly, she projects an image of Yvette using the pencil, telepathy presented as harmlessly as possible.
Yvette frowns at the torn paper and then sits back to wach as Jean finds another page. Again she watches but with less patience this time since she really wants to mark on the page too. The image in her head..now that's different. She quirks a brow, looking around as if expecting to see something to explain it. As there is nothing, she returns her attention to the paper, this time taking the pencil clumsily in her hand. With it, she scribbles lines on the paper successfully.
"Well done!" Jean praises, both for the scribbles, and for the fact that Yvette seems disinclined to freak out at telepathic pictures, at least. "If you can get the hang of that, I think we'll have to try pencil crayons. And I'll have to go get some reading done on early childhood education... how about this?" she wonders next, picking up a second, smaller pencil, and carefully drawing a square. She motions for Yvette to try one too.
Yvette is too content with just her scribbles to bother with trying anything more complicated. She continues with the task, enjoying it completely, until even the thick pencil reaches it's limits from her tight hold and snaps. Yvette drops the remainder of the pencil from her hand, resting her arms in her lap with a sad look toward the paper.
"That's OK," Jean assures. "We can get you more pencils." Possibly, she muses to herself, pencils encased in titanium.
"And we can work on getting some better control of your grip." But for now, another large pencil of the non-titanium kind is prestidigitated and offered over solemnly. "What's your name?" she wonders, aloud but mostly to herself. "We really -can't- call you Hedgehog Girl, I don't care how apt it is."
Oh! More pencil. Yvette reaches over to take the newly offered writing utensil in just the same way as the last. She scoots closer to the paper and ads more scribbles to it. Unfortunately, there is still no acknowlegement of Jean's words or an answer to her name, save for the one word etched into her unusual outft to give any clue on the strange mutant.
Yvette
There is a female shape to the being before you. Her physique is thin and wiry, almost delicate in appearance, but definitely female by the slender curves and modest chest. That noticeable fact might be the only thing to keep one from considering her a person and not just a creature, for the rest of her appearance is not human. She has deep, ruby red colored skin that barley looks like skin at all. It's smooth as glass with a radiance when caught by the light. Her eyes, from the iris and pupil to the sclera are all the same shade of crystal blue. The rest of her facial features match her physique, being small and feminine. Her fingers and toes are long and have grown into flat, sharp claws. Her hair (one might assume it's hair since it begins on her head) is not strands, but several long tendrils, also sharp and pointed.
She is not dressed in clothing, but rather tightly bound straps of thick black leather. They wrap all around her form from her neck, down to her wrists and feet. Each strap has a buckle to keep it attached and tightly bound to her form. They criss-cross each other and, on one strap just below the nape of her neck is a word etched into the leather: Penance.
She is awake and looks alert.
"And 'Penance," Jean murmurs musingly about that lone word. "God knows if that's a name, a nickname, or the clothing label for a fetish gear company. We'll have to think up something, because you're clearly either a feral child, deeply traumatized, or both. Charles'll probably have a better idea than me." In the meantime, Jean rambles. And supplies pencils.
Yvette looks up, for the first time, in reaction to a spoken word. She stops her drawing, letting the deeply etched pencil down as she eyes Jean warily again. The reaction to this 'name' isn't one of warm familiarity, but of fear.
"What's the matter?" Jean questions, aloud, as mental probes slip out and across the space between the minds, tasting that fear and trying to find the source of it. "Penance," she says again, not unkindly, but with definite purpose. "Is that your name? Or is it something else?"
Fear spikes again and in her mind is a somewhat scrambled image. Like a vcr tape that's been played to many times it's fuzzy and jerky, but seems to be a memory none-the-less. 'Penance' spoken in a rough male voice, and hands...hands with visible, sharptoothed mouths on the palms reacting outward toward her and then pain.
Yvette back up, eyes darting toward the door, although she doesn't seem to want to go past Jean in order to get to it.
Jean's reaction is swift, mind reversing from observation to projection in a steadying wash of calm, peace, tranquility. "Shh," she encourages. "It's all right, you're safe here. Shh, there. He's not here, he can't get at you." Firmly, the Phoenix informs that "I won't let him."
Yvette eases off, relaxing her posture and all that returns to her mind is the normal constant 'static'. She still doesn't look quite happy, despite the calm and sits back upon the ground, eyes going back to Jean with a silent stare.
Jean responds by turning the drawing pad to a new page, pristine and white bar for deep indentations from the pencil on upper layers. She offers it back again, with a hairbrained notion about art therapy she'd read in a paper once.
Yvette edges forward to retake the pencil and then settles back to a seated spot in front of the pad to contently produce another scribble masterpiece. It's not quite up to even Nate's par, but it makes her happy to do it.
The little red ball is collected, along with other things. The pencils and paper remain. Jean rises. "I need to get going now," she explains, for far below, the mental sounds of a teenager hobbling to the medbay after doing something Really Dumb are pricking at sixth senses. "But I'm going to leave you that paper and these pencils. And I'll make sure someone comes by to see you later."
Yvette looks up only briefly as Jean stands. She sets the pencil down and stands, moving forward, to follow.
"Ah." Jean glances backwards at her newly-appointed shadow. She stops. "Huh. Well... if you want to come with me you can, but you'll need..." She lapses into images and thoughts, telling a story. Yvette will need to be careful and quiet, where they're going. "Although I guess I could see if Logan or Scott wouldn't mind watching you while I work," she concludes.
Yvette looks around again, still not quite understanding the mental pictures, but, as they don't frighten her, she pays it little mind and patienctly waits to exit thrhough the wall-hole with Jean.
"I guess you're probably tired of being alone anyways," Jean says, once again chatting for two. She steps aside to let Yvette out through the door as well, before heading down the hallway with a bemused shake of her head. "I raised a telekinetic two year old," she tells her. "How much harder can you be?"
Jean gets a new shadow! It is a small and pointy girl, who is definitely no longer in the woods.