Issue 1 Downtime

The girl carefully steps past the gates of the institute and anxiously makes her way towards the main building. She whinces everytime she hears other kids playing and when a group of them runs past her she just clutches her bag and shuts her eyes until they passed her. Compared to the other kids she appears almost tall, though most of that is thanks to her feline legs. She keeps walking, slightly under-developed wings firmly folded against her back.

It's the first time she's been away from home and as much as she wanted to go to the Institute, now that she's actually here it's starting to hit her how scary this actually is. She's still weirder than anyone she's seen so far. What if they make fun of her? Or get angry when she inevitably blabs out someone's future? When she makes it to the front doors she swallows hard, looking back the way she came. No, there's not quitting now. If she runs back now her parents won't give her this chance again. She looks up at the mansion doors and hurries inside to find what the letter called 'Orientation'.

Later...

Freshly intimidated by all the new faces and information thrown at her she stands in front of what she was told is her new room. Having always had a room to herself she's not quite sure what to expect and the pit in her stomach doesn't help. She glances at the names under the door number.

Rebecca V.
Samantha M.
Nailah W.

Nervously she knocks on the door before reaching for the handle.

The girl opened the door just before Nailah could open it. She wore a fairly loosely fitting red t-shirt with jeans, and rose-lensed glasses that she was peering over nervously as she looked out from the room. Seeing the tall girl standing there, she stepped rather quickly out of the way, swallowing slightly and smiling weakly. "Hi..." she said quietly, glancing around the room for a moment. Oh no oh no where's Sam... she has friends coming over and she isn't here and now she's looking at me and oh come on, Sam, where are you, I don't know this girl and she's staring at me and I'm doing that deer-in-headlights thing again aren't I, that's probably why she's staring at me...

She forced her smile back on, still speaking quietly. "I don't think I've met you before... I'm Becca," she offered.

Staring was one of those things Nailah was just naturally good at. Especially when she wasn't trying to.

"Oh. Yeah. That's 'cause I'm new! I think this is where I'm supposed to be..." she adds carefully after surprising herself with her initial outburst. Trying not to make it too obvious she throws another look at the sign to make sure she did pick the right door. "I'm Nailah..."

There was the sound of hurried footsteps coming down the hallway, and barreling along was a blonde, arms flailing... or was it a brunette? It certainly seemed to be right now. No, blonde again as she anxiously shoved past Nailah to get into the suite.

"Sorry!" She blurted out, meeting the sphinxling's gaze with mismatched eyes for only a moment before she continued her awkward retreat into the suite's common room, and flopped on the couch.

As she caught her breath, her form seemed to stabilize out, resolving into neither blonde nor brunette, but a short, freckled redhead.

Becca seemed legitimately worried now, enough that she... well, actually spoke. "Sam? Are you okay?" she asked, hurrying over toward her best (read: only) friend.

"Sorry, sorry, just... slipped again. Needed to get my head together."

Nailah leaned back into the doorframe after being half pushed out of the way, half jumping to the side. What the hell just happened?

"Uhm... Hi, I'm Nailah..." she starts again

She looked to the still open door, her eyes going wide. Oh yes, she had just shoved someone out of the way, hadn't she?

"...hi. I'm really sorry for doing that. I ah... I live here."

"I... think I do too." she says, dragging her bag through the door.

Becca, naturally, jumped up and silently started helping pull any other bags she had into the room, like a good little girl.

For a moment Nailah looks really confused until she realizes what Becca is doing. "Oh! Thanks."

"Oh! I didn't know they were going to finally fill that room." She stood, and awkwardly looked around to see if there was anything else to help with.

Becca just smiled a little. "People don't stare if we close the door," she admitted sheepishly.

"Yeah, there's... there's that. This place has been such a zoo since the Professor took the school public."

She looked to Nailah again, then to Nailah's tail, and turned bright red.

"Er... Ididn'tmeanitlikethat..."

"She... ah... probably didn't think that you did," Becca offered, sitting down in a chair off to the side.

"Right... yeah..." she mumbles, her tail awkwardly coiling around her leg to make it stand out less before she turns around to close the door.

"So... welcome to Xavier's. It's not all that scary, I promise."

"Usually," Becca sort of agreed.

"Thanks..." she says, eyeing the other two girls. She had kinda hoped to run into someone different looking but so far everyone she's seen had been pretty normal. I guess she's a little pale and the other one did something weird with her hair? Maybe she should just ask them or was that unpolite?

She realizes she's just standing there and looks for something to say. "How long have you two been here then?"

Becca swallowed, her eyes averted. "A year and a half," she said.

"Yeah, and you ah... kind of got stuck in the shy girls room." She gave a faint smile.

"DOn't worry. MOst of the time you won't even know I'm here." Literally.

"Oh... Well that's probably not too bad. I mean, I've never really been to a boarding school before..." Or a public one even.

"It's pretty nice here, if you don't let the protestors get you down."

"It's not bad!" Becca offered. "And you can go home for holidays. Are... you going to be going home for holidays?"

"Yeah." she says before realizing what Becca was probably really asking. "Had to fight my parents so they'd actually let me go here in the first place."

"Oh, well that's good," Becca said, feeling the little bit of home that had started to well up in her implode upon itself, but out of practice not showing it.

"Mine weren't thrilled about me being so far away either."

Becca let the girls talk, sitting on the couch with her arms wrapped around her knees.

"Kinda glad I am... I was getting kinda sick of how awesome they thought this all is..." she says, glancing down at herself.

"...wait, what?"

"Yeah, that... would get annoying..." Becca said quietly.

"They had a small party when I started growing wings..." she says, having the decency to sound embarassed at least. "I just wanted to go hide somewhere. It was terrible..."

"Your parents are... really, really weird."

And it was a rather good thing that as Nailah was talking, Becca started fading from sight. Because she really didn't want her new roommate to see it as she started very silently crying.

"Yeah..." she says, staring down at her 'feet'.

Samantha looked over to Becca. Or at least where she knew Becca to be.

"Hey," she murmured. "You don't have to do that, Becca. It's just us."

"Hm? OH, I... didn't notice. Can't come back, I just have to wait this one out," she lied. Very quietly.

Nailah blinks at the lie though she plays it off as being surprised at Becca turning invisible, which is the case anyway.

"I'm sorry if I said something wrong...?" she tries to apologize for... something, awkwardly shifting around.

"Everybody has problems with their powers sometimes, here."