Issue 1 Downtime

After the headmistress' speech, Victor decided to pay the another visit to the refreshments tables. Now he was standing with a burger in each hand and a bottle of water held between two fingers he was enjoying one of the simple joys for just about every teen boy; free junk food. He probably could have waited until he finished one to have gotten the second, but clearly he was saving time by taking a bite out of one and then the other.

"Slow down greedy guts, no one's gonna take 'em away from ya."

Veronica hugged her little brother from behind, the young man standing a good six inches taller than her, though still below average for his age. "Did ya miss me?"

Victor coughed as though he almost choked, and more importantly he almost dropped some of his food as he was taken by surprise. He forced a lump down his throat before glaring back at his older sister.

"We came back on the same plane you brat. We've been apart for like an hour."

"Well once classes start, it'll be almost the same as when I left for school, I'll never see you. I'll be too busy being an awesome scientist superhero and you'll be busy... eating."

Ronnie ducked her head under Vic's arm, the boy having his arms raised from the hug, and moved toward his lunch.

"Don't even start, you know it tastes better if you steal it."

Victor breathed a heavy sigh through his nose and just held one of his burgers at eye-level for his older sister, letting Ronnie take a bite without bothering to protest. Seems he was used to this.

"Aww, how adorable." the young woman with the obvious aquatic mutation manning the refreshment tables says as she watches the brother-sister duo bicker.

"I know, right?" Ronnie said with a mouthful of food as she reached up and pinched Victor's cheek. "He's just the adorablest little cutie patootie."

Victor's cheek was stretched enough to show some of his teeth before he began to slowly mash a burger against his sister's face.

"Don't talk with your mouth full. Or at all."

He seemed more preoccupied with trying to keep himself from being embarrassed than fully taking in Kay's appearance, though eventually his eyes did widen a bit. At least he was polite enough to keep his mouth shut and not blurt out "mermaid" or something.

Kay seems to notice and for a moment she looks like she's about to wince, but then she seems to pull herself together.

"I can get you two more burgers if you want." she chuckles.

Victor felt a bit ashamed of himself for having stared, though whether or not he noticed Kay's reaction wasn't obvious.

"I think we're fine for now, thanks. But um, if you're hungry and lookin' for an excuse to take a break or somethin', we could eat some more."

Ah, awkward teenage banter.

"Nah, I just took over anyway. I'm Kay."

"I'm Veronica!" The older girl said, pushing her brother's offending arm out of her face to offer her hand to the girl. "And this is my little brother, Victor."

"Cool. Nice to meet you both. Are you new this year?"

"Well, kinda." Victor rubbed the back of his head. "I spent some time at the Institute in the States, but things got kinda crazy... but yeah, it's me first day here. Ronnie's a returning uni student though."

"Guess you got your sister to show you around then. But if you have any questions..." she smiles.

"I'm sure she'll forget about me as soon as she starts seein' her old friends again, so I really appreciate the offer, Kay."

"Hey, don't be mean." Ronnie pouted, giving her brother a little shove. "I'm a good big sister to you. I didn't even point out to Kay how much you're blushing right now."

"Right..." she awkwardly chuckles at Ronnie.

Victor's face flushed, the young man now the same height as his sister.

"Did you just get smaller?"

"I'm gonna let you explain this one on yer own, kiddo. I already got the reaction I wanted." Ronnie ruffled her little brother's hair a bit before stepping back. "It was nice meetin' ya Kay! I'll see ya later sometime. Oh, and go easy on him."

Victor's face was obscured by one hand as he rubbed his forehead, before sliding down over his nose and mouth to cup his chin for a moment.

"... you got any brothers or sisters, Kay? 'cause if you don't, I'm gonna consider you to be a very lucky girl."

"I got three brothers who think I'm a monster..." she says, trying not to make it obvious that she's kind of jealous of Vic and Ronnie.

"Well if they think that, they're idiots." Victor crossed his arm like a grumpy little Napoleon.

"Ah, sorry... for, like, the entire last five minutes. She likes to mess with me in front of g- people."

"It's fine, really. I thought it was cute."

Okay, yeah, he was definitely a little shorter than before now.

"You okay? Are you having a power freakout?"

"N-naw, I'm okay. Just sometimes when I get flustered it flares up a bit. Y'see, I... get little. Like, really little. That's my thing. That I do. I'm a little guy who gets littler."

"You're not that little. Before, I mean. Right now you're pretty short." she chuckles.

Vic seemed to lighten up a bit, smiling despite himself. "Thanks, I guess. I'm usually not this bad, Ronnie just knows how to push my buttons."

"I've... been talking about myself a lot. I should be askin' you stuff. Like what it is that you do. I guess that's the big question everyone asks around here, right? Not where yer from or what classes you're in, but what awesome powers you've got."

"Well..." she says, holding up her arms to show the fins running along her lower arm and her webbed fingers. "I swim really well and breathe underwater." she says, deciding that if Vic didn't notice her spines popping out during her talk with Brigid's dad then she wasn't going to bring it up.

Victor watched Kay with widening eyes as she showed off her unique physical attributes.

"That's... frickin' awesome! You could become, like, the BEST marine biologist ever or something. That's like the next best thing to flying."

"It's pretty cool, yeah..." she humbly admits. "And I get to do my Danger Room training in a tropical island sim." she adds less humbly.

"Whelp, I'm jealous. Now I gotta see if I can convince 'em that I need training at an amusement park or somethin'."

"It's pretty sweet. Though I spend a lot of time down where there's not a lot of sun."

"That can be kinda nice though." Vic said before he hopped up to sit on the edge of a nearby picnic table. "I mean, I don't know what it's like, but my folks used to take us to visit family the coast every couple'a summers; sometimes it'd get so foggy that you couldn't even see more than twenty feet away. No one would be out doin' anythin' so it'd be just grey and quiet. It was pretty peaceful, in a weird way. I imagine it'd be like that down there. Except blue instead of grey."

"Yeah, it kinda is. Except it just goes pitch black at some point. And there's some weird stuff down there. Some of them glow so you can tell but mostly it's just that you kinda feel that there's something close to you, you know?"

Victor shivered. "Ooh, that's creepy. That's like livin' in one of those horror games that annoying people with facecams play online."

"They're just fish. I think. They never come close enough to bother me. It was really scary the first couple times but nothing ever happened."

"I dunno. I read online that octopuses are really smart. Like, smarter than dolphins or crows smart."

Vic was quiet for a moment.

"I can't remember where I was goin' with that. But it was spooky."