Issue 1 Downtime

A couple of Hispanic students had set up a cultural display booth with samples of sweet bread, statues, and different art work from Mexican artist to showcase The Day of the Dead in the cafeteria. Belle volunteered to take a turn hosting the booth while her peers went off on a short break. Pictures of dead people were on display on top of a very colorful cloth. She talked to the few that stopped by but she mostly spent her time rearranging the flowers that surrounded her father's photo.

(Open to Everyone)

Kay walks into the cafeteria and stops to look at the decorations. She seems somewhat confused.

Belle stops arranging the orange and red imported flowers and turns to the peer, "Hola. I see you are a bit puzzled by our presentation. Today is The Day of the Dead a Mexican tradition here that our campus Spanish club is putting on today."

"I... didn't know we had a Spanish club. Or a Day of the Dead... Is this a Halloween thing?"

"We do. I started it a bit ago. It's more of a sport group for the Spanish speakers on campus," she lifted a sweet roll and offered it to the young woman. "And no it's nothing to do with Halloween really. It's how we honor our dead back in home."

She takes the roll and just kind of holds on to it. "Thanks... So it's like a really cheerful funeral?"

The young girls hands are make Belle raise an eye brow. I wonder if I should have torn pieces off to this girl and tossed them at her!

She smiled at her comment but it appeared as if she was being friendly towards the girl, "Yea like a really cheery funeral. You know like when your white family members die and wanted everyone to get white-girl wasted to celebrate their life? Well with Day of the Dead we skip the booze and continue to remember them over the years with gifts and well...bread!"

"I don't think anybody got wasted when grandpa died..."

"Oh I'm sorry. I thought you from some back-water podunk town...Where are you from young lady?"

Kay's face noticeably sinks.

"Flint... Michigan..."

"Well at least you've been brought to a place of learning and culture so you don't have to keep up your family's tradition of building cars," it was rather a bitchy thing to say and Belle didn't even notice if it might have hurt the young ladies feelings.

For a moment there Kay looks like she's about to cry. Then instead she twitches and bursts into spikes, making her look like a cross between sea urchin and a pufferfish.

Belle takes a confident step back with raising her hand to her heart in an 'I never' fashion as she exclaims, "Young lady!"

Kay looks absolutely mortified, pretty much frozen in place. "I.. I didn't..."

"Of course you didn't...It's okay," Belle says with a genuine hint of actual sincerity but still mostly with annoyance.

"The professors here are really slacking off. Not teaching our youth to control their powers properly," she mutters under her breath.

"It's not that easy..." Kay meekly complains.

"Oh yes it is!" she snaps back at the young woman. "You just have to have a will stronger than your mutation!"

She lightly goes to pat the young woman on the shoulder but recoils as she doesn't wish to prick herself on...the thing.

At that Kay does burst into tears and runs off towards the exit.

Where Alex was currently walking in. "Whoa!" he said, trying to catch himself from falling and to not let her fall over either. "What the hell?"

Kay stumbles back when the door opens and manages to land on her ass despite Alex best efforts. Of course it might be a bad idea to try and hold on to her right now anyway. "N-nothing..." she mumbles, not particularly feeling like crying in front of Alex.

Alex, though, by virtue of not being a moron, noticed that, with her looking like she'd possibly been crying, something might be wrong. "What's wrong?" he asked, frowning.

"Just that Mexican girl being a... being mean." she kind of dodges the question and glances back to where Itzcoatl is standing.

Alex looked over and... blinked. He couldn't help it, she was hot. But then again, she'd also made Kay cry. He shifted metal and reached down to help her up. "What, now we have university bullies to worry about, too?"

"Guess so..."she says, carefully wiping her eye. Which is kind of tricky with all the spikes.

Alex looked over at Belle, partly to give Kay some privacy to deal with awkward eye-wiping problems. "What's the big idea?" he demanded.

Belle was to involved in her own world that she did not notice the boy and continued to pass out flyers and bread to her the students that passed by.

"Bitch," Alex muttered, a bit miffed at being ignored.