Players:
Summary: James and Robyn share their family life among other things with each other.
Date: March 19, 2010
Finding Similarities
Rating: PG
Xavier Mansion - Locker Room
Lockers line half of the room for students to store their gym clothes and uniforms in between training sessions. The room is divided in half, one side for girls and the other for boys. Both sides are identical and have individual showers for students to clean.
After squad practice for Alpha Squadron, Robyn's the only one in the locker room still. He's taken a long shower today, but then he hasn't taken a shower in a couple of days. He's in need of sleep but he doesn't think he'll get much tonight either. He's wearing a pair of black jeans and is standing in front of one of the mirrors with a towel over his shoulders. "God I look tired."
With Spring comes sports. And while James has never considered himself a sports type, he loves leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. And it's this reason that decided to try out for one of X-school's beginner football teams. Afterall, given the fiasco with the hockey club this seemed like as good an option as any. "Yeah, ya do," James says nonchalantly as he walks into the locker room. With a bag filled with borrowed gear he finds his locker and begins to stuff the mess inside. There's a series of crashes as he uses his foot to force everything into place, giving the bag a final kick for good measure. "You alright?" he asks as he wonders over. Clothed in his normal t-shirt and BDU pants, the hyena looks himself over in the mirror as well, showing off all his pearly whites to no one but himself. "Heeeee!"
Looking over at James, Robyn smiles. "Sorry, yeah, I guess I'm okay. I've been working since last night on a project and can't stop so I haven't been sleeping." Or going to class. "I mean, honestly, I'm about as okay as I can be. What about you, you seem like you're in a good mood." HE says going over to pull on his shirt on before looking at all the sports equipment. "Do you play football too?"
James ehhs, "Not yet. But I'm hoping to, maybe. I dunno. Seemed like a good idea. But there's a lot of listening and not enough jumping on people. So, we'll see." He grabs his ears and tugs down on them as he gives his reflection a rather rude look, tongue hanging out of his mouth, "There's like try out and stuff. And then you have to make the cut. I'd probably just get more out of spending my free time in the DR." Or picking on Zack again. He shoots the other boy a look, "What'cha workin' on?"
"Jordan's big on football me…I think I'd break in half." Robyn says as he that skinny art type. Who knows if he's even played touch football. "I don't know if there are try outs here, are they enough kids who are even interesting in a team? Jordan, Dallas, umm….you?" Robyn says sitting down on the bench with a yawn. "I'm making a weird sort of plant holder, you should come up to the art room and check it out, I got the base almost done. Just need to work on the detail and then get the monsters made."
James nods: Monster gooooood. "Oh…I dunno . Will the teacher be around? There was a thing…a thing with a kiln and a can of creamed corn. They think it was me. Sounds like me…might have been me…but I forgot about it if it was." He smirks. Maybe kidding. Maybe not. "Sounds cool though!" He yawns in turn after seeing Robyn do the same, "Gah…cathing!" On the football thing he shrugs, "Jordan, huh? We know what, if anything, anyone is doing to get him back?"
"Oh god, was that you?" Robyn says as he remembers opening the kiln and seeing all that baked corn in there and had to wait to use it for a few days. "And…I don't know James. I don't. I'm not like Rashmi where I'm this endless fountain of hope. I wish I was though. I hate being so…miserable. I want to be myself again."
James steeples his hands, "….meeeeebie….." Eyes shift to the left, and right, "I plead the 5th regardless. I have no recollection of the events on that specific day in question!" He nods deftly. That's his story and he's sticking to it. "I want you to be yourself too…if nothing else just so you're not miserable," the hyena says sympathetically, "And, of course, so he's not trapped with Sinister. Jono's back, though, so I'm sure the teachers are using that to their advantage. Maybe he knows something. Like…where Jordan is being held."
"I don't know, I really don't know how to ask him without bringing up stuff he might not want to talk about. I also wanna ask what exactly happened there, but I can't." Robyn just feels it's invading someone's personal space. "And it's not just Jordan, he's a big part of it but now with Addison and Jono saying he might go crazy with power and kill people? I don't like that. Also…just with being a mutant….it's not as cool as it first seemed."
James phhhhttts, "Yeah, this place sucks. At least once a month one of us is going to turn evil. It's guaranteed. Seriously. I'm not joking. Last month, it was demons. This month it's a geneticist. Next month…who knows." He frowns a little, "I'll ask Jono. I figure I have an in since we tried to kill one another twice now." The statement is said with no hunt of humor, no joke. Just fact. A fact James is still dealing with in his alone time, "If I hear anything, I'l let you know." He crosses his arms and stares off at the lockers, "The thing with Addison sorta freaks me out. It's like Lucas being Neculear powered. Just, with Addison after the other dat I wonder 'when' it's going off."
"I don't know, I wouldn't say it sucks, I mean there is a lot of good. There really is, it's just this life that it seems mutants get sucked into. With the demons and the Sinister and before that the green things that stole our powers and getting turned into a frog and the MGH stuff, it doesn't end and from what Jono says, it's never ends." Robyn says with a shrug as it's all too much for him, just too much chaos. "I mean, this is all in less than a year. April I will have been here a year. And it's like we can't get away, no matter what. But I don't want to be an X-Men like so many people do."
James hmphs, "If there's good. I'm waiting to see it. So far, I think I'm better off back in Indy. At least there I could have sat around waiting to tun back without having to worry about taking pieces out of people." He sticks out his lower jaw and cuts himself off before he gets carried away. Of course, it wouldn't have workout the way he thinks it would have, but it's nice to dream. "Somedays I feel like I'm being controlled by a bunch of really bad writers. And this is some sort of amusing game," James says with some disgust before looking off to the left for a moment before turning back, "But hey…at least we're all in this together. Right? I mean…that 'is' something? Right? I'm not sure."
"It's something." Robyn says moving so that he's lying down on the bench with his hands behind his head. "The good is the friends here. I've never had as many friends and people I care about as I do now. I was a bit of a loner at my last school but I've come out of my shell a bit more here. And I have to go a bit crazy over the art room they have here, I can go nuts." Robyn says giving a small smile. "I dunno, I'm glad we met and that we're friends. I know sound stupid and stuff, but there is some good here. Just…the bad sometimes seems to be so much."
James reaches over and puts his hand on Robyn's shoulder as he looks off, "Yeah…" Which is as close as he's going to get to saying 'yeah Robyn, I appreciate you as a friend too.' He shrugs some, "Before here I had a truck I worked on, a family farm…and not much else. Small town. The whole 'hang out' thing was pretty foreign to me." He recrosses his arms, removing that hand, "Some days being here is a fair trade, somedays not." There's no smile, just a weary voice to go along with the statement.
"Yeah, I know how you feel." Robyn says understanding some of it, maybe not all his his mutation isn't obvious, but he can hear it in James' tone. "Yeah, I know. Sometimes I wish I was back at my old high school, with my old friends and the kids who made fun of me. I could deal with getting pushed around more than this sometimes. I feel like I'm a whole different person than I was."
James screws up his face and gives you a funny-guy look, "I know I'm a whole different guy than I was. But I'm Feeeeeeling Much Better Now." He nodss, and nods, and nods. Getting back onto topic he asks, "What was the last thing you said to your friends?" James considers if for a moment, "For me it was, 'See you in the fall.' Which never happened. Spent the next 1.5 years at home while my parents explained that I had moved to North Dakota to live with an Uncle."
"I didn't really get to say good bye. I explained to them later that I got accepted into some art school." Robyn says with a shrug. "I mean, there were only like three of four of them." All girls actually. "See, I went into a coma for a few days and once recovered I was sent here. I didn't even know I was a mutant for two weeks before coming here. It just happened so fast. My Mom didn't speak to me at first…it was..well, everything worked out I guess." He says looking at James curiously as he mentions that it's been one and a half years. "How long have you been a hyena?"
"Total?" James asks, "Over 2 years. It's been about one and a half since I stopped being able to shift back." James hmmms and thinks about it, "Parents were sorta the same way. Man…they were cheesed off when I couldn't change back anymore. Not that they liked it to begin with. Oyyyyyy…" There's a sound of disgust, but he recovers, "Coma? What happened?"
"Are they better with it? Your parents?" Robyn asks curiously since his got better. "Well, I was getting really bad headaches for months, then one day in German class I just passed out. After a few days a nurse touched me, I drained her psychic energy, I woke up and she ended up in a coma for a few days. I guess that's how my powers manifested. My mom /hates/ people with super powers, so when I turned out to be a mutant, she didn't know how to handle it. But like I said, she's better. I know noone wants to find out they adopted a mutant."
James nods, "What happens when you drain someone, they just go 'ka-put' for a bit? Does it happen automatically?" He guesses not since he touched Robyn's hand, but he looks at the paw pads all the same, "We don't talk much. They're better, but…with all the crap hitting the fan I'm afraid they'll hear it in my voice." He perks a little at the adopted part, "Yeah, same here. But I think I might have already mentioned that. Parents…they get these plans in their heads. Like…I'm gonna' inherit the farm when they buy the farm or something. Then *poof* it's all gone and we feel like it's out fault that out birth parnets had weird genes."
"Only when I need it, it happens automatically. I'm lucky that Jono and Addison have so much of it, it doesn't bother them, but if not the very minimum is someone will get a bad headache." Robyn says as it doesn't sound so horrible, not until he drains to the point of a coma which has only happened once. "I don't know anything about my birth parents, just that out of the blue I seem to have a twin brother. Richard, but he's convinced he's an alien. I don't see him around here much though."
James smiles at the idea that his friends brother is an alien, "Is he like an identical twin? Or just born at the same time sorta twin?" The hyena rests his arms on his legs and shifts his ears a little as he leans over, "I know nothing about mine. I kinda wonder if one of them is like me. If so, maybe I can find them some day and short cut all this learning." He recalls that one night in the library that he thinks Robyn was there for, "I saw in a book that the whole 'werehyena' thing outdates the werewolf so there's gotta be more of me, right? I mean…Mange-Cub has a pack. So, why can't I—somewhere?"
"I think it's an identical twin, I mean, he looks just like me. It's kind of creepy." Robyn says as he hasn't had a ton of chances to interact with him. It's harder cause Richard doesn't believe they're twins. "Mange-Cub?" Robyn doesn't know who or what that is. "Maybe, I dunno James. What if more of you is just, mutants? And your friends here are your pack, I don't know. I don't know much about it." Then about his birth parents, Robyn looks up. "Sometimes I wanna know, but over all, I love my Mom and Dad. They raised me and they taught me that I just need to be myself. They gave me a love of art and music and have always been there. I mean even my Mom got over me being a mutant and we're still close, I just…don't know if I want to know or not." And Robyn is a bit of a parents boy.
James listens, shrugs, and nods for good measure not taking his eyes off a wall, "Maybe." That's about the possibility of a pack and parents being like him, "Dunno." He hates it when people disagree and rain on his little crocuta parade. "Your parents sounds awesome. I like mine. It's just…weird talking with them. They were awlays busy. Which, I kinda liked. Suddenly I was the center of attention, and it wasn't for a good reason." He thinks a little, "Had a grandfather. Wonder what he'd have said about all this."
"They are, I wish I could see them more. I feel bad about that. I know my Mom would freak if I told her half the stuff here and most the time I just want to call her or my Dad and just talk about all my problems but I can't. It's so hard. I just lie and say it's school stress. Because a lot of the times, I just need to hear their voice. And as for grandparents, I only met my grandfather, my Dad's Dad. He died when I was younger." Robyn says notices how he acts to the 'maybe and dunno'. "Who know James, you could have a pack out there. Really, who knows anything, but maybe it's for you to find out."
James listens to the parental details, adding, "Same here. If they knew. I'd be pulled out of here over night. Or someone would have to like…change their minds or something." He frowns a little. Historically, he seems to sound negative about the whole mind tricks thing. Regardless, however, he asks, "How 'is' Addison anyways? I heard he was in the ned bay. THought about a visit. Maybe….with sock puppets!" He grins.
Robyn is about to say something but then he just starts laughing. The thought of James visiting Addison with sock puppets is a good mental image. "Oh man, I'd love to be there when you did that. I guess he's okay, I mean, I've been seeing him once a day to absorb energy from him. Oh man his psychic energy now, with the phoenix force, it's amazing. But Addison, he's okay. One day he's okay then he's just kind of gone. He keeps talking about the warmth of the sun." He looks at James for a bit, not realizing how similar they are in some ways.
James smiles, "If I do it, I'll make sure you're there to keep him from turning me into a monkey or something." He laughs at the thought, but it's not outside the realm he supposes. "Nothing can go nicely around here, you know?" he says with a sigh, "Who next? Rashmi? Lucas? You?" The hyena shrugs his shoulders and taps the hard floor with a toe claw, "Sorry. Mind's wondering."
"I honestly don't know James, I really don't." Robyn whispers looking at the ground. He reaches over to put a hand on James' shoulder. "I really don't James, I just hope that the answer is none of the above." He yawns and stands up. "I think I'm gonna go take a nap for a bit and then spend the night in the art room again. Thanks James, and sorry for being so miserable." He says giving his friend a smile as he gets his bag as he prepares to leave.
James nods and puts his paw on Robyn's hand, "S'Cool. I should be getting to bed or something. And so should you, ya know?" He gives the other boy a friendly smiles as Robyn grabs his things, "And don't worry about it. Sometimes it's good to vent. You know? Just let got for a bit."
