Players:
Summary: Megan comes back to the mansion after her little talk with "Willow" and finds someone to talk to in the library.
Date: October 27, 2010
Log Title: Politics and Memory
Rating: G
Xavier Mansion - Library
Like most Libraries, this one has that respected quite hush about it. A desk to check out books sits next to the door, next to the desk sits a statue of an Orangutan with a sign saying Return your books or else. Row upon row of books goes up and down the room. In the middle of all the shelves are two computers for looking up titles and a group of tables for students to sit and study. Along the back wall are windows with padded window seating for students to read in quiet.
Late evening at the Xavier Institute finds the school a very quiet place. With so many of the students and teachers still missing, the halls are eerily bare and many of the students are nervious. One such student is Megan, the butterfly-winged girl fluttering along the halls about a foot off of the floor. Her shoes are still muddy from being out in the rain earlier, a sight that's rather unusual for the teenager that prefers to take to wing rather than walking from point A to point B. She pushes open the door and flits over toward the political history section of the library, a small frown drawing her brows together as she looks for a specific time period, apparently lost in thought at the moment and not paying attention to anyone, or anything, else.
Rather than snug down in the guest room she's been given, the events of earlier tonight have given Rashmi the urge to study. Hence, the head-high book fort taking up most of one end of one of the tables, in the main area. Lots of dry subjects, it would seem, are the order of the day; Constitutional Law, Post-Renaissance social studies, and a smattering of Arthurian legend analyses. On the top of the fort, a lone, pristine Latin primer that carries its own catalog label, not at all from this library. As the door opens and closes, her head rises, dark eyes peeking out from behind the stack, watching the pink-haired Pixie fluttering among the shelves. There's a long, puzzled moment of silence, then a solicitous clearing of the throat. "…Um… Sorry to bother you, um… are you a… you're a student here, right?"
There's a little squeak of surprise when the voice interupts her thoughts and a little shower of sparkly, pink tinted dust showers down around her, "What?" Megan peeks back around the shelving at the book fort Rashmi is hidden behind, rising a little so that she can get a better view over the top, "Oh, aye. I am." She blinks a couple of times, her Welsh accent noticable even with those few words, "How can I help ye, Miss…" She trails off questioningly, not entirely certain who this woman is that's questioning her.
Rashmi blinks at the reaction, smiling. "Franklin… Rashmi Franklin. Sorry I startled you, just… well I was just curious. I go to school at Barnes now, and my Supernatural Studies teacher *is* a pixie, so um… I… sort of had to ask." Her cheeks flush slightly. "…Sorry. Um… What's your name, then?"
Megan smiles brightly and glances back at the shelves she was looking over for just a moment before she flutters over toward where the other girl is sitting, "A pleasure to meet you, Rashmi." Since she's still in school that means the winged girl doesn't have to call her 'miss', right? She blinks a couple of times at hearing that there's an actual pixie teaching at Barnes, "Really? Like one of the wee folk?" She blushes at the question of her name, "Oh, right! I'm Megan Gwynn." She grins, wrinkling her nose slightly, "They call me Pixie sometimes." For obvious reasons.
"…Well not exactly 'wee,'" Rashmi answers, brow furrowing as she looks at the upper stack of books, distracted for a moment by the possibility that she got a fact mixed up. "*Some* kind of fae with wings and the like. …*Anyway.*" With a shake of the head, she snaps back to the present, smiling up at the hovering mutant. "It's good to meet you, Megan."
Never quite being entirely still in the air, Megan reaches down to slip her muddy shoes off and finally lands, her shoes in one hand and her wings fanning behind her once or twice before going still. At least now she's not bobbing all over the place, "Well that's immense, in any case." She grins again, "Aye, it's a pleasure, Rashmi." She leans on the back of a chair, supporting herself with both hands, "So what brings ye back to Xavier's, if ye be attending Barnes?"
The question earns a small frown, and a deep, heavy sigh, as the redhead leans back in her chair, waving a hand in the vague direction of the dormitories. "…The disappearances, actually… They asked me to come back until stuff goes back to normal, they needed someone who'd be sort of a liason to the students for the staff. I guess I'm really good at helping people feel a little better, and Mr. Parker-Mayfair already has just this *huge* overflow with students needing his help, so…" Rashmi lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. "…Also one of my friends from here is a Barnes student now, and he's disappeared. …Also my powers trainer there. …So SHIELD said 'go ahead, keep us updated regularly as long as you're keeping up with your classes.' And… well… yeah."
"Oh…" Megan's grin fades and she wrinkles her nose at the reminder of the vanishings, "Daw! What a right mess this month has been…" She shakes her head and moves to plop down in the chair, not bothering to ask permission first, "Well it's good to have someone here to help out. It's just so erchyll that it's all gone down like this…" For a moment, she slips into Welsh without really thinking, though she recovers quickly and reverts to English. She cocks her head curiously at hearing that the other girl has both a friend and a teacher that have gone missing, "Who might they be?"
Rashmi chuckles, the brief dip into Welsh not seeming to faze her. "Mike Drakos, he was my friend. His parents pulled him out of here because after the demon thing and Sinister, and that, um… temper tantrum Magneto threw in between, they sort of thought they were out of their minds letting him stay in such a hugely dangerous place. My teacher, um… Agent Bay."
Megan nods, making a face, "Well I'm sorry to hear about yer boyo and teacher. Nothing worse than not knowing…" She pauses for a moment, "I hear that David Alleyne went missing, too." Along with, apparently, half the teaching staff. There's another pause and she looks at the books on the table for a moment, "So what are ye reading about?" It's got to be something big with the book fort that's taken over half of the table.
"I, um… Don't know any David, actually," Rashmi says slowly. "There was a pretty big change in the staff roster just after I left… right before that future-time nonsense." Her nose wrinkles, and she tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, glancing at the books. "This? Um. Schoolwork, mostly. …Well and the Arthurian stuff just cause I can make the excuse, but most of it's for keeping me ahead on my work."
There's another wrinkle of the pink haired girl's nose and she nods, "I think he only came back for the start of this term." She grins and props her chin up on her fists, her elbows resting on the table for support, "Arthurian stuff, 'ay? Tis a shame ye can't visit Wales if ye're interested in the Legends." She shifts so that her chin is resting on just one fist and runs one finger over the top edge of one of the books' covers, "My da probably could of told you all about it."
Rashmi grins. "Yeah, that'd be great… Well… when everyone gets back from wherever they went, I'll have to think about cashing in a promise a friend made to me, maybe visit there. But… yeah. That's not going to happen until this mess is done with. … …Which'll be *great,* just between you and me, I had to get that Selene person to sub in as my Latin teacher while I'm here. Don't get me wrong, I love this school to pieces, but… egh." The redhead gives a full-body shudder. "I try to like people as much as I can. I just… *can't* like her. At all."
Megan positively beams at the prospect of the other girl making a trip to Wales when everyone has come back from… wherever they went… Her smile fades a little at the mention of Selene and the other girl's shudder is echoed, "Arri… She gives me the creeps, that's for sure." She reaches up to tuck a lock of hair behind one ear and shakes her head, glancing back at the books for a moment, "Well, I probably better get on with looking up what Captain America was doing during World War II. I was talking to someone earlier and she said some pretty horrid things about the Avengers. I just wanted to check up on something in case I see her again."
Rashmi blinks at this, frowning. "…She did? That, um… What'd she say? And what'd she look like? I know, funny question, but still… If you haven't been around here awhile, you might have missed something. … …Oh! And when this is all over, maybe I can take you to meet my boss, and you can ask her. … Well. One of them. I do legal assistant stuff part time for, um… She-Hulk. It's pretty wild, honestly. But Captain America… y'know, I think if he wasn't as amazing as he is, there'd probably be a tape running around somewhere of him just telling a reporter 'You know, I punched Hitler once. I punched him right in the face. I think you'll find that pretty much gives me carte blanche for the rest of my life.'"
The girl frowns for a moment, pausing as she's picking up her shoes from where she'd dropped them on the floor beside her chair, "Um… Red hair, taller than me… Made a couple of umbrellas out of crystal, or somesuch. Seemed real familiar…" Megan shrugs, "She said her name was Willow, but it seemed to have been yanked right out of thin air." Her eyes widen slightly at the thought of getting to meet She-Hulk and maybe some of the other Avengers, "Oh that would be so mega!" The younger teen giggles at the thought of Captain America potentially having told a reporter something like that and nods, "I though it was something like that, but…" She wrinkles her nose again, "She seemed really insistant that they were all evil." There's another little pause and a deep frown creases her brow, "She comparied Iron Man and Captain America both to Hitler." And that was at least vaguely offensive!
It takes a few moment, but one can almost watch the thought being turned over in her head, and slammed home like the final piece of a puzzle lock. "…Oh god… Envy…" Her face pales for a moment, and she shakes her head. "Yeah, um… you're going to want to stay away from her if you possibly can, Megan… She's like… Well okay you know how people talk about Magneto? Well, that's how crazy she *actually* is. She's seriously bad news, I'm glad you didn't do anything to make her mad… like, y'know, stop her from killing normal people."
"Envy?" With a name like that, the mystery woman has to be someone that's not nice, "Why'm I not surprised that she's someone that would kill normal people?" Megan makes a face and sighs, "I wish I'd known… I'd have called the constable on her." She shakes her head again, wings fluttering once or twice, "At least all she wanted to do was talk. And she did give me one of those twenty kilo umbrellas to try to stay dry while we were talking." Twenty kilos is likely an exaduration, though she likely felt like it weighed that much at the time.
Rashmi shakes her head. "The police are pretty terrified of her, honestly… The only reason I got away is because, well… One of the perks of being She-Hulk's legal assistant is having her phone number, right? But yeah… I'm pretty glad she just wanted to talk too… That'd be the *last* thing I'd want anyone to deal with with all this going on, y'know? Bad enough with the Game going on, I'm sort of shocked they let you go to the City at all."
Megan shakes her head and sighs, "She didn't seem to have a very high opinion of them, that's for sure." She can't help but giggle softly at the thought of the other mutant teen having She-Hulk's phone number and nods, "Aye, I could see that as a nice perk of the job." There's the slightest of pauses, "I had something I needed to pick up for a project I've been working on. That's the only reason I went into the City. It's a wee bit hard to draw when you've run out of paper."
Rashmi pauses for a moment, blinking owlishly. "…Um… You… *do* know there's a whole big art room, right…?"
Megan gives the older girl a blank stare for a moment and finally grimaces, "I totally forgot all about that." She blushes faintly, managing to look pink from head to toe, other than her black and Hulk-green clothes, "I'm still not used to not having to buy my own supplies, I guess." She shrugs, "Nothing happened, though." For which everyone can be grateful.
Rashmi chuckles, reaching out to pat the girl's arm. "It's okay… I'm kind of that way too. Part of it's my power's fault, it's *really* hard not to be scatterbrained if I'm not paying really close attention."
Megan's excuse is… she's a butterfly? Or something like that, anyway. She gives the other girl a faintly curious look but doesn't ask the obvious question: What are her powers? Not right now at least. She does give a little apologetic smile and sigh, "Thanks. I'm not normally that forgetful." Though when she is, it's epic. She runs her free hand through her hair, "Most of the time, I mess other people up instead…" She's the faintest bit sheepish when she admits that.
A slightly raised eyebrow answers the look, her smile widening slightly. "I've seen some pretty wild powers while I've been here… I'm going to guess that, um… well, wings, hair and eyes aside, yours is that glittery stuff?" Up above Rashmi's head, a half-dozen faintly glowing spheres fade into view, lazily orbiting the air above her. "…That's mine. But the way my brain works had to change a little to fit it… so I can control them all separately at the same time, but, when I'm not, I sort of end up multitasking a lot in my head. … …Which actually sounds neater than it really is."
The winged mutant giggles and nods, "Aye. It's… Well, it's like pixie dust. Anyone that I toss it at ends up seeing things that aren't there." She pauses for a moment, trying to think up a way to explain it, "Kind of like a really bad acid trip, I guess. That's what a buttie described it as once, anyway." She grins a little wider when the spheres fade in, "They're right lush, aren't they?" She grimaces faintly in sympathy at a power not being as cool as it sounds, "But it must be useful, ay?" Or so she would think, anyway.
"Well, the thinking part is useful, yeah… That's kind of how I've managed to juggle everything I normally do, even though the medic at Barnes thought I was having a seizure like *all the time* before I told him about them… But those? They're pretty much just for beating stuff up, honestly… Which would be great and all, but when you've grown up on stories of like great statesmen and Gandhi and Mother Teresa and all these wonderful people, it's, well…" Rashmi shrugs, taking in a breath. "Saved my life a few times, so I can't say I really hate it. Just it seems sort of weird to me."
There's an incredulous shake of Megan's head at the medic thinking the other girl was having seisures, "That sounds… Uncomfortable." To say the least. She leaves her shoes where they are and leans on the table again, "So you don't like fighting, then?" That seems slightly odd to the pink haired girl, "All I can really do is distract people and fly out of the way, but it's been enough so far." She's still alive, after all, so something has worked.
Rashmi lifts a shoulder. "I've wanted to be a lawyer and probably a politician since before high school," she admits. "I'd be a lot happier if I could just argue everything into the ground, honestly. It'd be *nice,* but, I'm not nearly silly enough to think I can manage it anywhere near my own lifetime. So, I just have to be as good with my powers as I possibly can, so if I *don't* have a choice, I can at least not make mistakes."
Megan nods, "That's neat. I still don't really know what I want to be. Right now, I'd have to say that I'd like to be an X-man, but…" She shrugs, "Well, I don't guess that's very likely until I learn to fight better." Because just getting her opponent high and then flying away isn't going to solve anything. She cocks her head slightly to one side, "So you'd want to be the first mutant president if you could manage it?" It's an honest question, at least, and not said with any malace.
Rashmi chuckles. "Senator, at least. President…? Maybe. But there's definitely stuff I'd want to do before I take my shot at that… Did you know, President is like the last job anyone ever has?"
The younger girl shakes her head, her eyes widening slightly at that bit of information, "No, I didn't…" Megan shrugs, "I thought ye could still, maybe, do something political after." She really doesn't know very much about politics, for all that she believes in the general 'rightness' of the government. Or, at least, this government.
"Well, you *could,* but unless it's something independent like writing, there's not exactly much of a need." A wide grin spreads over Rashmi's face. "I mean, imagine putting that on your resume! 'Hi, I'm Rashmi Franklin, and I'd like to be hired by your company, probably in middle-management under ten or twelve people. Prior Experience? Well, there was that four years where I ran the country, but I'm *really* excited to work for you.'"
Megan can't resist giggling about that, "I never thought of it that way. It would be really intimidating to the people ye're working for, I'd imagine." Talk about over qualified! She shakes her head, "Well, maybe when you're old and wrinkley you can do it?" It's a half joking suggestion, since thirty is 'old and wrinkley' to the seventeen year old. She giggles again and leans back in her chair, spreading her wings so that she doesn't crush them and pulling her feet up into the chair to wrap her arms around her knees, "Could prove right funny, if ye ask me."
"It *would* be funny, sort of," Rashmi admits. "But probably really embarrasing for the other people… But yeah. I could do more political stuff, but there's no money to be made there anyway. In fact, it's kind of a crime to be using campaign funds for anything *not* part of the campaigning. But that's years away anyway," she says, waving a hand and settling back. "First I have to get my Bachelor's and sit the bar, probably practice for twenty years or so, I can't even *run* for any kind of office until I'm at least thirty."
"Well, aye… It might be at that, I suppose." Megan just shrugs that thought off, though, "And it's not bad to work for a while first. Politics is always years away." Just like Rashmi said. She shifts her position slightly, apparently unable to be still for any solid length of time at the moment. Quite likely just because she's at least a little tired, since it's already pretty late.
Rashmi bobs her head, an eyebrow twitching up as she notes Megan's posture shifting. "It isn't, yeah… Um. How about we look for that book tomorrow, okay? I mean, it's seriously late, and I've got more studying to do when I can find the time tomorrow… I can make some curry in the kitchen after classes?"
Megan nods and sits up, "Arri." She pauses a moment and reinforces the word, "Sure. I need to be able to wake up in time for classes in the morning, anyway." And sleep is a very good thing when trying to learn history. Which is actually what she had come to look up. A slow grin spreads across her face at the mention of curry and she nods, "That sounds like a lush idea to me. It's been ages since I had a good curry." She stands and stretches, finally picking up her discarded shoes and grimacing at the mud, "I'll see you tomorrow, then, Rashmi." Beat, "And it was nice talking to you."
Rashmi smiles, bobbing her head as she gathers her books together, separating the fort into easy-to-organize piles for putting away. "You too, Megan. Again, sorry you had to come back to all this, but once it's over it's probably going to be a whole lot better, you know?"
Megan gives a little nod and stiffles a yawn, "Aye. I just hope that everyone is back again soon. It's awfully empty around here without all of the others." Not to mention who has had to take up classes since teachers are missing, too. She lifts her free hand in a little wave and flits back out the door without bothering to put her shoes back on or touching a toe to the ground, a word of farewell called back over her shoulder, "Goodnight."
