New York City, ESU Campus, Marvel-616. Monday Afternoon.

[icecoldfrost]

Emma was in the middle of her kickboxing class when she was just struck with the sense of - for lack of a better term - wrong. She couldn't sense anything with her powers to account for it, it was just... like a voice over an intercom where you couldn't make out the words, or a popular song with two notes out-of-tune. Or a ripple in a lake with no source. Nothing she could articulate, just...wrong. Echos of nails on a chalkboard and why couldn't she place this damned -

- Of course, the middle of kickboxing class was generally not a good place for one get hit by nebulous feelings of doom and dread, and the next thing Emma knew, she was on the floor, her sparring partner shrilly apologizing over and over, and her classmates hovering.

"Please stay down, Frost," the the cute coach was saying, even as things swam in circles around her. "You might have a concussion, and you've got a bloody nose. Can you tell me how many fingers I'm holding up?"

"Three, my name is Emma Grace Frost, I am about to turn nineteen years old next month, this is Kickboxing for Beginners, and Ellen there just nailed me on the side of the head," Emma said crossly. "That wasn't the move we were supposed to be practicing."

"But you always seem to know what I'm going to do next!" Ellen wailed, looking distraught. "I didn't think it would hurt to try something new!"

"Ellen, go get Emma some ice," the teacher sighed. "Fine, no concussion. But take it easy the rest of the day, okay? I'd skip any other classes today if I were you, and I'll give you a note in case your other professors raise a fuss."

That was perfectly fine with Emma. She was just going to hole up in her now single-room with an ice pack and a large mug of tea, and try to resist the urge to call Kerrigan or Sookie or Karla like a frightened child. She was Emma Frost, dammit. She wasn't going to go running to other people over a mild spook like this.

....start randomly texting, maybe. But at least it was something to focus on that wasn't homework, and now she could do it without worrying about a roommate catching her.

[OOC: NFB, Open for calls, texts, what-have-you.]

Comments

[furnaceface]

Jono hadn't even really bothered to think too hard about how he was replying to Emma's message until after he'd hit send. Texts were a force of habit, really. If he got one, he was all too happy to give one back.

Please, please don't mention X-style anything to me right now, Emma. I'm not entirely certain I can stomach it right now.

... To say the least.

[icecoldfrost]

That sounds ominously like something happened and you didn't tell Auntie Emma because you knew she'd go on the warpath and possibly vivisect a few people, Emma replied, and if it was possible for a text message to carry overtones of 'spill it, Starsmore,' this one probably did.

[furnaceface]

... Possibly that. More that I'm still working on getting my head on straight again.

Bloody hell. Where to even begin?

It's a long story. He frowned at the screen of his phone, having a bit of a moral dilemma, then. He could hold back the whole of it from her for now, but all it would take was another alumni event on the island, and she would be able to find out anything she wanted, anyhow. But timelines were so...

Bloody hell.

[icecoldfrost]

I am on bed-rest from getting dumped on the floor and cracking my brain open during kickboxing today, Emma practically drawled. I have nothing but time.

Yeah. Timelines were so not an excuse as far as she was concerned.

[furnaceface]

Jono just kind of stared at the phone for a moment, and then after a couple of failed attempts at even figuring out where to start, he gave the hell up and dialled her number.

Ring ring, Miss Frost.

Really, what better way to break the ice?

[icecoldfrost]

That was....not what Emma was expecting to happen.

"Please tell me you have another Speak 'N Spell," she said immediately upon picking up. "Because then I can record this for posterity. Somehow."

Caring friend. Really.

"Now, darling, tell Auntie Emma who she gets to tar and feather? If it's Jean, you get a cookie."

[furnaceface]

"... No, not Jean."

And no, not a Speak 'N Spell, evidentially.

"I could write you a list. Not going to, though. Not worth it."

He didn't mean to sound so damn tired. And he couldn't really help it, either.

[icecoldfrost]

Typically, one might expect a long pause as a friend digested such information.

This was Emma.

"You stupid, horrible boy," she shrieked, glaring as if he could see her. "How long have you been able to speak? Why didn't you tell me? What the HELL have you been up to, Jonothon, and so help me, I am tempted to put you on the next portal out here so I can pick your mind myself and where the hell are you anyway?"

Caring friend. Promise.

[furnaceface]

There was a bit of a pause from Jono's end, at least.

"'M in Fandom," he replied, his tone dropping to something even more tired, still. "Cable brought me here about a week ago. Which is about as long as I've been able to speak, so long as we're not counting th' half-year that I spent brainwashed, doing dirty work for the American government."

He was taking the shrieking with a grain of salt. Really, he'd called himself stupid and horrible enough lately, it wasn't like he was phased all that much, hearing it from somebody else.

[icecoldfrost]

"Cable." It was practically spat out. "How nice of him to provide a taxi." And not stop whatever they had done to Jono that made him sound so exhausted.

"Lovely to hear they're still trying to use us when they aren't trying to eradicate us. Utterly charming. Maybe I'll just start lobotomizing the racists as I run into them. See how they like genetic cleansing when it's them on the table."

[furnaceface]

"That'd just make them all th'more militant about wiping mutants out," Jono sighed, frowning as he found himself a seat in the corner of the theatre. "S'just what they need, isn't it? More reasons to hate us?"

There was a wince that followed that.

Us. Them. He'd been a hollowed-out shell of baseline human for months. And now he wasn't entirely certain what he was.

Ugly, mostly.

"Trust me. They don't need th'help."

[icecoldfrost]

"They don't need reasons, either," Emma pointed out. "Even if we were all happy fluffy puppies, they'd still hate us."

[furnaceface]

Even if there were less than two-hundred left...

"And what would you accomplish by proving them right, Emma? You'd frighten th'rest of them. Give them more reasons to hate and fear mutantkind. I might not be Xavier's biggest fan right now, but I'm hardly going to start throwing stones at th'more excitable members of humanity, either."

[icecoldfrost]

"I'm not talking about leaving them as drooling simpletons, I have more subtlety than that," Emma snapped. "Just a push away from being utterly intolerable for the most dangerous ones. I'll even be sweet and leave them their free will, just a mild curb on the homicidal tendencies."

[furnaceface]

"And you'd never get caught? They rebuilt my chest and face with no effort at all, Emma. Harnessed dozens of telepaths row-on-row in pieces to keep their base of operations shielded from the mind's eye and to keep a lookout for things like that happening. And they've been doing things like this. They've been doing it for quite some time."

Since before his time. Since before hers.

"What mutants have to face out there is so much bigger than you can imagine. I won't tell you not to try, but... God, Emma. Be careful."

[icecoldfrost]

Emma's voice was low, controlled, and utterly cold as she responded. "They did what?"

Yeah, that probably wasn't the best thing to tell the tiny, previously institutionalized telepath, who regarded Lieutenant Kerrigan as her role model. At all.

[furnaceface]

Oh, really, now. It wasn't like she wouldn't find out from him one way or another.

"They've done worse, Emma. Just... trust me on that much." Someone was reaching record levels of fatigue in his voice, now. "I don't feel quite like elaborating on some of th'more colourful atrocities at the moment."

[icecoldfrost]

"And you expect me to just sit back and let them gather steam while I twiddle my thumbs?" It was a rhetorical question, Jono. "You don't have to elaborate. I am sure I can come with a few ideas."

"But what about you? Why are you in Fandom, of all places, and not on my futon? Dorm living may not offer much, but at least you won't be moping about some small town."

[furnaceface]

"Most of my friends are in this small town that I'm moping in," Jono pointed out. "Raven, Karla, Squall, Tara... And... I think it might be best for me to avoid places that react poorly to anyone who doesn't fit in at a glance."

He didn't handle the way he looked when he saw himself in the mirror well. In a world where mutants were just barely starting to get attention in the media, where all of that hell was still yet to come...

[icecoldfrost]

This time, Jono was going to get a suspicious pause.

"...You said they rebuilt your face," Emma replied slowly. "So why don't you fit in, exactly?"

[furnaceface]

"I... lost it again."

Which explained nothing, and Jono was well aware of that, yes.

"And then... Well..." A sigh. "Can you receive photos on that phone of yours?"

He didn't really have the words at a moment, and a picture was worth so many of them.

[icecoldfrost]

"I still have my Fandom-purchased Blackberry," Emma answered. "It handles texts, even in this time period, so photos should work?"

[furnaceface]

"Well, then..."

A quick photo with his phone held at arm's length. Looking... less than pleased, and not with the greatest lighting or resolution, but it was good enough to show the new skin tone. Not to mention the lips.

"I'm not exactly going to fit in, luv."

[icecoldfrost]

That was....interesting?

"Please. This is New York," Emma scoffed. "If you're that self-conscious, we'll say you're a goth mime. Or if I decide you look like Errol Flynn for the week, everyone around us will think the same."

TOTALLY ETHICAL USE OF POWERS. FOR FRIENDSHIP JUSTICE.

"Before I came to Fandom, I saw far freakier than you in the bars I frequented."

[furnaceface]

... Jono would not mind looking like Errol Flynn.

"It's more than just being self-conscious," Jono replied, stubbornly. And self-consciously. "This face... it means something, to certain people. Ones I'd just as soon stay far away from. Mad cultists. Those vampires that you don't believe in. Can you thrall a vampire, Emma?"