5th transformation . spam & open video

[permutates]

[ spam ]

[ She's been working herself hard. Maybe too hard: she spends hours a day in the gym, sometimes as many as eight when she's not sleeping. She's read books on how to get in shape quickly and safely - more or less - and she's pushing herself as far as she can go. Trying to find her limits.

Today, she can also be found coming out of the CTS with Kelsier, bruised and mussed and a little bloody, and grinning ear to ear. If you're trying to impress me, it's working, he tells her, and she kisses him on the cheek and flushes bluer and makes her way to the Infirmary to make sure she's got nothing worse than bruises.

She hasn't reached her physical limits yet, but emotional is a different story. Being a child again, with that faith in Charles, has shaken her. Her conversation with Charles before that shook her. And sometimes, even when she's feeling fine - maybe when she's feeling the most fine, paradoxically - she starts crying. And sometimes she can't stop. Tucking herself into a corner of the gardens and trying to muffle the sounds of it so no one catches her at it. It's embarrassing, and she can always eventually manage to pull herself together and make it back to her room. ]

[ video ; open ]

[ Raven is blue, with red hair, not hiding. ]

What's something you've done here, for the first time? Or thought or realized, for the first time.

[ She's not sure what she's looking for. Maybe a little hope. ]

Comments

[permutates]

If someone else knew it, they could remind you, and then you'd know it.

A pocket watch means more than just telling time - I guess a name means more than just what people call you.

Mystique can be both. It's not just about my power, it's about having a name that can identify you as a mutant. Something that we share with each other. It's important; it ties us together. And it can be protection, too.

[velocette]

My old man probably knows it, but I get the feeling if I asked him he'd never believe I really wanted to know.

[He's been mildly curious about some of the mutants on board, but none of them have identified themselves that way where he could hear (or read).]

There aren't any mutants where I'm from. Or rather, there are, but none with extraordinary powers. Just small, random genetic traits that haven't evolved any further. I guess people in your world hate change as much as they do in mine, if you have the need to bond with other mutants for protection?

[permutates]

When the world found out about us, it fired missiles at us. The United States and the Soviets stopped fighting so they could make us the enemy.

[velocette]

[He's from the middle of the Vietnam War, so this doesn't surprise him, although it does disappoint him. Other worlds shouldn't be so familiar.]

Nothing brings people together like a chance to create more fear. How'd they decide to target you? Mutations are usually pretty random, and widespread, aren't they? It makes it hard to point troops at.

[permutates]

We were together - and visible. I think it was called the Cuban Missile Crisis, later?

[ She's been talking with people about history. ]

There was another mutant who wanted to turn that into World War Three. We stopped him.

[velocette]

I was a kid when that happened.

[But what really interests him is the fact that her world had the exact same event.]

A lot of people thought it'd turn into another World War. A lot of politicians would've shook his hand, if he'd succeeded. What was in it for him?

[permutates]

He wanted to wipe out humans.

[velocette]

Hard for me to think of humans being different than mutants. You don't look like some separate species--but I guess you could have a different number of chromosomes. I guess for me genus matters more, but people back home are still arguing that people from Asia aren't the same 'type' of person as the guys running small businesses in the city.

[Rambling. This is an interesting topic, but he realizes about partway through she's probably heard this angle before.]

What's your take?

[permutates]

My brother's the one who really knows things about genetics.

But mutants are different enough that I guess I can understand why someone would be scared.

[velocette]

Wish I could talk to him about it. But most of it would probably go over my head. [He's only read half a textbook on it, and he's from the 70's so what he knows is hard to reconcile with the current information.]

Maybe it's not being different that's the issue. Maybe it's jealousy. People here have powers no one at home has...if I'd had them maybe I wouldn't be dead now. Not that I mind, but as an example.

What does being a mutant mean for you? [It's a deliberately broad question.]

[permutates]

It means that I can't be accepted as I am by most people.

[velocette]

[He hums, nods slightly.] Ignorance is the most familiar state of being. Maybe what they see in you is what they can't ever be, no matter what they try; it can be intimidating to be faced with a boundary you can never hope to cross.

[permutates]

...or just someone who can look like anyone they want, and spy on you.

[velocette]

"Yeah. Maybe that wouldn't be an issue in another society, but any real or imagined threat to privacy here is unthinkable. For the middle and upper classes, anyway. In my neighborhood, no one had any secrets. Our walls were too thin."