Xaviers!

"Wait. Save? We didn't need saving. We coulda left at any time. You wanted to stick around in jail. Or was that him? When did this splitteroo happen?"

"That was just him. And I meant at the bar. You know, when you two had the shit kicked out of you, before the cops came and arrested you two and no one else? That thing?"

"Well... wasn't that on us for not winning?" Seems like she has kind of a skewed perspective on how things work and how blame is assigned.

"That's not how justice works here; this isn't your Klingon homeworld. Attacking people without provocation is slightly frowned upon here."

"It's called Skrullos and obviously it is, because we were the ones who got arrested."

"It's because they hate mutants. Think we're unnatural. And they thought you were one, too."

"So we should have gotten help to beat them up instead." Shari draws a, to her, logical conclusion.

Drummer Will groaned.

"Shari, sometimes you are dumber than a box of hammers, I swear.

The ones who start the fight should get punished, whether or not they win. You didn't start it; you shouldn't have been punished unless you did something above and beyond. Period, end of story."

"Okay but if that's not how it actually works then who's saying that it should?"

"It's me, for one."

"It does feel unfair..." she admits.

"Yeah well, they hate us. Get used to it, and make some noise," Will said, smashing some cymbals as he went into an arrhythmic fill.

"Yes, let's. Oh! Can we make music that tells people to shove it?" she asks as if this was some kind of ground-breaking idea no one has ever thought of before.

"That seems kind of aggressive..." Piano-Will hedged.

"There was SOME punk on those CDs I gave you, right? That's all about sticking it to various forms of The Man," Drummer-Will countered. "Not a lot of Saxophones in punk, but breaking rules is basically what punk is about. Three chords and the truth, and sometimes not even the three chords."

"I've been going through them chronologically. I'm still on the Bugs. No, what was it. Beetles?"

"Beatles, yeah. Fuck, that works; all modern music can be found somewhere in their stuff," Drummer-Will said, switching to a swingier rhythm on the ride cymbols. After a minute, Piano-Will joined in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh0C7VglcGg

Shari joins in on her saxomophone and while she struggles to hit the right notes at times and is only vaguely familiar with the song she manages to at least approximately add to the music.

The song got progressively more undone near the end, with DrummerWill screaming out the vocals progressively less and less in tune and more and more intensely, with the final "alrights!" ending up more a gutteral yell than actual words. He had gotten up and was using his full body to really add extra *oomph* into the cymbal hits as the band ~crashed~ to a halt.

"Yeah! Fuck the man!" he shouted, kicking over crash cymbal stand at the end.

"Yeah!" Shari adds, a bit delayed, looks around for a moment, then sweeps a stack of sheet music off a table.

Piano-Will quietly closed the lid of the piano, without breaking things.

"That was actually not bad, for someone who didn't know the song," he said, encouragingly to Shari.

"Thanks! I haven't figured out all the buttons and noises yet, but I'm getting there."

"Combinations of buttons work, too. You should really check out how to use it, you can do a bunch of different things with it. And then you can easily learn to play the other saxophones, too."

"Other saxophones?"

"Oh, yeah. There's a whole Saxophone family. You've got an Alto there, but a Tenor is quite common, as well -- a little deeper sound, plays lower notes. Above the Alto there's the soprano and the sopranino and even the sporanissimo; below the Tenor there's the baritone, the bass, the contrasbass, and the subcontrabass, which can shatter windows if done properly. And those are just the normal ones, the ones that play in the same basic way as the one you have there. Learn to play one, and you can play them ALL, though you might need to shift larger or smaller to handle some of the more unwieldy ones.

It's like how Goofus over there can play not only the piano, but two dozen other keyboard instruments because he learned how to play that one."

"Versatility. I like it! Okay, so, how do I learn to play it properly?"

"Best way to do it is to get someone to teach you, and then to practice. A lot.

Playing an instrument is something everyone is bad at, and then they just keep doing it a lot and eventually get good at it, over time."

"That sounds hard. This is a school, right? Don't you have a cerebral imprint of somebody who's really good at it?"

"OK, no, that's not how we do things here, as experimental brain surgery usually gets you a couple dozen no-nos.

We have records of good sax players, though."

"It's not brain surgery. Duh. But the records might help." she nods eagerly.

"It's too bad your shifting is limited, because I know a really quick way to get something stuck in my head for days and weeks and years.

"Oh sure, your way of absorbing knowledge quickly is fine but a mental imprint is weird and wrong." she say, jokingly. Mostly jokingly.

"Glad you see it my way," Drummer Will smirks. "We'll make a human out of you yet."

"Says the mutant. But fine, I'll do it your way. Don't really have the equipment for an imprint anyway."

"Well, I don't think you'll do it my way, but you can learn to do it the normal way. Slowly but surely."

"What is your way anyway? Eat a saxophone?"

"Nah, it's more simple than that," Drummer Will said, standing up and walking over to Piano Will.

"Wha-hey?" Piano-Will said, as Drummer Will grabbed him by the shoulders.

For a moment, nothing happened. And then, as Drummer Will pushed, Piano Will twisted and warped, shrinking down on the bench.

After a few moments -- longer than normal, mind you, but not excessively so -- a small portable music player lay where Will once sat.

"There," Will said, a bit out of breath. "Would have done a record player or something, but, you know -- no one listens to those anymore. Gotta stay with the times."

"Ooh! I've never tried to turn into something that works. Not sure if I even can..." she muses. The idea of turning into an objects for reasons other than passing muster and spying had never occurred to her.

"It's tough -- you either gotta be really precise and finicky, or you gotta be good at faking it. He's pretty good at both of 'em."

"Man... that sounds difficult too. Fine, guess I'll just practice." she pouts.