Xaviers!

"They do good work," she agrees.

"Doesn't sound like a bad gap year, all told."

"It wasn't. I graduated a little early and this university wasn't an option at the time, so it filled in the time nicely."

"Oh, so you're the one whose notes I'll want to borrow," she smirks.

"It was only a little early. School in Quebec is different from some of the other provinces."

"Well the alternative is that I ask you to teach me the ways of poutine, but that's probably a lost cause in the UK."

"It would certainly be a pale shadow," she says with a grave nod.

"It's not fair. We invented cheddar."

"You once ruled a good chunk of the world as well, but past accomplishments tend to fade away. Ours is an ongoing perfection," she grins.

"Well then, I guess I don't have to tell you where the good kebab places are in town..."

"Of course you don't *have* to..." She grins, "But it would be super nice if you did."

"Hey guys!" Nailah says as she sits down at the table, a plate of food and a brown envelope on her tray. With her memory of who she's met before being unreliable she seems to have settled on treating everyone as if she knows them to err on the side of not upsetting people she's met. Of course, in turn that makes it awkward when she doesn't. "What's up?"

Laura seems to roll with it after just a moment's uncertainty. Maybe she knows Janice, after all. "Not a whole lot. What's up with you?"

"Not much. First day without the cast! I think." she says, sticking her leg out the side of the table and stretching her foot so her claws poke out for a moment.

"You... think?" Janice says with a perplexed look.

"Yeah. Oh, guess we haven't met yet, huh? I'm Nailah. I have some... memory issues."

"Sorry to hear that. I'm Laura," Laura says, "I'm new here. And this is Janice. She's my roommate."

"Oh, was that part of... getting hurt?"

"Yeah..." she says, with a bit of a twinkle in her eyes when she does. "Totally worth it though." the twinkle spreads to her mouth as she grins. She grabs the envelope and pulls out a newspaper clipping. "Just got this today from a friend."

Mystérieux héros ailé sauve Lyon

the headline reads above a picture taken with a cellphone, showing Nailah standing on top of a public mailbox, holding up a tablet of some sort, wings spread wide and looking very dramatic as she's shouting something.

Laura looks at it and reads the headline, "That is pretty cool. Nice picture too." Then she tries to ask diplomatically, "Do you remember what happened there?"

"Yeah! Most of it anyway. It was pretty messy and broke my brain a little, but I prefer this way of looking at it." she says, pointing at the article clipping.

"So I guess you've pretty much got 'Rawr, Birdcat!' powers?"

"I'm a sphinx." she corrects Janice. "And I can see the future."

"You can see the future?" Laura says with a small amount of amazement.

"That seems like... weirdly specific."

"Well... futures. It's a bit like looking into one of those tubes full of mirrors and colors. Dunno if I'd call it specific."

"No I mean like... wings, paws, and seeing the future. Like you got a whole sphinx package."

"But I guess I'm sort of your arch-nemesis."

"Huh... yeah. Never really thought about it, but lots of powers got kind of a theme to them, don't they? What's yours?"

"Probability manipulation," she grins.

"Oh shoot! I've fought someone like that once. It was cuh-razy!" she laughs.

"Sounds like you do the hero thing a lot."

"Yeah. I want to be a super-hero one day." she nods.

"Must've been a real bummer when you got benched. I've never really been able to make my power really... action-y."

"Don't really remember most of it, so..." she shrugs with a smile. "What kinda probabilities do you manipulate? Flip a coin to always come up heads? Bounce a bullet off three things to disarm a thug around a corner? Find a rope when you really need one to rappel down from a roof?"

"So far what I can manage is nudging things to go wrong."

"How wrong? Like making somebody slip on a banana-peel?"

"Well it tends to vary by just... er... how complex something is? That tends to open up 'what can go wrong' considerably."

"So, like... mess with something that's already there. Man, that's a crazy power... Does it work on stuff you don't know is there?"

"Kinda? But it's... way safer to actually aim it."

"Safer? Is it dangerous to use?"