Xaviers!

"A truly horrific fate." she chuckles. "Oh! I have a good question to follow up on that! If you had to switch your powers to those of anybody else at the school, who would you pick?"

"I guess... Nailah, probably. Being able to see something coming would be bloody useful."

"Iiiinteresting. Sick of getting blindsided, huh? I can get behind that."

"I mean I can sort of see some things coming, especially in a fight, but that's mostly my telepathy. She's got the deluxe version."

"Right, right, there's reading an opponent and then there's literally seeing the future. Speaking of, you got any plans for what you wanna do after college?"

"I've... honestly got no clue. I'm just a freshman, and even just this first year the stuff I've found out about myself has been... a lot."

"Honestly? Same. Well minus the finding out stuff about yourself, I think I'm good there. But this whole situation being stranded here is kind of a blessing in disguise, cause I get to punt that decision down the road for a whole decade!" she chuckles.

"Aye, we just have to keep you and your dad intact for awhile."

"Apparently harder than it looks. But we'll get him fixed up and this place along with it."

"This place, huh?"

"It's not like it's awful or anything, just... backwards. A little bit. And you guys deserve better. Everyone does!"

"The thing I keep trying to remind myself is you lot have some time on us."

"Yeah, that's honestly most or all of it. And I don't wanna sound like I'm being full of myself about what I can actually do, but... I dunno, my parents made our world better, so the least I can do is try to do what I can here, right?"

"Kind of what frustrates me about it, aye? All these different standards to measure myself against."

"Ah, gee, yeah, I wouldn't know anything about that." she laughs. "But yeah, it's unfair to be held up to that kinda standard. It doesn't help that you look almost exactly like her, which is just uncanny." she says, putting her palms on the side of Sam's face and squishing her cheeks.

"Aye, well so does the filthy one once you clean her up."

"Makes sense. In that weird dimensional bollocks kinda way that doesn't really once you think about it."

"I think the face is the easiest part to remember, of anything. The rest kind of varies?"

"Heh, that's what the first lesson I can remember her giving me was about. Having an anchor for your identity and a face is a good one cause it'll be what most other people are gonna associate with 'you'."

"It's not an effort so much, but it's the sort of thing where you notice if something's wrong, aye?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." she says, crossing her arms with an exaggerated slacking of her shoulders and at the same time letting her nose sit askew, followed by one ear slowly sliding down like a water bead on the outside of a cold glass of soda.

"Har har. I guess that also gets into the thing I was talking about. Your definition of 'you' feels like it gets broader the longer you have... you know, options. I bet you've been shifting longer than I have."

"Oh yeah. Mum especially was worried about it, but I never knew any different. I get it now but at the time I thought those lessons were the dumbest thing in the world. Who I am is a pretty loose physical definition at any point but it's good to have something comfortable and familiar to hang on to."

"So what's yours?"

"For the viewers... er... viewer at home?"

"You're looking at it. And the stream did earlier in a mirror. More or less anyway and I guess I picked pink as kind of 'my color'. Probably picked that up from Dad and it just kinda became a sort of signature as much as my face did."