Xaviers!

"Mansions are... overrated... and old, though this one's network is pretty impressive."

"I dunno about overrated," Alex says. "I mean, it's like we're living in one of those Harry Potter books or something."

"Right? I dunno what that is, but you're right! Why's everyone so... bored by the fact that this is patently ridiculous?" she chuckles.

"I went to the Institute in America. The ridiculous is kind of my normal."

"What was it like there?" Alex asks.

"Like someone corralled a bunch of teenagers with powers and tried to run a high school. I wasn't cut out to do more than support the X-Men high school teams, but they were the big thing. Sort of the equivalent of a high school football team for how the school regarded them, if I had to guess."

"So running support would make you the... cheerleader then?" she teases.

Alex tries to hide a grin at Shari's comment.

"What sort of stuff so the teams do?"

Natalie makes a face at the cheerleader comment, "At the high school level, it's a lot of search and rescue and natural disaster recovery with the occasional side of stopping superpowered bad guys. I mostly ran communications for the teams when they couldn't get a telepath. Here, I don't know what all they do."

"Well if you ask around Maldon then apparently they beat up Nazis." Shari deadpans. It's hard to tell if she's being serious.

"That sounds...really dangerous," Alex says. "Is it legal to have kids doing that sort of thing?"

"You would not believe the forms my mum had to sign. Although the students who got involved in it trained a lot and knew their abilities inside and out. And quite a few of them were pretty tough or had other useful abilities."

"So they don't expect that kinda stuff here, yeah? Cause, I mean, that doesn't sound like it's for everybody..."

"Strictly voluntary, according to the welcome packet. There's a Ms. Kinney that's managing that program."

"That sounds... familiar. Why does that sound familiar?" Shari mumbles.

"I think I've had enough...that, for a lifetime," Alex says, grip tightened around her fork. Even with the reinforced utensils the Institute wisely invests in, it begins to bend slightly.

"I'll probably sign up, but my power isn't well-suited to bad guy punching, so I don't know if they'll use me."

"Whoa, hey, ease there, big girl." Shari says, giving Alex' fork bit of a poke with her own. "That fork's got a family."

"Oh my gosh!" Alex says, dropping her fork. It clatters loudly on her tray.

Alex groans. "I can't believe I did that."

"The food's not that bad." Shari chuckles and picks up the deformed fork to look at it curiously. She grabs it with two hands and tries to straighten it but accomplishes exactly nothing. "Yup, this one's done. Stick a... fork in it?" she tries, realizing herself halfway through that this joke is forced at best.

Natalie reaches out for the fork, "Super strength is amazing. On my top ten list of cool powers."

"Yeah, it's great for destroying things and hurting people," Alex grumbles.

"Well... it is." she says, not one to lie to make somebody feel better. "But so's a hammer, yeah?"

"It's also useful for lifting things and stopping things and... it has any number of useful applications."

"Well, I'm glad you're here to tell me how useful my powers are," Alex snaps.

Natalie physically moves backwards from the snap. "I'm sorry. I was only trying to help," she says as she gets up and picks up her tray.

"Hey, it's cool. Come on guys. We've all had moments when we felt our powers were shitty, yeah?"

"...I'm sorry," Alex says. "I didn't mean to--I..."

"I'm just sick of people telling me how cool it must be."

"I'm sorry I offended you," Natalie says, still not sitting down, but not quite walking away yet either.

"It's cool. Right? I'd sure hate it if I kept breaking my stuff, believe me."

"I'm sorry I'm so...sensitive, I guess," Alex says. "...Maybe we could just talk about something else? Not power related?"

"Sure. Oh, hey, you wouldn't happen to have a map of this place or anything? It's a miracle I managed to find the food dispensery." Shari changes the topic.

"I'm afraid mine is all marked up and probably not very useful." Natalie cocks her head to one side, "I'm sorry, I need to take this call. It was nice meeting both of you."

"Nice meeting you too," Alex says in a small voice.

"I think I might have a map on my phone. Here," Alex says. She takes out her phone, unlocks it, and hands it to Shari.

There was not an ounce of mistrust in this girl.

"Oh hey, awesome!" she says and takes Alex' phone. And immediately opens her photos. Totally accidentally and not at all because she's curious. At least she has the decency to pretend she's looking at the map as she's poking her nose into things she shouldn't.

Alex took a lot of pictures of cats. Most were adorable, but it really was way too many cats. Seriously, there was something like thirty cats and these were all photos she took with her own camera. Did she go out of her way to find cats?

There were no pictures of other people. No boys, girls, friends, or even family members.

"Are you looking for anywhere in particular?"

"Nah, just trying to figure out what's what and where..." she says, vaguely distracted by all the cat pictures. She almost feels a little bad for Alex. Doesn't she have any friends? Not that she does, but that's cause she tends to leave them behind sooner rather than later and completely different. She checks to see if she's got a Facebook account where she maybe keeps all of that kinda stuff. "Not exactly used to navigating the grounds of a mansion."

That was a mistake. Alex was friends with exactly five people. A spambot that kept posting chain letters, three people from elementary school that lived in different towns or states now, and her grandmother's memorial account.

She posted pictures of cats tagged with a name based around some sort of pun. Chairman Meow, Catmandu, Cat Stevens...that sort of thing.

The phone dinged as an email arrived in her inbox. It was from..."slashfic.net"?

"Thanks for Your Submission!" the subject line read.

"What's a slashfic? You just got an email from them..." Shari just bluntly asks.

Alex's face goes bright, bright red.

"It's nothing!" Alex says, "Don't read that!"