MA

[jageskro]

A pizza box in one hand and two cans of London Pride in the other, Jag walked past Ollie's workshop and smirked at the sight of the artist in the middle of creation. Best not to bug him, then. Jake was out, so he reckoned it would just be him and Em, then. Hands full, he used his foot to knock on her door, twice.

When she opened it, he smiled at her as if he was about to offer her the meal of her life. "Traditional moving day meal. Pizza and beer. Who can say no to that?"

Comments

[offthebeatenpath]

"Okay." A hint of smile came into view as Em tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

"What about you?" she asked, nudging his knee with the back of her free hand. "Any plans for tomorrow?"

[jageskro]

"The usual," he replied with a small smile. "Go do my thing, hopefully earn enough to go out tomorrow night."

[offthebeatenpath]

"Heading anywhere in particular?" She could always check the tarot tomorrow, to see where she might find him, assuming she could pick out any landmarks, but it didn't hurt to ask first.

"Maybe I'll swing by after my appointment and shopping for supplies. I haven't caught the whole act since Christmas Eve."

[jageskro]

"Text me when you're done and I'll tell you where I'm at?" he offered. Who knew where he'd end up; it depended on the crowd so much. But then he smirked, leaning back on one hand. "Or I could just give you a private show."

[offthebeatenpath]

"First you bring me dinner and beer, and now a show? How could I possibly say no to that?" It wouldn't be the same as Pyro using his powers, but thanks to Pyro, fire had been a bigger part of Em's life. There was more to it than just light and warmth, and she missed it.

Besides, Jag was a born performer. "I'll even applaud if you want," she offered, thinking back to the day they met.

[jageskro]

"Only if you feel like it," Jag told her as he sat up, then smirked. "Trust me, you'll feel like it." He swiped a hand in front of his other one, curled in front of his chest, much like a magician about to make a bouquet of flowers spring up in his hand. But instead of flowers, a flame burst from his palm, the warmth of it echoing in his lungs.

There was no use pretending, here in private with her. He knew what she could do, why wouldn't he let her know what he could do, too?

A second flame burst from his second palm, and he pretended to throw it up into the air, beginning a circle of juggling flames, sending new ones into the air until he was handling eight at once. His focus had to be on them, even now, after so many long years of practice; he'd learned the hard way what a second's inattention could lead to, although he'd always managed to stop any fires from spreading.

[offthebeatenpath]

Or it would be so much like Pyro using his powers, Em had to blink away the sting of tears, even as something insider her unknotted. Jag was a mutant. She should have known, when she saw the fire bird in her sketch.

Once she could breathe again - she hadn't even noticed she was holding her breath - she said quietly, "You're pyrokinetic," somewhere between surprise, relief, and not wanting to distract him.

[jageskro]

The tone of her voice drew his attention back to her and he killed all of the fires at once when he saw the look in her shimmery eyes. He wasn't sure what that word was, other than the 'pyro' bit, but he was more worried about her than it right then. "Usually I get looks of wonder, not..."

Definitely not getting applause after all.

[offthebeatenpath]

She dimmed when he put out the fires, and shook her head. "No, it's..." Running a hand through her hair, Em tried to find a way to explain.

"You control fire - pyrokinetic. I... I've missed that, and just being around other mutants."

[jageskro]

"Mutants?" Jag echoed with a frown. She wasn't making much sense to him. Had she known others like him?

[offthebeatenpath]

Drake had told her this world had forgotten about mutants, but there'd been so much going on she hadn't asked what happened or any other details. Now she wished she had. Because Drake had obviously remembered, and he made it sound like other mutants did too, but Jag... didn't?

"You've never heard of anyone else really having... unusual powers? Manipulating fire, seeing the future, moving things with their minds, flying, that kind of thing?" Sarah would have been much better at this; she was used to talking to people just finding out they were mutants.

[jageskro]

"I've met my share of people with unusual skills," Jag replied, still frowning. He'd lived with the circus, after all. Trapeze artists flew, fortune tellers told the future, and magicians levitated or made things move with their minds. But that wasn't what she meant, and he knew it. "But no one - like you and me." Never the real deal. "Mutants?" he repeated the word, as if that would help it fit better.

That sounded like science, rather than magic, and he'd never been much about science.

[offthebeatenpath]

"Yeah." Em nodded, more to herself than to him. "The way it was explained to me, there's a gene, and if somebody has it, they can do things humans aren't supposed to be able to do. Or they're different in other ways. Like this girl I knew, who had blue fur and a tail, and it wasn't some gaff." TJ had had other abilities too, but she probably was already straining credulity without getting into too many details.

"You can control fire," and as she said it, what she'd been missing finally clicked. "And create it - Pyro would be so jealous, by the way - but there are all kinds of abilities people can have. But most people don't know we exist. It's maybe safer that way."

[jageskro]

But Jag was still frowning, unable to wrap his mind around what she was saying. "How can a single gene..." He opened his palm, fire springing from his palm and raising into the air, crafting itself into his usual bird. "...do this? How can a single gene make you see the future? Through tarot?"

[offthebeatenpath]

"I'm just a fortuneteller," Em said, shrugging. The x-gene had been well established in her world, to the point she hadn't questioned it. Now in a world where almost no one knew about mutants, she had no idea how to go about proving it. "Not a geneticist. But there are ways of testing for the gene, even before someone shows any abilities." And in the US of her world, a positive result got you locked up. Em didn't want anything like that to happen here. No matter how much she hated hiding what she was.

"I know it sounds crazy. It sounded crazy the first time someone told me I was a mutant. Right before they put my abilities in overdrive and tried to kidnap me because of what I could do. Me and my cousin."

[jageskro]

Jag lowered his hand, then only, as an afterthought, remembered to extinguish the bird in the air between them, which meant he had it fly around him, and only once it was behind him did he put it out. Focusing to make it fly, wings flapping, flight natural, served to stop his mind from jumping all over the place with questions and protests at the story Emma was telling him.

"So, what, there's a secret society of mutants in the world, and no one ever indicted me?" he settled on, once the bird was gone.

[offthebeatenpath]

"No," Em told him, sobering. "But there are other people like us in the world. You're the second I've met in London, and I... I don't like having to hide who I am, or what I can do. Reading the tarot is easy, most people think it's all in fun or I'm just the average fortuneteller who tells people what they want to hear."

But that wasn't all she could do, and he'd shown his. Rolling up her sleeve, Em looked at her tattoo, letting her hair fall into her face to hide her eyes. "I can't show those people this," she said, pointing to the mostly empty room. And then the room wasn't empty at all, when a knight astride a winged horse appeared.

[jageskro]

"Shit!" Jag started, scrambling back instinctively at the sudden and very massive presence of an armed bloke on top of a winged bloody horse. "...definitely not your average trick," he agreed, although part of him was already thinking about how it could be one, with the right circus. With his. And he had to laugh, to release the tension inside him, and because it was worth laughing at. "That's bloody marvelous," he added, and stood up, holding his hand out to see if he could touch it, or if his hand would go right through it. It looked very tangible.

[offthebeatenpath]

When Jag laughed, Em willed the pegasus to bow over its foreleg. "You can touch it," she said, not reading minds, but knowing it was one of the first things most people would wonder about. "It's not real real, but it's not an illusion either. Just don't ask me how I do it, because I don't really know."

[jageskro]

Jag petted the horse, clearly at ease with animals (but did it really count as an animal?), and grinned up at his stone-faced rider. "No way a gene does that, bab," he stated, following the muscle in the horse's shoulder to go and stroke his hand across his wing. It wasn't every day you ended up petting a horse's wing, alright?

[offthebeatenpath]

Back home, Em could have turned to Sarah, who could sense mutants. Or to Dr. MacTaggart who knew more about mutant genetics than almost anyone. Or probably a few dozen other ways to prove what she knew. But here, where the world had all but forgotten mutants, where a Google search wouldn't turn up anything... the proof was less important.

"Give it whatever explanation works for you," she offered. And with a vague awareness of his touch along her projection, she made it respond. "The more important thing is we can do stuff others can't comprehend, let alone do, and we're not completely alone."

[jageskro]

That brought him out of it, making him turn back to her, although he kept his hand companionably on the horse's wing. "You said you'd -" whoa, her eyes, "- met others in town?"

[offthebeatenpath]

When he turned, Em lowered her gaze again, but it was too late. He'd see her what projecting did to her eyes. It wasn't enough to make her drop the projection - she'd trained hard not to let little things disrupt it - but she couldn't stop the blush that rushed over her skin.

"I met one, not long before I met you, actually. Over by the university. But he said there are others."

[jageskro]

"What does he do, then?" Jag took a seat across from her again, reaching for the rest of his beer and apparently unphased by her eyes. He'd seen people with freakier-looking contacts, and the fact that they were just - he assumed - a physical sign of what she was doing with the horse and the rider made them not that freaky at all. More like natural, and kinda magical.

[offthebeatenpath]

Em let go of her Knight of Swords, color returning to her eyes as the projection disappeared.

"He's a cr- coolest guy you'll ever met." Drake might not be the Bobby she knew, and maybe he didn't even like puns, but Em wouldn't forget Bobby's love of cool puns any time soon, and she smiled fondly at the memory. "He makes ice. Snow. Generally freezes things. He can even turn himself to ice."