ax_main | Duo and Warren

Duo arrives at the school just in time to catch the notice of Warren.

Duo arrived at the school on a crisp December afternoon, with a bag in one hand and another tossed over their shoulder. After weeks of following the odd impulse-driver map that the 'Professor' had implanted in their mind, and after weeks of jumping from one host to another to navigate that map in a way that didn't completely inconvenience the people who hosted them... What a relief.

They lifted a hand to knock, but they were expected, weren't they? They had an invitation tucked away at the back of their mind. They could just walk in, couldn't they? Hell yes. Duo put one bag down, turned the knob on the large front door and pushed it open, then picked up their bag again and stepped inside.

Holy Mother of God, this wasn't a school; it was a mansion.

Warren didn't recognize the kid, but man, that was some epic hair, even from above. He circled once, then went in for a landing a few yards off, so as not to freak the kid out too much. "Hey! You new? Or am I just losing track."

Duo turned around and saw... nothing like what they expected. An angel? No, that would be ridiculous. A boy, because the voice in his head had said this was a place for people like them and that, Duo had learned, meant mutants. Still, a gorgeous boy with a pair of feathered wings - mutant didn't seem like the right word for him. Duo dropped his bags inside the door and stepped back out.

"New would be correct." Their Spanish accent had been tempered by Father Maxwell's American one over the years, but it was still obvious enough. "I just walked up the road. You're the very first person I've met here."

"I'm honored." Warren grinned and strode closer, the cold of the grass more refreshing than anything else. The new... actually Warren wasn't sure about gender, so he wasn't gonna assume anything--the new kid had the faintest of untraceable accents and a pretty epic sense of style. Nice. Warren held out his hand when he got within range. "Warren Worthington. Welcome to Xavier's."

"Thank you! I'm Duo, Duo Maxwell." If it wasn't true that their last name was Maxwell before they said it, it was now. In fact, Duo wasn't sure why the idea of taking the Padre's name hadn't occurred to them before. They looked down at Warren's hand. "I'd rather not if you don't mind. Nothing against you, just" - Duo held up a hand and wiggled his fingers - "things happen when people touch me."

Warren took his hand back and chuckled, grateful Duo didn't seem embarrassed or anything. "You'd think I'd learn--you're not the only one here with that issue. Nice to meet you, Duo. Can I help with the bags?"

"I don't know. I set them inside, but I haven't got any place to put them yet. Maybe I should see to that first?" Except their stomach choose that moment to growl, and Duo realized how long it had been since they ate. In this body at least. "Or is there someplace to eat in there?"

“Oh yeah, totally. Cmon I’ll show you.” Thankfully warren had left his shoes in the foyer. “I like the outfit. It’s sorta.... hippie fun priest.”

Duo looked down at their clothes, more than a little surprised at the compliment. "Uh, thank you. It usually gets me odd looks; people see a guy in a skirt and... well, the eyebrows go up."

"Well, I'm not saying I didn't wonder if you were a guy," Warren admitted with an easy smile. "Or--are you using 'guy' as kinda like non-gendered there? Sorry if that's inappropriate." He... had no idea how to ask this question. It was mostly a thing he'd seen other people deal with and/or read about, not a thing that happened at his old school. God no. More's the pity, but that place had been a shit show when it came to this stuff.

"I'm using it in a that's-what-people-see sense, although apparently, you're a little different from most people there." Duo returned Warren's smile to let him know it was nothing that bothered them. "Me, I don't really worry about that sort of thing. Gender is very low on my list of priorities, unlike food."

Warren started walking, gesturing for Duo to follow. "There's a huge cafeteria that always has something in it, but around mealtimes there's a bigger variety. It's pretty epic. Also, I can show you the kitchen. Always has snacks and drinks there, plus stuff for cooking if you'd rather."

Duo considered, but the cafeteria won easily. Real food, already made and waiting? Yes please. "The cafeteria. I just need a chair under me and food in front of me right now."

"That, we can do. I can show you around after, too, if you want? Not sure what you already know and don't know, but the place is huge. It can be disorienting." And hey, he needed a break. He was sick of interviews and internet loathing.
"Then I'm going to take complete advantage of you. All I know is that I got an invitation from someone who said this was the place for people like me. Bizarre delivery method though. " Duo tapped the side of their head. "I thought I was hearing voices - which I was - but not in a good way."

"Oooh, yeah, that's weird. Not the weirdest thing that'll probably happen to you here, but still. Weird. I promise, the telepaths don't just go around doing that." He opened the front door and held it for Duo to go through.

"Thank you!" Duo flashed Warren a smile and walked through. "I'm not too worried about that. If you're the standard for manners around here, I have a hard time thinking anyone would try poking around in my head without asking."

"Uh, well, a few of us were raised by proverbial wolves--I mean, I think they were proverbial." Warren smiled apologetically as he closed the door behind them and led the way into the hall, completely ignoring the grandiosity of the foyer. "But you'll figure it out quick. Most people are really cool.

"You know who your roommate is yet? Probably not, right, you just got the invite."

Duo couldn't help but laugh at that. "Oh no, I got the invite weeks ago. It was just a very long and complicated trip that I am very glad is finally over."

"Where'd you come from?" Warren shook out his wings slightly, gently, and tucked them up tight. They always felt bigger, in the hallways.

But they'd gotten to the start of the food counter, and Duo's attention was captured by the cooler full of sandwiches and pie. They reached in and grabbed several of each. "San Salvador. It wouldn't have been such a long trip except no papers, no money, and I have an odd way of traveling." There was no way they were going to eat all of this, but they didn't care. Just having the stack of food there to look at was a comfort.

Huh, El Salvador. There was a country you didn’t meet someone from every day. Cool. “Well, with no papers it’d have to be an odd way. That your mutant party trick? Odd travel?”

"Very odd." Duo grabbed a bottle, no, two bottle of orange juice and set the whole collection on the nearest table. "I travel inside people. I jump inside them and take them over for a bit. It's tricky to make your way to America that way without leaving a lot of very lost and confused people behind you."

"Wait, you... so this isn't your body... or...?" Warren was having all kinds of crazy thoughts now, and looked thoroughly confused.

"Oh, this is my body. Like I said, I travel in people, body and all. Something like getting into a car?" That would have to be enough because they had no intention of showing Warren what they could do. No touching and no merging for awhile, just the comfort of being themself again.

Warren gave a little chuckle. 'Like he said'--like it was something easy to understand! How was that even possible...? Okay, no, if he started wondering about the Physics of various mutations, Warren would drive himself insane. Forget it. "I guess I see why you have a no shaking hands rule. Would've been weird to end up with wings."

"And I would have spent too much time admiring myself in a mirror." They smiled and sat down, letting Warren take that as he wanted. Maybe it was a little early for compliments, but the boy was beautiful and a compliment couldn't hurt anything.

Warren just kept chuckling, accepting this as he did all compliments, with grace and ease. "Yeah, but you'd miss your hair, I bet. It's better." Not that Tommy had been totally right about his. Just saying, that braid was epic.

Duo unwrapped a sandwich, then motioned to the chair across the table from him. He might as well sit if they were going to talk. "There's more of it anyway. I can't remember that last time I cut it."

"I believe it." Warren chuckled, settling in and rustling his wings as he kept them over the back of the bench. "Probably get stuck in my feathers if I tried that, though."

"Feathers. That's amazing. Are there more people with feathers here?"

Warren nodded, leaning one elbow on the table and propping up his head, admiring Duo's pile of food. "There's Shen. She's awesome and has sort of hawk-looking wings. And Jay, whose wings are this really gorgeous dark pinkish shade. Amazing. Megan and Tamara have wings too, but no feathers. Oh, and one guy has shadow wings, but they come and go."

"A whole school of angels! I knew someone who would have been very impressed by this." The 'knew' was painful to say, so Duo grabbed their first sandwich and bit into it for cover.

Warren caught it but obviously didn't comment. He was far too polite for that. "We might look it but we're hardly angels. Shen's probably as close as we've got, though. She runs the mutant activist club."

"How many students are there here?"

"Uh... good question." Warren thought hard for a second. "Maybe forty? Fifty?"

Not too big then. That was a comfort. "Wasn't sure what to expect, but from the size of the house, I thought there might be more."

"More come every month, it feels like," Warren admitted. "But the place still doesn't feel packed. Not by a long shot. Some of the schools I've been in felt pretty much like a zoo, sometimes."

Duo nodded. That he understood. "Home was like that. Not school, because I got private lessons, but 24 kids running around all the time? A zoo would have been a gift."

Warren chuckled. "24 is a lot of kids." He assumed Duo was raised institutionally and left it at that. They seemed pretty chill but he didn't want to poke at potential wounds. "Especially if it wasn't a huge place."

"Not huge at all, but we had the run of the church's property too, so there was room." They'd been leaving bits out, editing too much for the sake of skipping over things they would rather not mention. That was a bad habit. Either they should mention it all or say nothing at all. Unfortunately, it was too late for that with Warren. "It was a Roman Catholic orphanage, which might not sound like a very fun place, but the people who ran it were very kind."

Nodding, Warren said, "As long as the people are cool, anywhere can be fun. More than a few students grew up in similar places so there's a, uh, range of experiences to discover." His smile went wry. "But that's cool. I think there are a few kids who do Mass on Sundays, if you're interested."

"I am not." Duo grinned. "There's a lot of Catholicism that interests me, but worshipping its god is not one of them."

"I feel that way about religion in general," Warren said with a little snort of a laugh. "Don't let the wings fool you."

Duo shrugged. "To each their own right?" Better to shuffle aside the subject. People generally took their lack of religion for contempt, and their lack of belief in a Christian god for atheism, and Duo was just tired enough that getting into either discussion wasn't something he wanted to do.

"Exactly." Warren was far from the world's most spiritual guy; in fact he didn't think about it much one way or the other. "Everyone here so far is chill about stuff like that. Religion. Politics. Touchy subjects.

"If there are arguments, it's the usual teen drama, nothing as big as it could be. So far."

"See, now I like the arguments about religion and politics. This is very disappointing news." Duo shook their head sadly as pushed their tray away from them. The extra sandwich they'd grab for later, but for now, they were full.

Warren chuckled. "So far, you're more likely to get arguments about who's dating whom, Oh, though we do occasionally see arguments about other mutant teens, the ones who don't usually live here. That's a whole thing, though."

"The other mutant teens. You don't mean generally, like any that don't live here?"

Warren shook his head. "No. You heard of Magneto?" Maybe that wasn't a thing in Catholic group homes in Central America.

"No. What is it?" They had a lot to catch up on, not only from the weeks on the move, but the shift from one culture to the next.

Warren gave Duo a quick and mostly impartial rundown of the situation, since that seemed like the kind of thing new kids should know. He started at the beginning with Xavier and Magneto being old friends, the split in their relationship and philosophies, and some of the Brotherhood's most recent activity. Then he finished with, "So that's kind of a cluster fuck in multiple ways. But the good news is that Magneto seems to respect Xavier's as a safe space."

Duo reached over the still-wrapped sandwich and dropped it in one of their bags. Then they sat back in their chair and shrugged. "It will probably occur to me later that I should be concerned about this, but right now I'm just thankful to be here."

"See, that attitude will get you far here, Duo," Warren said with a chuckle.

Duo shrugged. "That kind of attitude gets you far everywhere if I'm going to be cynical about it. People like apathy. But I think I'm just tired. A few days and rest and being comfortably numb, and I'll be annoying people about that whole thing."

Warren laughed quietly some more. He was definitely gonna like this one. "I can't wait."