ax_main | Jubilee, Shen, and Clarice

Shen and Clarice go shopping in Beverly Hills, and pick up a hitchhiker

That was the good thing about being a Buddhist; you didn't have to follow the Eight-Fold Path to the letter, not unless you actually wanted to become a Buddha in this life. Shen had no hope, or intention, of achieving that, so she was free to indulge in shopping trips and enjoy them to the fullest.

Especially shopping trips to Beverly Hills! Salem Center hadn't provided her with anything she wanted to wear to the upcoming party, so she'd enlisted Clarice's help and here they were, in a Californian mall. Shen carried a couple of bags in one hand, and she was wearing shoes for once (it had been a while!), no wings, no talons.

She grinned over at her very-normally-colored friend, thinking once again that she really preferred it when Clarice looked like herself. But they were in Beverly Hills, and that was, to put it simply, da bomb. "Seriously, what you do is so awesome."

After that incident in the park not-nearly-long-enough ago, Clarice's feelings about being out in a public space like this remained distinctly ambivalent. On the one hand, she didn't want to be the kind of person who would be scared into hiding for the rest of her life, just because some crazy people with placards and a persecution complex thought she was the Devil. On the other ... it still made her really, really nervous to be surrounded by so many unfamiliar people. But that could be as much a product of her lifetime of avoiding strangers as her recent encounter.

Either way, her palms were sweaty, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes from darting in the direction of any slight hint of movement in her peripheral vision. She just hoped Shen wouldn't notice; if nothing else, she didn't want to ruin this trip for her. And, hey, she'd scored a couple of colorful tank-tops and some really short-shorts out of the deal, so there was no way she could call the outing a total loss.

"Gal, I know it," Clarice replied, bumping her shoulder into the other girl's with a grin. It was still weird, that caramel-colored skin where usually vibrant lavender would show, but she supposed she had to make the best of it until people were ready to stop being assholes about non-standard skin tones. "But the ideas you come up with are as awesome, so I guess we's even."

"We make a great team," Shen agreed easily. "Is there anything more you want to check out?" She wasn't sure whether it was her imagination, or whether Clarice really was twitchy, but given the reason she had for it, Shen was definitely going to let her decide whether this was enough for today. Just in case! Erring on the side of caution and all.

She considered that for a few moments. Clarice was, she had to admit--if only to herself--so ready to go back to the school. But she also didn't want Shen to think she was ... twitchy, or flakey, or otherwise not cool to hang out with. She could soldier on, just a little while longer. "How about some Bubble Tea? That's a thing they has around here, 'ay?"

"Sure!" Shen grinned, happy that her friend was cool to stay. Not that she was desperate for bubble tea (it was good, though!), but mostly because that meant that Clarice was doing all right. Shen linked her free arm through her friend's to change directions. "I think I saw a shop that way..."

Some thirty minutes later, the girls were walking out of the mall and heading for a small alley so they could discreetly disappear back to school. "Thanks for taking me," Shen told Clarice as they turned into the alley. "The stores are so much better here than in Salem Center."

From her vantage point on top of one of the low, decorative walls outside the mall, Jubes watched the two girls she'd seen earlier head back towards the alley that they'd come out of a couple of hours before. There wasn't anything remarkable about either of them - except that she hadn't seen either of them before. Which, considering that she'd lived at the mall even before she'd literally lived at the mall, was seriously bizarre in and of itself.

So was the fact that alley was a total dead end, which was what had caught her attention in the first place.

Grinning, Jubilee jumped off the wall - ten points for a perfect dismount, but duh, she'd expected that! - and followed after them, the string backpack containing her blades and her trademark yellow coat slung over her shoulder. There was something interesting going on here, and she wasn't about to miss finding out what it was.

"Hey, I don' mind carryin' you anywhere, darlin'," Clarice said, smiling. Part of that was relief at finally getting back to the school, but even more so she was pleased Shen had a good time. Even if she herself didn't particularly notice the difference between the shops here and those on the opposite coast. There was a blink, and a portal opened at the end of the alley, waiting to take them both back to Westchester. "Just hope the Professor don' get too hot with us when we get back."

"Why would he?" Shen asked with a frown as they headed for the portal. No need to stop their conversation; this was as simple as walking through a door. "We haven't broken any rules, and we've been safe."

Clarice shrugged, somewhat uncomfortably. Despite the laid-back disposition she usually tried to present, she was predisposed by both culture and her own personal experiences to both respect figures of authority and conform to their rules. And, though the Professor hadn't explicitly forbidden the Bahamian mutant from using her powers for this kind of thing ... she had a hard time imagining he'd be happy with it, after that thing in the park. A thing of which she had been prominently a part, if not so much so as Tamara or Tommy. "We didn't exactly ask first, either, though."

She didn't break her stride as they approached the end of the alley, the portal back to Westchester opening before them with a characteristic blink.

"Whoa," Jubilee whispered, having entered the mouth of the alley at the same moment that some kind of portal opened up at the end of it. That was...that was just so beyond cool she wasn't sure she'd have even known how to describe it, and she couldn't remember the last time that had happened. Maybe never. One thing she knew for sure, though. She hiked her bag up on her shoulder and got ready to run. If there was any possible way, she was finding out just what was on the other side.

"We didn't exact sign out," Shen agreed reluctantly. "Better ask for forgiveness than permission," she added, brightly, and stepped through the pink portal.

The green-eyed mutant gave her classmate a look, then let out a laugh she couldn't quite suppress. "My lord, I swear sometimes y'all wan' me to dead from stress." Anyway, it was always nice to have a chance to use her powers for something like this, something bigger than just 'porting around the mansion over and over again. She had a feeling that the practice would come in handy, one day. As they passed through the shimmering pink doorway, Clarice made certain to hold it open until they were well clear; the effects of her portals opening and closing could be very dangerous, and she didn't want to take any chances. Even if Shen didn't seem to mind.

And this was her chance. Jubilee broke into a sprint, then dove through the portal before it could close (okay, fine, she didn't know it was about to close, but it seemed like the thing to do. Tuck, roll, and...whoa. Definitely not the other side of the wall. "This is like, so cool!" she exclaimed as she got to her feet and retrieved her back from where it had fallen. "Dude, how did you do that?"

For all that Shen had great control over her wings and talons in more normal circumstances, stepping outside the mansion and being surprised by someone coming in right behind them was not one of those normal circumstances. She turned around to face the intruder, even as her hands and - yikes, inside her shoes - feet turned into talons, and wings sprouted from her back. "What the fuck?" she let out before she had a chance to come to grips with any of it.

"Mudda fuck," Clarice yelped, at almost the same time Shen underwent her reflexive transformation. The result was the temporarily-camouflaged island mutant ending her exclamation with a mouthful of feathers, and practically knocked off her feet by one powerful wing. "Where the hell did you come from?" she demanded, once she'd mostly recovered.

"Whoa. Did you seriously just grow wings?" Jubilee asked, staring at the Asian girl with unrestrained curiosity. "Because seriously, I watched you guys open that wormhole thing, and I thought that was totally cool, but seriously, wings? That's amazing! Are you mutants?" She looked over at the other girl, only just registering what she'd said, and rolled her eyes. "California. Duh. Where you guys just were? By the way, if you're going to do that? You maaaybe don't want to be going in and out of dead end alleys, because honestly, anyone watching would've wondered whatcha were up to. Except hardly anyone notices anything," she admitted, "so maybe not."

Shen first made sure that Clarice was okay, then turned to the younger girl who'd just spoken a mile a minute, tried to think of anything to say to her, but ended up turning back to Clarice. "Okay. Now we're gonna be in trouble."

"Maybe," Clarice ventured, her heart sinking somewhere down into the pit of her stomach as Shen confirmed her greatest fear of the moment, "if I 'port her back right now, nobody will notice ... ?" She sort of doubted it, since the school was run by the world's most powerful telepath. But maybe he could be asleep, or something? Either way, as much as she wanted to, she was probably too anxious right then to try blinking away a living thing. Definitely not a human. When accidents occurred inside her portals, they tended to be messy.

"Hel-lo! Standing right here, asking questions!" Just to make that clear in case it already wasn't, she waved her arm and fired off a few bright pafs from her fingers into the air. After all, they were mutants - no reason not to show off what she could do, too. "You are not 'porting me back anywhere. I claim," damn, what was the word? She'd totally seen it in a movie, once - oh! "Statuary! Or, y'know, something like that." Because that wasn't it, was it? But still, close enough!

"Sanctuary," Shen replied, immensely relieved at the... fireworks, or whatever that had been. "Hey, maybe we won't be in that much trouble after all. Just a detention or two. We are so not 'porting you back anywhere," she confirmed with a grin, then looked at Clarice. "Let's take her to the Prof?"

"You're forgettin' that time I dumped Inu-Yasha in the lake," Clarice said glumly. "And that thing at the park. Between all that, and now this, how is the Professor gonna think I'm anything but a problem case?" Sighing, the island girl tapped the image inducer on her wrist; they were back on school grounds now and safe, and she really did prefer to look like herself--glowing green eyes and all. The suddenly-lavender mutant looked back at their--her--stowaway, and sighed again.

"Guess there ain' anything else to do about it now, though," she conceded. "But you," she pointed at the strange, small, Asian-Californian gal in warning, "don't ever try anything like that again. Is dangerous." To illustrate her point, Clarice formed a portal right down the center of a large-ish rock off to one side of the garden path. The rock split in half, the two pieces rolling away from each other as soon as the pinkish energy dissipated. The sides that had once joined together were both unnaturally smooth.

"Shit. Now I guess I gotta clean that up." She was definitely going to have to work on thinking things through.

"Omg, that was incredible. And you're purple," Jubes added, pulling her gaze away from the split rock and turning to gape for a moment at the newly purple girl. Only for a moment, though, before she replaced the expression with one of deliberate nonchalance. "Which is totally cool," she said, waving it aside. "I mean, purple's an awesome color."

"We like to think of it as lavender," Shen told the new kid on the block with a small smile. As far as she was concerned, the rock wasn't a big deal, and it could definitely wait. "I'm Shen, this is Clarice. Come on," she nodded towards the front door, "there's someone who'll want to meet you."

Clarice facepalmed as her warning clearly went over the new arrival's head. Biting back another sigh, she gestured toward the mansion not so far off, and fell into step beside Shen. "Yeah, I guess is better to get it over with. Welcome to Xavier's, uh, kid."

"Jubes," she corrected. She narrowed her eyes and fixed Clarice with a look. "I'm so not a kid, thank you very much." After all, the other girl couldn't have been more than a couple of years older than her. It wasn't her fault she was short. Just genetics.

That said, though, she turned her attention back to Shen and hiked her backpack higher on her shoulder. "Who are we going to meet? And what do they do?"

"We're all kids, and he's the guy in charge," Shen replied, resisting the urge to grow her wings back just yet. She could wait until 'Jubes' here was safely in the Professor's hands. He could decide how much to tell her. "He'll explain everything."

"Don' mind Shen goin' all cryptic," Clarice said, bringing herself back to something like normal with no small effort. "We just don' wanna get into any more trouble than we's already in. But the guy in charge ain' half-bad, believe me." She held up a hand, and another portal blink-ed into existence a few steps up the path. The exit-point was the Professor's study, where she was pretty sure he'd be expecting them. "Let's get it over with, 'ay, Jubes?"

"Wow, way to make it sound like I'm going to my death." But whatever, right? She'd said he wasn't bad, and honestly, what could he do? Without waiting for further invitation, Jubilee headed through the portal.