ax_main | Lil and Shen

As far as first meetings go, this one is definitely a disaster.

Shen tended to hit the gym wing-less more often than not; the wings got in the way when she wanted to use some of the workout equipment. Case in point, the chest press machine she was sitting on, with its high back. Wings made it hell to work, but she was rocking it without them. Between how much she'd been working out and her enhanced strength, she was getting near the maximum the machine would allow, and she was hoping to get to the actual maximum within a month or so.

Objectives were good to have.

Her phone beeped, letting her know it was time to take a break before moving on to another machine. As if on cue, that super tall new girl walked in, and Shen climbed off the machine to grab her water bottle. Sweat glistened on her body, which she clearly had no problem showing, since she was only wearing a pair of shorts and a sports bra. "Hey there. How's it going? Lil, right?"

"Um, yeah." Lil hadn't managed to find a quiet corner in this school yet, so she wasn't surprised to find that yet another person had decided to make an introduction. What did surprise her was how her gaze wanted to wander over the girl a bit when she saw her. Just self-consciousness Lil told herself as she tugged at her t-shirt. It was new, green and gold with the gemstone crest of the NWT diamond centre on the front. It was that and an old ripped pair of sweatpants - no wonder this chick in barely anything made her feel uncomfortable. "I'm Lil. You're... Shen? Jeanne-Marie's roommate?

"Yeah," Shen confirmed with a friendly smile. All the more friendly for hearing Jeanne-Marie's name. Any friend of her roommate's was bound to be good people. "It's nice to meet you. I'm sorry I didn't say hi before." She had made a point of talking to every new kid, up until there had been so many of them more or less at once.

Lil shrugged. "Eh, no big deal. It's not like I was goin' out of my way to say hi to everybody." She had, in fact, been trying to do the opposite until recently. The mansion and grounds were huge, but around every corner there seemed to be one more person ready to pop out and introduce themselves. Best to just give up and go with the flow.

Shen capped her bottle (all steel, with #feminist written on its side) after taking a very welcome drink. "How are you liking it here?"

"Better than I thought I would." Lil offered a half smile. "Seems like a pretty friendly place."

"It is," Shen confirmed with a nod. She was pleasantly surprised that cliques still didn't seem to be appearing. "I hope that holds, the more students we get. Don't let me stop you from working out," she
added with a friendly smile.

Lil looked around the gym. With a collection of exercise equipment, much of it stuff she only vaguely recognized, it looked nothing like the big empty gymnasium at her last school. "Honestly, I really don't
know what to do here. I mean, I got this idea that I should get into shape or something, but this stuff... " This stuff was intimidating."

"I was the same when I got here," Shen told her with a smile. Her old school hadn't had any of this equipment - and with good reason, since they hadn't planned on training a group of mutant vigilantes. "I can show you how to work them, if you like?" Her phone beeped again, signifying the end of her break, and the fact that she should get back to working out, and she picked it up from its spot on the floor and stopped the workout program so it wouldn't keep annoying them.

"Yeah, I guess I need the help." Lil hadn't had much more in mind than 'get strong' with a very loose idea of what that meant. She'd made a promise to protect one friend, and had every intention of watching out for at least one other, especially with all this talk of superheros and crap, and she took that commitment seriously. Still, in this room she felt lost. "Like," she waved at the contraption Shen had been using, "What the fuck is that?"

"Chest press machine," Shen answered, as if that said much of anything. She hadn't batted an eye at the language. "It works your chest and upper arms. You just sit there, feet there, set how much
weight you want to press, and pull those handles towards you - then back out - then back in. Rinse, lather, repeat, the usual."

Lil gave the machine a suspicious look. "And how much were you lifting, or pressing?"

"I have superstrength and I've been working out all summer, so... pretty near the top," Shen admitted, gesturing at the weights.

"Jesus." That impressed Lil, even if she didn't know what the top end of the machine was. "I just thought you flew, that you had wings or something?" Maybe she was like Teddy and the wings only popped out when she needed them, because they weren't there right now.

"Yeah, that and a bunch of extra goodies that make flying a lot easier," Shen confirmed. And the talons, but if Lil had seen her around, she was sure to have seen those, too. "What about you? If you don't mind saying."

"Naw, it's no secret here. I've just got the one trick - I'm unvulnerable. If you ever need a punching bag for the Danger Room, I'm it."

Shen looked horrified. "I think I'll stick to non-people punching bags, thanks." Invulnerable or not. That just smacked of abuse.

"Suit yourself," Lil mumbled. She'd obviously said the wrong thing. Either that or Shen was just too precious for a joke. Lil preferred to think it was the second. "I'd sort of like somebody to try one of these days. Find out what my top end is."

"I... recommend the other way around," Shen replied. "You hit something increasingly harder, until you start feeling pain." Or not. Maybe Lil was completely invulnerable, but what if there was a limit to her invulnerability? Like Tamara used to think she was fireproof. Better safe than sorry. "Or Tessa's been helping people figure out their limits, if you want to check in with her." She nodded towards the chest press. "You wanna give this a go?"

But Lil shook her head and fixed Shen with an angry glare. If there was one thing that got under her skin, it was people thinking they knew more about her than she did. "Not yet, 'cause you seem to think I'm some kind of idiot, and I'd like to clear that up first. I've been like this since I was a year old. I can't get a needle from my doctor. I can take long walks in the middle of winter in a t-shirt and shorts if I want, and I'm from the fucking Northwest Territories. I was in a car that hit a pole going a hundred kms an hour with no seatbelt and didn't break a fucking nail." She paused to take a breath and banish memories of the person who didn't survive that accident. "Punch something? Shit, that was all I did sometimes. I'm not a dumbass, so if I think I can take whatever pansy ass punch you can throw, it's 'cause I've got good reason to think that."

Shen's eyebrows raised at the tone Lil was using with her, but the more the other girl spoke and the more pissed she got. Especially with that pansy ass comment. "Wow, shit, sorry for giving a damn and frowning at the thought of a kid getting punched with any kind of strength, when most of us have only manifested recently and don't have much clue what's going on with our mutations straight away. Which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with that." She forced herself to rein in her anger as she went on, more quietly, but no less intensely. "I'm sorry for the shit you went through, and I'm glad you survived it, but you can keep your sexist, homophobic language to yourself."

"Oh?" Lil raised her eyebrows in mock concern and put a hand to her chest. "Well, I don't want to be offensive. How about I just call you a fuckin' asshole?"

"You know what they say," Shen replied, picking up her phone and turning to go. "Everybody's got one!"

They'd been too lucky with all the kids who had come in so far; this had been bound to happen sooner rather than later.

Shen was walking away, and the urge to reach out and grab her, drag her back into the argument and maybe, take a swing at her, was hard for Lil to resist. But who knew what that would get her?
Suspended? Expelled maybe? And all for the sake of some stuck up cow she'd only met a few moments before.

Instead, Lil sat dropped down onto the seat of the machine she had no idea how to use. The anger, quick to rise, was quicker to leave, and all Lil was left with was that grimy sense of shame these kinds of encounters always left her with. She'd let herself be prodded and baited again and if it hadn't ended up with someone else sporting a broken nose, it was only because Shen had the restraint Lil didn't.

She was still a bitch of course, but at least she had that restraint.