Snippet #1883625

Damien turned his gaze down to the grass in front of him and lightly touched a blade. The image of thousands of days of walking, playing, and past school years flooded his mind, but he ignored most of it. What he didn't ignore was the second they had sat down, when she had sat and he had followed. He felt it was relevant enough, and close enough, to that time for him to see.

"I guess it would take a while to get used to a school like this," he agreed, voice quiet. The school was huge, the layout was unique -- like nothing he had ever seen in his life -- and the students had so many different powers that it was disorienting. If he ever got used to the school, he didn't think it would be in the first year, but that was all he was giving himself to adjust. One year. After that year was up, if he didn't already have an established social life, he was giving up on attempting. One friend, that's all he wanted, and he had a feeling his roommate would become that. One friend. Maybe he would luck out and get a second with her.

"But can't you feel the static? The charge in people's bodies? Their atoms? What about the grass? What about the clouds?" Damien looked to her once more, sparing her the science jargon in favor of her understanding what he was saying and in favor of not having to repeat himself. "And the planet's electromagnetic field?" He thought that she would have felt a lot more than nothing, but he wasn't the one with the power. He didn't know.

-

Ten minutes of running later, Tucker slowed to a trot and sat by the exit of the school closest to the little group. He had seen someone go into the dorm building, but he didn't know who it was or that the person was his roommate. Everything looked different when he was a cheetah. He laid down on his back and morphed to his normal, fully-clothed self, eyes shutting to block out the sun.

He loved the excitement on new students' faces when they saw him change, and, even more than that, he loved it when they were excited that they weren't alone.

Tucker stretched out, uncaring of if his clothes became dirty, and exhaled a deep breath. The sun still felt nice, even when tired out; it felt even better, if anything. He listened in to the conversations as he had before, altering the insides of his ear canal and the actual shape of the cartilage to better pick up on words both spoken and whispered.

Two girls were having... an interesting conversation, and the new students sounded happy. He faintly heard the talk between someone about powers and being shared, which he found amusing. Did no one remember their first year at the school? When they were just excited not to be completely alone as freaks in a standard world? Life was just amusing in all ways today.