Meeting

[Ixtlilton]

Dragon was so not sure about this. Here she was, at a new school, classes about to start, and then she'd been informed, almost as a side comment, that she'd be sharing a room with some girl.

Dragon had never shared a room. The earliest she could remember, she had her own room. When she ran away from there, she'd been on her own... then she'd had her own room again. Then she'd been rescued, and now she had to SHARE? Shit man! How was she gonna pull this off? She didn't know how to share! She didn't go to kindergarten; no one taught her that crap! She knew where to stab in the back of an average person to avoid bone and go straight for the kidneys, but that wouldn't help!

Dragon quickly nabbed the bed closest to the window. She could hide under that and be certain the sun wouldn't touch her at all times of the day, she was sure of it. Maybe she could put curtains up, if her roommate didn't mind. What sort of thing did roommates mind, she wondered as she set Bon-Bon down on her new dresser.

[Kitten King]

She hated schools.

The very word 'school' was not synonymous with her being. She'd been through several schools, and tutors, and all manner of educational trials, but it had been the same stories. 'Hazard to the other students'. 'Failing half the subjects.' 'We can't deal with someone who bites anymore.' (Which, by the way, was stupid - everyone knew teeth were the most efficient weapons that humans had! So what if she'd drawn some blood once, twice.. three times…) Of course, things hadn't been made easier when Dominic had left last year, to come to this very school. To go away. The fuck had her parents been thinking? That was the first time they'd been separated for longer than a week or two.

It hadn't gone well.

Suffice it to say, there was some relief when Lilith's abilities began to manifest themselves - some relief, and some fear. What exactly happened, she wondered, if she got kicked out of this school as well? Could she even get kicked out of this school? She wasn't sure, but for once, she wasn't so keen to find out. She wouldn't have anywhere left to go if that happened, not anywhere else safe. That was the least of her worries, though - she couldn't stand another year without her brother to pick on and batter around. It took all the fun out of life without him around. Besides, he needed her a lot more than he even knew - and she was sure of it.

Full backpack slung over her shoulder and hands in her pockets, with a little help from her brother, she traversed the hallways of the castle up to the section of dorms where she'd be staying. She glanced around where she got there, before pulling a crumpled bit of paper from her pocket with one hand, squinting at the blank ink printed onto it. Dorm 316… that was up here, right? That's what Nic had said. She moved up the hallway, passing two other rooms or so, before she found the number she was looking for. She stuffed the paper back into her pocket, and pulled a key out from inside instead. She stared at the door for a moment, before pushing the key into the lock and turning it with a click. She grabbed the handle, twisted, and pushed it open to her new room.

The first thing she noticed was that there was a ferret sitting on the dresser. Her view then expanded, to take in the rest of the picture. Her new roommate was already here - well, shit. She hadn't figured out how to deal what that little part of things yet. She hadn't had a roommate since she and Nic were little kids, Christ. Uhh, think Lilith, think! She tried to take in the other girl - short hair, dark clothes, a little shorter than her, pale. The first thing that registered was that they had a thing or two in common - the second was that she was sure this was going to be a complete disaster. For god's sake, would you SAY something already?!

"…hey?" Smooth, Lilith. So smooth.

[Ixtlilton]

There was no sign of a roommate, for now, so Dragon decided to just start unpacking. Not that she had much to unpack. She had a small briefcase (stolen) full of tools (actually hers). And that was about it. She'd brought a few of her little toys that she managed to escape with... the wind-up mouse and the little helicopter.. thing. Her stupid little netbook that couldn't do anything right. Not really much, and nothing large.

The beds had sheets on them. She had two pairs of clothes for her drawers, and some money she'd keep on her for whenever she got to go and buy some clothing. Would they let her buy clothing, or was she in some sort of secret hideaway where they had NORMAL people go buy things for them? She sighed again, and was in the process of moping to Bon-Bon when the door opened.

There was a long moment of silence while six eyes examined each other. Bonnie was the first to become unimpressed, and he quickly went back to gnawing on his leg. Dragon and Lilith, however, were taking their time observing each other, both cautious like they expected the other one to bite.

"Uh... hi," Dragon replied, equally awkward. Dragon hadn't really been close to another girl in five years or so... this was gonna be a disaster. And hell, the LAST girl she'd been close to had been totally boyish, two. She'd almost never encountered this sort of... feminine... thing... ever.

[Kitten King]

Dragon would learn soon enough that Lilith was not the most feminine person around. Lilith just sorta stood there for a minute, looking at Dragon while Dragon looked back at her. She took another appraisal of the girl in front of her, and then after a moment, relaxed a little.

"Thank god you're not one 'a those fuckin' girly girls." She said the first thing that came to her mind, and already any illusions towards her behavior were no doubt beginning to drop. She took a couple steps into the room, her typical swagger already coming back to her step, before shutting the door behind her. "If I ended up with one 'a those, I'd 'a had ta punch somebody before too long, ya know?" Also becoming quickly apparent was her distinct accent - though not as strong as some, it was most definitely from somewhere in New York City.

She moved across the room, becoming a little more confident with each step. She was still nervous, but that didn't mean she was gonna show it. Hell, she could handle this. She was Lilith fuckin' Andraste! She could take anything! She let her backpack slide down her shoulder, and she tossed it onto her own mattress with a dull thud. She turned to face the other girl directly again, leaning against a wall and folding her arms across herself.

"So, guess we're roomates, eh?"

[Ixtlilton]

"Uh," Dragon said, her sole addition to the conversation. The girl looked pretty girly to Dragon, but then again, she had to admit, she'd only ever known a couple of girls in her lifetime (including herself) to compare too. She'd never really thought about that one before. The girl sure didn't SOUND girly. Her strange accent made Dragon feel a bit more self conscious about her own. Despite this school being closer to her home then America, it was Americans that were the worst about hunting down and killing "mutant freaks," so most of the school was American.

Dragon paused to thank her old friend for being so manish and teaching her to be the same, or else she might be getting her skirt-wearing ass kicked in right now. Thank you, thank you, androgyny and baggy clothing!

"I, ummmm... g-guess so," Dragon said, not too fond of how timid she sounded. She couldn't help it, this girl was loud and intimidating! Where was that accent even from? New York? It was from New York, wasn't it? Americans had too many accents to choose from. "Uh... I'm Dragon... This is Bonnie," she added, gesturing towards the ferret.

[Kitten King]

This girl was one of those quiet ones, wasn't she? … she reminded Lilith strikingly of a friend she'd left behind in many ways. Quiet, short-cut hair, possibly boyish. She'd left behind several old friends, but she hadn't really been given the chance to think much about them. Even now, she didn't have time for it - she shoved it to the back of her mind best she could, and kept on with the conversation.

"Dragon, eh?" She thought on it for only a second or so before declaring, "I like it," and moving on in the conversation. The other girl had an accent, too - seemed to her to be British, of some sort. Maybe? Eh, that's what she'd guess. She sounded like a different version of a childhood friend's accent, and he'd come from London, right? Yeah, that was right. The world was a freaky place. "The name's Lilith, Lilith Andraste." She turned away again, giving her backpack a shove across the bed again, before flopping down onto it. Fwump. She stared at the ceiling and spoke again.

"I'm not really used ta sharin' my space, if ya know what I mean." She wasn't going to lie about that, no matter how many other things she spoke through her teeth about - some things just didn't need lies. "But you don't seem so bad."

[Ixtlilton]

Dragon was glad her name was acceptable. She wasn't quite sure what to think of this girl yet. She was loud, but that seemed to be part of her accent (was "loud" an accent? Lilith made it one).

Oh, right, manners. She remembered those. "Pleased to meet you, Lilith." She had a bunch of questions, considering they were in, like, Scotland or something, she forgot. She wondered what it was like for someone to be so far away from home. Had Lilith been here for a while? Did she know any people? What was she in here for (that made it sound like prison)? Did she mind the ferret? What were classes like? Did they mind if you spent the whole class invisible, or would they count you absent?

She put the questions off for the moment, however. "Uh, me neither, but... You'll probably mostly be sharing it with Bonnie," she said, pointing at the ferret. "I'll probably spend most of my time under the bed... at least until I get used to things here," she admitted. And maybe even then. She didn't know if she could get away with making things here. If not... yeah. She'd be under the bed pretty much every spare second she wasn't being forced to go to class.

[Kitten King]

'Pleased to meet you.' Heh. It sounded like something Nic would say - she could deal with that. Quiet people tended to remind her of Nic. So did nerds. A lot of things reminded her of Nic in the past year, actually. It was both reassuring and annoying. Did her mind always wander off like that? ...oh yeah. It totally did. Speaking of Nic, did she just say under the bed?

"Under there?" she said, rolling onto her side and tilting her head at the right angle to view the girl and her bed. "Heh, man. The more I hear of ya, the more ya remind me of my brother." She rolled the opposite direction, digging around in the side of her pack, pulling out a pen before she leaned right back to her former position. She played with the black-ink tool in her hands while she spoke again. "He spends time underneath shit all 'a time, lemme tell ya. Tables, desks, prob'ly beds, too. Never did get why." Lilith had never been the most attentive nor the most polite, and she kept the same expression on her face as she played with her pen in a somewhat bored manner.

It was more a cover-up than anything else.

[Ixtlilton]

"Oh?" asked Dragon, suddenly interested and perking up. "Is he a shadow too? Or does he just... hide under desks?" She could understand either way. She often thought that even if she couldn't just melt away, she'd hide in shadows anyway, just to pretend she wasn't there.

She'd slept as a shadow for the past three years, and hadn't slept in a bed since she was ten. There was no way that nice-sheets bed of hers was going to get used by anyone other than the ferret, she was sure of it.

"Oh, right, um... would you mind if put up curtains?" she asked, pointing towards the window. She'd been told once that her accent made everything she said sound polite, which was good, because "manners" hadn't really been thoroughly covered in her on and off education. She had learned specific rules for asking for things, though, which she planned to apply here. She could find out if there was a "how to act like a normal person" elective at the school later.

[Kitten King]

"A shadow?" The wording confused Lilith, and she tilted her head at the other girl with a confused look. "Nah, he just likes cozy little posts like that. Finds 'em safe, I think. Somethi- OW, fuck!" Having been flicking the pen around in her hand, she had proceeded to let it slip through her fingers and fly right into her eye socket. She sat up abruptly, rubbing her eye and mumbling curses beneath her breath. She would have kept doing so for some time, no doubt, had she not had her attention taken again by the matter of the curtains.

"Eh? Oh, pssh, yeah, go ahead. All the light in here was buggin' me too." At home, she'd gotten into the usual summer schedule - sleep from dawn to dusk, up when there was moonlight shining on the world. It left her with more time to sleep and a world that hurt her eyes less than daytime did. She'd always been a little sensitive to the light, now that she thought about it... probably one of the reasons she'd always hated school. It didn't run at night. Well, at least most of the classes here were indoors in rooms with no bright-lit windows. She didn't want to be blinded half the time. "I'm normally more of a nocturnal person." She only knew that word because she liked it - nocturnal. It fit her. She'd always felt like the darkness fit her.

[Ixtlilton]

"Oh," said Dragon, clearly dissapointed. Well, that was okay. It was a weird thing, no point in expecting someone else to have it. She was going to explain what she meant to Lilith, but at that moment Lilith managed to stab herself in the eye. Dragon squeaked at the sudden noise and movement and vanished.

Of course, she hadn't really vanished, she'd just instintually dove into the shadows under her bed, but unless someone was paying enough attention to see her melt quickly melt away, it tended to look like vanishing.

She quickly realized Lilith was fine and nothing was going to explode, and then she felt pretty silly. She didn't have vocal cords, though, so she kind of had to come back out. She reformed under the bed. "Uuuh... okay. I'm pretty nocturnal too. Too bad they don't offer night courses..." Although she kind of liked having her nights free to roam around, at least in theory. She was gonna explore the CRAP out of this place as soon as the sun went down. "I'll... get some curtains."

[Kitten King]

Lilith had to do a double-take when she looked back and found herself the only person in the room. Wha... wait, where had she gone? She looked accusingly at the ferret for a moment, though why she suddenly thought he had something to do with it, no one would know. Everything began to make sense again, however, when she rematerialized once again beneath the bed.

"Woah, shit man - did you just- did you just do what I think ya did?" She rolled her body over so that she could swing her legs over the side as she sat up, staring at Dragon with her now one good eye. She wasn't always the cleverest ham in the meatlocker, but she was fairly sure she could put this puzzle together. Ha, if that was the case.. "Ha, wish I could do somethin' like that. My powers are barely anythin' right now." Other the tiniest pushes and pulls in the shadows around her, Lilith rarely could do something on purpose with her powers. The only time she remembered anything significant, actually, was when her powers had been discovered - she'd been angry at her sister, wasn't that it? Yeah, her younger sister. She'd gotten pissed off again, and made a swing in the air with her hand. A twisted shadow had shot forth, snarled around the leg of her sister's shadow, and tugged back. Jade was knocked right off her feet, much to her satisfaction (and of course, confusion). Lilith wished she knew how the hell she'd done that.

[Ixtlilton]

"I... I'm not sure," came Dragons voice from under the bed as she peered out at Lilith shyly. "What do you think I did?"

Bonnie seemed incredibly nonplussed by all of this action and remained on the dresser, licking his foot. He'd seen Dragon do all kinds of things in the two months he'd known her, and he was finally starting to get used to it. He was pretty chill ferret by nature, as long as he could OhHEYTHEREWASSOMETHINGSHINYINTHATGIRL'SBAG. He darted towards it, launching himself off the dresser, onto the desk, the chair, and then the floor, like a well trained ninja ferret.

"I've been able to for as long as I can remember. When N... when I was found, they tell me I was half in and half out," she admitted. "I was five....ish. We think."

[Kitten King]

Lilith squinted at the bottom of the bed, where she could clearly pick out two eyes and the shine of skin, but not much else. If it had been darker in the whole room, then maybe she'd be able to pick out Dragon's outline, but the contrast was too much right now. Giving up, she shrugged, and leaned back to her old position, raising her hand to outstretch towards the ceiling.

"Well, beats me exactly what you did, but ya vanished somehow, and you said something about being a shadow. Guessin' you can jump into them or some shit like that? Lucky bitch," she added, her hand clenching and unclenching at the ceiling still. She was staring up with a concentrated look, but nothing in particular seemed to be happening to the shadows in the corners of the room - not like Lilith wanted it to. She thought, at one point, one of the shadows contracted a bit.. but if it had, it didn't much, and she couldn't do it again. Damn it, damn it, damn it... she'd get the hang of it eventually. That was why she was here, wasn't it? "Can't believe you've been able to do shit for that long. I've only known a couple months, and I still can't do anything with it. Damn shadows..." She was too concentrated on the ceiling to notice the ferret, but if she did, the little weasel better look the hell out.

[Ixtlilton]

"Uh, yeah, sorta," Dragon agreed uncomfortably. "I can turn into shadow or something, I'm not exactly sure what..." Lilith was, unfortunately, not really looking in Dragon's direction, so maybe she didn't see how Dragon flinched wildly and flattened herself up against the wall in the very back part of the corner. A few bad memories flashed through her head, which she shook wildly to clear, actually banging her head against one of the bed's legs. "OW!" she swore, or kind of swore, anyway. She swore a lot in her head, but she couldn't remember the last time she actually said one out loud. She wasn't much of an out-loud swearer, and hearing Lilith go at it like that had startled her in more ways than one.

Bon-Bon was only momentarily distracted by Dragon's noise of pain, glancing over to make sure his new owner wasn't bleeding or dead or something. He could see her there, shifting under the bed... didn't seem too wounded, so he went back to trying to drag a bracelet out of Lilith's bag and under her dresser.

"Um, uh..." Dragon said, trying to compose herself and failing miserably.