etraya | un: HELLION

We can load up at the convenience store.

( probably isn't a bad idea, either. which is why julian's turning himself around, and - heading back out of the cafeteria. time to go grocery shopping. )

Or the hospital. There's a stocked kitchen in it.

[ It's not a bad idea, which is why Jay follows him.

He thinks it's crazy, yes, but not because of Julian. ]

Why are our food shopping options a convenience store and raiding the hospital kitchen? Why is the kitchen in the empty hospital stocked with food? When is anything here going to make sense? We should go somewhere with clothes while we're out.

Dude, chill.

( easier said than done, julian knows, but he's saying it anyway as he exits the cafeteria and starts flying off towards the convenience store. )

Freaking out isn't going to make it make sense. It's the weird holographic chick in the hospital who fills out - whatever. It's probably her fault everything here doesn't add up.

[ "Chill"? Very helpful, Julian. A real rock in times of emotional turmoil, Jay thinks to himself, not realizing that his irritation and concern for Julian are the entire reason that he's here, chasing after Julian out the doors and into the air, instead of hiding in his bed. Why he can be annoyed about Julian not even pausing to see if Jay was following him, he just assumed that Jay'd come trotting after him like one of the Hellions.

Ugh, and he did. ]

I'm chill! [ He is not, but he's also not screeching and panicked. ] Sorry if I can't just flit my way through this.

[ Says the boy who is, in fact, literally flitting. ]

( there may be countless types of people in the universe, but juilian's relatively good at identifying the followers. jay, for one. josh for another, even if he isn't here. but he does expect jay to just - trail along with him, considering it's julian who knows where they're going.

he does turn around to keep an eye on jay, even while he keeps flying off in the direction of the store. )

You did miss the bit where all the teachers were just yelling at us to get over ourselves, so I'll give you a pass, for today. But - things are going to be fucked. That's just the way it is.

[ Which is not encouraging in the slightest. Coming back to Etraya has been a shock, finding out that everything's going to be fucked at home is depressing. If he wasn't actively in flight, his wings would droop. As he'd rather not break both legs, only his face does. ]

Yeah, they're ... not great when it comes to helping people get over the bad times.

[ The X-Men endorse sending kids who are already in pain to their boarding school and forcing them into teams that have to essentially subsume their friends groups if they're going to pass. The thought and care behind it is minimal. ]

... is that what they did after... ?

It wasn't intentionally like that.

( jay was gone, through all of it. and julian - doesn't really know a good way to summarize how fucked the world got after m-day. )

Miss Frost had all of us go into the Danger Room - and I mean all of us. That was before the - bus incident. Made a team of what was left of the Hellions, Laura, Josh, and Nori. Killing Stryker broke Foley. It was Danvers and Stark who found your body. Laura who had to listen in on their conversation and tell us, because no one was filling us in on anything. We figured out your message, but they wouldn't listen to us about Nimrod. We all almost died, countless times. Cess was kidnapped and they broke her apart. The school was destroyed a few times. It wasn't safe anymore. They moved us around a few times - left some of us behind. It'd take me forever to fill you in with all the crap that went down, and almost all of it was bad. Pretty sure for a while there, we were all just waiting for our turn to die.

[ Jay can't quite hover the way that Julian can, but he stops making forward progression and bobs up and down somewhere between Stryker and Stark. Listening and trying not to feel it all like he was there or like it was his fault. It wasn't. Part of it's not.

But every time Julian talks about anything he casually throws in more things that've gone bad. Jay doesn't know how the guy keeps breathing through all that. ]

I think it was intentionally like that.

[ Jay's looking down at the grounds beneath them. Don't need to be able to see the future or through walls to know what the school's always been for, and Jay's always gotten his feathers ruffled over it. ]

Sam and Paige both went to schools like this, back when they didn't have more'n 10 students. Students died. And they both wound up X-Men. There were hundreds of students here with us. I get splitting us into grades - that's the school part. But into teams? They didn't need to teach us teamwork and tactics unless they were specifically weeding out the ones not cut out for combat. Why do you think I hated it so much? Students died. I wasn't here a month before the first funeral. And the ones that live - they're the X-Men.

( okay. so jay has a point there - but that wasn't exactly what julian was getting at. he twists around mid-air, still heading in the direction of the convenience store but facing jay. )

Congrats, you've named both the problem and the solution they came up with. Students died, because the flatscans hate us. It didn't matter how hard we tried to keep to ourselves, they didn't give a damn. They just wanted all of us dead to try and cull the number of new mutants coming into the world. The teams? I agree, shitty concept, but at least we had a built-in buddy system.

They don't all hate us.

[ He well and truly believes that. Look at his mom. Julia. Humans don't all hate mutants, no matter what it sounds like on the news or feels like. Some of them are decent folks. ]

I know that being loud and angry sells, but I can't be the only person out there who wants everyone to coexist. It's not like it's hard to live and let...

[ Let live. But Stryker hadn't let their depowered classmates live, because they might've proved that mutants really were just like humans. They couldn't live if his narrative was to live. Jay feels nauseous, and it has nothing to do with the bobbing. ]

... let's just go to the store.

( jay survived through m-day, but didn't last all that long after.

he wasn't there for the utopia mess. wasn't there for the fight against the avengers. wasn't there when emma abandoned julian in a hotel room and told him the x-men were disbanded, good luck, and figured he'd find his own way. he wasn't even an adult yet, his parents had sold and abandoned their home, and even magneto rejected him. jay wasn't there, when julian helped lead the protests for their rights. wasn't there, when emma socked him in the face to arrest him.

julian flits a little closer, and reaches a hand out to grab onto jay's wrist. it's not a forceful hold, but more just to show that he's extending his tk shield out to jay. if he can't manage to keep himself up in the air, julian's got him. )

Was working on it already.

( getting to the store, that is. there's no need to push the subject when jay already knows the answer. coexisting would be the ideal, but mankind refuses to allow mutants to exist. )

[ That's - okay, that's weird. Not that Julian's holding onto him, but the sensation of the telekinesis mixing with his own flight is crazy. Even if Julian isn't trying to give him any additional lift, he's changing how much Jay's weight pulls against his wings. He pulls up a few inches higher without meaning to, and he has to focus to stay even with Julian.

Which has the handy side effect of grounding him more in the present, without realizing it's happened. Making him lighte in more ways that one. ]

Yeah. How hard can raiding the store be? It's not like trying to take you to a Piggly Wiggly with a straight face.

What's a Piggly Wiggly?

( it's jay, so he assumes it's a thing beyond just a ridiculous name. but he's not all too concerned with getting an answer, because it doesn't matter much. the hand leaves jay, but the telekinetic hold on him doesn't. it's supportive rather than directive; if jay starts faltering, it'll catch him. if he pulls up, julian'll help readjust his weight a little.

they're not grounding any bird boys today, because that doesn't sound ideal at all. )

[ Really, Julian, how do you possibly live under a rock that big? Everybody knows Piggly Wiggly. ]

It's a grocery store chain? You've never seen a Piggly Wiggly, or you've never gone food shopping?

[ He'd believe either one, and Jay is trying to stay on the safe topics that're easier to be normal with.

Because getting a TK shield for just flying along ain't normal, and he has no idea what he did to make Julian feel like that was worth the effort. Jay has to figure out where being fine keeps falling off. ]

I'm from LA, man. There's no Piggly Wiggly's out that way.

( far as he remembers, anyway. sounds more like a place that'd be from jay's landlocked part of the states, which - considering julian's generally stayed on one coast or the other (or on their own islands), he doesn't expect to know what the hell jay's talking about.

soon as they reach kwik trip, julian drops down to the ground and doesn't bother looking back to jay as he strolls inside. )

Your loss, man.

[ Jay lands a few seconds behind him and takes a second to consider this situation. Food shopping, at a convenience store, with Julian Keller. He's not looking forward to it, and yet - there's something nice about knowing that no matter how tough it was back home, they never had to grocery shop at a gas station. Dollar store, sure, but everybody does that.

And then he follows Julian into to the promised land of beef jerky, ramen, and slushies. ]

un: HELLION | video

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