TUESDAY, MAY 29TH, 2001 (ages 16/16) Well that had been interesting. After having a discussion with Professor Xavier, Zap had been sent downstairs to the fifth ring of hell to meet 'Mars'. After trekking back up elevators and staircases, she came to the door she'd been assigned to and pushed it open before slinging her bag inside. She trudged through the entrance and shut the door behind her, then leaned against it, in a sort of zombie-like state. "Oh," her roommate was in. She'd met the girl previously - her first day, actually. "Hi." Zalika offered up a smile and a bit of a floppy wave. "Sorry," Edana had been reading. "What's that?" the dustcover wasn't on.
"Oh, hi." The girl glanced up from her book to give Zap a small smile, which warmed up when she asked about her book. She held it up for her to see even though she knew Zap probably couldn't read the title from where she was standing. "Lord of the Rings." What she was doing wasn't very interesting. As a new student, Eddie was sure that Zap had had a much more exciting day than she had. Math homework. Yay... "What did you do today? Meet anyone interesting?" she asked. Zap seemed nice enough, though Edana knew some people didn't like to share any kind of information, really. But if they were going to be roommates, then questions had to be asked, right?
Lord of the Rings! It was the trilogy copy - one could tell by how freakin' fat it was. Loads of appendixes. More fun for nerds. "I love Lord of the Rings," Zap shared. She smirked a little, recalling the accident that landed her at Xavier's. Before she could mention it, her roomie had asked about her day. "Lots of homework gathering. I don't even remember half the teachers' names. Just that there are forty subjects I'm taking." She sighed a bit. "I met Storm," place beaming smile here, "and I just got back above sea level. I went downstairs and met Mars." Huh. "Ronan." Codenames were weird. "He's ... yeah." The shock of his severity and the feeling Zap was trying to get across got buried under the smirk that was erupting on her mouth. Okay, so he was a jackass - but he was a hot one.
Eddie beamed when her roommate expressed her love of Tolkien. At least they had something in common right off the bat. She laughed when Zap mentioned homework and teachers. She'd get their names quicker than she expected, probably. It was lucky the school wasn't too big. Plus a lot of the teachers taught more than one subject, which helped also. She smiled again when Zap mentioned Storm. "She's awesome, isn't she? I'd say she's the nicest teacher here. Well, Mr. Summers is nice too. Except when you read during his math class, of course." Math was horrible. "Isn't he a trip?" she said of Mars. A scary trip, she thought. "Was he nice to you?" He usually wasn't friendly, but maybe Zap was an exception?
Storm is awesome, Zap thought. She moved away from the door some and sat on the bed that was now her own, bag in tow. She smirked about Mr. Summers. 'Cyclops'. He'd greeted her at the door when she'd first arrived at the mansion a few days before. She could definitely see him having a stick up his ass. Her mouth made an 'O' shape when Eddie mentioned reading through a class. "I totally do that. I failed a few classes on Tolkien's behalf." Her eyes went wide in agreement with Levity's statement about Mars. A trip, yes. She shook her head no, solemnly. "He told me about my powers, then said he'd kill me if I tried anything. So." That generally wasn't what one would consider nice, she supposed. "I made him smile, though. I didn't know if his mouth could make that shape." Serious bizness face. But he'd probably just felt sorry for her. Then again, most people she'd spoke to at the school so far had lost someone near and dear.
"I'm glad I'm not the only one. They'll get on your ass if your grades get too low. Like, hardcore. Just wanted to warn you." she smiled a little. Eddie moved into a sitting position, facing her roommate who'd sat on her own bed. "Yeah...he does that." Mars was very straightforward and aggressive. Her own eyes grew wider when Zap spoke next. "You did? I don't think I've ever seen him smile..." Of course, she avoided him when she could help it. "So, you're name's Zalika. Do you go by that or do you go by like," Jeez. What's short for Zalika? "Zal?"
Oh crap. Like she needed a ruler across her wrists for slipping up in Trig. And that's the class she'd slip in, too. She glanced miserably to the side where her bag was laying next to her on the bed, stuffed full of super-fun text books. Her attention went back to Edana when she questioned about her encounter with Mars. "It was sorta scary." She admitted. Zap pulled her legs up onto the bed now and wrapped her arms around them, then bent knees facing upwards. "Zal?" Huh. "Monogram. Z.A.P. But if you wanna call me Zal, I guess that'd be okay." She smirked and it quickly broke up into a laugh. "Zal." It was different, at least. "Eddie okay?" Made her think of Absolutely Fabulous. She could totally rock Patsy.
She smiled a nervous-looking smile when she mentioned Mars' scary smile. Edana could imagine it was kind of freaky looking. She couldn't help but laugh when Zap did. She supposed 'Zal' was kinda silly sounding. But it had a nice ring to it she thought. "Eddie's fine by me." 'Edana' sounded too stiff and formal, in her mind.
"Right on." 'Zal' grinned.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19TH, 2003 (ages 18/17) Eddie closed her eyes, counting back from ten to keep herself from throwing something at the stupid computer in frustration. She'd been trying to get this program to work for an hour now. Zap had gone down for a Danger Room session and wasn't back yet. She hoped she got back before she ripped her hair out. She picked up a pencil that was lying on the desk and hurled it at the door. At least a pencil wouldn't hurt anything, and it made her feel a little better.
She heard something clack against the door from the outside, and there were some scuffling sounds beyond. Zap pushed through the door and checked the floor as she entered, "Stop that. I lost the sharpener a week ago," she told Edana as she stepped over the thing. Who used wooden pencils anymore, anyway? They drove Zap mad. Her hair was matted down to her head and she had it pulled back in a tight ponytail. She headed for her dresser to find some clean underoos, "What's wrong, anyway?" She breathed in and out a few times, sighing on the last exhale. 'Seeing in the dark' with her powers involved more than a lightswitch being flicked, she had found. Her feet were killing her.
"Thank god." she sighed, relieved to see Zap's sweaty form. "Can you get this thing to go? I've been at it forever." She knew her friend had just got done with happy-fun-gym-time, but she was going to go crazy. "You okay?" she asked as her friend began taking deep breaths. "What'd they make you do?" Whenever she had Danger Room sessions, she had to make her way through obstacles while emotionally affecting volunteers. Not fun.
Zap hadn't really looked at Levity as of yet, but when she asked specifically for her help, she grabbed her underwear and closed the drawer before moving to stand behind Edana. "Click that, down there," she gestured toward the lower corner of the screen, "the blue one. Now type 'override system key 530755221'. No, 530755220. Sorry," she yanked her t-shirt off over her head and began to walk away. "That Shark Week crap. You know, sensing things in the dark - living things. Namely Scott. Storm had me kickin' my own butt." Zap's pants were halfway down her legs when she heard a 'bing!', "Did it work?"
She did as she was told and the program clicked into action. "That was easy... Computers are so not my thing." But Zap knew that. Eddie nodded when she told her about her sensing abilities. She remembered that Zap had mentioned that they were going to have her try it out soon. "I'll bet she did. Scott didn't hit you with his lasers did he?" Storm was nice as could be on regular terms, but once she got you in the Danger Room, she did a total 180 at times. "Yeah, it worked. Finally. Thank you." She ran her hands through her hair and rested her head against the back of the chair in relief.
"Good," Zap smirked, "No, he was my subject. Totally passive." And she could've hunted him all day... Ahem! "You're gonna hurt yourself one of these days, ya know." The electrokine gestured at the computer, then stuck out her tongue at Levity teasingly. She stood in her camisole and underwear now, hands on hips, taking a few more seconds to cool down before she crawled into the shower and set up camp. "And if he'd used his lasers, I don't think I'd be helping you with coding right now." She was a whiner, and could rarely take back what she'd dished out - at least physically.
Well that was good. "You're probably right." Eddie laughed hard then. And Zap was right about Scott's laser beams too. She wouldn't have been up there if Scott had hit her with them. She'd gotten a mental picture of her friend sitting on Brian's knee and whining like a child as Joe fixed her up. She voiced this, grinning all the while. "I'll bet he'd give you a little pony ride too." Eddie said this all in fun, but if she were to get hit by Scott's beams, she'd probably do the same thing. Ouch.
"I'd rather get a pony ride from Brian while Joe fixed me than the other way around," Zap replied, grinning. "Jean's knees are less bony than Joe's, come to think of it." She laughed hard then, as well. Jean sort of took on a very motherly quality when in the infirmary. In the class room, there was less warmth, more business. Fine by Zap. "I'm gonna hit the showers." Great - with thoughts of Joe and pony rides.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21ST, 2005 (ages 20/20) "Spooky movie scary time!" House of Wax, remake. They were borrowing it from Will and Troy, and despite warnings from the two guys, Zap wanted to watch it, damn it. So she'd wrangled Eddie into watching as well. Despite the empath's request to watch the film during daylight hours, Zap had waited until darkness had fallen before bringing out all the the really good junk food and popping the flick in the DVD player. Everything was piled onto her bed, and pillows lined the walls so they could be propped up (and near each other; this shit was scary) while they watched. She pressed the 'close' button the other player and hop-skip-jumped back toward her bed where Eddie was already waiting. "I hate Paris Hilton." Menu, select, play. "Here we go." She was grinning, evilly.
Scary movies weren't really Eddie's thing, but she watched them every once in a while (despite the nightmares of that usually followed). She nodded in agreement with the Paris Hilton comment. She was horrible. "It'll be nice to see her get chopped up." She watched as Zap put the movie in and reached over for an Oreo from the package that was sitting near her. She hadn't heard much about the movie, save that it was rather gross.
"Yeah, I wanna see her run in those heels." There were always heels. Maybe that was the reason they hired the blonde skank. People wanted to see her get killed. Zap grinned to herself about that and yanked Eddie's Oreo for spite. "Mmm, cookies." She took a slow, tasty bite and grinned with blackened, chocolatey teeth over to her best friend. She anticipated a punch to the arm and grabbed another cookie for Eddie. Part way through the flick, they were cuddled together under a fleece throw and the cookies were now only crumbs. "Oh god..." she groaned. Things had gone from gross to grosser and Zap wasn't feeling so giddy about scaring the daylights out of Levity any longer. She felt sick, honestly. "Where'd they go with the main guy?" she wondered.
"I dunno." Eddie responded, not really wanting to know. The movie was really nasty. It was more gross than scary, actually. Well, it was kind of scary. Zap's uneasiness had been growing steadily by the minute. Where the hell was the main guy? The friend guy was going through the house looking for the main guy. He stopped by the piano where one of the wax figures was sitting...oh God. Did his eyes just move? She let out a gasp at what happened next. The friend guy had just torn off a piece of the main one's face. Oh, that wasn't right. She glanced over at Zap (not that there was any need) to see her reaction. Uh oh.
BLEH! Oh shit. Zap squinted, but continued to watch the scene, unable to take her eyes from the TV. "Uh," she muttered an uneasy noise and began to squirm beside Edana. Her hands curled up and she clenched her toes in her socks, then began moving her limbs in toward her body so she could hold herself. She attempted taking deep breaths, but the gore had disturbed her to the point that she was going to have a 'freak out' no matter what. "Hell." Her head bowed forward and she clenched her eyes shut, trying not to listen to what was going on in the film.
Her friend's feelings washed over her and she shuddered before sitting up and turning to her. She could feel the hair on her own head start to stand up as Zap's control started to slip, causing the air to become static. Okay, this was the end of the scary movie. Before she shut off the DVD she had to stop Zap's panic attack. She switched off the other girl's feelings of panic and she overrode them with tranquil/pleasant ones. Eddie frowned slightly. She had done that, but there was still the noise of the stupid film. She hopped off the bed and moved quickly for the TV where she punched the 'off' button. "I think that's enough horror for one day, don't you agree?" she said quietly, climbing back onto the bed. She'd kept her mutation going during the entire shutting off of the television and her friend looked better for it. She gave her a small smile, but didn't touch her. She knew that Zap didn't like to be messed with when she got like that. "You any better now?"
Just when she felt like she was about to crash, Eddie began sending peaceful vibes her way, and Zap concentrated (once she'd calmed) on controlling her own mutation. The entire room was calm now. No noise, no electricity, no panic or anxiety. Good. She took in a few deep breaths and let each one out slowly in turn. Zap locked eyes with Eddie and raised her eyebrows both in appreciation and amusement. "Whew," that'd been fun. "Yeah. I'm okay. That was just nasty, I'm sorry," her eyes had welled with tears, and she began blinking them back while her body began to loosen up again. "Whew."
"It's okay." she said, dismissing the apology with a wave of her hand. "It wasn't a very good movie anyway." She was glad her friend was calm again, but she noticed the tears in her eyes. Eddie couldn't blame her there. Panic attacks were horrible. She'd only had one before and it caused a whole room of people to panic until she'd gotten control of herself. Embarrassing to say the least. She laughed. "The only thing I'm regretting is that we didn't get to see Paris Hilton die."
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18TH 2006 (ages 21/21) Eddie and Zap had been outside for the better part of an hour. It was hot, but not terribly so. They were trying to get a tan before she left for school in a couple weeks (that didn't give them much time). One more year to go! Then it was on to more advanced schooling. She held a book in her hands and read aloud from it, "Considering that Aquarians ultimate 'type' is a sort of prodigy from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks, a biker-scientist, redneck-guru, mechanic-philosopher, janitorial genius, we see in this affinity for unusual hybrid species of guys not only evidence of her sign's association with mutative energy, but also it's correlcation to the experience of the 'divine' mind being made manifest in the common man." she sighed, slightly downtrodden. "It's official. I'm never gonna get laid."
Zap would've liked to have said she was darker than Edana, but she was inside just as often, if not more so. Sunning with shades, drinks and books with Eddie was never dull. She listened as Levity read aloud and she quirked her eyebrow at the nutty description her man-to-be needed to have. "Gimme that," the electrokine ordered. She reached across between the deck chairs and when she laid back, she adjusted the butt of her swim suit so it was fully over the cheek again. Stupid thing. She flopped the book back open to the page Eddie had been reading and then scoffed. "It also says Aquarian women love 'freaks, geeks and carnies'. If I recall, when that ride-operator at the fair hit on you, you weren't very responsive. I think you'll find someone." The book might've been a little off. Perhaps it didn't take mutation into consideration. Eddie was a peculiar Aquarius. She began flipping through, back to the Taurus woman section.
"No, ew." That ride-operator wasn't attractive in the least. Spikes through the chin didn't do it for her. She smiled a little. "Hopefully." She'd made some male friends in college, but none who she liked romantically. Oh well. There was time, right? "What's it say about you?"
If Zap was talking about any other guy, she might have said 'He'll come around.' But it was Ronan and Ronan wasn't very nice. Well, he was nicer to Zap than to others, but still. He had to have known Zap liked him. She was rather surprised that she'd tried to kiss him, however. Eddie wanted to ask 'What'd he do?' but she could tell by her expression and body language told her she had been denied - again. "I don't know why you keep trying. Why don't you set your sights on someone who's... I dunno, nice?"
She sighed again. Some part of her knew Eddie was right. But she also thought that what Eddie was saying was what Ronan had been getting at, and that's what pissed her off. "You're nice. Why don't we just date?" she breathed deeply and sighed it out, then smirked over to Edana. Men sucked. "I dunno," seriously now, "He's in here, though." She was stuck in some sort of retarded fairytale world that existed in her mind and Mars was a major character. She could hardly write him out. "I've been keeping myself occupied, though." Someone nice. "If I tell you, do you promise not to tell anyone?"
"Ha ha." She stuck her tongue out at Zap. "I am pretty damned hot." Zap was really bummed out and it was making her want to feel really bummed out. She felt bad that Ronan was being such a jerk about Zap. It wasn't like they didn't know one another. Ronan still freaked her out though. She raised her eyebrows in interest when Zap asked her if she wouldn't tell. "I won't tell anyone." She didn't tell people's private things and even if she did, who would she tell? "What is it?"
She cast a darting glance around the grounds that surrounded them and shifted her eyes back to her (pinkish red) best pal. "I've been sleeping with Will. Just sex, we're not 'together'." She'd been sick of being so pent up and miserable and alone. Her expression was a mixture of shame and conspiracy, and a bit of amusement. 'Cause, damn, Will was crazy in the sack. She peeled the book off her legs and handed it back to Eddie. "Don't judge me." The same mixture of emotions filled her voice, amusement winning out in the end.
Eddie's mouth fell open slightly at what Zap had said. That wasn't what she had been expecting. Not that she'd expected anything in particular. "Damn. That's...uh...interesting. And a little weird." Not that her friend could take it back, but it always seemed like people who engage in casual sex... well, one of them always ended up getting hurt in the end. Maybe not with those two? She hoped not. Edana took the book back and set it on the ground next to her. "I'm not judging. Just be careful."
Ah. She'd anticipated a less than 'SCANDALOUS, GIMME DETAILS!' reaction from Levity. Zap shook her head. Weird? Weird that it was Will, or that Zap was sleeping with someone casually? She wasn't going to press the issue. "I'll be careful," she sighed the words. She'd stop if things got weird. Her hands clasped together across her belly and she realized how warm she'd been getting. Eddie looked a little toasty, too. She reached down and grabbed her water, then moved to sit up. "Let's sit in the shade for a few," she gestured at some nearby trees. Then, to break the awkward stillness that had fallen between them, Zap gave a mischievous smirk, "So... Brian's single again."