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Matutinal Meeting; Beast, Open
Topic Started: Oct 11 2010, 04:30 AM (365 Views)
Sally Blevins
Unregistered

8:00 AM
Wednesday, September 15


She had been at the mansion since Monday afternoon and she had been given a day to get herself adjusted to the way things were being run. Today, however, she was to meet a mutant named Dr. Hank McCoy, who was to help her set up her class schedule and hopefully show her around the part of the mansion that held the classrooms. Sally didn’t fully know what to expect, because she had gone to Tennessee public schools all her life, where there had been thirty or more kids in each classroom. This environment was supposed to be more personal and the class sizes were not as big… so this made her slightly nervous.

Coming up the stairs from breakfast in the cafeteria, she paused at the top step to look up at the large painting of Charles Xavier. A small smile came to her face as she examined his features, noting how kind he looked. Of course, a mean man could be painted into looking nice, but she could tell from the way this school that this was not the case. She walked a few steps towards the painting while looking at it before a boy on his way to class bumped into her.

”Sorry,” Sally said, throwing him a small smile. He looked back at her and shook his head before continuing down one of the long hallways. She could hear laughter and talking down the way he went. She looked up at Professor X for another moment, giving the old man a smile, and then continued down the hallway towards where she thought Dr. Hank’s office would be.

She walked with little confidence down the hallway, not completely sure of where she was going and truthfully she was intimidated to be among so many other mutants. She had met Melody and Alani earlier in the day, and they could fly and phase walk. Which, sounded really cool compared to creating a force field that caused you to fall on your ass.

Sally reached the end of the hallway and then turned around, confused. She walked quickly back to Xavier’s painting and stood there at the top of the stairs, just as another student came up the staircase. ”Excuse me,” Sally said.

The young boy stopped. “Yea?”

”Is Dr. Hank McCoy’s office around here?”

The boy smile and shook his head. “New, huh? Go to the elevator and go down to the infirmary. He is a doctor, right?” the boy replied with a little attitude.

”Well, he could be a doctor in something…” …else, she never finished, watching the boy shrug and walk away. With a sigh, she walked back down the stairs to the elevator and hit the down button. After a short wait and a short ride to the basement, she got off of the elevator and followed the sign that pointed her in the right direction. She walked into the infirmary and saw the small rectangular sign that said “Dr. Hank McCoy.” She smiled at her successful navigation and continued to the office. Since the door to Dr. McCoy’s office was open, she approached it and stepped inside the doorway, knocking twice on the door while she waited for acknowledgement.

”Excuse me Dr. Mc…” Sally started politely, before the words got caught in her throat as she saw the blue… beast. ”Uh,” she started, taking a step backwards outside of the room so she could look at the name tag again. She then peeked in at him instead of coming completely into the room, her eyes widening slightly even though she was trying to hide it. ”I’m sorry.. Uh… I’m Sally… Blevins…” she turned red as she smiled at him, embarrassed at how she reacted. This would take some getting used to. But hey, he did kind of remind her of Sully from Monsters Inc. With this thought, she stepped back inside the office. ”I am supposed to meet with you this morning.”
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Hank McCoy
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Humans generally spend 16 hours a day awake. This is generally an aberration, especially for a mammal. Gorillas, for example, are awake for only 12 hours a day. The great predators of the world spend even less time. One might think this is a function of agriculture, that humans don't have to spend more time on calorie-intensive hunting and gathering. But that's underestimating the high level of exertion it took to do pre-industrial farming. Most estimates of pre-industrial peasant diet was an astronomical 4000 calories. They just spent a lot of effort to maintain agricultural yields.

Basically, this was a long way of saying that with Hank's more animalistic physiology, he slept a lot. He took the standard 8 hour rest that normal took, and then tried to supplement that with at least 4 different cat naps of half-an-hour each.

He was in the middle of one of those cat nap sessions when he heard someone walking down the hallway of the subbasement towards the infirmary. IT was the curse of having enhanced senses and being a light sleeper. In a Darwinian/Malthusian setting, a sure-fire advantage, but it did interfere with Hank's Circadian rhythm. He wiped a massive paw across his face, to take care of any drool he had there and ran his other paw through his bushy hair. Not his fur, the hair on his head. He sprang from the curled up position he had on the floor and into his desk chair.

Hank would have figured that he would have been over the sting of pain that he always felt whenever he saw someone double-take over his visage, but he wasn't. It wasn't some deep chasm of pain, it was like stubbing a toe for a clumsy person. It was something that on balance, he would prefer not to happen, but he was used to it.

"Right, right, Miss Blevin, I'm Dr. Hank McCoy, you can call me 'Doc' or 'Hank' or, you know, whatever" Hank said, moving some papers around, "We have your old school records, obviously, but I find that self-evaluation often gives a better mark on what's going to happen here. So tell me, Sally, how well did you think you did at your old school?"
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Sally Blevins
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Had she known that she had hurt Hank’s feelings, even though it was something slight and that he was “used to,” she would have probably felt horrible about it. However, she was no mind reader and because he did a good job at hiding his feelings on it, she figured that she had done a good job at hiding her surprise. Sally trudged a few more steps into Hank’s office, holding her hands in front of her at the waistline. Her initial surprise at the sight of Beast faded as he began to politely speak, but she continued to stare at him with a bit of childlike wonder that a teenager allows to slip out only on the rarest occasions. Like a little kid approaching a mall Santa Claus, Sally approached his desk, very much wanting to touch the good Doctor to see if he was real.

Taking off her backpack, she sat down across from him at the desk and then fished through her bag, finding a folder that contained her own copy of her permanent records. Sally sat the folder in her lap and then looked up to Beast, nodding as he explained self evaluation. Sally immediately shrugged as he asked her how she thought she did at her old school.

”Well…” she began, looking down from Hank’s gaze towards the folder in her lap. She quickly realized that it might not matter how many A’s she had in the past. She was a good student and she had always felt bad if she made a B. But here, it was different. It was not only about making good grades, but it was also about learning who you are and how to handle the gifts that had been given to you. ”I guess that I’ve done pretty well academically.” Damn straight. She had made all A’s. Except in P.E. She made a B in that one semester because she sucked at volleyball and so she was one of those girls that walked around the top of the gymnasium the whole hour. The coach gave B’s to all of them, and if she had known that, she would have been down there sucking at volleyball.

”I’m not used to this though, Dr. Hank… The kids here seem to all have their own cliques and coming into it at this point is going to be pretty.. Uh… hard. I had my own group of friends back in McMinnville that I grew up with since elementary school and being away from them sucks,” Sally shrugged and then looked up to the blue man that many humans out there would describe as a monster. But she only saw a kind man. Something about Hank made her trust him, which was against how she usually felt about most older men. ”I guess I miss the way things were… I feel like I have been uprooted from everything I knew and stuck here with a bunch of strangers. I couldn’t go back home if I wanted to,” Sally said, referring to the fact that her home was destroyed in the floods caused by Apocalypse, her mother was killed in them, and her father was in prison for the next few years thanks to domestic violence. In a matter of months, Sally’s world was completely different.

Sally bit her lip. ”I’m sorry if I’m saying too much… I’m sure I’ll do fine..”
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Hank McCoy
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The good doctor twirled his pen in his fingers. It wasn't anything that impressive for him. He was used to playing guitar with his feet. Now THAT was impressive.

Sally was a bit hesitant to talk about her grades, which was understandable. Hank liked talking about his grades when he was her age, but he did have a bit of a cocky streak to him, especially as a teenager. "I was hoping for a bit more. Strengths, weaknesses, glasses you liked, classes you didn't like, areas of interest. Maybe what you would want to do once you're done with high school, Miss Blevins."

Everyone thought they wanted to be an X-Man when they graduate, but Hank didn't want to pigeonhole Sally into a career path that, truth be told, had an awful high chance of killing her. Maybe Sally wanted to be a lawyer or a truck driver or a zoologist. The freedom to choose that was what Hank and the rest of the X-Men were fighting for.

When Sally gave her fears about her social life, there was a slight twinge of annoyance in Hank's eyes. He did several things astonishingly well, but giving advice, especially about teenage problems was not his forte. The only thing that got him through high school was his prowess in sports. The fact that he often spent his time not in practice in the chemistry lab, and sat at the same table as the Dungeons and Dragons nerds, left him as a man without a country.

He cleared his throat, "Well, I know it can be hard to move to a new school, but you have to understand, every single one of the other students are going through exactly what you are going through. None of them started here. In a very real way, they're just as far from home as you are. When I first got here, I was a 19 year old kid who the only time he ever left the state of Illinois was for road games with the Northwestern Wildcats. You're in a brand new territory, and so is everyone else. Just be yourself and try to be sympathetic that everyone else is struggling to fit in here, too."

He hoped he didn't sound like a huge idiot. Which let's face it, he probably did.
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Sally Blevins
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”Yea, I guess I didn’t think of it like that,” Sally said quietly in response. She was in a new situation, but so was everyone else. She smiled and looked up at him from her lap as he gave a small glimpse about what it was like when he first got here. Since she had no idea about his age, she could only guess that it was quite a few years ago. He was a doctor now, after all. ”I guess I was focusing too much on what I have been dealing with and not really looking around to see that everyone else is probably going through similar things,” she said, hoping to explain herself a little bit.

Take that Melody Guthrie girl for example. Her and most of her siblings were here at the mansion. What could they have went through so that they all ended up here? There were probably a lot of kids here that had more things going on with them than she did.

Keeping these thoughts to herself, Sally looked back down to her lap, halfway ashamed that she was complaining to the doctor that she just met. She took a moment and then looked back up at him, hoping to throw the awkwardness aside and talk to him about what she came here to. ”Well, strengths… I am good at most class work stuff. I made A’s in all my classes at my old school… well, except one year in P.E. I made a B. But I think I learn pretty quickly. Math sucks and I have to study a little more.. But I have always made A’s in that too,” she said, pausing to think of her weaknesses.

”Weaknesses… I’m a wuss? I don’t know, I’m not good at sports. I don’t understand sports, really… and I’ve heard a lot of kids talking about training and fighting and stuff… I’m pretty sure I would get whooped in any of that kind of stuff,” Sally said. ”After high school, I guess college. I actually have been interested in being a doctor like you… but then again I used to throw up when I changed my friend’s baby’s diapers. So really… who knows?”

Sally looked at him for a moment. "Did you always want to be a doctor? You said you were good at football... didn't you want to go play in that NFL or something?"
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Hank McCoy
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"If you ever want something to lord over Mr. Grey-Summers, I can get you some old photos of the sweaters he used to wear," Hank said, recalling a really atrocious number that had both vertical and horizontal stripes and was in yellow. Of course, it wasn't totally fair, since Cyclops' color co-ordination wasn't operating in the same plane as the rest of the planet's. "What I'm saying is, everyone who's walked through those front gate doors has had an awkward period where they didn't think they fit in."

He had to kind of chuckle behind his paw at her strengths. She reminded him of a lot of the classmates he had when he was in high school. Certainly not dumb, but Hank could always just sense that there was a gulf between him and them. Between them and the next smartest kid. They perhaps didn't have the raw ability that Hank or the other 'smart kids' did but they made it up with hard work. It wasn't Hank denigrating the girl either. It just brought him back to his high school days. Nothing more than a small smile and a twinkle in his eye.

"Well, not everyone here pursues a combat track. Just because you're here, it doesn't automatically mean that you want to be an X-Men. Now a lot of our students do want to become X-Men, but that's not our end-goal. One day, we want our students to be able to pursue the entire scope of careers that anyone graduating from any other school can."

"I will say that if you do wish to pursue medicine, most pre-med programs require some pretty heavy science classes, which you'll need good math skills to excel in. If you really want to pursue it, we can certainly put you in the upper track for math classes, which should end up putting you in my Calculus class before you graduate."

"And, I'll also add that depending on the age of the baby, that stuff really can be gross. Neonatal digestive systems are still developing and it comes out uh, differently, especially as they change diets," Hank said. He hoped that she meant friend's baby sister's or something instead of her friend becoming pregnant. He didn't want to judge, but teenage pregnancies weren't something that he approved of, and in his experience, it didn't speak well of your social compatriots to be close friends with a teenage mother. "And really, you do tend to get over that kind of stuff if its something that you really want to do."

"Actually, I was the first one of my family to go to college, so I was willing to do anything that branched out from there. I received both academic and athletic scholarships to Northwestern. I was just happy to be there. I mean, part of me always wanted to continue on my work as researcher, but my life here isn't so bad. I'm a superhero and a doctor and I have my own side projects that I get to work on."
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Sally Blevins
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Sally couldn’t help but to smile when he spoke about Scott’s old wardrobe. She couldn’t imagine being stuck in a world that was a shade of red. Though, it would be better than being blind or blasting everything you looked at. Skids adjusted herself in her seat, growing more comfortable being in front of Beast the more he spoke. He seemed like a honest person. Perhaps that was sometimes a fault as well, but she could tell that he wouldn’t bullshit her like some adults did. That was a quality that she could come to respect, even though she might hear some things that she might not like. Sally only nodded in response to what Hank said about Scott and everyone else trying to fit in. She got it.

”The X-men?” she finally said after he was done talking. Sally’s eyes widened slightly and she shook her head negatively. ”I don’t know how I could do them any good. All I can do is make a force field and most of the time, it causes me to bust my own ass… er… butt,” she corrected herself, realizing it might not be wise to curse in front of a faculty member. There were people with super strength, telepathy, teleportation, adamantium claws, and all other sorts of cool powers that were on the X-men. A freakin’ slippery force field? Puh-leeeease. What could that do against anyone? Sally instantly doubted herself on doing something like that.

She shook her head. ”No, I can’t see how I would be anything but a hindrance to a team like that. So I might as well study and work on becoming something else,” she stated, continuing to listen to Dr. McCoy talk about getting into math and sciences. ”I am pretty good at science. I know there is a lot of math involved with it, but I can at least see how the math is being used, so I can piece it out in my mind a little easier.. Taking straight math classes is harder for me… but I was on course to take calculus at my last school, so I think I would enjoy being in yours.”

As he continued to explain that about where he went to college and the like, Sally listened but glanced around his office and noted the diplomas on the wall. Her eyes then flickered back to him and she nodded once more. ”Okay, so you are an awesome doctor, scientist and a superhero?” she asked rhetorically, more out of amazement of his accomplishments than anything else. Maybe she just found someone to follow around all the time? She smiled at the thought, perhaps crushing just a bit on the beast that she was initially afraid to look at. ”If I could just do one of those I think that I’d be happy. But I am just curious… what kind of projects do you do here? If you ever needed help, I would rather be learning than sitting around upstairs listening to people talk about who they are dating this week.” Even if she would just watch, surely something cool was going on in a lab like this.
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Hank McCoy
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He scratched his nose with one oversized finger, and realized that he was actually quite hungry. It was one of the eccentricities of having Animal from the Muppet Show lodged in his cerebral cortex. The baser instincts of man, hunger, fatigue, the primal urge to mate, would come on to him with little to no warning. Once he was done here, he was gonna have to go upstairs and see if he can get himself some sort of breakfast or something. Again, his sleep schedule wasn't like normal people's, and neither was his eating schedule. He ate when he was hungry.

"Well, Miss Blevins, you also have to realize that you're at the very beginning of your use in your powers. Quite a few of our current students and X-Men thought their powers were completely useless and destructive when they first started," Hank said, rubbing his eye with his knuckle, "If we do our job right, you'll see your powers as the gift that it really is."

"That sounded a bit cheesy, right? I'm not always so good with the inspirational stuff," Dr. McCoy apologized, "But yeah, don't sell your self short. You never know the journey that your powers will take you on." Again, that was pretty cheesy. It was hard to do this thing without sounding like an afternoon school special.

Hank had an ego, and he liked it being praised. So he may have overlooked what some may perceive the sarcasm of calling someone an 'awesome' doctor. "I do mainly biotech and medical technology here. Technically, I think I'm a subcontractor for Worthington Industries. Have you met Warren Worthington? The man with the wings?" Hank then corrected himself, "White wings. Jay Guthrie's the boy with red wings. Anyways, I do some freelance work for him. I could probably make more money if I had my own company, but that's a lot of legal red tape and honestly, I'd rather leave the money stuff to other people."

"Now, I could use a lab assistant. It wouldn't be glamorous work, most likely. A lot of taking down measurements, cleaning stuff up, whatever. I've had a couple people 'intern' with me in the infirmary," Hank said, complete with the scare quotes fingers, "Joshua Foley, Avery Doyle. Avery's now working in the infirmary as a nurse, so you know, it can lead on to bigger and greater things."
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Sally Blevins
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She listened to him explain the use of powers and she did initially think of a G.I. Joe morning public service announcement. Yes, she was too young to actually see those when they first came on, but she has seen several spoofs of them on the internet. ”Porkchop sandwiches,” she said inadvertently, nodding in agreement with what he was saying while thinking of her favorite G.I. Joe clip. She then squinted and looked down, shaking her head. ”I mean… I see what you are getting at. People have suggested that I should try to like… skate around on the force field… but I can’t gain momentum forward because it is so slick. But..”

Skids stopped a second and then looked down at her feet as if in thought, straightening her legs out enough so she could see her feet. She could always roller skate well, so that wouldn’t be a problem if she could just push herself forward. It wasn’t necessarily balance, it was the ability to propel herself forward. While looking at her feet, the nearly invisible force field came on around one of her feet and while she thought about it, she kept it there. She then looked to the other foot and the shield appeared there, while disappearing from the other. As if she just had an epiphany, she looked up at Hank with a grin.

”If I alternate feet just long enough to push myself forward,” she said, knowing her would follow. She couldn’t push off of a frictionless surface, but if she allowed the foot that she was pushing off of to be free of the shield just long enough, it could work. For the first time since she had been at the school, she saw something fun and maybe useful about her mutant power. It would take practice and effort to get the timing down, but she could do that. Breaking out of her thought and keeping the smile on her face, she looked back up to Dr. McCoy.

She remembered seeing Mr. Worthington and who could forget Icarus. She nodded in response to his question about seeing Warren around the school. To be honest, she didn’t fully understand what Beast did down here. She didn’t know what all went into “biotech” or “medical technology.” Hell, she was only sixteen, how much was she supposed to know? But she would do her best and probably learn something in the process.

”I am interested in doing it, Dr. McCoy. I will probably have to work hard to learn how you do things… but I learn fast… and I’m not the kind of person that tries to do things that they don’t have a clue how, so you wouldn’t have to worry about me blowing something up,” Skids explained. Why was she trying to sell herself? He sounded willing to begin with. ”But… so.. Yea… I could come down after classes whenever you needed me. Oh!” she said suddenly, remembering something. ”I learned CPR before.” Sally grinned again, feeling all…medical… and stuff.
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Hank McCoy
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One eyebrow cocked, Hank decided to mostly ignore her comment about pork chop sandwiches. He didn't have a problem with his mouth running off extraneous comments. That was always Jonny's schtick. If Hank had problems, it was talking too much, yes. But it was too much on a subject. He didn't sprout off randomly, he just got stuck on a subject too long and wouldn't let go. "Err, yes, then."

"See?" Hank said after Sally brainstormed her own idea about how to use her power effectively, "All it takes is a little bit of imagination. Let's be honest with one another. We have an X-Man who's power is the ability to speak any language. We're very good at this."

He felt a bit abashed, like he should have had more to contribute to Miss Blevin's idea for her powers. He was, after all, an X-man and that was part of his job. But sometimes it wasn't best to take the strong hand. Sometimes, it was best for a teacher to just give a nudge, give them just a bit of self confidence and let them take it from there. It was a perfectly valid pedagogical strategy. That was his story and he was sticking to it.

"Well, Miss Blevins, I like that you're enthusiastic about the chance, but I don't think its wise for you to jump in just yet. Moving schools is a semi-traumatic experience in the best of circumstances, and I don't want you to accumulate too much stress too quickly," Hank said in his most professional tone, "How about in a couple weeks, we see how you're doing in your classes, and if you're doing okay, handling all the stress, then we'll move from there? Does that sound fair?"

Hank wanted to help Sally pursue whatever she wanted to do, but he did have an obligation to make sure she could handle what she was getting into.
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