solarhippie | Guidance Counselor's Office, Wednesday

The way Karolina's eyebrows climbed up in a manner that was best described as 'aghast' and which also looked a hundred percent sincere, it was probably safe to assume she wasn't that type. Even before she said, "Oh my God, I would never."

But it sounded less like she was reacting to an accusation and more like she thought it was something akin to a misunderstanding she had to clear up immediately. Again, classic Kar.

She shook her head, and tempered her tone (as well as her face) into something a little less urgent-seeming. "No, I'm here doing this because -- I could probably have used something like this when I was a kid." All those many many years ago. Ahem. "I just want to be someone who's safe and at least tries to understand, because my teen years were pretty screwed up, too."

"That's fair, agreed Beau, who felt kind of bad now about letting her pessimistic tendencies take over since there really was no way to construe Karolina's reaction as anything but sincere. "It's just, you know, information like that is good leverage for certain types of people. Mostly the ones I know." In her own teenage years, also so very long ago.

She spun the apple around in her fingers, took a bite, and made a sound that implied the apple was pretty good, actually.

"But if this is a confidential, no-judgment zone? Yeah. That's pretty cool."

Karolina's head tilted just a fraction as she watched Beau with the apple. Not quizzically, but like she was paying attention. Without being too obvious about it.

She nodded. "This is. This is exactly that." She hoped the students saw it that way, at least. her head tilted further, but now it was coupled with a shrug into a gesture of 'what can you do?' "I mean... I'm a gay alien who went into superheroing when her parents turned out to be supervillains. Who am I going to judge?"

She didn't mean to infodump, really. But it was a concise way to describe what she was about. (And also that she was into women but sliding that in there was just a minor point, honest.)

It might have been coincidence that Beau seemed to be smirking the next time she took a bite of the apple. Might have, just like the not-quite-subtle lift of her eyebrows.

"I respect a woman who's that up front about things," she said with a slow grin, because look, it wasn't like she was an expert at subtlety herself. "For real, though. Not a figure of speech. That's a lie, it's both, but anyway."

A little more seriously she added, "I get that, though. About the shitty parents. Wouldn't call mine supervillains exactly, but. Wait. That's not a figure of speech either, is it?"

You never knew around here.

"It's not," Karolina confirmed, losing what little smile she'd briefly had in favor of just becoming subdued. Almost resigned. "They were sacrificing kids. It was really bad."

You don't say, Karolina.

She shrugged. "So I know a little bit about what it might be like to go through a difficult situation as a teen."

Beau's eyes flashed with anger for a brief but unmistakable moment, her lips pressing into a hard line.

"Mine were just assholes who couldn't deal with me not being the kid they wanted," she said, and as hard as she tried to keep her lingering anger about that out of her voice the undercurrent was still there. "But not on that level. What the fuck. So you what, went and did the hero thing to flip them off?"

Another quick grin. "That's good. I like that."

Better than her method of turning criminal, really.

"Well, they died." That was a long and complicated story made very very short. And it had taken a long time in therapy for her to sound that -- not quite casual, but some form of neutral and factual about it. "And then me and my friends started heroing. So I guess it's more like I'm making up for their bad actions than anything, but, yeah."

There was another little shrug. Followed by a lopsided smile.

"I'm just here trying to do my best," she said. "Sounds like maybe you are, too." In a manner of speaking. 'Best' was not always 'what someone else wanted from you'.

"Oh." And now it was Beau's turn to fidget awkwardly, too unsure of how sympathy even worked to know how to respond to that. "That, uh. Kind of sucks. Like the whole shitty situation."

Which was an understatement; she had very strong feelings about adults using kids for some fucked up personal agenda, but she was at least self aware enough to not want to go into a mostly incoherent profanity laden rant right here, and that was close to her own personal damage than she wanted to go anyway.

She let out a low, dubious laugh instead. "Well, I'm trying something, anyway. Probably not channeling it into anything as positive as you, though. That's like, seriously. That's impressive."

It was fine. Karolina didn't really expect anyone to know how to react to her life's story. She knew it was a lot, even when she didn't go into the details of just how much lot there actually was.

She just smiled a little. It got slightly less lopsided, too. "Thanks," she said, with a sheepish kind of sincerity. "I'm trying."

A beat, and she gave a soft snort and shook her head.

"I... pretty much just said that already, right?"

"Yeah, you did," said Beau, "but it's cool. Sometimes I like get distracted and miss out on details so it's kind of not a bad idea to repeat things."

She took another bite of the apple, unsubtly suggestive enough that it would likely give any lurking squirrels some severe secondhand embarrassment.

"I mean, I wasn't that time but, you know. It's fine. Trying stuff is like . . . I'm into it."

And yet you weren't even really trying that time, were you, Beauregard?

Karolina was honestly so woefully unused to anyone (or at least anyone who wasn't a gross guy on the street) being unsubtly suggestive at her that she wasn't going to be mustering any second-hand embarrassment, here. Too busy being slightly flustered for that.

Brushing her hair back a second time was wholly unnecessary.

"Well, I mean... It's good to try things, too. It's the only way you find out what works."

“Sure.” Beau stretched a little bit and leaned back against the doorframe, her pierced eyebrow raised slightly in amusement. “I mean, I’m all about that. New experiences, right?”

That she felt some kind of sense of accomplishment about getting that reaction out of Karolina was entirely possible.

It was a little harder these days than it had been in the past, so maybe it wasn't even an entirely unfounded sense of accomplishment.

Still, maybe a little bit.

Of course, she had no clue what to say, so after a little smile and a pause that went on just a second too long, she came out with, "Uh, keeps things from getting boring, too."

Well, Beau wasn't generally used to her attempts going this well, which also said something. Fjord probably felt the urge to facepalm right about now.

"Yeah, 'cause that's no fun." She mentally reviewed what had just come out of her mouth, then shrugged and laughed self-mockingly. "I mean, obviously, right?"

She was perfectly aware how awkward that sounded, so she tried to blow past it with a slightly rushed, "Yeah, I don't really know how to talk to people but I was totally hitting on you. You know, full disclosure."

Really, Beau?

No, no, it was probably a good idea to go there.

At least if you disregarded the very brief interlude of Karolina's eyes going wider than she would've liked them to, in an international signal of 'eep!'

Because she got over it, albeit with a sheepish chuckle and a quick downward glance. "Well, that's good," she said. "Because, um, it's good to be clear sometimes, you know? Because... I hadn't really made it that far yet. Into flirting."

For her own part, she meant, because she'd definitely grasped what Beau had been doing. She was just really lacking in eloquence right now.

"I mean --" Beau's eyes went wide too, for a moment, because she'd kind of been expecting to get laughed at or otherwise not well received. "On the same page, good to know. 'cause like, if you weren't into it . . ."

She was an asshole, but not that kind of asshole.

"No, I'm into it."

She said that a little too quickly, even.

"I'm just --" She paused and bit her lip, and cringed a little, almost apologetically (if that was even a thing). "Super rusty."

“Yeah, that happens sometimes,” Beau said, and she didn’t actually mean to sound kind of dismissive about it; she was just really bad at actually being reassuring. Her eyebrows twitched up again, and one corner of her mouth quirked into a sly smile. “I’m, uh, good for the practice.”

Yeah, that was really low quality as far as reassuring went. But, it appeared they were mostly fumbling blindly through parts of this whole situation anyway so Karolina couldn't really fault her for it.

She looked like she was trying to hold back a smile and wasn't doing a very good job of it. "Yeah?" she asked. "You'd let me do that? Like, maybe even some other time too?"

"Yeah, sure," Beau agreed, looking . . . a little surprised, actually. Things working out in her favor, even despite herself? What was that? "Somewhere more interesting than on campus. I mean, unless you're -- never mind."

You could kind of see Karolina's lips begin to form the 'un' in 'unless I'm what?', right before she apparently cut that thought short.

"Somewhere more interesting is fine," she said. Apparently that boosted her confidence enough that she decided to act relaxed and casually pick up one of the apples. This was, of course, a foolish mistake because it sent five or six other apples tumbling onto the floor and merrily rolling away.

Somehow, the rest stayed put.

For now, anyway.

"... Somewhere with fewer apples will probably be okay, too," Karolina added, a lot more meekly.

It was probably better not to ask, anyway. It would only end in more awkwardness and a squirrel or two just outright dying of embarrassment.

But even Beau, habitually surly as she was, couldn't quite suppress the briefest flash of an actual smile at that.

She stuck her foot out, trying to intercept one of the rolling apples and kick it up into her hand; instead it bounced up into the air at a wild angle and nearly hit her in the nose before she reached out to snag it out of the air and . . . swat it out into the hallway instead.

"I'm working on it, I'm working on it," she said, waving her hand. "That's not like a thing you can do, is it? Just random apples manifesting around you? 'cause I mean, it's kinda cool but also kinda a pain in the ass."

Focus, Beauregard.

"I mean . . . what do you want to do? Get drinks sometime? That's usually my go to but I'd be into other ideas."

For a split second, Karolina almost suggested bowling.

Then, immediately after, she realized that that was probably one of the worst possible ideas, after the skill both of them had just now demonstrated at handling way smaller round objects.

"Uh, drinks is fine," she decided, nodding. "I don't do that a lot, so I think that balances it out." Because for all of her visible hipster hippieness, she was stll kind of a stay-at-home nerd at heart. "Also no, noo, the apples aren't my doing. I mean, I have powers, but nothing to do with apples."

"I was kind of joking about the powers . . . you're serious about that?" It was hard to tell whether Beau looked more surprised or impressed, but it was definitely both in some proportion, with a touch of doubt mixed in. "Like magic, or something totally different?"

Bowling could quite possibly end up terribly.

Karolina shrugged. "Well, like I mentioned before, I'm not human." A beat. "Except socially and culturally, but, anyway."

She'd thought about that kind of thing a lot during her studies, okay. What it meant that she'd spent so long living as a regular Earth-born human before the truth had come out.

"I, uh, I can manipulate energy into shields and beams. And I can fly. But, no apples. Or any other kind of manifesting things from thin air, either." Her head tilted a little, thoughtful. "So I probably wouldn't call it magic."

Beau’s eyebrows had started twitching upwards slightly at the energy shields, and by the time Karolina mentioned the flying she was sporting a wide-eyed expression somewhere between impressed and awed.

“You can fly? That’s hot,” she said, so quickly it was clearly reflex. “Usually in my world when people can do that kind of thing it usually is because of magic. Unless it’s a racial thing — uh, that doesn’t always mean the same thing it does here, but as far as I know I’ve only heard of these bird-people who can. I still forget that this world is mostly just used to all humans all the time, you know? Like, outside of here, I mean. And see, now I kinda want to watch you fly sometime, but did you not know for a while? That you weren’t actually human?”

"Uh, yeah," Karolina replied, looking off to the side, briefly, as she carded a hand back through her hair. "That actually kinda went with the whole evil parents thing? I was raised on the other side of this country and it wasn't until I was sixteen that the whole... parent thing happened, and I found out that they were aliens and so was I."

She made a face, the way you sometimes did when something sucked but on the other hand, what could you do?

"It was a lot."

Beau frowned slightly, blinking for a second as she tried to figure out how to respond to that exactly without sounding like a complete asshole.

“Yeah, that’s, uh. I kind of don’t even have a frame of reference to figure out how you’d process all that,” she admitted. Finding out about some of the shady crap her father had gotten up to hadn’t exactly been fun either, but that wasn’t even on the same level. “I mean, wow.”

She rubbed a hand over the back of her head and asked, in a slightly raspier voice than usual, “How did you even handle all of that?”

And not come out of it all angry and bitter, was what she meant, but that part could remain unsaid for now.

Karolina shrugged with a wry little smile. "Good friends and mandatory therapy? she suggested. "Maybe a little heroing?"

She was wlling to be open about these things, but not so much so as to go into the whole messy self-loathing issue she'd had for a couple of years, there.

"That's fair," Beau said with a tiny but genuine smile of her own.

It was probably best not to go there; she had her own fun self-loathing issues to contend with, after all, and some things were a little uncomfortably close to home.

"I mean, looks like you made it work pretty well for you. And now you're paying it forward here? That's . . . kind of amazing."

Karolina's smile remained lopsided and wry, but for a slightly different reason. "Well, if any kids ever actually came here," she said with a little raise of her eyebrows, and then a shake of her head. "It's hard to get people to admit they need anyone to talk to, sometimes, on this island. Everyone's a hero."

She had been, anyway. Same with her friends.

"I wouldn't know what that's like," Beau said deadpan, as if she wouldn't insist she was fine while bleeding profusely. "But yeah, getting people to talk about their damage is -- I don't have the patience for it, l personally."

She grinned slowly. "So you're saying you would probably have been bored all day if I didn't come by?"

Not the point, Beau.

Not the point, but Karolina couldn't help snickering just a little anyway. "Yeah, I guess so," she said. "Would've been a long and lonely day."

She could joke! Sometimes!

"Good thing about the apples then, I guess," Beau decided. "It was going to be a pretty boring day for me too, otherwise."

Guidance Counselor's Office, Wednesday

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