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Yesterday, the President of the United States of America was shot and killed.
Today, everyone's just… somber. People are in shock. People are angry. People are sad. It makes for a quiet diner, even if it would otherwise be on the busy side. That's fortunate for Josh, because at the moment he stands out like a sore thumb.
A golden sore thumb. And by gold, what is meant is metallic, shiny gold: not orange or anything like that. Still, Josh does try to keep a low profile, with gloves, a hoodie that's up, and a scarf around his neck to hide half his face… Except when eating, its hard to do that, so he tries to keep his head down.
It's mid morning, and that makes it time for a late breakfast or maybe brunch. For his part, Josh has some banana pancakes and bacon and orange juice, that and a magazine out on the table near him. A medical journal, actually.
*
Lorna really should've just picked up breakfast in the school cafeteria that morning, but she was distracted to say the least. With everything happening in the news, the other students of the Frost Institute in a rather morose mood (not to mention several angry mutant teenagers), Lorna found it a breath of air to just get off campus. She had the urge to just go and keep going, to keep her mind off things.
But hunger waited for no one, so the bottle dyed brunette drove up to the diner rather than going back to school where her food was inclusive. Mid-morning or not, Lorna was getting a piece of pumpkin pie and hot chocolate.
The young woman looked for all intents and purposes normal. The most typical All-American girl you could imagine. Hair pulled back into a high ponytail, a mid-calf skirt of deep maroon and a black turtle neck sweater with a Frost Institute jacket slung over her shoulders.
She beamed at the waitress as the woman led her to her own booth, the diner was quiet otherwise and Lorna sat down with a heavy sigh, green eyes scanning over the menu briefly, already knowing what she wanted and was thus left to wait for the waitress' return. She tapped her fingers against the table top, sighing as her gaze lifted to glance over the other patrons idly.
*
The golden skinned young man looks up as another patron enters, for a moment his face visible. Despite the color, there's nothing metallic about his actual skin: there's a quick half-smile and his skin moves all normally skin like. "The banana pancakes are really very good." he offers over to the other booth.
But Josh, a bit shy with the 'obvious mutant' thing, ducks his head again, and grabs up his fork to cut into said pancakes and shovel some up into his mouth. Still, he can't quite hide even though he's trying not to draw attention to himself.
*
A shift on the seat and Lorna leaned forward to the edge of her booth toward the one opposite of her. Her initial reaction to the golden tone of his skin was minimal, and she offered him a beaming smile none the less. "Really? I was going to go for pumpkin pie of they serve it this early, I'm dying for some with a bit of whipped cream and maybe a hot chocolate. I have a bit of a sweet tooth." She grinned in an almost sheepish manner.
Then her gaze flickered to what he was eating and she arched a brow upwards. "So, I assume you're eating the banana pancakes then, are those your favorite? I have to admit, the last time I was here, I just had some hot chocolate and a bagel. Granted, I didn't really get a chance to eat that much. Sort of spent the whole time talking to this guy who was blue."
*
"Hey, its a diner, when do diners not have pie?" offers Josh with a little shrug of his shoulder, "Granted, if I had a sweet tooth, I'd pick a sweeter pie. The reason I like pumpkin is because its not so sweet." He hesitates a moment, then nods his head, "Yep, having the banana pancakes myself. Usually, I'm a waffle man: the texture of pancakes are a bit too soft for my taste. But the addition of bananas just changes the whole equation."
And then, the gold fades into a tanned but completely normal complexion, and Josh sighs with obvious relief, "Finally." The hoodie is pushed back, showing blond hair, and the scarf is tugged off as well. His entire posture shifts to one that's more relaxed as he looks more directly across the booth to the young woman, "Blue, huh? Takes all kinds, I suppose. I know a blue lady."
*
"That's why I have the hot chocolate, and they put tons of whipped cream on it here." She beamed, but her expression faded to one of astonishment as his skin fades to a normal tan and he flings off the hoodie and scarf. She gapes, her lips forming a perfect 'o' of surprise.
"Woah," She blinks a few times and shifts in her seat, balancing her weight with a hand on the back of her booth seat.
"Yeah.. blue. He was from Germany… you know that is /so/ cool." She gestured to him, rather all of him, with a hand wave.
*
"It happens when I heal someone." admits Josh, wincing a little, seeming a little bit bashful about the whole thing, "I go gold for … a day or so. There's no telling exactly when it returns to normal, and people vary in their reactions to gold-guy syndrome. Its a little on the inconvenient side of things, really." But she seems cool, so Josh shrugs, and gestures, "Wanna join me? Anyways, blue seems to be a fairly common color, at least as far as different-colored-people is concerned."
*
A small laugh, and a smile and Lorna scoots to the end of her booth and crosses the aisle to settle in opposite of him at the offer. "Sure!" She held a hand out to the young man opposite of her once she'd settled in.
"I'm Lorna by the way, and thanks for the invite." She glanced him over again, her head tilting to the side.
"It's so cool that you can heal people, that's a wonderful gift. I wish I had something that useful." She rubbed the back of her neck and then took off her jacket to settle it into the corner of the booth.
*
Josh accepts the hand and shakes it, his grip firm but on the gentle side, "Josh." He hesitates, and adds with a quick grin, "Also known as Elixir, in certain circles. Since I'm the cure for what ails you." He can't help it then, he winks. But it lasts only a couple moments before he sighs and shakes his head slowly, "If only I was in Dallas yesterday, I could have saved the President. Imagine what that would mean, the headlines: President saved by mutant! It could have changed everything. But here I was stuck up here. Being able to heal someone is only useful if you're there at the right time to make it matter." He frowns, "And it did get me fired, lost me my family, my friends, my apartment, though notably it didn't lose me my student loans for medical school."
*
Lorna's brows furrowed as the conversation takes a different tone and she bites her lower lip, glancing down at her hands. "Yeah," A small shrug and she pushed her hair back from her face.
"I know how you feel about that Josh.. as far as how it could've changed everything. Like," She bites the inside of her cheek. "The thought that maybe if a mutant had been there save him.. maybe things would've been better now.." She glanced up at him, and frowned at his story of loss.
"I'm sorry to hear that." She shifted in her seat. "Guess I'm pretty lucky by all accounts. My family doesn't really /like/ that I can do things, or that I'm different, and they really just want me to hide it.. or pretend it doesn't exist.. But they've never considered kicking me out… I guess it helps that they choose to adopt me.." She rubbed the bridge of her nose.
*
Hefting up a piece of bacon, Josh nibbles. "I was in my surgical residency, and really good at it. I specialized in general surgery. General is most abdominal organs except kidneys. Anyways, this guy was coding— I mean, his heart stopped. I didn't even know I could heal, I thought I could only sense people's health. And I healed him. Turned gold. The hospital couldn't fire me fast enough."
Nodding slowly, Josh hesitates, then shakes his head to clear it, and smiles, "It's good that your family accept you. You're lucky: a lot of us aren't as lucky as that. Well, what can you do?" This last is asked curiously.
*
Lorna listened with an empathetic ear, her expression wreathed with concern and pity for Josh's story. She bit her lower lip and when the waitress came over to inquire to her order it took her some time to process before asking for the pie and hot chocolate. As the woman left, Lorna's gaze swung back toward Josh and she fidgeted in her seat.
"Well, I can kind of manipulate metal." She flushed, and tapped her fingers against the table. "And I say kind of because I'm not very good at it. I sort of spent most of my life ignoring it.. 'till about six months ago when it decided that I wasn't going to be able to ignore it. Paperclips stuck to me all the time, clocks went all wonky, and I couldn't be near a TV or phone without causing static. Kind of like a magnet." She flushed and averted her gaze.
*
"Considering how much metal is in the world—" Josh begins, smiling easily and letting darker thoughts fade away, "that could be very powerful. You should practice and see what the extent of what you can do is. These mutations, they're what make us special. And they are the only advantage we have over the baselines, the only hope we really have of getting our rights and freedom is if we leverage those advantages. Together." He hesitates, tilting his head to the side, "Have you ever heard of the Brotherhood of Mutants? I've been hearing a lot about them lately."
*
Lorna makes a brief face, "Yeah, I know. The problem is I lack control, much to my teacher's .. disappointment." She grumbled under her breath, and as the waitress swoops in to set the hot chocolate on the table, Lorna offers her a beaming smile, wrapping her hands around the mug quite contentedly.
She thought about the fact that her birth father, her Tata, could fly and talked about lifting cars and her gaze fell to the mug in her grip. Maybe if she had been any good at her powers, she'd be able to actually /do/ something useful for once.
"Wait, what, baselines?" Her eyebrows furrowed and she tilted her head to the side. "Uhm.. no I haven't heard about the Brotherhood of Mutants, what are they?"
*
"A lot of us have control problems at first, you'll get the hang of it. Practice makes perfect." Grabbing another piece of bacon, Josh munches and then goes for OJ. Only after this diversion is done, he gestures off towards the waitress, "Baseline humans. As in, those without a mutation. I'm not sure what to call them, 'regular humans'? I don't think anyone is regular. 'Normal humans'? That implies there's something unnormal about us, and I don't accept that. So, baseline. Genetically, they are the basic model, and we are the next stage of evolution."
There's a thoughtful pause, and Josh wrinkles his brow a bit, "Well, the Brotherhood— and don't take the maleness at issue, its actually a blue lady that's in charge, is like… mutants who aren't content to sit in Mutant Town and wait until the government turns it into a concentration camp. The Brotherhood thinks we've been pushed as far as we should accept BEING pushed, and that its time to push back. To not wait for our rights, to demand our rights."
*
A blink, and Lorna chooses to carefully sip up all the whipped cream from her hot chocolate. Then she glanced back at the waitress and back toward Josh with a faint furrowing of her brow. "Oh. Huh. I'd never heard that before. I dunno, I guess it was just.. I was the one that was different. So I guess I just never heard the term before." She frowned faintly.
As he continued to explain what the Brotherhood was she listened with care until he was finished explaining. "Oh, a blue lady.. huh. Yeah, I guess like you said before, lots of blue." She paused a beat, and reached up to fiddle with the tiny Star of David pendant she'd turned into a necklace, when he mentioned concentration camps.
"So it's kind of like the civil rights protests?" She asked, arching a brow.
*
"Yeah." Josh nods his head slowly, "Just a bit more— involved then that. Less march on washington, more black panthers. You hear what happened in Sacramento?" He frowns a bit more, "The baselines burned down the mutant town there. Burned it to the ground. No telling just how many mutants they massacred. And that's not the first time they've started killing us, and it won't be the last. The Brotherhood is our first and last line of defense for when the time comes and they decide the answer to the mutant problem is simple: no more mutants. Round them up and make them go away. Permanently." His expression darkens as he glances away, "It's coming."
*
Lorna shifted uncomfortably at the mention of Sacramento, and bit her lower lip, a hand rising to run through her now brown hair. "Yeah, I did." She bit her lower lip, thoughts of what she'd seen first hand against mutants here. Perhaps it made Emma Frosts' paranoia more understandable to the naive, trusting girl.
There had been reasons that Lorna had refused to acknowledge her gifts, and what happened to mutants in Mutant Town, was one of those reasons.
She rubbed her upper arm glancing over Josh again. "But won't that make things worse?" She asked softly. "I mean..people fear us because we're different. People fear the unknown.. wouldn't.. wouldn't it be better to try to work against that from even happening in the first place?"
*
"We didn't start the war." Josh shakes his head slowly, "We didn't fire the first shoots. We're the ones suffering, dying: at what point can we say, 'enough is enough'? At what point do we stop waiting and start defending ourselves, and defending our people." He reaches his hand out, and a soft golden light envelops his palm— but only for a moment, so as to not draw too much attention. "I'm a healer. I can even heal death. I should be welcomed, cherished, I should be able to set up a clinic and do nothing but heal all day long and that should be enough to make the world not fear mutants."
He shakes his head slowly, "Except its not: instead, people throw things at me, jeer, call me a freak. I've healed a man and had him threaten me before right after. Look at the blacks: it took a civil war to end slavery. And still they do everything they can to stop blacks from voting or moving up. Do you think they'll ever stop fearing us? We have power they can't imagine. They're killing us. If I could heal the world…"
*
Lorna grimaced, her brows furrowing as she squirmed in her seat. She looked down at her hot chocolate, the heavy, creamy drink sitting wrong in her stomach as her thoughts soured along with the tone in the conversation. "It's not everyone though, most people just want to be safe.. they want to be able to go on living. Doing their day or day things. I go to school where there /is/ integration. Between mutants, women, blacks, whites.. everyone. It's not perfect, and there are a plenty of things wrong and we still have to be careful.. but.."
She pursed her lips together, "Maybe you're right, and the people that are scared will react like that.. it certainly feels as if that's how things will go.. but," She sighed, "What about afterward? Beyond that hatred and fear? They're still just people. We're still just people.. and we'll all have to live with each other beyond that, won't we?" She tilted her head to the side, green eyes lifting to peer up at him.
"Or does the Brotherhood not think that we can co-exist at all?"
*
"And the Brotherhood is fine leaving most people alone." agrees Josh with a slow nod, leaning back, letting his hands rest on the table, "No people in the history of the world have ever been oppressed without their consent: eventually, everyone rebels. The oppressed rise up. After… after we hopefully end up with a fairer, more free society. The Founding Fathers didn't win their freedom then immediately turn around and try to kill all the british in the world, and now today, Britain and America are the best of friends. Once we win our rights— the most important of which is simply the right to *exist* at all— and are acknowledged as free, equal people, will there be some tension? Sure. But then it will be history. And the world will be a better place."
*
A sigh, and Lorna shifts, recrossing her legs and glancing around as the waitress brings the pumpkin pie on a plate and settles it down before Lorna with a small smile. As the woman leaves again, Lorna props her chin up with her hand. "In all of those events, lots of people died.." She chewed her lower lip. "On both sides."
"If we don't then.. then you're saying that something like the Holocaust is likely to happen again.. but this time with mutants." She winced as she said it, her throat clogging and she downed the rest of her hot chocolate to try to clear the lump in her throat. After the chat with her birth father, with Erik Lensherr, she had gone into more research about the historic event that had stolen away part of her family. The event that had landed her adopted here in the US.
The thought that something like that would happen again turned her stomach, and her skin paled slightly. "I dunno, maybe it makes me weak or pathetic or something, but I can't imagine hurting anyone. I get it, really, I do. Why they'd work to fight back. I just.." She exhaled a heavy breath.
*
Gravely, Josh nods his head slowly, "Sacramento wasn't the first, but it was the biggest purge so far, and it's only a matter of time before there's more…" He eyes his now soggy pancakes with some distaste, "I understand. Believe me, I never wanted to hurt anyone: I'm a healer. Its in my nature to make people better. But I can't stand by and watch any more of our people die. I have to do something. Maybe that something is I just join up with this Brotherhood and if any of them get hurt, I heal them. I don't know— the revolution is happening all around us right now. Sooner or later everyone is going to have to pick sides or find a hole to hide in and wait it out."
*
A small exhale and Lorna lifts her gaze back toward him. "I'm pretty sure that my teacher, and my tata, would not allow me to be anywhere near such things. They're both pretty protective." She smiled, and glanced down at her pumpkin pie, no longer interested in it, though her stomach most decidedly wants food. Even if the topic makes her guts clench in worry and fear.
"My tata, it's my dad, in Polish.." She smiled faintly, and some of her fear loosened as she spoke of him. "He's pretty strong. Like, he can tear apart buildings and flip cars and stuff. He can /fly/ even. And make a car run without turning on the engine. I feel safe with him, he knows so much and he's so kind.." She trailed off. "I wish more mutants had someone like him around. If I didn't have him now? When everything is so scary and my powers were just as messy? I dunno what I'd do." she shrugged, pushing her hair back.
"If you need a safe place, or just someone to talk to though Josh, I'm here. Well, not /here/ here, but around at least."
*
"Well, you should practice your powers anyways." Josh nods his head slowly: recruitment = failure, but still, doesn't mean it was a waste of time. "Just in case. Its good you have someone who wants to protect you, but you never know if you're not going to need to rely on it." He hesitates, then adds, "I'd like to meet your Dad sometime, maybe. Its cool to have parents who are mutants. All my family are baselines."
*
A small nod, "Yeah, I know. I plan to. I mean, I can't really get out of training anyways. My teacher made me run extra laps when I was five minutes late and she's demanding. But she's nice." She beamed, "And my father wants to train me too. So there's literally no way for me to get out of practice. Even if I wanted to." She sighed, glancing down at her pie piece and poking it with her fork.
"As far as meeting my tata?" Her brows shot upwards and she tilted her had in thought, "Err, well, I think he'd be pretty interested. The tricky part being is that he lives out in Westchester. So it's a bit of a hike from the city, depending on the time of day you try." She tapped her chin in thought. "I have to call him anyways soonish." A pause.
"Do you want my number, Josh?" Wide green eyes flicker over him, innocent in and guileless in the fact that he'd tried to recruit her.
*
Digging into his pocket, he pulls out a pen and grabs a napkin, putting his own number on it then pushing a second napkin over with the pen, "Oh, getting around is no trouble. I have a car, though its not a great one or anything." He smiles, "And I like meeting other mutants, getting to know our people. Maybe I can take him out for dinner: I mean, everyone wants to make friends with a healer, right? Just in case."
*
A laugh, and Lorna took the number as he slid it over and passed her own over the table. "You know, not many people can say that they've exchanged numbers with someone they just met so you can set up a meeting with a girl's dad." She laughed again, and grinned.
"I know you don't mean it like that, but still. My roommate is going to rib me so hard on that." She dragged a hand back over her hair and a small sigh escapes her. "I've met so many other mutants as of late. It feels strange, like this city is just a magnet and I keep running into people by accident."
*
"There's a lot of us." agrees Josh, after he laughs at the numbers exchange comment, "And hey, don't be sore about wanting to meet your Dad." He grins, "I'm 26, he'd probably throw a building at me if he thought I were hitting on you." He nods his head then, soberly, "But yeah, there's more of us then people think. That's part of why the baselines are freaking out and trying to put us down. But… I should get going. It was nice meeting you, Lorna."
*
A laugh at that, and Lorna muffles it behind her hands as she snorts and a flush crosses her cheeks. "He likely would!" She giggled again, a grin stretching over her lips before she sobered as well and he made to go.
"Thanks for sitting with me Josh, it was a lot better than sitting by myself. It was nice to meet you too." She waved, a little wiggle of her fingers as she sighed and glanced down at her pie.
*
With a wave, the once golden kid flashes his best smile back, and then heads off.