The Stairway of Doom

Posted on Mon Apr 10th, 2023 @ 23:13 by Cameron Johnston & Sarah Bright
Edited on on Mon Apr 10th, 2023 @ 23:33

Chapter: Prologue: Dawn of Avalon
Location: Stairway of Doom, Avalon Institute
6449 words - 12.9 OF Standard Post Measure

As expected, Sarah was lost. Well maybe not truly lost. Lost seemed so... absolute. Sarah could easily turn around and find herself back where she started out, but moving forward? So far the librarian wasn't very sure of anything, least of all her sense of direction.

All Sarah wanted to do was find her quarters and call it a day, but so far that simple task was proving to be... well, problematic. The one direct route from the library to her quarters was currently besieged by two groups of students engaged in a rather messy food fight. What was wrong with the kids today? Sarah had no idea how old that made her sound. All she knew was that she'd narrowly dodged a projectile jello pudding cup. Unbeknown to her, she hadn't dodged it as well as she would've liked. She wouldn't figure that out until it was time to brush her hair.

How was one supposed to go about restoring order and discipline among a group of eight or so unruly children with unknown mutant powers? What were they even fighting over? These were questions that Sarah reasoned were better addressed by other members of the faculty... preferably ones with reputations, and/or abilities of their own that commanded respect. At the moment Sarah was not one of them. At least other faculty members had stopped asking her for her hall pass...

Lost in her thoughts, Sarah was not fully aware of her surroundings. She had no idea that her current detour had led her to the infamous stairway of doom. The stairway was aptly named for its treachery, despite every attempt at careful and thorough maintenance. Her hands full of her belongings, Sarah had been in the process of reaching into her satchel for her map when she failed to notice the loose and protruding floorboard right at the top landing of the stars.

The librarian wailed with terror as she tripped and started falling face-first down the stairwell. She'd changed out of her heels for her trusty Converse chucks, but not even those could save her. Arms flailing, she lost hold off all of her belongings. Her fancy heeled pumps, held in her left hand, went flying as she was able to clutch at the railing to avoid the worst of the fall. Her coffee thermos, which resembled an ominous-looking metallic cylinder, went flying out of her right. Her eyeglasses left her face and were airborne, along with her satchel bag which was in the early stages of spraying its contents of papers everywhere. Last, but certainly not least, her portable cassette player broke free of its position clipped to Sarah's satchel strap. The headphone plug pulled free, releasing it from its final tether as it sailed along its own trajectory, silently playing what could be its final song.

Way back in the elements of his childhood shrouded by an amateur's best efforts to mask the blatantly obvious, Cameron had learned that there was a lot of difference between having super fast reflexes and being able to capitalise on them. It turned out that, whilst his mutation had taken a lot of things into consideration, such as making sure his thighs could handle a little excess friction or that his metabolism could actually keep up with the nutritional intake required to make sure he didn't black out at high speeds, it hadn't guaranteed absolute liberty from clumsiness. In those very early days, still treasured in an odd way because it had been just him and his emerging powers and the horrified fascination that he was turning into a really, really cool freakshow, Cam had spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get from A to B swiftly without miscalculating unpredictable obstacles. It helped that, over time, his perception had adjusted and his mind's capacity to keep up had improved and he had eventually found a sense of synergy that made it seem like he was moving at a perfectly acceptable rate, it was just the rest of the world that had donned its sloth impression. None of that changed the fact that he had eaten dirt, painfully, over and over again during the process of skill refinement.

Luckily, he'd been born with a tenacity for physical aptitude and a hunger to pursue excellence in the one field that hadn't, at the time, left him floundering at the bottom of the class. As if being a mutant hadn't been bad enough, learning difficulties that had since been speculated as probably being part of his unique mental landscape had made school something of an ordeal, and though his eventual diagnosis had left him ineligible for any of the professional sporting competitions he had aspirations for, he hadn't stopped playing entirely at an amateur level. The move to America that turned into a few years of residency had introduced him to gridiron. Whilst clearly inferior to football, there was still something to be said for passing and receiving at high speeds. He'd never been allowed to exceed certain limitations but that hadn't mattered; the clumsy kid from Chelsea had found an outlet for honing his abilities that only ended in official complaints, oh, once or twice every game.

And then there had been basketball, and hockey, and rather less successfully golf, not to mention recent developments in squash when Claire could be convinced to let him participate. If it involved a ball, if it involved running, if it involved being cornered by entire teams of Neanderthals who somehow had a combined I.Q. lower than Cam's SAT score, then the mutant was all over it. Adult life had curbed some of his appetite for the constant conflict, and Cameron tended to view his responsibilities as being far more important than his own aspirations, but he was to the very core of his being a physically-oriented man. Even a deviation into his second love, mechanics, involved just as much physicality most days. He had long accepted that he was far more useful as the collector of fish and chips than the calculator of who hadn't paid their portion of the bill. What he hadn't counted on was ever needing to use all that practise to save a librarian.

The only part fortune really played was having the food fight produce enough noise to have sent the autoshop teacher investigating. Almost an entire corridor separated him from the split-second fumble that threatened to send the distant figure on an unhappy adventure down a flight of stairs but anticipation of imminent negotiating with a bunch of students had seen Cameron already prep himself for speed and so the distance was negated in the blink of an eye. Had it been a decade earlier, the ensuing debacle of trying to figure out whose limbs were whose would have run the risk of his intervention making things worse, but this kind of scoop-and-swing was second nature by this point. He didn't have hands enough to save everything but he caught the most important thing around her waist, spun her away from the staircase to face back in the direction she'd come before setting her down, and then at the very last minute, an outstretched hand caught the cassette player.

"--eep!" Sarah's terrified cry awkwardly trailed off as she opened her eyes. Only a second ago she'd closed them, expecting a very painful and gruesome outcome. But that never happened. It felt like she'd been caught up in a whirlwind... a very solid and gentle whirlwind. She looked around, realizing that she was seated at the top landing, her back resting against the banister post. What the hell?

Then Sarah heard all of her stuff hit the ground.

Sarah sat there, her face pressed into the palms of her hands as she tried to figure out what had happened. She jolted with every metallic *pang* as her empty coffee thermos bounced and clattered off the hardwood flooring. The rustling of papers settled a moment later. What the hell! Gravity wasn't supposed to work that way. She remembered the time her dad caught her after she fell from a tree, with the falling branch knocking both of them over. That was how gravity worked. All that noise, mixed in with bones breaking, should've been the last thing she heard.

"Umm.... uhh...." Sara murmured, seemingly incapable of anything more than a series of dazed, squeaky moans. She tentatively glanced over her shoulder, afraid of what she'd find. An angel? The devil? She had to be dead, right?

Instead she saw a man. A man holding her Walkman.

Sarah scooted her butt around and planted her feet on the steps, a movement far more fluid than she should've been able to manage. She didn't care that her skirt was all twisted about or that her tights had to be shredded, or even that her stuff was in heaps on the ground. She was alive. And so was her Walkman. Maybe. Had the man caught it, or picked it up off the ground?

"Wha--? How?" Sarah asked hazily, staring at the man with a shocked expression, unaware of the red, pulpy goo starting to seep from her scalp onto her forehead.

There was a comical side to the split-second reversal of fortunes that would eventually occur to Cameron, but his initial reaction, buried in the furtive back and forth of his gaze beneath his furrowed brow, was pure concern. "You okay?" A flit upwards caught, with consternation, the downward descent of dessert in its current charade and the snap of misunderstanding was almost as swift as his rescue had been. "Wait, you're hurt..." And then he was back in her personal space again, hands on her shoulders under the assumption that he was preventing her from imminent collapse whilst his frantic worry slowly gave way to hesitant confusion. She was, he felt reasonably safe in assuming, a mutant. He wasn't an expert on all the ways in which a mutant could bleed but goop....that was new. "I, uh..." He pulled back to look at her face again, incredulity turning his scrutiny into more of an attempt at code-breaking. "We should probably get you into the sickbay."

Sarah blinked when she saw the man rush forward again to help her. It was like he'd been at the bottom of the stairs one moment, then right up in front of her in the next. Had he saved her from falling? Of course he had! Given where she was, Sarah had no reason to find that too surprising. What surprised her more though was when he held her, and she felt the sparks fly. Not the sparks of attraction (though the man was quite handsome), but the literal, sparky kind. It was like that feeling of rolling around and somehow getting rug-burn on rough carpet, despite wearing heavy winter layers, then getting a jolt from touching the closet doorknob to put the clothing away. That, by a factor of ten. Sarah didn't understand where that energy was coming from, but she understood why she was feeling it.

Not liking the sensation of heat, Sarah drew it in, contained it, then imagined smothering it with an ice-cold blast from a fire extinguisher. That was a mental exercise she'd found that helped deal with the pain and discomfort from sunburns. As for the electrical jolt, Sarah had no idea what to do with that. She couldn't find the mental imagery to convince her body to find a way to deal with it, so she just let it course through her body and continue along its circuit. She felt her skin break out into goosebumps as it did.

Doing all of that required most of Sarah's concentration, so she didn't really register the man's concern or words until she felt the goo sliding down her forehead. She reflexively touched it, then inspected her fingers. "These kids are going to be the death of me." Sarah said with a wearied sigh that quickly morphed into an expression of embarrassed realization. "Well, if I'm not the death of me first."

Sarah licked the goo off of her fingers in what probably at first looked like a rather macabre display. "It's jello. I'm okay. Thank you for saving me." She reached up and treated the man to a hug, radiating as many feel-good vibes she could his way via her own strange ability, while trying to maintain some plausible deniability about the notion that she too might be a mutant. That was a fine line to walk, and she wasn't very good at it. Her family had learned that lesson well: Hug a happy Sarah at any and every opportunity. Hug a sad Sarah at one's own risk.

Well-meaning obliviousness might just as well have been a secondary power in Cameron's repertoire. Reagan speculated that it was because he wasn't cynical enough but viewing the world through dark and dingy lenses, smudged filthy with the entrails of scattered hope, seemed better suited to the poetry Jonathan coveted so much. Cameron stopped short of being naïve, he simply chose an optimist's path and, as such, wound up being just the kind of guy you wanted to deal with if pretending not to be something you wished you weren't was your aim. He tended to believe what he was told until he found reason not to.

He also tended to radiate the kind of expressive energy more typically associated with small puppies, along with the actual manipulation of electricity that might have been a better explanation for the sensation Sarah felt. This enthusiasm, too, was helpful in masking any suspicion about his sudden desire to grin and spin her in several circles as if greeting a friend after long absence. He abstained from actually following through with the urge but Cameron was conditioned enough to expect his own good mood not to question when it was being intentionally enhanced. Once again, his radar blipped with predictable monotony and utterly failed to register the glaring evidence smacking him in the face.

"That's assuming they survive what I'm going to do to them for wasting food again." He wrinkled his nose, more inclined to consider the sanitary aspects of having goop seep through your hair than he had been when he'd worried her actual brain was attempting to exit her skull. "Are you okay though?" Craning his head to view the damage strewn about their feet, Cam bent to start picking up errant papers in danger of being trodden on if he took a step in any direction. "That was nearly a nasty tumble."

To Sarah it almost felt like there was a moment of awkwardness when Cameron straightened up. Not quite done with the hug, she all but had him hoist her up with him, until she too was standing. It wasn't that she was trying to be clingy, she just wasn't done with the hug yet... or rather, trying to make him feel good with it. In her experience, making people feel bad was easy. Making them feel good took time and effort, but for the most part was worthwhile in the end. He didn't seem to feel too awkward about it though. If anything, for a moment Sarah thought he was going to twirl her about. Maybe he thought that too, and had second thoughts about it, as a moment later she felt herself being eased back down until he let go and set about tidying up some of her papers.

Maybe it was good that he hadn't let go while she was standing. Normally Sarah never got dizzy or lightheaded... perhaps a byproduct of her strange abilities. But she'd never been handled by someone with superhuman speed before. In that respect she took her time standing up. But everything seemed fine. She let go of the railing and took a moment to adjust her clothing, realigning her skirt and tugging her sweater back into place. She was amazed to see that her tights had escaped the ordeal unscathed.. not a single ladder or tear to be seen.

"Again?" Sarah commented softly, in response to Cameron's choice of words about the students wasting food. There had been food fights before? As for what he said after that, Sarah gave that quite a bit more thought. Was she okay? She felt elated to be physically okay, but that flash or terror wasn't just going to go away in an instant. It was still there, lurking underneath, trying to spike its way through to the surface. But whatever she was truly feeling, some part of her took charge and spoke its mind.

"If my Walkman's okay, then I'm okay." Sarah said decisively, surprised to hear herself say it. Sure it was only a gadget, but at the moment it was more or less her most prized possession. Her paternal grandmother had gifted it to her many years ago, the Christmas of 1980 to be precise. Sarah had been sixteen at the time. It had certainly not been her favorite thing at the time, as that very same year her much wealthier maternal grandparents had gifted her a Mercedes-Benz. But the cassette player had been the last gift her grandmother had given her. She'd suffered a stroke a few months later, and never fully recovered from it. Sarah still had the Benz too, but that had been much harder to pack into a suitcase for her unplanned move to the UK. Suffice to say, Sarah took care of her things, however present circumstances might suggest otherwise.

The response prompted a moment of vacancy before Cameron glanced down at the item in his hand and recognised, for the first time, what it actually was. A slow smile of appreciation wiped the glazed confusion entirely from his expression. "Looks intact." He'd had a couple in his time, had taken apart a few in his time for that matter, but the recent prevalence of compact disc players had distracted him in much the same way new tech always did. Extending it towards her, he added, "If you need a stash of batteries for it, let me know. Slight inventory hiccup," he added mysteriously before winking. "Calculation error, coupled with user oversight. Ordered a few more than we actually need." He glanced then to the sheets of paper he'd started to gather in his other hand and held those out too. "Sorry I couldn't catch everything."

The dart of his eyes attempted in a split second was might have been easier to achieve with a lengthier pause to consider all available facts. There was a delicate balance between insult and, well, more insult and Cameron didn't have a great track record with avoiding the placement of his foot in his mouth when it came to making assumptions. She could have passed as one of their older students but wasn't dressed in uniform, and though that was by no means any sort of guarantee, he veered towards it as a starting point because mistaking a student for a staff member was risky, but the alternative seemed more difficult to recover from. "Claire's outdone herself on the recruitment front again. I don't think there's been a year with quite so many new faces. Cameron Johnston," he added, with the extension of a hand being something of a delay in manners given he'd just plucked her up off the ground and then hugged her for marginally longer than might have been deemed polite. "Auto-shop buffoon."

"Sarah Bright. Damselic bookworm." The librarian said, taking Cameron's hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. Those might not have been the best descriptors for her, but they were the first to come to mind that seemed to match his self-deprecating humor. "And you picked the right thing." She took the Walkman, and plugged her headphones back in. She pressed play, and Fascination Street by the Cure played softly through the headphones around Sarah's neck, though the song only sounded coherent for a few seconds before the tempo slowed to the point of garbling. She pressed stop and frowned with momentary confusion. "Funny. Guess I will need batteries. The rewind button's broken, but then again its been broken for eight years." Sarah had tried out the newer compact disc players, but they felt more fragile, and they skipped way too much. Plus, most of her music, and all of her mixtapes were on cassette, so there was not as much of an incentive to make the change... something Sarah was loathe to embrace to begin with.

The librarian clipped the Walkman to her skirt and took the papers Cameron offered, hoping very much that he hadn't looked too closely at them. They were the beginnings of research for her eventual post-graduate dissertation, and in their present crude state looked more like the scribblings of a lunatic, rather than any sort of rational, coherent notetaking. She stopped just shy of stepping on her eyeglasses, and didn't appear to notice that they no longer had lenses in them after she donned them. In truth they never had, and were purely cosmetic. She simply thought she looked cuter with glasses.

Sarah reached for her satchel and loosened the strap a bit so she could wear it cross-body. She quickly stuffed her papers back inside before Cameron could comment on them. She could see the heeled pumps she'd been wearing earlier in the day on the ground somewhere behind him, but her empty coffee thermos? It was nowhere in sight. It was probably still rolling along somewhere down the hallway.

"The rewind on these things always does tend to give way before anything else." Cameron's hands had found his back pockets in typical fashion and he seemed to find his observation amusing. Growing up with a younger sister had conditioned him to the repetitive strain injuries cassette players endured during peak emotional moments. For a moment, he found himself wondering what song, or collection of songs, it was that had her going back and forth, not to mention the overthinking that usually went along with it. "I'm sure it's part of the charm by now but I can always take a look at it for you if you want." There had never been a clearly defined moment where Cameron had taken over as the resident Fix-It Guy, it had simply been the natural evolution of continual offers stacked on top of the complications of finding repair workers who could be trusted to set foot on the grounds of a school for mutants.

For a moment Sarah was hesitant to take Cameron up on his offer, though she did her best to not let it show. It wasn't because she didn't trust the man, or doubted its competency... it was hard to put a finger on why, but Sarah felt that if anything, it had more to do with the Walkman's age. It felt like performing an elective surgery on an elderly patient with numerous health conditions--the benefits likely wouldn't outweigh the risks. But what did she know? Changing out the ink cartridge on a printer was enough to put her maintenance and repair skills to the test.

Whatever the reason, the moment passed quickly, and in the end, Sarah felt Cameron was deserving of her trust. That, and it would be kind of nice to be able to rewind again. It would be a lot easier than flipping the tape and fast forwarding. "Sure, I'd like that." Sarah said with sincere gratitude. She took her headphones from around her neck and plucked the Walkman from the waist of her skirt and offered it with undue reverence. "Feel free to keep the mixtape... if uh, you like it." Sarah definitely couldn't help but add the last bit awkwardly. She wasn't exactly sensitive about how her taste in music would be received, but she couldn't say the same about people knowing that she was twenty eight years old and still making mixtapes. There was some new stuff on there.

"I'll check it over tonight." A thumb pressed against the offending key was an automatic verification, or at the very least a temptation that Cameron utterly failed to withstand. When the tape, as promised, refused to budge and the tension on the button proved slack enough to provoke gratification from the sheer tap-tap-tap of repetitive jiggling, he conceded to concur with her previous statement regarding the device's current deficiencies. With any luck, it was just a busted spring. He held it up then, an attempt to peer at the cassette inside, or rather the writing scrawled over it, going as far as to turn it slightly sideways to work with the slope of the letters. He was rubbish at deciphering tricky fonts, however, and squinted dimly at the effort it took just to make out the occasional letter. "What vintage are we looking at?" It was a query full of natural suspicion; the women in his life had a tendency to inflict music on him that Cameron wasn't sure should even qualify for the term.

Sarah grinned brightly, and a bit awkwardly. She was appreciative, and was anticipating having a fixed-up brandy new Walkman, but she also caught his suspicion and recognized it for exactly what it was. She found it funny being able to relate to something she too had often been on the receiving end of, and awkward about the fact that she was now... what, the offending party? She couldn't think of the right word for it. But it didn't matter. At home in Boston where most of her stuff was, she had a case full of awful mixtapes that a number of girls and women (some of them friends, some of them friendlier) had given her over the years. A lesson she'd learned early in life was that no one would care about the music she liked more than she did. With that in mind, Sarah usually was not one to push her taste in music on other people. Plus there was also the opinion (bordering on fact) that she was terrible at making mixtapes for other people. She didn't care about themes, or taste, or even the lyrics really. Most of the time she never got around to figuring out what her favorite songs were even really about. Music spoke to her on emotional and kinetic levels. Not intellectual ones. Anyone looking for subliminal messaging in her song choices would probably end up with a bag stuffed full of love and crazy. Which in her mind was what most songs were about anyway.

"Uh... nothing older than that tape player. But not much you'd still hear on the radio nowadays. But it's good, you'll like it..." Sarah trailed off, trying to hide a wince behind a smile that wouldn't have made the worst used car salesman out there even remotely proud.

As if to free herself from any further inquiries or commentary on her taste in music, Sarah made a show of half-circling around Cameron to retrieve her fancy shoes... which upon closer inspection might no longer be quite so fancy. Someone who cared more about money would've probably done well to catch those first, instead of the Walkman, as they were designer brand shoes, the kind that usually costed more than at least a month's rent. But thankfully for Cameron, Sarah was semi-spoiled, and cared little for money when it came to things that could probably be replaced. Picking up the shoes, Sarah was pleased to discover only a few small scuff marks that would easily polish out.

"As weird as this sounds, I would not have tripped if I'd been wearing these." Sarah said with near-certainty. Yes the heels were much more unforgiving than sneakers, but they demanded a higher degree of awareness and focus , as the threat of a broken ankle was ever-present and very real.

"Well, you'd have definitely fallen further if I was wearing them." There was the slightest hint of a dimple beneath facial hair, and a glint to Cameron's eyes that flagged its existence further. Wealth was such a relative subject and Cameron himself, whilst not coming from the kind of money that Claire or Sarah knew, had enjoyed a comfortable upper middle-class lifestyle and was quietly poised to become a successful plaintiff in a civil lawsuit being waged on his behalf by other families caught up in the mess that had allowed a mutant donor to pollute the gene pool. Whatever financial windfall that produced would be a problem to sort out when the time came; Cameron tended to spend his wage on his motorcycle and food.

And other people.

Which tended to result in rather odd gestures at times, not to mention diabolical attempts at controlling the wrapping paper long enough to create an appealing gift. It would undoubtedly lead to eventual scheming in regards to how the Walkman was returned because Cameron was rarely content to just do the bare minimum when it came to following through on favours. He turned a slow circle, intent on making sure there was nothing left of hers on the ground, and stopped for a moment to squint at something on the second landing, poised one huffed breath away from rolling all the way to the bottom of the staircase. He jogged down, swiped it up, and wandered back rubbing his thumb over a slight dent. "Also yours, I'm guessing?" He shook the thermos then, held up to his ear to listen to the contents as if an auditory clue was going to be enough. "Do I need to check this for contraband?"

Sarah let out a restrained laugh when Cameron joked about wearing her shoes. She thought his sense of wit was really funny, and she didn't disapprove of the thought. The restraint was due to the fact that she was very self-conscious about her laugh. Sometimes she lost control of it, letting it slide into a full-on giggle that was a little too cute for the reaction she wanted to convey. Sometimes she finished with a little snort that she didn't think was so cute. She'd had a number of friends and romantic partners that had enjoyed both reactions and made games of eliciting them whenever they could, giving Sarah plenty of practice to master a toned-down version of her laugh, without it sounding too fake or snooty.

Before Sarah could think up some kind of clever reply to the jest, he was off and jogging down the hallway, not with his superhuman speed but still much faster than she would've been able to manage. While she considered herself reasonably fit, she was not inclined to increase her level of fitness, as her abilities made it very difficult for her to train safely. She made a show of feigned impatience as he meandered back by striking a pose while checking her wristwatch. She considered tapping her foot for some additional flair, but sneakers didn't quite have the same effect, as they were more likely to squeak than tap.

"It's mine." She said with a nod and a smile. "And its just coffee... or was. Its just about empty now, thankfully. And no contraband... unless taking a double serving of coffee from the cafeteria to go is against the rules?" The last bit morphed into a question, as it seemed like that there was a great deal of cafeteria and kitchen etiquette that she had yet to master. Her relations with the school's chef were... complex. Which was her way of saying they were a work in progress, and not as good as she wanted them to be.

Cameron held up his hand to see-saw back and forth, a series of little tremors to represent the wibble-wobble of uncertainty. "Taking anything from the cafeteria seems to be against the rules." He had a very detailed and personally-relevant series of experiences that permitted him expert testimony on the fact. "The difficulty seems to rest with the fact that certain rules seem to be against the rules, or at least a little contrary to basic good Samaritan code." His eyes shifted to consider her hair. "Wearing jello, for example, probably against the rules. Certainly flinging jello ought to be but I'd predict a definite lack of sympathy if you get caught showcasing tonight's afters as a fashion accessory."

Sarah picked at her hair, wincing as she realized that there was a lot more jello in there than she'd thought. There goes the rest of my evening. She thought, having a fairly good idea of how long it would take to wash out. "Wouldn't be the first time I've washed jello out of my hair..." Sarah said, laughing again, this time slightly less restrained, but sounding noticeably more awkward and unhinged. She used to put unflavored gelatin mix in her hair it to shape it into liberty spikes. Those days felt like so long ago, and she was very glad that there were no photographs or other forms of incriminating evidence of those days. Nothing more than a few ticket stubs in an old shoe box buried away in her apartment thousands of miles away.

"I used to be a punk. Like... a real one." Sarah admitted abashedly. She reasoned that Cameron might not know what that had to do with jello in her hair, but she wasn't about to provide any more clues on that matter. "Anyway, now that I've found backup, I wonder if we should check out what those kids are up to. It sounds ominously quiet now." Sarah said, trying to make it sound like she'd been searching for reinforcements all along, and not simply fleeing from the food fight.

"I doubt they're still there, probably high-tailed it the minute they realised you'd caught collateral damage." Cameron didn't know what it was like for faculty in a non-mutant school but it became increasingly more challenging to follow through with discipline when the students were literally capable of disappearing into thin air. "I have an idea of who it probably was, I can catch up with them later. Make sure they come apologise." With a final glance around to make sure they'd picked up all of her stray belongings, he added, "Where's the best place for them to find you?" An easy grin was reminder enough that her introduction hadn't exactly been explicit enough for someone who could be exceptionally quick-witted at times and completely clueless all the rest.

Sarah's brow furrowed for a moment. She remembered that there had been introductions at some point after falling and almost breaking her fool neck, but she couldn't remember exactly what she'd said to Cameron. Had she told him that she was the librarian? Or made some poor attempt at humor? She almost wished that it was the former, and that she was simply that forgettable. But then again she wouldn't have minded people forgetting about her clumsy attempts at humor too.

"Umm... the library." Sarah said, her hesitant tone verged on making the statement sound more like a question. Part of her wanted to tell Cameron not to worry about it--the apology, that is. She did not yet have a reputation for much of anything at the school yet, and she wasn't keen on starting off as the tattle-tale jello-head. But then again, though Sarah wasn't a teacher, she definitely wasn't a student, and she shared part of the responsibility in making sure there was some discipline at the institute. That had to come way before her caring about what other people (especially the kids) thought about her.

"Thank you again, Cameron." She said with direct sincerity, to compensate for her earlier hesitation about her usual whereabouts. If there were students about she would've been sure to call him Mister Johnston, but among just the two of them she opted for first names. "I'll be more careful." Sarah still couldn't really believe what had just happened. She still felt very wound up over it. But she knew for a fact that when the time came, she'd have no trouble getting to sleep. She didn't really have any superpowers like Cameron's super speed, but she could fall asleep by the count of three.

Cameron was lucky to fall asleep for the count of three.

"I'll have this finished overnight," he held up the Walkman. "Can't have you going into withdrawal." A cheeky wink was his way of busting through the awkwardness of what he perceived to be unnecessary gratitude. He didn't want to know what kind of person would watch someone fall down a flight of stairs without at least attempting to intervene. "You okay to get wherever you're going? No official escort required?"

Sarah found herself subtly bobbing and twisting in a sort of anticipatory sway, like a child awaiting sweets. As much as she wouldn't want to admit it, she probably would go into withdrawal. She didn't always like to listen to music, and she rarely ever listened to it while walking (for fear of mishaps like the one she'd luckily avoided), but she liked to have her Walkman on her just in case. Some parts of Avalon were quiet, but the students tended to make any place they congregated in quite loud, usually louder than Sarah preferred. When she wasn't specifically tasked with watching over the students, she tended to pull out her headphones and drown out some of the noise with music, if only to keep her stress levels down.

"Umm... Room 29, in the faculty wing. I know the route off the main hallway, but I think this way heads there too?" Sarah said, fairly confident that it did, but not sounding it. The institute did not look too complex from the outside, given the old stone castle facade, but inside she'd found it to be deceptively large and sprawling. But then again getting lost was a frequent issue for her.

"Down the stairs and cut through to the left," Cam agreed, eyebrows hitching. In a feat of impressive self-control, coupled with the ability to catch himself before he shoved his foot into a messy mound of awkwardness, he avoided asking if she wanted him to carry her safely down the stairs and settled instead for tapping her shoulder encouragingly with the back of the hand holding her Walkman. "No more indoor gymnastics, at least not without some lessons from our resident all-star. See you tomorrow."

It had made sense in his head, anyway.

Bright's Mix - Fall '92