strangetrip | [EP] Recon Mission

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[EP] Recon Mission

Ororo had been at the inn for only a couple of weeks and while she'd gathered some information it had been limited in nature. She'd decided to expand her search and it had the added benefit of getting out of her room.

She'd heard there was a beach, that was something that she'd never seen before in real life. Ororo had seen it in pictures and on TV, but not in person. The closest beach to Cairo had been two hours away and not worth the trip on the bus. She'd needed the money that she stole for living, nothing frivolous like a beach trip.

That wasn't the case now, so she'd walked in the direction others had said to go until she smelled the salted water on the air. Ororo paused, before she caught sight of it and just felt the difference in the atmosphere, it was nice. She continued on until she reached the line between the pavement and the sand. Ororo bent down to take off her shoes before she stepped on the soft sand. To others, it probably would have burnt the bottom of their feet, but hers were so used to hot desert sand, that it didn't register. The only thing that did was the difference and she liked it. There was a small smile to her lips and she ran to the water's edge to kick the salty sea letting the water splash around her and on her.

Ororo had stayed at the beach until her stomach growled from hunger which sent her back toward the inn and food. She thought about getting the meal to sit outside by the pool, but she found that she preferred the ocean water. At least for now, so she'd found a table to enjoy her grilled fish and vegetables. It was another meal that she rarely got, even at the Professor's mansion.

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"You disappear from sight?" Ororo asked a little surprised but wondered if she knew Tyrone who in a way could disappear as well. "Was your power something that you were born with or did it come to you in a different way?"

It was Storm's way of asking if she'd had her powers since birth or if it was accident related like Tyrone's were.

"That's... complicated," Sunny mused. She paused to chew, which wasn't a no so much as a gathering of thoughts. "I'm what we call a free agent. Someone magic born to non-magic parents. It was there since I was born, and had I been raised in other circumstances I would have been more openly magical from a very young age. But it more manifested as there being something strange about me until I was initiated. I could always sneak up on anybody, if I really put my mind to it." And there had been that near death experience with malaria when she was two or so, but she never knew what to think of that. "My dad hated when I did that."

Ororo was thinking how useful that skill would have been with her street rats back home.

"Mutants do not have an initiation but sometimes it is extreme emotions that will bring it out. A baptism by fire, sort of. If you don't know what is happening it can be frightening. I think that is why you'll see so many mutants together. Misery loves company." Her lips quirked wryly.

"Did your father and your family learn to accept your abilities once they manifested?"

My father's had a chip on his shoulder about me since I came out both female and albino. Had she been one or the other, she might have been acceptable. No such luck for her.

But Sunny only shrugged. "They don't know."

Since arriving at Xavier's Ororo had heard a few of the mutants tell their stories of parents and other family members disowning them when their abilities surfaced. She never had that experience because of her circumstances and parents' deaths at a young age.

Ororo still had hid her abilities until Apocalypse because of the mutant hatred.

"Sometimes it's easier to keep that hidden even from people you're closest to." For her it had been the other kids on the streets.

"I'm not allowed to tell," Sunny said, something that was simultaneously very simple, but extremely difficult. There were times that she wanted nothing more than to tell her mother, but...

"There are punishments for that, and they're pretty severe." Of course, most punishments in the Leopard world were severe, and only became more so when you were grown. It wasn't uncommon to die or go insane as a result of being put in the Library's basement. "There's a very low tolerance for anything to do with exposing Lambs to our world. And by low, I mean basically zero."

Ororo listened thoughtfully. She didn't have the same experience, but in some ways she had, at least culturally. "It was not the same for mutants but I grew up on the streets of Cairo. We had our own code with threat of severe punishments if we disobeyed our leader." It was for survival and she assumed it was the same for Sunny.

Her lips curved wryly, "I think for some, they see a glimpse into my world and see barbaric, I see normal." Could it change? Sure, but Ororo actually understood the reasoning behind the punishments, if not the punishments themselves.

"It must be complicated to straddle two worlds as you do." For Ororo, she only had one. Even with being a mutant, it was still an outsider, just in a different way.

"It's not entirely new," Sunny had to admit. "I've already got Nigerian and American, what's one more?" Even though those were public things, which yes, made it very different. She couldn't talk to many people about this one. There was no one to guide her through, to share experience. Isong's book was helpful, but reading it was like someone spitting in your eye nonstop.

"Does it get confusing?" Ororo asked after hesitating to ask such a personal question. "to be yourself or does it give you more confidence of being who you are and damn anyone else's opinion?"

She was just beginning to see herself as more than she had before she arrived at the inn. Sometimes Ororo wasn't sure who she was. Mutant always, but she knew that she'd followed Apocalypse because he saw greatness in her. Would she have done the same if she'd seen it in herself first?

"Honestly," Sunny said, even as she felt the potential well of panic open up inside her, "I really don't know. If I ever figure it out, I'll tell you."

The longer Sunny was at the inn, the more she felt the divide that made up who she was and the less she knew what to do about it. She missed her family, her friends, her world, she missed them so much it hurt. But she also knew that while this world didn't have the people she loved most, it was also the only place she'd ever been where she could be completely herself all the time without worrying about letting something slip to people who couldn't see.

Her mother could never know her. Her brothers could never know her. If she married outside of the Leopard community as her grandmother had done, her husband and children would never be able to know her. It killed her having to lie, and being here was a stark and sweet relief from it.

And she hated that.

None of this being something she was about to tell a stranger.

It was actually comforting to know that Sunny wasn't sure either. She nodded her head in understanding. At least in her own way.

Because Sunny had opened up, Ororo did the same.

"The mutant that made me stronger, wanted to remake the world into one just for mutants. A part of me liked the idea of a place where we wouldn't have to straddle anything." Her lips quirked, 'but the reality is that you would always have differences, even among mutants only."

Sunny made a face at that. "That's why we just hide. The kind of monster you have to be--as a person, as a people--to force integration or superiority when they frankly have a good reason to be scared is..." She shook her head. "I know I don't want to be that. It's easier if they just don't know to get upset in the first place."

Though of course in cases such as hers when there were Lamb friends and family to lie to, on that individual level it very much was not. But the world was bigger than her, and went on regardless.

"I think some mutants would probably like to be on their own. Maybe something like the inn. Though with coming and going instead of just one way." Ororo thought of Kurt and those like him.

She also thought of how she'd been able to hide in plain sight, "sometimes I think it wouldn't be too bad either." It was honest and another reason why Ororo had enjoyed her time at the Xavier's. They were kind of in their own world there, too.

Sunny nodded. "We have something like that. Several places, actually. There are sides to cities that only we can find. Places we can be ourselves. Out in the world, though, we pretend we're just like them."

Ororo was intrigued by that. "You have places that you can go? It's not like a mutants only bar but someplace that is only seen by your people?"

That would be nice to have.

Sunny smiled, a real smile full of warmth and nostalgia. "All over the world, yes. When I was still living at home in Aba, I lived near a magical center called Leopard Knocks. People without magic couldn't find it." They'd probably die if they even tried, actually. "It's thousands of years old, and a hub of learning and culture. There are places like that anywhere you have enough Leopard People who need a place to be safe."

It sounded perfect to Ororo. "In a way it sounds like where I was before I came here. Xavier's School for the Gifted, but it was a really a mutant sanctuary." She wondered if she could create something like that when she got back.

"Is magic used to hide it or is it natural but only Leopard people can see it?" She added, "I was thinking that maybe we could have something like that with mutants hiding it, those with the ability to hide things, or illusions where it looks like something else."

Like a chameleon, sort of.

"A bit of both, but mostly magic," Sunny affirmed. "It helps if there's some natural barrier as well, but it's not necessary."

Ororo turned a thought over and over in her mind before she voiced it. "I could use my ability to create fog to begin the feeling of disorientation before the other mutants used their ability."

She thought of Jean, and her ability to make others see what isn't there or not see what was there.

"Though there's the part where it only works because everyone either participates or there are strong enough laws in place," Sunny observed. "And while I have no idea how that happened back then, what I've heard about mutants suggests that that kind of unity and central authority isn't there."

"It's not." Ororo agreed about the mutant unity. She was thoughtful about the Brotherhood and the other mutants that weren't a part of the Professor's school or the Brotherhood. Which would have included her before Apocalypse.

"But this might be something that could unify us. A place to be ourselves and for those that can't pass for human, a place to feel safe - or safer - from mutant fear." She gave Sunny a half smile, "our own pocket universe."

"As long as you can get back out of it again," Sunny couldn't help saying with a wry little smile.

She paused to check the time on the cellphone that never got a signal, but she could not get out of the habit of keeping on her person. "I have a shift at the library in a few minutes, so I should probably get going. You'll have to show me what you can do sometime, though."

Ororo gave a quick nod. "Any time you want a demonstration." She smiled quick. "or if you see a patch of sunshine where it's raining everywhere else - that's probably me."

"I look forward to it," Sunny assured her before she gathered up her dishes to take them back to the kitchen. For all that there was waitstaff at the inn, she preferred not to leave such tasks to other people. Doing her own chores let her at least pretend that the inn was a kind of home.

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