strangetrip | GP: April Fools!

It didn't take any sort of precognitive abilities to predict some kind of shenanigans on the first of April. Many of the people stuck in the bubble world of the Madonna Inn were from times and places where April Fools' Day pranks were normal, expected... (in many cases) minor annoyances. And then there were the residents who remembered the strange egg hunt from a year ago, and the sometimes confusing explanations of the two holidays falling on the same day and how that related.

Also, life at the inn could be interminable. After a while, people started hoping for some kind of strangeness to happen, just to break up the monotony of being trapped in a kitschy no-snow globe.

So, no. You didn't have to be a mutant fortune teller to expect some kind of joke being pulled. But Emma was, and even she had no idea what was coming, other than it was going to be frustrating and topsy-turny, and the visions she'd been getting from the tarot – and way more reversals than was usual or healthy in her experience – were even less clear than usual.

She definitely didn't foresee waking up without the powers that were as much a part of her as her heart. Or just as suddenly having powers she had no idea how to control. But she did, and she had*, and she was far from the only one. The same thing was happening to people all around the inn.

(*Not to worry. The singe marks should be gone in a day or so. Right?)

[Powers swap GP! Tag in. Tag around. It's a time for out and about at the inn coping (or not) with powers gained (or lost).]

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"Hopefully," Jackson echoed, although he meant it for the others. He was fine as he was; in fact, he was better this way. More efficient, and more capable of dealing with being stuck here. No, his hopefully was all about the other residents, those who were faring less well.

(And, perhaps, about Corbie, but he set the thought aside before it might clog up his logic.)

Hope was a dangerous thing.

"How are other people dealing with you being an android?" He might not need to adjust, yet, but Emma couldn't imagine everyone accepting it so matter-of-factly. And asking meant not having to think about how she and her friends were dealing with the changes to themselves.

"Fine, for the most part," Jackson answered. Corbie was a different story, of course.

For the most part. That sounded like not everyone was, and with what Emma knew of Jackson – not as much as some people around the inn, but in such a small community, everyone saw more than expected – the most likely person having trouble with it was Corbie. Emma should check in with her, see how she was doing.

Which of course reminded her of someone else she wanted to check up on, not that she'd been able to forget entirely since Coby stopped by the kitchen that first morning to let her know what had happened to Jag.

"How's Jag? Not about you being an android, just... with everything." If anything, Jackson being an android probably helped Jag.

"He was in a rough spot at first," Jackson admitted, "but he seems to be adjusting." Thanks to the medication River Tam had provided, more than anything else.

It was such a relief, just to hear. But, Emma told herself firmly, she should still probably keep her distance. Something about Regina's magic made her way more labile than was good around an empath.

"Dani, my teacher... mentor back home, is a pretty powerful empath." And Sabine's connection to ghosts was empathic too, and Emma had seen what happened when it got to be too much. "It's a lot to adjust too."

"Was her empathy also manmade?" Jackson asked, looking at Emma curiously.

How could someone be a man-made empath? Emma was pretty sure she didn't really want to know the answer to that question.

She shook her head. "She's a mutant, like me. Or like I usually am." At the moment, according to Regina, she was some kind of sorceress, but that didn't stop Emma from thinking of what she'd sort of learned she could do in comparison to mutants with similar abilities. Reality warping. Teleporting.

...Pyrogenesis.

"She was born that way, but her powers didn't manifest until she was a teenager. That's pretty common with the X-gene."

"And that is due to a mutation in your genome?" Jackson asked. He understood genetics better now than he had before. And if one thing of who he used to be remained in this version of him, it was his scientific curiosity.

She nodded. "How it manifests is really variable, different powers, different appearances, that kind of thing. But they've identified where in the genetic sequence the mutation occurs. That's how they can test for it, even when it's still latent."

Everything Jackson knew about genetics filed through his mind, and he blinked curiously at Emma. "Could you tell me more about that?" If she knew more, that was.

"A little maybe. Sorry, I've always been more interested in the humanities than the sciences. If you really want to know, Kitty could probably tell you a lot more than I can." No, biology wasn't really Kitty's field either, but she'd been at Xavier's and an X-Man longer than Emma had known she was a mutant, and as smart as she was, she would have picked up plenty.

Jackson nodded; Kitty was definitely a fellow scientist. He thought that he might be able to follow her more easily, as he currently was. "I will. Thank you."

Emma nodded too, not sure what to say, since she hadn't done anything worth thanking her for. She'd just passed questions about mutant genetics off onto Kitty.

"I should probably be the one thanking you. For getting me out of my own head for a little while."

"And you helped me fill the hours of the night," Jackson replied, lips curving into a small, polite smile.

GP: April Fools!

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