you must become an island

adrianceasar

adrianceasar

There is no friend as loyal as a book (Open)

Mary was walking to the bus stop when she saw someone head into the library. She knew its hours and if he was the janitor he would at least have the keys to get inside wouldn’t he? He didn’t look like any other librarian she had come across. Deciding to follow, she went after him into the library but stayed out of sight. Or so she thought. She jumped at the sound of his voice, but didn’t step out from where she was hiding.

Päivi yanks on the coat of the person in front of her, right as they are about to step into what is the shiniest and in her experience therefore also the most slippery, tangle of leaves and rain puddle she has seen in a while. “Look out!” And she likes to believe she doesn’t do so with too much force, but Päivi has never been good at estimating her physical strength. 

Mary feels the tug on her coat and she’s not sure why, but she still stops her step forward and at that moment she hears watch out and takes a large step back, but keeps her balance. Thankfully. “Whoa,” she breathes and looks over at her familiar savoir. “Thanks for that.”

Already half-soaked with rain water, Diana arrives at her scooter, leaned against the wall of a store, only to find she has gotten a ticket. So that’s where being helpful will land you - today, that’s just too much. She kicks the wall in exasperation: “Second time this week, goddamn it!”

Mary was only walking by but then she recognizes the voice and looks around to find the source. She sees Diana, but she’s not sure if she should acknowledge her judging by how upset she sounded. “Parking enforcement can be jerks. Do you know what it’s for?” She asks as she walks closer to her.

Piret stands next to the rack with the handbags, as if on the look-out for a victim. Which she sort of is, really. So the first person who strays into her vicinity gets cornered into a display of scarves. Piret holds up two handbags and gives a genuinely curious expression: “What do you think? Blue one or pink one?”

Mary was shopping, looking for pretty much anything. She was just killing time until she met up with Adam. As she moved to the scarves, she saw someone come up to her. Not sure if they were speaking to her, she only glances at the other woman then back at the scarves then back at her, until their eyes meet. “Oh! Um, pink,” she said with a sheepish smile. Mary was always a sucker for pink.

Felix found it cute how much Mary didn’t want her to be in debt to her for this. She really did want to make it up to her, though. Her mind went to a few places it probably shouldn’t have at various ways she could make it up to the woman. She couldn’t help herself; she found the woman quite attractive. She raised her eyebrows in surprise at what Mary said next, forgetting she had said that after she had gotten lost in her dirty mind. She could see the excitement light up in Mary’s eyes, though, and who was she to deny that eagerness? Okay, maybe she liked having her ego stroked and the fact she didn’t have to be ashamed of her post human ability here, but she also wanted to kinda impress Mary. It seemed she looked a bit surprised, too, which was understandable. Usually post humans at PROTECT were out in the field, but once they had found out she had a degree in biochemistry, they were happy to fulfill her request to work in the lab. She loved using her powers, but she also loved science. Plus, this science could help people, which was a bonus. “I mean…I can move water.” Felix said this casually, smirking slightly at Mary. She raised her hand, feeling the closest water in a test tube, sitting there in case she needed it, but she hadn’t used it today. She flicked her wrist up and it rose from its container. She curled her fingers slightly and it came in one swift motion to her hand, floating above it. She moved her other hand up, cupping it, which made the water compact itself into a ball. “I can make it change from liquid to solid to gas form, too.” She said as she played with the floating ball of water between her hands. “Would you want to see any tricks I can do with it? Because I don’t mind.”

For some reason Mary believed herself not to be so easily surprised by post-human abilities, but she couldn’t help but have her breath taken away at seeing the water come out from the test tubes. It was totally, completely, awesome. As someone who had to watch everyone in her family use their ability and be left alone, there was always a sense of jealousy at people having abilities--but who wouldn’t be jealous! It was the stuff of comic books! “That’s so cool,” she breathed her eyes fixated on the water. She’d yet to come across anyone with the ability to move water. “So you can do, like, any shapes? Square, triangle--heart? Do a heart!” She said, maybe a little too excitedly, but Mary liked hearts. “The conventional heart symbol not with the-the whole aorta and valves and stuff. Although it would be pretty impressive if you could create a water model of the heart, but I assume you would need to know some sort of human anatomy to create it--or does it come from visual memory and not what you personally know. Uh, sorry, ignore me, simple heart works for now,” Mary clarified. “Please,” she added not wanting to seem rude. She knew people didn’t want to display their talents for show sometimes. However, she couldn’t help but be excited. It was all so amazing, the new capabilities of mankind. How anyone could see it with fear instead of awe was just ignorant, but she understood the dangers of some. She had seen first hand what the misuse of one’s ability could do to people.

Mary appreciated Felix trying to make her feel better for repeating her name, but she would probably replay that embarrassing moment for days to come and then months later she’ll remember this out of the blue and relive this moment again. “It--it really isn’t,” she mumbled more than spoke aloud, not wanting to seem like she was arguing in case it upset Felix. However, something else caught her attention before she could comment even further. “Wait, what do you mean by water moved?” Mary knew post-humans worked in PROTECT, most employees were, but since she wasn’t one, she still felt excited to see what each one could do. She usually expected most of their post-humans were agents, but she was happy to see one was working down at the lab. Much easier to visit than someone who was mostly out of their office or didn’t even have one at all. She hoped she wasn’t pressing any boundaries by potentially asking what Felix could do, after all, what else could she be implying with being able to move water?

Felix was kinda impressed by the way Mary seemed to recite their policy word for word, straight from her own memory. “So we don’t get hacked and have our information stolen by the Rogues or Nexus.” She supplied as a reason, even though the information would be pretty useless without her or another scientist there to translate it, since most of it was in what she called “science-y talk”. As Mary looked over at her and bit her lip, Felix couldn’t help but find that adorable. “If you can, I owe you a million. Seriously.” She breathed a sigh of relief. “I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I’m Felix. Felix Shaw.” She added, since she knew Mary’s name, she thought the other deserved to know hers. 

Mary gave a nod of acknowledgment at being given her name and smiled. “I’m Mary,” she spoke out of habit before realizing she had already said her name. “But... you already knew that.” Shutting her eyes momentarily, she winced from her own embarrassment. “Anyway, it shouldn’t be that much of a problem...” She kept her attention at the screen, feeling just the slightest pressure to be able to repair the file. The progress bar for repairing the file grew stagnant and she wondered if it was actually going to work... however once a pop-up came up saying the repair failed, she sighed. “Don’t worry, there’s another way that I’m sure has to work. Now, it won’t repair the original file exactly, it’ll just be the raw data that was imputed with no format, which is better than having no data, right?” She glanced at Felix with a small smile before looking back at the screen. When it began extracting the progress bar moved much quicker and when it gave a positive chime and opened up the data in a notepad-esque format, she smiled wider. “There you go. I recommend saving that information before restarting the monitor one more time and then you’re good to go. No million necessary.”