Overly Warm Welcome [Xavier, later open]

He'd never realized grass had a smell. But it did. It was... a little how the beer tasted. A little bitter, a little sweet, a little sharp. It smelled green too. Clement had never associated a scent with a color before, but it felt right. It also had that 'dirt' smell underneath all of it, same as everything in Vermont seemed to, but the dirt smell wasn't... well, wasn't too bad. It was tentatively better than what Clement was around normally, the car exhaust and sun-baked trash and leftover fumes from cigarettes and fast food places. It was the unfamiliarity of it that Clement didn't like, how it constantly pointed out (and underscored and bold-ed and italic-ed) that this wasn't L.A., it wasn't anything like L.A., didn't want to be and was glad not to be L.A.

Clement wondered if he'd be so hung up on how things smelled if he could see better, but it was a brief thought that didn't get any further when he heard the voice.

"What the hell!!!!!!"

Clement knew immediately that he was in the presence of the beer's owner and that it was a fellow student, two things that automatically made him feel superior. And a little excited. There was a fight in that voice, and for once Clement didn't think he'd need too much by way of physical provocation to happily vent some of his anger. He got warily to his feet and knew he wouldn't have time to put his shoes on. It was too bad, they'd be an asset against a kid that much bigger than he was.

And then the kid started on fire.

Various swear words overlaid the thought meta school is going to suck. Clement dropped his unfinished beer (more than 2/3 gone). His head felt slow now that he had to concentrate on something, and he knew he was probably at least half drunk. Breakfast had been awhile ago, so he'd just had about one and a half beers on an empty stomach.

"How did you get my beer?"

"Anyone could get it," he replied, which was the truth. The hiding place was about the same as stashing something under a public park bench. Clement's mouth wanted to say something idiotic like 'are you really on fire', but he could feel the heat from where he stood.

The kid's shirt was going up and he just stood there like it happened all the time, chugging the can left. Clement knew if he made a break for it this kid would be the kind to run him down, and the last thing he wanted was to be jumped from behind by a dude on fire. His first day at a new school was not the greatest time to be given a real life example of how bad decisions gave equally poor results, but in Clement's defense it wasn't often that hidden caches of liquor belonged to teenage pyros with poor control.

...In a wider world view, anyway.

In less time than Clement had ever seen anyone finish twelve ounces of anything, the can in the big kid's hands was empty. And the kid was still merrily blazing away. Normally undaunted in the face of a challenge, Clement felt the whole fire thing was unfair and where was his stupid armor when he needed it? His arms weren't even changing color.

"Are you asking for a fight?"

A lesser kid than Clement (or perhaps a smarter one) would've unleashed taunts about the obvious size difference between them, or something about how it was playing dirty to be on fire against someone who wasn't, but one of the places Clement wasn't very talkative was a fight situation.

When his knees bent and his hands curled into fists, something in his body sent a message to his meta parts that he was about to go through with something stupider than usual and-

"YA! Sshibal!*" Armor from fingertips to shoulders. Clement blinked till the white spots cleared from his vision. The pain only lasted about three seconds, but it was bad. His chest was grey-blue to the base of his neck, and that made him nervous. Armor in a fight could be handy; armor popping in the middle of a fight would be a distraction he couldn't afford with the Human Torch. And he didn't know if the stuff was fireproof yet.

Curling his fists again, Clement let his posture show that he was willing. But that the first step would be up to tall, blond, and flame-y.



*ya - a word Koreans use to express anger, no English equivalent.
*sshibal - fuck

Normally Clement did have better sense, but he was 3000 miles from his family, belonged body and soul to the state of Vermont, and had spent the last four days speaking nothing but English. He was running high on indignation and low on judgment, and figured any kid dumb enough to hide his beer in a tree deserved to have it picked like the forbidden fruit it was. Of course there were consequences, but being beat down by a kid over a foot taller on fucking fire was less After School Special and more COPS. Or maybe Cirque du Soleil. Well, it didn't matter, Clement's never seen any of them. It was just bad.

The kid vaulted forward, his long legs making the distance between them two giant steps, and Clement had just enough time to throw his armored arms up to deflect the first punch. The power behind it slammed Clement back against the tree, the rough bark skinning red hashmarks along his spine through his t-shirt. Between the first and second punches Clement's shout of anger cut off as his whole body armored up. When his hands dropped the kid got in a face hit, but it hit the armored mask and Clement didn't feel a thing. Which was great, because this kid could punch. Feel it or not, the force of it made the back of his head crash against the tree trunk and bounce off.

He was coughing. Why was he coughing? The kid was close enough that Clement could sort of see where his body was through all the fire, and he aimed a sharp kick at the dude's nuts. Looking down told him why he was coughing, too. He was on fire.

Not really him, not the armor, but his clothes. They were producing an oily black smoke that was billowing up right to the place the armor parted to let him breathe, and covering him in streaky soot. That his new clothes, his first whole set of new clothes, was getting trashed made him angry enough to try the offensive in earnest (and also kept him from dissolving in panic that he was on fire). And that he didn't know how long he could keep the armor up. So far he'd only lasted a few minutes at most.

Clement shoved himself forward with everything he had, enough to get what force he could behind a left hook he aimed at the big blond's middle chest. He didn't know he was going for the solar plexus, didn't know the word, but he knew that hits that connected where he was aiming sometimes took the wind out of a person, besides hurting like hell. Clement just went for the area he thought was where the kid's ribcage parted and put all of his 90 pounds into it.

The effort made him breathe hard, and he inhaled more smoke. Clement bent over, coughing, his clothes still burning, though there wasn't much left past a ring at his neck and another at his waist. He could hear the blows connecting but not feel them. It was strange, like he was inside a room and someone was knocking on the door.

And it was about to give out on him. Clement could feel the armor loosening in the way it did that said it was about to curl back inside him or whatever the fuck it did when it went away. The only thing he could think of was getting in one last hit, and he aimed his sturdily armored foot at the kid's knee in a stomp.

There was no pain when the armor dissipated, but he was still coughing, and the neck and waistband of his clothes still burned, turning the skin they rested on red. Clement noted dully that he was naked, and wondered if it would make a difference.

Probably not.

This was going to hurt.

He saw the fist coming but not in time to do anything. Clement's vision was nothing but big dots of color, wavery with tears from the smoke with little white dots that exploded around the edges every time he coughed. The fist was a shape that filled his sight till he felt the pain. Clement let out a strangled mewing noise, half exhalation, half smoke-roughened squeak. His nose broke in a burst of blood and a hairline fracture cracked down Clement's left cheekbone. As a kid who'd spent years getting less than a thousand calories a day with no regard toward proper nutrition, his bones broke easily. Two ribs went, a third cracked, the breath whooshed out of him and he gasped. The points of contact left fist-shaped burns that started bleeding, darkly red and shiny, the blood crackling in the heat and flames.

Clement couldn't breathe. His nose was gushing, his throat felt squeezed, he'd had the air punched out of his chest, and he was still coughing. He couldn't get enough air. He choked on what tried to be a gasp when the burning hands pressed his shoulders against the tree. Clement was three feet off the ground and had just realized what he was smelling wasn't dirt anymore, it was his own burning skin, when he passed out. Lack of oxygen. His chest rose and fell shallowly, furiously, trying to fill lungs crowded with smoke.

Xavier's hands bled as he held Clement pinned against the tree trunk. The knuckles were split, and three of the fingers were broken, two on the right and one on the left. Punching armor had its drawbacks.

[enter the Seangularity]

((ooc: Xavier's injuries listed with Sly's permission.))

" Let him go, Xavier, Now."

Xavier was to focused on his rampage to notice that Sean had walked up. He did hear the words and they surprised him enough to remove his arm. Clement, being unconscious, slipped back down to the ground. He was indeed covered in blood from his nose and Xavier's bloody hands punching him.

Xavier's finger and knuckles were destroyed. Clement's armor had smashed them and it didn't help that he kept punching after his fingers were already broken. The bruise on his chest was now all of the way black and in the shape of Clement's fist. Clement was in way worse shape than Xavier. He had passed out from the smoke from Xavier's fire and from not being able to breath from his now broken nose.

Xavier hadn't meant to take it this far. Everything had piled up and was put out in this fight. Xavier turned to Dr. Sean and faced him, but couldn't bring himself to make eye contact. The rage still swelled in his head. His fire kept going creating black smoke with it. It was hard to calm down a raging fire much less a kid on fire.

Xavier turned his head and looked over at Clement. He had screwed up big time and now he was facing a guy who could get into his head and that happened to be the one thing he didn't want to happen. He had stuff in his head he didn't want anyone to know. He hadn't been in this kind of situation in a very long time.

Broken ribs aren't easy to heal. They take some time before you can breath properly and it can be months before the pain is entirely gone. So in Chris' left side, even now, three weeks after breaking two ribs, he could feel a constant ache. Every breath gave a slight tinge of pain and any time he reached too far on that side he would have to take a sharp breath to fight against the pain. It certainly slowed him down in his day to day life, but he had only been in the hospital for two days anyways so when he had returned so soon a few other teachers had been concerned. He'd made a name for himself, that was for certain. The teacher who jumped out of side of a building to try and protect his students.

He had of course been subject to playful teasing by people. Suggestions to avoid windows, people asking if he was afraid of ladders now. But it was all in good fun. He would smile along with those making the joke, and just keep on. His classes had actually gained more popularity since the incident too. Apparently his exploit had spread and even been exaggerated by the student body. Some of the students that were less familiar with his power seemed to think he had super strength or a very aggressive form of telekinesis. One had asked him if he could only blow up walls or other things too. This kept Christian on his toes but it was also somewhat tiring to keep having to explain otherwise.

Now, with his ribs healed up to a point and classes more or less back to normal Chris had gone back to his wandering the school campus when he wasn't teaching. It let him think better when he was moving and he constantly met new students and kept tabs on things. He was pretty good at relating to them and helping them with problems and in return they kept him informed on the current gossip. It was nice to be trusted by them, and he did his best to avoid damaging their trust. Occasionally he'd have to take it up with one of the other staff members, especially Dr. Neville for the bigger ones, but usually it was pretty easy to keep the issues minor and help with petty disputes.

Today he had no classes at all. It was strange that way, coinciding with some other school function or some such. He had shown up anyways, despite his lack of any actual paperwork right now. His main reason being that he had nothing at home other than Mozzie. But even his ferret wasn't enough to keep his mind busy. So he let the school be his distraction. The constant movement and buzz of the school kept him awake and happy. Unfortunately today there was also a bit of extra buzz at a certain point in the day. He heard someone yelling for help near the courtyard. Apparently there was a fight and someone was being hurt. Never a quite day. So he rushed to the supposed location of the fight.

He arrived there just as Sean was pulling his handkerchief out and pressing it to his face. Chris kept back for a few moments as he assessed the situation. Xavier and some other boy. The kid reminded him of many children he had seen in African countries, his cheekbones pressing against his skin like knives just about to cut through cloth. Now though this cloth was covered in blood that had been pouring out from an obviously broken nose. The way the kid was breathing suggested something was wrong with his chest, and that's when Chris noticed through a patch in the shirt, that it seemed this unnamed child had at least one broken rib. Chris' own ribs ached in sympathy.

The good doctor obviously had this part in hand for the moment. Chris' first reaction was to jump in and help him, but he knew the first step was to get help. Pulling his cell phone out he called the emergency number and explained as quickly as he could what was happening. As he was talking he saw Xavier. The boy's hands were ripped up and bloodied, and he was entirely naked. Obviously his power had taken hold of him again. The burns on the younger boy certainly implied that it was Xavier who had done the damages. As Chris observed this, he also spotted three half melted beer cans. Xavier had been drunk for this?

Crossing over to Xavier as he finished talking on the phone, he grabbed his still hot shoulder and dragged him by it until they were about ten yards away from the tree. "Speak. Now." It was obvious that Christian was not happy about this. He had high expectations from Xavier, and every time he did something this dumb, he was taking one step closer to juvie or worse, jail. So now that something this major had happened, Chris expected a damned good reason for such unacceptable actions.

Mia walked out of her last class for the day. It was weird still being in classes this time of the year, she was used to getting out in the beginning of June, not the end of June. In a month, it would be a year since she came to Hammel. At least that anniversary was a good and positive one. She just wished it wasn’t as close as the other two anniversaries that were negative.

As she walked through the courtyard, she had decided to do some poetry writing, and enjoy the fresh air. But that idea quickly left her mind when she saw Dr. Neville hovering over a young boy who had been obviously beaten half to death. She ran over to Sean, “Dr. Neville! What happened? Is he okay?” She hadn’t even noticed Xavier and Chris. It was a good thing she hadn’t right now either, Xavier was in enough trouble at this point in time. And when Mia did put the pieces together and finds out Xavier did do this, and why he did it; he might just lose a friend. Mia doesn’t like violence, or bullies, or even alcohol; and she especially wouldn’t like those three put together. If she found out that this was the kind of person Xavier really was, then he wasn’t someone she wanted to be friends with.