Minnesota Nice? (Ace)

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

AJ had just finished a long day at work and so she was walking back to Hammel. The young brunette was still working on getting a car. That's what she was saving up for actually. That and to live off campus when she graduated. She was becoming more confident it was a possibility with improvements in learning to control her power...or rather her burden. She'd never see at as a power. She'd even been talking to her parents more recently after shutting them out for nearly a year. She'd finally called her mom and came clean about how she just thought they'd be ashamed of her, for what she'd accidentally done to Oliver, the thing she'd never fully explained to them. They said they would help her out with paying for a car and was glad she'd gotten a job.

While she didn't feel ready to spend a whole summer at home in Minnesota, she would go for a visit around her birthday, her eighteenth to be exact, but for now she was staying on campus, trying to figure things out with Oliver through therapy and working.

Downtown was filled with people, tons of townspeople roaming around looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon. However, she wasn't aware one of them was from her hometown and wasn't Oliver.

[Mason "Ace" Walker]

Ace wasn't sure what he thought of Pilot Ridge. Hell he'd barely been in the town less than a week and he already felt a bit overwhelmed living in the slightly larger town. Not to mention the fact he could barely walk five feet without tripping over yet another meta. His only consolations to moving out of Minnesota was that he got to see Oli again, and the fact he wasn't having to live with a meta. Really, how could his hometown buddy stand it here? Ace felt like he couldn't so much as accidentally bump into someone without the chance of causing some kind of nuclear explosion.

However despite the overwhelming number of metas in the area -was there a convention no one told him about?- Ace was spending his Saturday night out on the town. Not for anything he would deem extremely fun, mind you, but to get a bit of shopping done. Mostly just to buy a few more shirts and a new set of sheets since his had mysteriously gone missing during the move. So nothing the boy could call an amazing night by any means.

He was walking down the street currently, studying a window display when he ran into someone. Almost literally except for he wasn't running. Ace felt himself flinch away from the body before he looked down, shocked to find a head of brown hair that looked far, far too familiar for his own comfort.

"AJ?" His voice was filled with a mixture of hope, and just the slightest bit of dread. He really didn't want to meet the she-devil that had stolen his best friend's heart. Happy as Oliver was, and as nice as AJ might be, Ace couldn't help but dislike the girl. For reasons the male was never going to go into. Not unless someone forcibly read his mind.

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

AJ looked over towards a voice which had called out to her and away from the insides of shop's windows which were catching her eye as she walked along. The short hair cut, the tall frame and the leather jacket. It all seemed misplaced here in Pilot Ridge, like she was suddenly back home... "Ace?" she asked, looking at him incredulously as she came to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

It'd felt like this when she'd found out Oliver was here and now Ace was as well. Was he a meta too? What were the chances of that? It had to be him and as she moved closer to him, she realized it was. The same guy who had pulled Oliver off of her in the hallway two years ago. That seemed to be the image of him that was frozen in her mind. "What are you doing here?"

[Mason "Ace" Walker]

He really shouldn't have been as surprised as he felt, staring at the girl before him. After all, she had disappeared off to the same place as Oli. Hell, she and his boy were even back together - which was a mess he wasn't sure he wanted to touch any time soon - but no. Here she was in the middle of the street like this wasn't Vermont, like they were back home, like this wasn't a whole new level of weird.

Did he mention he hadn't wanted to see her yet?

As she walked forward, Ace was very careful to school his face into the 'easy' grin he had remembered once pulling on his face when he first met the girl all those years ago. And all those times since. He straightened up some and shifted his only shopping bag - clothes were hard to chose alone - so that he could give her a rather sloppy wave. "Oh you know me, I migrate wherever my main man is. Just took a bit longer than expected to gather a plan." He shrugged easily and grinned again. "Actually I'm up here for college. Figured I'd have to come up here since Oli never came home anymore." There. The extent of what he knew to talk about was exhausted.

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

AJ felt slightly awkward upon seeing Ace, a sort of familiar awkward that came with the knowledge of Oliver being at Hammel as well. Ace was a part of her old life and now he was here. Why did that keep happening?

Part of her wanted to hug him, but part of her knew that wasn't the best idea. She had no idea what he thought about that night at the dance. She hadn't known what Oliver explained it to him as, just that Ace was there for him and that Ace had saved them from making things much worse than they were now in that hallway. "I see. You and Oliver were super close. I'm sure he'll be really excited. Does he know you're here yet?" She found herself almost giddy asking these questions. Maybe it was because she wanted something good for Oliver and she often wasn't so sure that was herself. "Oh? Wow. Where are you going? Do you have a major yet?" Okay, she was kind of nervous, so she was firing off questions. She bit her lip after that last one, mentally shaking her head at herself.

Ace didn't know why Oliver was actually here, did he? Did he not know that Oliver was a meta? That she was? Because that would explain so much about that night... It seemed Oliver hadn't gone home for holidays either, something she couldn't bare. "That's really great of you..." she trailed off, shifting her floral book bag from one shoulder to the other. "I...uh, thanks for being there for him, you know...after I left." She found it necessary to thank him.

[Mason "Ace" Walker]

Ace chuckled softly at AJ's question. Did the girl really think Ace could be in Pilot Ridge for more than five minutes without informing his best friend of his arrival? Either she was just being polite, or she really didn't know Ace. But Ace was fine with that. It wasn't like AJ was Oliver's fiance. He didn't have to acknowledge she might be around for a large length of time. "Of course! Saw Oliver before I even saw my new apartment. We went out to lunch and everything." At the question of his major, Ace just gave AJ another one of his half-assed grins. He didn't really want to admit that he didn't have much of a plan when he moved up here and even less of a plan on his future. "Well. I'm taking my Gen Eds up at Greenview for now. Hoping I can figure out a major before I'm done with them."

Ace was well aware of the fact his best friend was a meta. Oh how aware of that fact he was. Just like how he was aware that the school up the bend was filled with more of them. Filled with the things he could never become. Just as he knew the girl in front of him. The girl who took away his- no. He wasn't going into it. If he started down that train of thinking, Ace wasn't sure he'd be able to stop himself from hating her. "It's what best friends do, AJ. Pick up their friends once they get their heart broken." Okay. So maybe forgiveness wasn't in his arsenal of skills.

He sighed some before glancing at her book bag. Time to start over. Pretend she's just the girl from back home. Like she can't do some strange witchcraft. "So what are you doing out and about tonight?"

[Amanda Joy "AJ" Lane]

"That's great," AJ told him. Oliver was really a priority in Ace's life and it was nice to see. She wasn't sure how Oliver would have done without Ace when she left Minnesota, but she was glad he was there. What Ace said next started out great. That is what friends did. They were there for each other. "Heart broken?" she questioned, a look of confusion passing across her features. AJ knew what had happened between her and Oliver was awful and really hard to face, but she never thought she'd broken his heart. "What do you mean?"

And just like that, he'd changed the subject. It was odd and almost jolting, considering he'd practically just accused her of something. "I just got done with work," she told him, her voice wary from what he'd said moments ago.