Life Mimicking Art (Lucy)

[Vincent Meian]

((Taking a couple liberties with an on-going post, since I know how it'll turn out. If things change a little, I'll edit it up.))


Vincent Meian was not having a good morning.


The previous night, an argument with another trainer had gotten out of hand quite explosively. Security had arrived and pried the two apart, and both of them had looked much worse for the wear afterwards. Nik had almost refused to ease the bruises on his face so that he could work today, but in the end she had done so anyway, leaving green-yellow mottled patches on his chin and cheekbone. His lip was still split, and more than a couple black bruises hid under his clothes, but at least he looked somewhat respectable.


Still, tensions this morning were high in his household, as well as in the company of his peers. He chafed at the silent stress, and cursed himself even more for losing his temper. He shouldn't have let that fool antagonize him so much. It wasn't worth getting fired or arrested over, with the ink on his visa barely dried.


The Asian man sighed heavily, a scowl crossing his face briefly. He was still frustrated a bit, and his light brown eyes scanned the hall warily for any sign of the eccentric instigator as he walked towards the training rooms. One of them had the door busted off its hinges (training accident, he heard), and he almost walked past it without a glance. However...


Something made the tall man stop in his tracks and rethink what he'd perceived. Most training rooms were a solid tone and never very colorful. Also, they usually had mirrors at the back of the room, farthest from the door. He hadn't seen the usual reflection out of the corner of his eye, but an explosion of color. Brow furrowed behind his sunglasses, the trainer turned back and stood before the doorway.


The mirrors at the end of the room had been literally covered in ink. Black lines outlined abstract shapes filled with color, each and every detail a veritable rainbow of expression. He didn't even know what half the pictures were supposed to be of, but they certainly weren't supposed to be there.


"Nan de...?" he muttered to himself, the figure of a young woman catching his eye shortly after. She was scribbling color madly into the negative spaces her lines had made, and she'd covered almost all of the mirrors before he walked in. Checking himself to keep from speaking in his native tongue again, the trainer walked into the room and spoke loudly enough for her to hear.


"What is the meaning of this?" His voice was commanding and raised, though he did not shout, and the slight down-tilt of his mouth showed little more than displeasure rather than outright anger. What she had done was certainly against the rules, but Vincent wasn't going to scream at her for it. Doing so solved very little.


Besides, he would get into more trouble if he picked a fight with a student now.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Artistic inspiration was a funny thing. If you asked Lucy, she would tell you. She'd also say it could be a giant pain in the ass.

She didn't hang around much in the training rooms, because they were irrelevant to her power. She did stuff with ink, paint included, and that was it. Art class was okay, but it was constricting. Lucy went searching for a canvas bigger than she could imagine. And she found mirrors in a training room. She was pretty sure that was going to be a perfect spot. The reflection in mirrors just added something particular to it. She dropped her gym bag and pulled out a few cans of paint, wasting no time in sloshing it over the mirrors with a haul of her arms. Vibrant colours mixed with black and white, she ran her fingers through the surface as it aided her powers in letting the paint soar above where she could reach.

By the end of it, even she had paint all over her. She went so far as to draw war lines on her cheeks.

"Woah!" Lucy called out, turning to see who was there. Some guy who was older. Not a student, maybe a teacher or something? "Chill out, man. It's a training room, right? I'm training." She replied, turning away and smirking to herself.

[Vincent Meian]

The slight downturn returned to an outright scowl. Fire in a student was fine; impudence was unbecoming, and rudeness was uncalled for. Perhaps a healthy dosage of respect was in order for the tactless female.


Now, it wasn't that Vincent had no respect for art; his daughter enjoyed it very much, and he understood the effort that went into creating true masterpieces. However, that it hardly what he saw today. Whatever her power may be, this girl wasn't training; she was making a mess.


"I find that difficult to believe," he retorted sharply, eyes scanning the room. Paint covered everything within two feet of the mirrors, even the girl directly before him. He wasn't even sure what color her clothes had been before she'd dumped a rainbow all over them. "Even if that were so, it seems that your 'training' has become sloppy."


His inflection was direct and without emotion, scolding her without getting angry. He gestured with his right hand at the ruined carpet and the stained walls, the tattoo on his hand and arm clearly visible as he did so. "What is the purpose of this other than simply creating a disaster for someone else to clean?"


Something about the word he'd used clicked oddly in his brain, but he ignored it; she'd made a mess and he told her so. Just because he may have used a different word did not mean that the trainer's point would not come across. It just might be taken a little... more strongly than he would normally like.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

"Yeah well, we can't all be perfect right off the bat." Lucy replied, her Australian accent slipping heavily into her words. Her statement wasn't entirely true, as she had been at Hammel for quite a while now. Still, they were all at the school to learn in the first place. Maybe he would be a little more... Forgiving.

Lucy turned around again, drawing her hands away from the mirrors. "Melanokinesis." She replied shortly.

[Vincent Meian]

Her curtness was starting to grate on his already frayed nerves. Let alone that she showed no respect to her elder, a trainer; someone who was supposed to help her and guide her through the process of learning and controlling her powers. She acted as if she took his presence as an insult rather than-


Vincent stopped that train of thought in its tracks. He'd been no better as a student, and in fact had frequently been worse. He would not let his temper get the better of him, despite the goading of a petulant child. There would be no repeat of last night. So, he took a deep breath and released it slowly. This would go nowhere if he behaved on her level.


When she faced him and said that word, his brow furrowed again. What had she said? He wasn't familiar with the word, though he knew that the word "kinesis" derived into movement. But what was the other part of that? Melano? Wasn't than somewhere in Italy? No - that was Milano... Something nagged at him that reminded him of his wife, but he couldn't grasp what. Better just to ask outright.


"What is that, exactly? I am unfamiliar with the term." He kept his tone even and cool, not wanting to give her any space for insults or offense directly. If she forced them into the conversation, that would be her own doing. Regardless of whatever she was doing, he was still going to make her clean this up before she went off to class. No sense in making someone else do it, after all.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Lucy's teeth sunk into her bottom lip in the silence, trying really hard not to laugh right there. She knew the title didn't fit the power, but that's what they told her it was called so that's what she was going to run with. Besides, the confusion people had was hilarious anyway. She just tried her best not to laugh at him. She was bad at hiding it though.

"Ink stuff. Y'know?" Lucy asked again, indicating to the wall of paint again. "Pigments... Paint, ink, pens, words, drawings... Not. Melons." Lucy grinned with natural confidence at her own joke. "Even tattoos." She added, running her hand over her arm to get some of the paint away from her skin. It cleared quickly, showing the tattoos on her arm.

[Vincent Meian]

An involuntary twitch ran across the trainer's eyebrow, but he forced himself calm despite the fact that she was making fun of him. English was his third language, and he knew Latin and old Greek passingly. It was not something he studied regularly, especially because in the last three months he'd had to pick up more slang and idioms than he thought possible. He was obviously not the first person to misunderstand, but he certainly would not do it again.


Once she began to talk, that nagging feeling from before came back, sated when she used the word "pigment". He recognized it then; melanin, the pigment in the skin. One would think that the spouse of a doctor would know such things casually. Oh well.


At her jibe of her power not concerning melons, his tone became dry, "I understand the term well enough to know that now, miss. There is no need to be... sarcastic." There was another word at the edge of his thoughts and it began with the same letter, but he couldn't think of a better term right away, so he let it go.


The tall man watched as she wiped a good smear of paint away from her skin, revealing the permanent marks beneath the surface. The fact that she could use any kind of pigmentation to her advantage was commendable in a way. Her messy nature, however, could be improved. Quality over quantity, as the saying went (or so Ari had said - he supposed he could agree, given the nature of such a phrase).


"If you can use any form of pigment," he asked, pushing his sunglasses up his nose a little more, "why do you not practice with your own designs rather that outside mediums? That would require greater skill and less force." In a way, he was berating her, and in a way he was giving her another option. Mostly, he was just irritated by the fact that the training room was likely going to be unusable until every bit of paint had been removed. Colorful as it was, it was very distracting and paint was flammable and noxious. A bad combination for most students, let alone pyrokinetics.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Lucy waved her hand in front of her safe, making a snerking sound at his quip. "C'mon, take it as a good thing. Unless you want me to play fake nice till you kick my ass and tell me to clean up." She was being real with him, though she was aware that most people didn't like it.

"I do." Lucy replied. She ran her hand along the entirety of her arm, drawing the paint slowly away before physically wiping it off the rim of a nearby paint can. Cleaning, when required, would be a snap. Slowly the markings on her arm started to move, shifting under the skin to a new location. "Feels like crawling though. That appealing to ya?" She happened to notice tattoos on him too, after all.

[Vincent Meian]

A dark smirk briefly flickered over Vincent's face. "If this is 'fake nice', I would like to have a few words with whomever taught you manners." Honestly, she was lucky that he'd listened to her rather than doing just that when he walked in, especially in the mood he was in. He understood that she was treating him like an equal, though; a boon with teenagers. He gave her the same courtesy.


Watching carefully as she shucked the paint from her arm and wiped it back into the can, Vincent had to admit it was a mildly impressive amount of control. Still very broad-spectrum, but very useful for cleaning up whatever mess she'd made. He only just caught the sudden writhing of lines under her skin (as it was rather subtle at first), and he nodded, more impressed now. With her gifts, his opinion of her was slowly improving. He did not like this upstart by any means, but he could respect the talent.


"I would imagine it to be uncomfortable," he stated, noticing her glance to his arm. Undoubtedly, his tattoo was many years older than hers (likely, it was older than her period), but if she wished to test herself with it he would not object. He'd done much odder things to train students in the past. He held out his right hand to her, letting her see the half of the tattoo that was uncovered more clearly, the scars in his skin seeming to be underneath it (as they had been acquired before the design had been set).

"Are you familiar with altering inks that are not so intimate?" Meaning ink that she herself wasn't wearing or touching in some way, but hey; that's a third-language for you.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

"Then you better buy yourself a plane ticket to the middle of piss-nowhere, Australia." Lucy replied, looking away for a second or so. That was where her family was anyway, and she was pretty open about how angry this ridiculous move made her.

She shrugged at the thought of it being uncomfortable. "Y'get used to it." It took a while, but it was true. Once she realised it would work on tattoos it was pretty intense. When he held out his arm she couldn't help but look at the markings he had. The design was executed perfectly, it made her feel a little jealous. She was able to clean her designs up when they were finished, despite how much it hurt to physically pull ink out of layers upon layers of skin.

"Huh?" She asked curiously, a little confused by his question. "Like my own tattoos, y'mean?"

[Vincent Meian]

The tone in her voice made any further attempt at humor seem ill-advised. The girl was angry when she thought of home for some reason; at the people, the place, or just being taken away? Australia was a long way from Vermont - a good place to run to, but not so easy to return from. Turning his tact around completely, the teacher bowed his head slightly in her direction. "My apologies," he replied gently. "I did not mean to begin speaking on a poor topic."


He nodded, indicating both understanding to her statement and an affirmative to her question. "Must you be touching the pigments in some way to move them?" he clarified. "Or can you shift them from any point where you can see them?"


She had an interesting power - he wanted to learn more about it. This suddenly had become less of a disciplinary action and more of an introductory training questioning. How quickly things could turn about with a few words.

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Lucy raised her hand, waving it slightly when he bowed. The change surprised her, and she was pretty awkward when it came to niceties. "It's okay. Just a fact, y'know?" She replied. Her stock response was to accept it, but it didn't normally come across that way.

She shook her head. "Not all the time. I just have to have contact with the surface. But it's easier to touch it." It would be awesome if she didn't need to connect with the surfaces, but that was just how it went for now.

[Vincent Meian]

Vincent nodded once again, understanding. It was hard for families to be separated. Even though she seemed to accept it, it was something that seemed to bother her. As well it should. But he left it alone and instead gestured to the mirrors. "Try it, then," he invited. "See if you can do so with the paint on the wall. It will be good practice."

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Lucy's eyes went a little wide when he said that she should try it. She had tried it before, and had always assumed it wouldn't work. She looked back to the mirrors, turning on a foot to half face it. She wasn't used to trying new things in front of people, especially with such a high failure probability. She looked to her hands, holding them out in front of herself slightly and almost looking as if she was facing them towards the mirror.

Things were very silent, but she could only see the paint moving on her arms. It was stressful in her mind, and it made her frustration flare up and cloud her judgement.

"Fuck no." Lucy said flatly, dropping her hands again. Failure made her angry. "I don't even wanna."

[Vincent Meian]

Though he could see that she had tried (her tattoos had moved, after all), Vincent also saw that she quickly became angry at not being able to do so. Understanding where the frustration stemmed from, the trainer walked up beside her and took her hand. The appendage was still covered in paint, and that made this exercise much easier.


"Do not give up so easily," he advised. "If you can move the paint on your hands, you can move that paint on the walls. The two are connected. Move closer if you must, but do not touch; abilities grow stronger with practice."