So uhm....

[Ann Hudgins]

OK so the idea had been festering for like...a week now. And when she mentioned the 'research department' to Aiden via their afternoon conversation, he blew her ear drum with "GET EXPERIMENTED ON!!!!" Ann had to switch ears to listen through he got that loud. She was pretty sure a roommate had to have heard that, which was extremely embarrassing.

So anyway, she'd mulled the idea of springing a visit onto said researchers, with a mind to ask them if they couldn't perhaps help her in her quest to be an empath grandmaster (she'd totally settle for proficient). It wasn't like she'd lose anything by going to see them (she really had no dignity), and if worst comes to worst, she'd look silly in front of some people she could easily avoid for eternity. Because face it, Ann was going to be here forever. Forever. Like longer than Dr. Neville and Mrs. Barnes combined, multiplied, and times infinity.

So finally, she stood at the top of the steps to the basement. Before this week, she didn't even know about this stair case, or the room below. She tugged at her braid (ever since she bought a thing of hair bows, that's all she's been doing is braiding her hair and putting it up in a ponytail) before she started her descent. She really hoped this mission was going to be a success, or she'd seriously consider just...curling up into a ball again.

At the bottom of the steps she looked at the door with a haunting expression. The feelings of anxiety and nervousness hung around her like a bad fog, but she mustered the courage from somewhere and knocked on the door. She gnawed on her lip something fierce as the moments sorta ticked by. Gosh, she just had the thought the researchers would be really scary looking men with scraggly beards and mustaches--Ann just has something against facial hair, I guess--and weird goggles and lab coats and rubber gloves. Now that her imagination has successfully scared herself, she was starting to shake with suppressed....everything.

[Dimitri Spade]

If you decide not to wear your contacts one day, then make sure you never put your glasses down.

Especially in the office of Dr. Dimitri Spade. Though by now, no matter how many times that he had learned this lesson, Dimitri always seemed to lose his glasses at least once when he wore them into the office.

Okay, he always seemed to lose his glasses when he wore them anywhere. And today was not an exception. He was shuffling through the landfill that was his desk as he tried with his distorted eyesight. It was not an easy task.

Plus, he had been there way too early, as he had woken up early, too early, and hadn't gotten enough sleep because nightmares and dreams are always interrupted by your mind going on fire. He brought his fingers to his mouth, chewing on them, trying to remember where he set his glasses down.

A knock at the door startled him, making a few papers go airborne around the office. He sighed halfheartedly, not letting the sound interrupt his search.

"Yes, yes. Come in. You can help me find my glasses." Dimitri assumed it was Conrad or a nurse that he worked with. "After we find them we can figure out what you need."

ooc:sorry, it's short but I was running out of muse.

[Ann Hudgins]

She was permitted entrance to the domain and with a shaky hand she opened the door. She slid her hands into her pockets as she stepped inside the door and stopped it from shutting loudly behind her with her foot. "Uhm...ok." She started to look around, as he had said first. She spotted them sitting on a particularly precarious stack of papers and she picked them up.

"Here they are," She held them out to him, her teeth clamped down on her lip for a moment. "I'm uhm...Ann. I've...I've got a problem with my powers, yasee," She began with a somewhat firm voice, she needed to convey to him what she was doing down there. Her eyes dropped to the floor occasionally, though, because this talking thing was harder than it should have been. "And I was just wondering if...I could get help...with it. Down here. Or something. I dunno, it sounds really stupid now that I said anything about it. I'm stupid. I'm sorry to bother you." Ann quite completely lost her nerve. She retreated a few steps and bumped into something; the door. She made a face as the door knob pressed into her lower back. It was like a nudge in the right direction again, and her lost nerve returned, somewhat.

"It's just that I'm an empath, and it's--that is to say I just--me and my trainers can't--" She certainly wasn't doing a good job at explaining. She shut her eyes, and pretended she was talking to no one. "I've been training extremely hard and doing everything I can to control my powers, but even after all that effort I still can't touch anybody's skin, at all. And my hope in coming down here today was to...fix that. In...some way. If, if nothing can be done then, then I'll go." Ok. She was alright with that, that was good. She opened her eyes and lifted them to look at them. He was probably going to laugh at her, but she was at least a little proud that she had been able to get out what she wanted.

[Dimitri Spade]

Dimitri took his spectacles from the young girl, and looked her over. She was young, and she looked very stressed, making her look a little older than she probably was. He studied her eyes, which looked a little red and had slight dark marks under them. Dimitri knew he didn't look any better, but a girl a her age shouldn't have insomnia like the signs on her showed.

"I see. This happens every now and again, you know. Some kids just have problems with controlling their powers, and trainers can't really help. I have to tell you that being an empath is never going to be easy, but I can help you learn to use it well and when you want to use it. There will still probably be sometimes that you can't help feeling things, like if you go to a funeral you will probably feel all of that sadness, so all I can tell you is that you may need to stay away from events like that." He stopped, pushing an old keyboard and books written about evolution and some cerebral angiographs of human brains and some of meta-humans'. They had a few notes on them, made with a silver gel pen.

"Please, sit." He waded through his office's bizarre mess, getting to the other side of the desk and sitting at the comfy arm-chair he had instead of a real office chair. He leaned back, and grabbed a piece of peppermint from the little bowl on his desk and into his mouth. "Now, I may be completely wrong, as you know, all powers are different with different people. Kinda like snowflakes. Or some other simile that isn't overused." He waved his hand nonchalantly, "I can run some test, but nothing too severe. I don't want to do anything that would hurt you, and if you're as susceptible as you say you are, then it could seriously do some damage."

[Ann Hudgins]

Ann always thought she looked younger than she was, and she had a theory about that. Experience ages people; Ann didn't have the experience of most fifteen year olds, ergo she did not look like an eighteen year old, which she was. She had roughly four years of living to catch up on before she looked the age she actually was.

Ann bit back a sigh and an 'I know,' in reply to his words. She was meeting more and more kids that did have problems with their powers, which kinda helped her accept her own problems, but hers still sucked more (in her opinion) than others. At least they can hold hands or hug someone else. "Yeah. I've been working really hard, but I need help with it." Ann couldn't go to a funeral, even on her best days. The shields Ms. Vasiliev helped her with worked in a room with a few people with small bits of random emotions, but at one event with a bunch of people, all the roughly the same feelings would cover her like sand on a beach. She'd have no chance.

She then looked over the state of his desk to distract herself. It was cluttered ten times over. She couldn't imagine how he remembered where everything was, but she kept quite about it. Some people liked living in mess. Ann herself preferred everything to be in its place--if that place happened to be stacked with a bunch of other things then so be it. When he offered her a seat, she sank into it readily and pulled her feet up around her; she could hug herself. "Like emotions," Ann quipped about his comment of similes. "People are like emotions. None are ever the same." Some get close, but they always have more of one thing or less of another.

"I'm not worried about that. If I was, I wouldn't have come down here. I...need results." Ann pulled at her braid for a moment. Ann wasn't worried about damage, she considered herself already ruined. The only thing she can do from here is fix herself and.....he was going to help her. "'M sorry. I didn't catch your name," she mumbled nearly to her lap, but she couldn't remember him introducing himself before, she hoped she hadn't missed it.

[Dimitri Spade]

Dimitri frowned at her, adjusting his glasses, even though he really didn't need to. It was mostly to cover up his anxiety. She needed results, but if anything went wrong, she could lose her entire personality. Dimitri had some connections overseas that this very thing had happened. She didn't know this, though. She may be suffering, and he understood that, but he couldn't just give her the test-treatment.

"Results don't come in one day, Ann," Dimitri said gently but firmly. "I can run some tests to see how your body reacts, to see if I can come up with something that can suppress some of your power's problems, but making a test and getting unbiased subjects is going to take a couple weeks."

He flipped through his book of tests and appointments, the only thing that had a definite place in his office, and was sorta organized. He found a place that he could arrange a testing day for her, but it was two months from then. He jotted it down.

"Okay, in two months I'll be able to run a full-scale test," Dimitri's blue eyes looked at her, she was having a lot of trouble, and he wanted to hug her and tell her that is gets better. He knew of the same pain she was feeling. How she couldn't sleep and how being around people drove her insane. Sure, it wasn't the same reasons, but Dimitri couldn't help it.

"But until then, I can run a few tests on you. If you come in more, I can get a more definite view on your powers and your abilities. I can probably help a little. I'm not power-trainer, you see, but since none of the trainers have been able to help you, I think this is more of an ability that is too strong for someone to learn to control. It's like learning to ride a horse on a green, untrained stallion." He got up, and pulled a book from the bookcase.

"This is a book that studies the various cases of different empaths like you. It includes some interesting passages you may want to look at, some of which are bits from a journal they found when an empath died a few years back." He decided not to mention that the young man had killed himself. "It describes their different techniques on trying to control their abilities, like meditation and pain therapy. I really like all the information it has, please, borrow it."

The book wasn't old, but it wasn't new, either. It was one of the best one about empaths, since empathy was one of the most complicated and constantly unique gifts. It was a very interesting power, and Dimitri liked finding new things about them, so a new case was always a treat, but there was something about this girl that he felt that he could so easily break, and he didn't want it to come to that.

"I'm Dr. Dimitri Spade. You can call me Dimitri, or anything you come up with as long as its appropriate."

[Ann Hudgins]

His anxiety wafted over her like humidity, she didn't like that coming from him, but maybe it wasn't the sort of anxiety where he had the news to tell her he couldn't actually help her. He had already mentioned tests, so she tried not to get herself sad because of it. Honestly, except for just short of becoming a vegetable, Ann would consider anything an improvement. Not having a personality would be bad, but really, it would less complicate things. Ann sorta scoff/laughed when he told her results wouldn't come in one day. She knew that. She hadn't gotten significant results the first day of her training--it's been a slow and kinda rewarding process. However, if she couldn't get over the physical hump in her powers, she'd never be able to leave Hammel. It was just too scary of an idea. All her fears of being away from this place stemmed from not being able to handle skin contact.

She could live with having to wait for the tests, as long as she had the definite promise that there would be some in the future. "Okay, two months; great. Thanks." Ann really was happy with this information, sure, she was hoping to get some results faster than a few weeks, but this was good. She could hope for this.

She felt understanding and sympathy coming towards him, and while that made her slightly uncomfortable (because it wasn't her business of what he was feeling) but she appreciated that he wouldn't just brush her aside and forget about her. He seemed like he was actively going to help her, and she really appreciated it. His metaphor of trying to control her power was rather spot-on and Ann nodded in agreement to it. "Sure, I can come by. Like a few afternoons after school? Is there a certain time I shouldn't come, or....what?" Ann absolutely hated to impose on anyone, and it took a lot of nerve for her to agree to do that, but she could understand that to actually get help, she needed to abide by her superiors wishes. He wanted her to come in, so she would. Of course, he'd have to tell her exactly when, because she couldn't just barge in everyday.

She watched as he got up and went to the bookcase, and took that moment to look around get familiar with the area. It wasn't intimidating at all. No scary looking test tubes and beakers, no unaccountable smells or the odd chain rattle. It was just a bit cluttered. She looked at him as he started to tell her about the book he had selected from the shelf. Her eyes lit up in interest as he told her about it. Ann had only met a few empaths before, and neither of them had such crippling side-effects (or just the same general aspects) as her, but they had helped her a little. Dr. Collier, one of her trainers, was the best at getting her to test her limits because of his control over pheromones. If she got too freaked out, then he could easily set her straight again.

"This is great, thank you so much," Ann said sincerely as she took the book from him, being very careful to avoid his hands, and started to flip through it, to get a bit acquainted with the thing. She was sure that she would read this religiously, over and over again. "Nice to meet you Dr. Spade." Ann was raised in a strict environment that called for respect and humbleness. He was older than her, and an adult. He wasn't the same as a teacher, or power trainer, but because of her level of respect and discipline, he still got the last-name with title. Of course unless he expressed her use something different.