Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200. [Private]

[Emiko Nakajima]

*--outfit

She really hated disciplinary calls, but some things just had to be done.

Emiko had arrived to work that morning with a notice on her desk regarding the audio bug she had picked up off of Zachary LaRousse the other night, tracing the device to a girl named ‘Mia Keystone’. She had a long list of write ups and behavioral referrals, some of which impressed even Emiko. She had gone to the technology department about it and they reported that Mia was very good at what she did and that she was getting too good for them to keep up with her all the time. In fact, they said, she was getting to be a pain in the ass. They needed to take care of her and just pull everything from her room. The problem they had was that she always seemed to know when they left their computers and they needed security clearance before they did anything. Could she possibly go and clean out all the spying equipment from Miss. Keystone’s room?

Emiko agreed to the plea, albeit with quite a bit of eye-rolling. She could sense they were afraid of what Mia could do to them, and that made her, if anything, less afraid of the girl. It took a lot more to frighten her than it took to frighten a room of computer savvy, single men. The woman trekked to the security department and was grabbing a key when she was given another request, this time by a fellow security officer. They needed Mia’s laptop- after the attack on Mr. Campbell and the recent attack on Mr. Dalton, they were tightening security more. A student reportedly had given out security information and they wanted Mia’s laptop. Emiko half-listened to them, she was a little slow on her English and was concerned about Dalton and his safety. Finding and neutralizing the person that hurt him seemed like a better plan, but who was she to argue? She wasn’t department head. She grabbed a electronic detector as she headed out, flipping it on and scanning it over a security camera as headed out. It made a clicking noise. She waved it over a watch and it gave off a warped sound. Well, there apparently was a difference in equipment. Huh, nifty.

She waited until just after classes started before going to the dormitory, picking out the co-ed room with little trouble. She unlocked the outside door and wandered in, catching movement from the corner of her eye as she walked in. “Hello?” Emiko called, but no one answered. She frowned, shrugged it off, and went to work. She scanned the room and found fifteen separate devices, which, in itself, was amazing. She looked at one carefully crafted piece of work and frowned. It was barely bigger than her thumbnail, yet it was an audio bug? Where was she getting the money for this sort of refinery? The Japanese women scrunched her nose and placed the bug in her bag, moving on to the girl’s room after making sure she had been thorough in her investigation.

Sliding the key into the lock, Emiko turned the knob and pushed on the door, only to find it wouldn’t budge. She frowned and tried the key again, making sure to listen for the mechanism to unlock. It did. She pushed again. It still wouldn’t budge. The security member stepped back, sighed, and braced herself. “It’s in the rulebook, dorm rooms are subject to search and no personal locks are permitted. No EXCEPTIONS.” On the last word, she turned and kicked the door, shattering part of it in a flurry of wood chips and metal. She blinked, dropped her foot, brushed off her legs, commended herself for a nicely done kick (in heels, no less) and stepped into the room. She took a look at the floor- a deadbolt, still slid into place, and was lying in a pile of wood flakes, totally intact. She’d hand it to the girl- she knew her locks. What she didn’t know was that wooden doors were not high quality. She tossed the lock out of the room and looked around, marveling at the equipment. There were computers with multiple screens, towers, wires, and she already saw a few cameras. How did the girl sleep at night?

Emiko stared her work, pulling down the obvious cameras. She systematically began to move everything from the room, cataloging what she could in her head. She leaned the mattress against the wall carefully and was starting to look around under the bed frame with the detector. “This is going to take ages.” Emiko muttered in Japanese, already picking up a bunch of clicking. Just by turning the thing on.

[Mia Keystone]

Mia had started in History class when the silent alarm she had rigged in her room set off the equivalent of a small grenade in her pocket. To an observer there was nothing to see, but Mia started blinking quickly as she stopped watching her teacher and started seeing the feed from the cam in her room.

Oh no. No no no no no

The one person Mia had marked down as very dangerous, the one person who just might use her powers to harm a student was in her room. Mia closed her eyes, ignoring the class and flicking through the cameras that should show her the dorm lounge. Only two remained, high angled cams she’d managed to sneak in before the place was repainted. Fuck! Not bothering to check the audio, the quietly panicking girl used Kaylee to stretch out and see the state of her computers. Where there should have been power and data, there was none.

She was being most definitely shut down. And quickly too.

The technopath snapped Kaylee shut and stuffed the laptop in her bag, then got up and ignored the teacher’s complaints other then to mutter a quick ”Feeling sick.” Mia did not often indulge in physical activity outside of the occasional stretch and spar but she ran as fast as she could back to her dorm room, even when her lungs burned and her back hurt has Kaylee swung against it. The dorm was empty and she looked in horror and not a little bit of surprise at her splintered door. She’d kicked her door down. Fuck, Mia had known her panel lock was pushing it a bit but this crazy bitch had actually kicked her door down. With her feet.

Her brain was starting to itch; the energy Mia felt in her room was as familiar to her as her own hands and as more and more parts stopped humming in her mind, she started getting furious. Stopping short at the now empty door arch, the short girl glared at the japanese woman, looking around as her eyes widened. All her things had been moved, turned off. Her room was dark, when the power there should have made her eyelids twitch.

For a moment, Mia couldn’t move from the door frame, looking as her monitors and cameras and recorders and even her game consoles had been stacked up like some sort of trash pile; at least a third of them weren’t even active, just pieces she kept around for fun and to mess with. Even her fucking bed had been moved!

”What the fuck are you doing?” she cried out, running to her desk and standing in front of it, arms outstretched like a mother in front of a child. ”Get out!” Mia wasn’t thinking very dangerous, she was not thinking security team and she was not thinking this woman kicked a door down in stiletto boots. All Mia could think right then was that everything she had been working on, everything she thought of as important was being taken apart and taken away and she was not ok with that.

[Emiko Nakajima]

Emiko heard a door open in the distance, but paid no attention to it- she already knew who it was. As soon as she had come into the bedroom she had felt fear- the technopathic child was emitting it from the very technology surrounding her. It was an odd sort of diluted distress, and Emiko could even feel the electronic pieces of it intermingling; it was very similar to the feeling of smelling static. As a child she found that if she leaned close to her TV screen after turning it on, the static electricity coating the screen gave off a smell- try it sometime. It's very real. She could never liken it to another experience, but this was eerily similar. She looked around the room, with the full knowledge that she was being watched, and pinpointed one of the sources of the fear. If anything, the girl watching her was making things easier. She found the camera and took it down, putting it in her bag with the rest of them. Some of the other machines weren't even off.

She had toted out the equipment not because she was taking it, but because she was searching for the laptop and the surveillance equipment. She hadn't found the machine in her initial scan, so she figured the girl had hidden it somewhere. So be it. Emiko would take out every piece of furniture she had if that was what it took to find it. She had turned off any programs the systems were running and had shut the towers down correctly instead of just unplugging them, for she was at least attempting to be a little considerate. The ones that showed her password screens she simply turned off and carted out. They were placed as carefully as possible next to the door and Emiko made sure nothing was harming the systems, like a random puddle of water or a stray heating duct.

When Emiko looked up, she saw the girl standing in the doorway and refrained from smiling, or doing anything out of turn. She found that smiling at people while tearing their beloved inner sanctums apart was not a gesture of good faith, but rather one of mockery. With that in mind, she kept her face stern. Even when the girl cursed at her and threw herself in front of her desk, Emiko made no move other than running the machine over her bedframe. Any cameras underneath the bed were gone, alive or dead. "I have been ordered by security and by Hammel's technology team to confiscate any and all spying or surveillance equipment you own." She ran the electronic detector over the girl's dresser. Clicking started coming from the second drawer down. Disregarding and semblance of privacy the girl had, Emiko opened the drawer and began sifting through it. "Hammel's code of conduct clearly states all rooms are subject to search and seizure should the student fail to comply with security codes, after given ample warning that codes have not been followed." She found the camera, put it in her bag, and moved on to the remaining drawers. "As far as I'm aware, you have been warned time and time again since your arrival here. You have weekly sessions with Doctor Neville, and yet you have been breaking code." She finally looked up at the girl as she pocketed the last of the bugs in the dresser. "The final straw was when I pulled that audio bug off of Zachary LaRousse at the Valentine's dance, and the rumor blog updated about what had gone on while he was bugged. While we cannot trace the blog to you, the bug is most definitely yours."

Normally Emiko would have left it at that, but kicking down the girl's door had tried her patience and she was really not a fan of being cursed at and being told what to do by someone barely half her age. So, Emiko figured she was entitled to scare the girl and assert her authority a bit more. "As it is, you have already broken quite a few rules. But now, you have obstructed a search, both by your extra lock and your own interference, you have shown insubordination toward a member of the staff, you have used foul language, which, by the way, is not a way to win me over and let you get off free, so I would suggest being more polite in the future unless you would like me to put in an order for all your technology to be seized.."

Oh. Was that the sound of victory? Yes, yes it was.

Emiko smiled, her smirk holding more than a mere trace of mockery, and held out her hand. "Your laptop, please. I will be confiscating that as well."

[Mia Keystone]

”You’re fucking kidding me,” Mia breathed, then shook her head to clear it of the shock and panic that was clouding her and scowled as Emiko started sorting through her clothes. She was using a detector; an electronic one. Mia concentrated on the little device and, not being so stupid as to actually look at it, the technopath dulled the signal, pulling it’s radius in so it would stop picking up any more signals. Raking her fingers through her hair, Mia gritted her teeth as she tried to figure a way out of this even as the security bitch woman sorted through her underwear.

Using her phone as a source Mia started pulling up everything she could find on civil rights, Hammel rules, Hammel constitutions, the contracts she had signed and her parents had signed. Then she heard a name and her head snapped up. ”Wait, you mean you’re taking my stuff,” Mia said slowly, through gritted teeth, ”Because of a prank? Because of a bit of tech? How the fuck can you prove it’s mine?” Her surprise was giving way to anger as her hands clenched and unclenched, bitten down nails pressed into her palms. ”You have sale records then? Fingerprints? Shipping orders? Fuck. That.” Mia covered her tracks; paper trails were an amateur mistake. But every single peice of info Mia was pulling and reading was saying the same thing; they could confiscate. They could. But she would get it back, maybe.

Was this Sean’s idea? She was never going to talk to that bastard again, she was going to stay far away from that mind hacker and his hypocrisy.

”You wouldn’t let me off even if I kissed your feet and called you ma’am,” the short girl said flatly, staring up at the Japanese woman. She was tempted to ask if she planned on sending her insane too, or make her kill herself, but bringing up darker parts of Emiko's past that she shouldn't know might not have been a good idea.

Then Emiko honed her scary bitchy eyes on the bag still swinging by Mia’s hip. Her face hardened and Mia glared daggers, swords and throwing stars. She wanted to punch that smile off her face so bad, but that would be stupid. ”In. Your. Sick. Dreams.” she said carefully, spitting each word out and clipping them off even as she swung her bag behind her and braced her arms on either side of her desk. ”Kaylee’s not going anywhere. Take this stuff, then leave me alone.”

[Emiko Nakajima]

Emiko looked up and cocked an eyebrow at the girl. “Well, when you put it that way... Yes. That about sums it up.” She went back to her work, frowning when the clicking seemed to stop. Reminding herself there was a technopath in the room that was not happy with her, she figured the girl was causing it to short out. So, she began to open all the drawers to go through them, bugged or not. She had no problem with sifting through underwear and socks. It just made things a little more tedious. She didn’t mind tedious- it was all of the adventurous parts of her job that annoyed her.

“No, I do not have any records. Fingerprints put on it were smudged, but some of them had a partial match to another technopath. Reeve?” She looked to the girl for confirmation on the name, but didn’t really expect a reply. “However, the bug was compared to others you have set, and, well, they’re the same. And there just are not many students that go around bugging the school.” Emiko felt underneath one of the drawers and found a bump, which she pulled to reveal an audio device. “In fact, it looked a lot like this. Identical, even.” She put it into her messenger bag before standing, feeling her back crack as she did. She stretched her arms a bit before looking to the girl in front of her again, now giving her the attention she wanted.

“You’re probably right. I’ve counted four ‘fuck’s in the few minutes you’ve been here, all directed at me, and it isn’t putting me in the best of moods.” Emiko crossed her arms and leaned onto one hip. “But, if you start behaving, I won’t come back to take the rest of your things and you might get your laptop back faster than, say, the two months we planned on keeping it.” A bluff? Yes. It probably would be back in a couple weeks. But Mia didn’t have to know that. “After all, I’m sure your information is coded, or whatever it is called.” She held out a hand, ignoring the girl’s statement and merely flicked her fingers toward her palm.

“We need to access the files you have on the teachers inside your laptop so we can see if you have any important information on the staff that might be used against Hammel. One of the staff was injured and it was found that the perpetrator had secured files on the teacher. We know you have files.” It hadn’t dawned on Emiko that the files were likely Mia’s- she hadn’t read the report all the way through yet.

“Now, Miss Keystone, we can do this the easy way, and you’re inconvenienced for a few weeks. Or...” Emiko’s patience was growing low and she was getting tired of the child’s games. As she spoke, the color began to drain out of her face, leaving her pale white, like a ghost. Her hair grew ragged and wiry, crinkling and bending in different directions. Her pupils grew in size until they covered the entire eye, making them totally black. Her gum lines receded and she felt her teeth extend. Her facial features grew sharp. She felt herself grow a few inches taller and her shadow began to twist behind her. The whole room felt like it was getting dark. If Mia had blinked, she would’ve missed the entire transformation- Emiko looked much scarier now. “We can do this the hard way, meaning I force the laptop off you, take every technological piece of equipment on you, and leave you blacked out for a good seven months.” She rasped, her voice seeming to come from the room itself, not her mouth.

And, in a mere second, Emiko was back to normal- smooth hair, freckles and all. “Now. The laptop.”

[Mia Keystone]

Mia was known to lie to get herself out of trouble. She did it a lot. But there was one thing Mia would never let happen, and that was letting someone she liked taking blame for her own crazy capers. Reeve stumbling forward into Zac flashed across her mind and she inwardly groaned in annoyance. ”They’re mine,” she snapped quickly. ”Reeve wanted to look at them but he didn’t have anything to do with how it got on LaRousse.” Besides, if they searched REeve’s room they might find her backup. And then? Then Mia would be dead. Another backup bug gone; and some people may be wondering why Mia would bug her own room. Those people need only to remember the constant visits Mia had from security to understand.

Mia had a way of pushing buttons, and sometimes, people let things slip.

As the room started to shut down, it struck Mia how quiet it was without the hum of electricity she was used to. It was unnerving; her skin felt dead without the tingle tech let off. As determined as she was not to show Emiko just how terrified the technopath was, had her back not been to her desk she would have moved away as the Japanese serucirut officer moved closer. Mia was chewing on her lip rings as Emiko kept talking. If she played nice, it wouldn’t be so bad. That was the gist. But they would still take Kaylee. That couldn’t happen.

Then, with just a few words, Emiko froze Mia to the spot. Staff member injured? Files? They found those? How? I took them... copies? This was a different sort of fear; Mia’s eyes started darting around as she started searching medical entries from the local hospital for the mention of Dalton’s name. Nothing. Was she lying? Did they know? No. If Hammel knew she’d sold intel on a teacher, a teacher who was attacked, they wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Kaylee would be gone and she’d be in Sean’s office.

”Which teacher?” Mia asked absently; this new problem was almost enough to drown out her frustration at Emiko’s home invasion. ”Are they alright?” Was Mia feeling.... guilty? Heck yes she was. And sure, she was also wondering how in hell Dalton had managed to get himself hurt by a woman who, if the magazines were true, was about as thin as a piece of toast, but mostly it was guilt. Mia hated guilt. Really hated it. So, without even a thought, her mind started getting rid of it. Because seriosuly, if Dalton could get bashed up by a socialite, he didn’t need Mia to get him into trouble.

The most important thing? Not letting Emiko in on that. Which meant not giving her Kaylee. No matter what. Hearing Emiko flippantly call it an inconvenience made up Mia’s stubborn mind. An inconvenience? It was like someone had stuffed cotton wool in her ears with the room now so quiet.

And then things got trippy. Mia had played a lot of scary video games from a young age, and had started collecting gory horror films from the age of 13. So when Emiko started pulling some sort of magic mojo transformation, the girl’s eyes widened and her stomach dropped a little, but her reaction was that of the most desensitized of youths and she didn’t scream or shake or start urinating uncontrollably. Emiko had hit wide if she thought that would scare her enough into giving up Kaylee. And if her hands shook a little, you couldn’t even tell because she was clutching her bag.
”No.” she said stubbornly, her eyes no longer flitting around and looking directly at Emiko. She was scary, sure, but what would happen if they found out what she had on her computer would make this look like the Nightmare before Christmas. ”You can’t have Kaylee. You’ve got everything else; start searching there.”

[Emiko Nakajima]

“I see. Well, we may still pull Mr. Rzeznik in for questioning later. Protocol, as usual.” She knew she probably butchered his last name, but she chalked it up to annoying spellings, not her minor bits of broken English. It was not a common last name, therefore it was all but impossible to find a pronunciation key for it. Nakajima was fairly standard surname in Japan, and she found it, if anything, much better than some of the alternatives from over the years. “I don’t suppose you let young Reeve have any audio devices, did you? We might have to search his room then.” She supposed they would have to do so anyway- even if he was implicated in the slightest way in anything Mia was up to, it would lead to trouble down the line if left unchecked. Emiko assumed she’d have to confiscate his equipment as well, thanks to the security breach.

Mia’s attempt to suppress her fear made Emiko smile a little more- it was so cute when students tried to act like they weren’t afraid when it was so obvious that they were. Her body language would have been a big clue if the fear rolling off her in waves didn’t give it away already. Emiko felt so refreshed. It was rather like having a good meal. Her inner palette rather liked the feel of this fear; it was obvious that it was not let out often and it was rather like a form of ambrosia. She did not, however, let the fear that swam around her cloud her judgment or dampen her observational skills. Rather, she channeled it so it would sharpen them, just in time to feel a new wave of concern come off Mia when she mentioned the files.

“Jacob Dalton, why do you-” There was a pause as he question went unfinished and she gave off a blank stare at the girl as she began reading the fear coming off her. She had been the one who given out the files. She had been the one to hurt Dalton. She was the one who had done this, and one of her first fears was being found out. She came first, and Dalton came second- that thought alone made Emiko rage. But on the outside, she looked frozen- if she had been one of Mia’s computers there would have been a bright blue screen with a lot of writing and coding popping up somewhere in her eyes. She was trying to figure out what to do with the situation.

Good job, Mia. You broke the ninja security staff.

When she finally came to the realization that the girl had the laptop that had the files, and that she was not giving them up, Emiko snapped. In a mere second, she transformed again, into one of her best forms- in an instant, she grew tall enough to touch the ceiling, much like Alice after eating her mushroom. She bent as her body contorted to fit, but her torso began to shift and screech, forming something resembling an iron cage. Black, shadowy hands shot out from the tips of her hair to grab at Mia and pull her inside, while more pulled her bag from around her body, opening it to make a grab at the laptop. She had no choice- she was being sucked into Emiko’s body, struggling or no, and her laptop was not accompanying her. Instead, the spindly black shadowy talons deposited it into her hand, the size making it look more like a computer chip then an actual computer.

“I warned you, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Emiko looked down to her rib-cage and glared at the girl, opening the cage door once all was said and done. The transformation was draining her, but now that she had Mia’s laptop she would soon be replenished again. “Now tell me, why would you do such an unforgivable thing?”Her hair formed a sleek curtain between her and her victim, so she couldn’t see Mia’s face very well.

[Mia Keystone]

”What happened to him? Mia asked quickly, urgently, tilting forward. She needed to know he was at least not... well, dead. Because that meant possible accessory to murder and that would mean a lot of jail time. Unless Hammel could pull strings there too... The other stuff she could not worry about now, there would be time for that later, and by later Mia meant to lock the whole situation and every nasty feeling and consequence up in a box and never open it again. And she would NOT think to let it lying around for some nosy wife to look inside.

She didn’t get a response, not even a mind your own business and Mia shook herself out of her head and bothered to look back to Emiko. This... does not look good. Quickly, Kaylee still in her arms, Mia started tracing through the computer and erasing everything with Dalton in the contents.

Then the acid trip went bad.

”Jesus fucking christ,” Mia squealed (yes, squealed), her hands scrabbling to keep a hold of her bag as she was, shit, was the woman eating her? Eyes huge in her round face
Mia shrank down into a ball so there would be less area for the digestive juices to melt her. Yet it seemed unusual for someone to talk to the thing they were trying to eat so when Emiko started speaking, Mia unfurled slightly. Then some sort of... rib door opened and the girl tumbled out and scrambled away on hands and knees, not bothering to stand up until she was near her desk

This woman was insane. There was no other explanation. After pulling herself to her feet, Mia spun around and, since she was still alive, her fear was quickly replaced by the sort of anger that could only follow terror. ”You’re mental!” she muttered, then repeated, louder. ”you’re fucking nuts, you crazy bitch! You could have killed me!” Answering the japanese monster’s question had been pushed to the back of Mia’s mind by the overwhelming urge to protect and save Kaylee. It wasn’t just a laptop, she was Mia’s oldest companion and she had more personality in her circuits and microchips then most pets had in their entire being. ”Give her back! I didn’t mean to do anything bad, give her back!”

And no, her voice had not cracked. It was an illusion, and if you thought otherwise, Mia would be quite happy to tell you to go fuck yourself.

[Emiko Nakajima]

As the girl fell out on the floor Emiko was returning to normal- her rib cage shut and she began to shrink, taking back her natural form as she began to smooth out her dress. But the girl was screaming at her, loud enough to wake the dead, and Emiko stopped and listened, even though she knew what she was saying because she had heard it hundreds for times before, from students in Japan, criminals she had caught, and those same words were uttered to her (in Japanese, of course) by the very men who had murdered her father. They claimed she had turned on her own kind, and in some views, she had. She had turned upon people of her own race, nationality, stature, and even species, if meta-humans could be considered separate from normal humans.

But, in the Japanese woman’s mind, she had turned on none of ‘her kind’, because her kind did not exist.

She narrowed her eyes at the girl and gritted her teeth. She had put a teacher’s life in danger, denied it, insulted her, and she thought crying and shouting would get her possessions back? She did not understand Mia’s connection with the item. In her eyes, it was only a machine, not a friend. This girl was taking this much too far, and it was grinding on her last nerve. The security staff member finally lost her temper, and if Mia thought what had happened before was bad, then the technopath had no idea what she had gotten herself into now.

“Stop crying.” Emiko barked in her most assertive tone, glaring at the child as she held the laptop tightly in both hands. “Ever since I came here you have not treated me with the respect I deserve. You have endangered the life of a staff member and you expect me to grant you amnesty of some sort because this machine is considered your ‘friend’? You expect me to be lenient on you when you throw a temper tantrum, when it is quite obvious you have learned nothing? You are selfish.” She all but spat the last word at her, disgusted with her behavior. Spoiled. Mia was spoiled. Emiko looked down at the laptop and opened it, glancing at the worn keys, the fingerprinted screen. She looked to the girl and then to the machine before taking a step back.

“If you wish to have it back, then here.” Without so much as a second thought or a pause to think things through, Emiko bent her knee and slammed the back of the unit against her kneecap, bending the screen backward. There was a loud crack as the monitor broke off the processing unit, and a mixture of wires and plastic pieces kept it attached. She twisted and pulled, snapping the wires off. Emiko tossed the cracked and plasma leaking screen at the girl’s feet. “You may have that piece. We have no use for it in security.” with that, Emiko picked up her bag, filled with cameras, and walked out of the room, heels clicking as she stepped across the floor. She paused at the door before turning to glance at the girl, her expression of disinterest at her plight obvious.

“Perhaps this will be a lesson to you to respect your elders in the future.” And, with that being said, Emiko left, closing the dormitory door behind her on the way out.

In a rare moment of consideration for the student, Emiko did not give a self-satisfied smirk and chuckle until she was halfway down the hall.

[Mia Keystone]

Mia did not cry. She had managed to convince Jonah for two whole years that she’d had her tear ducts removed when she was 13 until he saw her tear up after biting into a chilli he’d dared she wouldn’t eat. She’d won the dare, but the myth of her missing tear ducts was shattered. Still, Mia hated crying, but she hated it even more when people thought she was crying when she clearly was not.

”I am not crying!” she protested, any hint of a lump in her throat vanishing in indignation. ”Give Kaylee back,” the stubborn technopath swallowed hard on her pride. ”I’m sorry, ok?” It was like gargling gravel, and the words tasted bitter but Kaylee was right there in the woman’s hands and while she could see her there was still a chance she might get her back. ”I didn’t mean to endanger anyone or be disrespectful or anything, I wont do it again, just give me back my computer!” Emiko’s own works meant little, only proving them further. Still, this was so far the most ‘respect’ she’d shown to a teacher in her life.

But it wasn’t enough.

It seemed to happen in some disgustingly cliche slow motion; the snap was sickening, like a bone being broken. Mia winced and yelled, her hands over her ears as Kaylee’s ever present hum flickered in her head. ”No, no, Kaylee...” Mia whispered as she bent to pick up the battered half of her friend. She was not crying, she was just leaking, like Kaylee was. Ignoring Emiko completely, the technopath sent out wires of though inside the screen to see if anything was salvageable. Looking up, her expression was bleak.

”Leave me alone,” she snapped, her voice rough. ”Just....” Mia looked back down at the cracked and broken computer screen in her hands and didn’t bother finishing. As soon as Emiko had left though, she let it drop. There was nothing there, not a single spark of life. Even if she did get Kaylee’s other half back, she’d have to rebuild a new computer. Somehow, after what had just happened, Mia doubted she’d get the hard drive back, even if they didn’t find anything on it.

Deflated and depowered, Mia sunk onto the floor and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. Her room was dead. It felt dead. It made her feel sick and dizzy and blind all at the same time to have a room devoid of anything more then the tiny spark of the lightbulb.

”Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” the tiny girl muttered to herself, rocking slightly on the floor as she hugged her knees to her chest. They’d killed Kaylee. They’d actually destroyed her laptop. God, she must have really fucked up with the whole Dalton thing...

And no, Mia was not crying! Nothing could make Mia cry....

[Jonah King]

Red-eyed from an hour of swimming in the local pool, Jonah could still taste the chlorine in the back of his throat – even though he had showered for long enough to remove the smell from his skin, he never lost that taste until at least the day after a swim.

Swimming in the morning always made Jonah feel ready to take on anything. Any exercise was something he very much enjoyed, but there was something about a swim which made him smile for the rest of the day. If he could have whistled as he walked through the corridors to Mia’s dorm room, he could have done. As it was, he settled on a happy grin, which he bestowed freely upon everyone he passed: teachers and students alike. He had an infectious smile, and received many in return.

But the closer he got to Mia’s end of the building, the more he started to pick up on something….odd.

He’d noticed a few times that when someone close by was experiencing a particularly strong emotion – from anger to sadness to happiness – he could pick up on it, as their thoughts were so much louder than they normally would have been. What he could hear at the moment was something like that, but it was stronger than he had ever felt it before. He could hear a jumble of thoughts, angry, frightened and upset, from a room nearby. It was, he imagined, like hearing someone crying and following the sound. But the interesting thing about this particular train of thought was that it sounded like someone he knew very well indeed: Mia.

He picked up speed, walking as fast as he could without running (the amount of times he had been told not to run in the corridors was reaching three figures), and reached Mia’s room in under a minute. The door had been kicked in. Jonah felt something cold twist in his stomach. This was very wrong. ‘Mia?' he called, hoping that he had raised his voice the right amount. He moved slowly to the door, tensed for a fight, and peered through.

Mia was sitting on the floor, curled up into as small a ball as she could.

Her room looked like a bomb site.

Jonah was at her side in a moment, kneeling on the floor in front of her without paying any attention to the small, sharp fragments of plastic and glass under his knees. ‘Mia,’ he murmured her name, trying to get her attention as he touched her lightly on the shoulder. The physical contact made her anger and desperation come into sharp focus, like turning a wheel on a microscope. Inside, she was keening her loss. He withdrew his hand as quickly as he could. ‘What happened?’ he asked, biting his lip in worry.

Her cheeks were wet.

[Mia Keystone]

Of all the people....

Starting, Mia looked up and glared as Jonah as she jerked her shoulder away. This was not alright. How dare he see her like this. The technopath had firewalls and shields that were there for her safety, for her defense and they’d been knocked out temporarily. Of all the people to catch her with her guard down.

She buried her face in her hands, hiding her face as she shifted away. ”She ripped up Kaylee,” she muttered, her hands clenching even as her lower lip trembled. ”That crazy bitch,” Looking up, Mia took in Jonah’s worry and hated him for it. He had to top the list of people Mia did not want to see her like this, maybe just under Sean Neville. And maybe that made no sense, him being her best friend, but Mia had stopped trying to be logical the minute she’d heard the snap of plastic casing.

”Dalton got hurt,” she said hollowly, looking up over her knees. The koal she always lined her eyes with was smudging, ghoul like as she wiped the treacherous tears away furiously. ”so they took my stuff but,” she sniffed, her nose blocked, ”she fucking killed Kaylee!” The piece of plasma, broken glass, wires and plastic sat dead in her hands, cold as a cadaver. With a bellow befitting a wounded lioness she threw it away from her. That wasn’t Kaylee, it was nothing. Just dead wires and broken silica.

He was still here, him and his mind reading. It wasn’t his fault, god, none of it was his fault but Mia needed to hate something, needed to have something to direct the anger and loss bubbling under her skin like malfunctioning cooling fluid. It was that or collapse and flop like a fish out of water while Jonah cooed and fussed like a housewife.

It was hard to know where to start. ”Have they ransacked your stuff yet, or did you manage to keep out of this?” she snapped, irrational and needing to hurt. ”Or did you just come by to see if I can still hear without my computer?

(ooc: oh man, i feel so bad >_<)

[Jonah King]

Emiko Nakajima. The image of the woman’s face was all Mia thought of when she said ‘crazy bitch’, and Jonah couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of it. And from the unease accompanying the image, he had the feeling that Emiko had used her legendary abilities on his best friend. For a moment anger overtook him, and he couldn’t breathe – how dare she do that? It couldn’t be allowed. Jonah wished he was the kind of guy who could just march into someone’s office and demand an apology, but he had the feeling that the rest of the staff would not be sympathetic. They would probably just be of the opinion that Mia had been given enough chances to amend her behaviour, and now desperate measures needed to be taken.

Jonah couldn’t hear Mia’s tone of voice, but the intense anger accompanying her every word was enough to let him know just how pissed off she was. But he concentrated on her words, taking the important information: Dalton had been hurt? Because of Mia’s information? Shit, he though, but didn’t bother saying it. He had the feeling that his words would not be welcome at the moment.

It was lucky for Mia that Jonah knew her so well. Even Ginny would probably have been hurt enough by her sudden interrogation to become genuinely upset. But Jonah could read Mia like a book, and saw her anger for what it was: venting, pure and simple. He knew that there was no way comforting her would work at the moment. Mia was like a cat. If you try to pet a cat, it will run away from you. If you ignore it, the cat will eventually come and sit in your lap. Jonah had been adopting similar tactics for years, with success, and he knew that the worse thing he could do right now would be to offer sympathy.

But her words still held some sting. Jonah’s mouth twisted.

‘Oh yeah,’ he replied, sitting back to regard her, head tilted to one side. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how they wouldn’t come to my room when I’m not the one who’s been selling information on teachers.’ He wouldn’t usually have said it aloud, but it was out in the open now. All the exasperation he had quelled before, when she had told him about the sale, was beginning to rise to the surface. Sure, she wasn’t angry with him – but that didn’t mean he was going to let her off for taking it out on him. She wasn’t being fair, so he would respond in kind. ‘And you know how much I love gloating. Of course I came here to point and laugh.’ Jonah knew that his speech was probably appalling (it always was when he got angry, and he hadn't spoken this much in a while) and he balled his hands into fists. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time, but it was suddenly as if everything – his worry for Mia, his anger at his family – wanted to come to the fore and make him shake with anger.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ He asked, and even sitting down he towered over her. ‘Sit there and cry?’

(OOC: If you can't beat 'em...)

[Mia Keystone]

He didn’t try and hug her. So much the better; Mia would have hit him if he’d tried. But this, this she could handle. Privately, she sighed with relief. They were leaving Jonah’s room alone then. Maybe they’d leave him alone entirely. ”Like you would know what a laugh is,” she scoffed, wiping again at her face but making sure he could see exactly what she was saying. His words were unclear and almost... slurred. She hadn’t heard him this worked up in a while, if ever.

Even with Jonah yelling, the room was quiet and muffled. There was a hum from Jonah’s phone, but that was it. It felt wrong and thick and slow like syrup. It was impossible to think properly, how did people stand being alone with their own thoughts, no distractions, no way to investigate if she didn’t understand...

Only one conversation.

For a moment, she felt guilty. But then, then he made her feel small. Not short, but small. The technopath’s face hardened and she swiped at her face again. ”I am not fucking CRYING,” she bellowed, and even if Jonah couldn’t tell the difference between a whisper and a shout the blood rushing to her face made it obvious she was raging. Climbing to her feet (and he was still taller then her, the bastard) Mia lent forward and glared at her best friend and his stupid ears.

”What the fuck should I do, King?” she sneered, hands clenching and unclenching as her face twitched. ”They took everything, I’m nearly as deaf as you without my stuff!” God, she was. She was fucking helpless without her technology. And he was just looking at her like he understood with his stupid brain and...

Fuck, Kaylee... but no, she was not crying. She was not crying and Jonah could go die in a fire if he was going to lie and say she was. Emiko had scared her. Had made her want to hide under her bed and hug her pillow and Mia was tearing herself to pieces going over the situation, seeing if she would have been able to do something if she hadn't been so scared.

”Why don’t you go and ask her to give it back, and maybe she can fucking transform and eat you then spit you back up again,” Her chest was heaving as she tried to breath properly, hair sticking up in spikes from where she’d clutched at it. ”Easy for you to say do something, you can’t even stand up to your mother...” Too far, even Mia knew she’d gone too far and she hated it, and hated Jonah for making her feel bad about it. Her face twisted again. ”Why are you hassling me?”

(OOC: geeeze)

[Jonah King]

Mia was emanating rage in the same way that an ember gives off heat. The background buzz of her thoughts was furious, and Jonah watched her scream at him. His expression remained impassive – the one thing he knew would really piss her off. He ignored the comment about her being ‘as deaf as him’, and raised an eyebrow at her. What should she do? ‘You can calm down and then politely ask Dr Campbell when you can get it back,’ he told her, even though he knew that the odds of her asking anyone anything ‘politely’ were approximately 1000,000:1. But he was obliged to give her good advice, even if he knew she would never follow it.

He shifted, and felt something dig into his leg – the broken remains of Mia’s laptop. With a sigh, he picked it up, looking back over at Mia when she began her new onslaught.

What had Emiko done to her? Jonah had heard a lot of stories about that particular woman, and what she could do – every student had – but he didn’t know anyone who had experienced it first-hand. By the sound of it, the woman had done everything in her power to scare Mia out of her five wits, and Jonah felt the anger rise up in him again. But then Mia pulled out her trump card, and he forgot about Emiko. His mouth went dry. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked, but he knew exactly what she was referring to. The guilty twist of her mouth was enough of a clue for him. The only way he and his parents communicated was…

‘Have you been looking at my e-mail?’ he asked, already knowing that the answer had to be yes. Mia had seen the e-mail from his mother asking him to stay away for Easter, and she had seen his reply – in which he had agreed to do so. For a moment he was lost for words, then he turned his head angrily away – the clearest sign he could give that he didn’t want to see what she had to say for herself on the matter. He took a few deep breaths to rid himself of the sudden constriction in his chest. Jonah hadn’t wanted anyone to know about his parents’ attitude towards him. The only person he planned to tell was the headmaster, and that was only because he would need to. He hadn’t wanted anyone else to find out, least of all Mia – the one person whose opinion he really cared about. Jonah didn’t want anyone’s pity.

When he turned back to look at Mia, his eyes were hard. He got to his feet. ‘I can’t believe you,’ he said after a moment, then reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. ‘Want to look at my texts, as well?’ he asked, then reached out to grab her right hand – he caught Mia by the wrist, and closed her fingers around his phone. The sharp blast of her anger as he touched her made him wince slightly. ‘I came here to see if you were OK,’ Jonah told her. ‘When you decide to stop blaming things on me, come and find me.’

It was only when he was halfway down the corridor that he realised he was still holding the broken half of Kaylee.

His hands were shaking.