[OPEN] A guaranteed personality

[spes_phthisica]

WHO: Souji, anyone who agreed to go shopping with him, and anyone else who wants to tag along.
WHAT: You know in high school movies / chick flicks when there's this awesome empowering shopping montage where everyone is laughing all the time and no one isn't fabulous?
This probably isn't going to be like that, let's be real.
WHERE: New York, I'm guessing. No, they didn't take the jet there, sorry.
WHEN: Saturday, 13/9
WARNING(S): This is a company consisting of a man who used to eat people, a woman with a PhD in Sexual Innuendo, a teacher who still has romantic feelings about someone who is technically a high school student, a high school student suffering from mutation-induced violent tendencies, and a rape survivor with PTSD. So, probably yes. Only Bridget isn't a walking CW/TW in and of himself, but people's reactions to him might warrant it.
Will add more specific things if required.

This will be a collection log of random things, so just throw up a header inside and play things out at leisure <3

Comments

C of course

[whosafraidofthe]

Bigby had been trying his best to at least keep his nose on him, but Souji is a new scent and managed to slip past him for a bit. That worries him enough, but finding him in this state...

"I don't have to worry yet, do I?" He speaks casually, while he mentally starts a timer for how long he can be in here without needing a smoke break. Hmm... Best not to cut it too close.

[spes_phthisica]

Souji tenses a bit further at the sound of a voice close by, looking up and attempting a smile in between dragging down more breath in his lungs, shaking his head briefly. It appears to be an indication that Bigby shouldn't worry, though the general state of him suggests that a little bit of worrying might be in order, more for his health than that of others.

Give him a moment to calm down somewhat.

"This is just... a byproduct of my mutation." He sounds kind of tired. "They used to think it was... PTSD, because of the panic- the way it-" He waves a hand a bit aimlessly as he tries to regain his breath a bit. "This doesn't actually make me attack anyone. They have to strike first for that."

[whosafraidofthe]

"You don't have to talk until you're ready."

Bigby slowly takes a seat beside him and places a hand gently on his head. "Just try and take deep breaths, focus on your heartbeat until it slows down. Think about sleeping in the sun or something. You can explain to me when you don't sound like you're about to keel over."

His posture is a bit tense, though, as he's still not sure how short Souji's trigger is. And he's ever-alert as to the locations of the rest of their ramshackle crew.

[spes_phthisica]

Souji nods with a grateful little smile, and for a while all that is heard is the strained scrape of his breathing as his fights to get it properly under control again. He's got breathing techniques that he knows he should follow, but it's hart to remember once the stress levels get too high.

Contact actually helps, though. He's a tactile creature, but for obvious reasons, a lot of people have been wary of touching him - not that anything so simple as touch ever sets him off, but he can understand why it would make people nervous.

"There, all better." He holds up a hand to demonstrate that the shaking has stopped. "It really isn't anything dangerous. The mutation just gets a bit much for my body at times, since it's the same as any human body when I'm not fighting. That's all."

[whosafraidofthe]

"I can understand that, I think." Bigby ruffles his hair idly as he speaks.

Bigby is a nervous creature these days, but he can understand mutations that are hard to control, that make people nervous that don't understand. It doesn't help that everything adds up to him basically being a werewolf.

"My powers get hard to keep up with sometimes too. I'm glad at least no one's made jokes about the moon yet." his hand lowers to pat Souji's back, "Can I get you something? Soda, candy?"

[spes_phthisica]

Souji tries to right himself a little bit, ending up half leaning against Bigby's hand that way and breathing in an exaggeratedly calm and slow rhythm now. It's important to keep being in control a while after a spell like that. But he makes a soft little sound of amusement, tilting his bag a bit to show Bigby the truly ridiculous amount of candy stashed within. Three guesses who bought him all that, and the first two don't count.

"It's alright, I don't need anything. I just let it get away from me for a moment." He watches the other man curiously, still with a somber little smile on his lips. "I looked around on the network. You said you'd hurt people. I guess... I guess some mutations are a lot less like super powers and a lot more like diseases, aren't they?"

[whosafraidofthe]

Bigby frowns, and his gaze falls into his lap with a somber nod.

"I spent the first half of my life without taking on my human form once. I just thought I was some other species, and since humans couldn't stop me from eating them..." He closest his eyes and lets his breath escape him slowly before opening them again, "Some mutants just aren't built to be heroes. I've been trying to prove people wrong about it for years, but it's the truth."

His head is already starting to hurt from all the smells fighting for his attention. He pointedly focuses on the scent of the candy in Souji's bag. And tries to think of a good way to either wrap up the conversation or move it outside.

[spes_phthisica]

Souji simply nods, obviously not bothered at all by this talk of eating people. It really makes sense to him. As far as he knows, predators never asks themselves whether they should be eating their prey or not, and if that was how Bigby had seen himself... well. Compared to the humans who are self-aware enough to choose to be predators, his crimes seem fairly mild from where Souji is sitting.

"I think I understand." He stifles a cough, throat raw from exertion. "They called me mentally ill, so that's what I thought I was. By now, I think I probably am." At least when he compares himself to other people, he seems to come up so very short on things which most humans seem to think are needed. It's not that he can't understand or feel for others, exactly, but simply that the concepts of 'wrong' or 'right' are completely abstract and impossible to understand.

"It's a bit sad, isn't it? The X-men and this place are supposed to make people think better of us, right? But they also mean that the people who are on our side keep expecting us to be born good and noble. And when we're not... I guess we ruin it for everyone else."

[whosafraidofthe]

He nods slowly, and... well, he feels sort of terrible for agreeing so readily with negative thoughts but as far as he can tell they are perfectly right.

"I'm gonna be honest with you... me being here, being a teacher, it's a stunt. On my part, and on Xavier's. We've been trying to prove that even heartless killers like me can be model citizens. But I guess I've never been one anyway." His foot is starting to tap. His head is starting to pound. He sighs, "And my nose is going haywire, you think you're well enough to come outside? I need a smoke."

[spes_phthisica]

"That makes sense. It comes with some unfortunate expectations, doesn't it? As if there is a way to ever turn something which is monstrous by nature into something human. There's no point saying we aren't monsters when some of us clearly are - it's better to say that being a monster doesn't have to make you bad."

He smiles apologetically then and shakes his head, and a moment later he has bounced to his feet, although he has to pause to discreetly support his own weight by grabbing a hold of Bigby's shirt on his upper arm. His legs still feel weak with adrenaline. "There's a child throwing a tantrum over there in the corner, and she's already thrown the shoe she's trying out on the ground twice. Outside seems like a good idea, before she decides to throw anything further than that." In other words, Souji can understand the sense of being all too aware of one's surroundings, even if it is in a very different way compared to Bigby.

[whosafraidofthe]

"I can hear her." He accepts this and subtly moves his arm so Souji can hang onto it comfortably, before leading him outside.

Outside of the store he leans against the wall and smoothly lights himself a cigarette, and after a pause offers one to Souji. "Might help your nerves. I guess that's what humans use them for."

And all the while he's thinking over their conversation. It's not reassuring by any means, but... it is nice, talking to someone who really understands what he's going through. And hopefully it's the same for Souji.

[spes_phthisica]

Souji waves the cigarette away, wrinkling his nose slightly. "I tried when I was fourteen. It really doesn't taste very nice." A pause, and then he adds as if it's merely an afterthought: "Oh, and my immune and respiratory system are compromised, so it's really bad for me. And I used to smoke weed to help with my mutation, so I guess it might also trigger a relapse, maybe. But I like the smell."

He lets go of Bigby's arm once he can lean against the wall, arms crossed behind his back as he tilts his head back to stare at the sky. "You still don't think of yourself as human, do you?" He sounds as if the idea intrigues him more than anything else.

[whosafraidofthe]

"Makes sense." the Huff'n'Puffs go back in his pocket and he takes a slow drag of his cigarette as he regards Souji carefully, and then follows his line of sight.

"I guess I don't." He responds after some thought. "Normally I'd cover it up, call 'em 'mundies', but... truth is, it's the same thing. They're a different species. They're not like me." there's another pauses as he takes another drag and sighs, "I'm getting used to mutants being my species. But humans aren't."

[spes_phthisica]

It might not be what Bigby is supposed to say, but to Souji it just makes an awful lot of sense. He'd been born with his powers, so they had to be natural to him, but to everyone around him they had seemed like some kind of disease. He couldn't say he blamed them, because most of them had really only tried to help him, but the fact remained that he wasn't like them.

"I don't think I've ever felt human either. I never even had a word for what I am until recently, but... One of the foster families I had was kind of weird. The mother was from America, I think, and she started saying that there was a demon in me, making me do bad things. And I thought maybe she had it all wrong, because I didn't feel as if there was anyone else forcing me. There was just me. So maybe I was the demon, and maybe the child that had been in the body before me had gone away a long time ago."

[whosafraidofthe]

Bigby wilts a bit as he listens. It's starting to actually hurt how much he can relate to this.

"She was trying her best, I suppose. My mother had my powers, and so did my siblings. So it never felt strange at all to be a wolf. None of them ever stopped me from eating what I ate... or who I ate. I didn't really think anything of it until I was painted into a corner, had to pretend I was human long enough to escape to America."

Saying it like that really makes him think. He's still pretending to be human, isn't he?

"As far as anyone's concerned I'm a monster in human clothing. Which sounds about right to me. I've just gotten more comfortable with the human skin."