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After the last bell Wednesday John finds Sylvia, "Can I walk with you?"  he asks.

OOC: He makes a point of finding her before she meets up with Donnie if she does that after school.

Sylvia gives him a cautious sidelong look and says, "I'm headed for Jack's, but I guess that's no problem for you.  Sure.  Of course.  Something on your mind?"

Once the pair are a little distance from people he begins "The other day when we bumped into each other after school I realized that I was terrified of you looking inside my head and seeing something out of context.  I actually don't know much about how mental powers work, there isn't much in the way of journal articles about them.  I'm not good with people, in case you hadn't noticed."  he chuckles, "Like it's some sort of secret.  Anyway, I just wanted you to know that."  He stops.  "That would have sounded creepy."  He glances at her, then at his feet as they walk.  "If you ever see or hear anything in my head, and need an explanation, you can ask."  He seems to be confusing himself as they go.  Sylvia notices that he accidental receptions dropped off some since yesterday.  Since she bumped into John at school she was picking up more and more stray thoughts, but it's gone back to normal over the course of the day.  "I just don't want my mental awkwardness to bother you.  As much as it might be embarrassing, I'd rather you ask then just think I'm."  he shrugs, "I have a feeling I'm not helping my case any."

She looks at him for a long moment.  "You're fine," she says, a faint smile bowing her lips.  "I'm sorry if it seems like I was peeking.  I try not to, but sometimes it's like overhearing someone as they mumble to themselves.  I can't stop up my ears.

"If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, no harm done.  It's not like I was posing in lingerie."  She continues carefully, not wanting to send him into retreat again.  "A lot of guys seem to have a thing for the cheerleader uniform that I don't quite understand.  Maybe it's because cheerleaders are supposed to be . . . "  She thinks about the new crew and discards her unworthy stereotype.  " . . . enticing."

John goes a shade of red.  I's not the uniform."  he says, "And I know all about not being able to help overhearing other people.  All the things they whisper, confidences to friends or just to the mirror in the bathroom.  Sometimes I feel like going to them and telling them that it's not that bad, or that they'll get over it.  And then I'd have to explain how I knew.  Or they'd get angry because they'd feel I invaded their privacy."

"How do you cope?  Don't you find the noise maddening?  Or is that you've been able to do this all your life, so the static doesn't bother you anymore?"

John shrugs.  "It took a long time to get used to it.  The noise sort of blends in, but I have to be careful not to answer questions I shouldn't have heard.  Focus enough on the conversation I'm supposed to be in to not seem rude.  Practice I guess is how I learned to cope."

"Tests are hard," Sylvia says.  "I hear answers.  Some are right.  Some are wrong.  Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between what someone else is thinking and what I am.  And when I get a good grade, I always wonder if I could have done it in an empty room or if I'm starting to use other people's brains like cheat sheets."

"I guess it doesn't matter in the end."

She changes the topic abruptly.  "What do you do for fun?  I mean real, cut-loose fun?"

"Lately, try to fly."  he says, cocking his head as if to hear a distant sound.  "Before that it was mainly just pushing myself to see how fast I could run, or how far before I got tired.  Not really the kind of excitement most people go for though.  What about you?"

"I don't know.  Hang with Donnie, play in those D&D games.

"Sometimes it's hard not to see everything in the context of our good-guy work.  When I hang with Rob, we're learning to throw smoke grenades or some crazy sh--"  But this is John.  John is a good boy.  "--tuff like that.  When I'm doing routines with the pep squad, I'm thinking about how to kick higher and harder, how to stay alert to who's watching us and why.

"It's a messed-up life, but the funny, scary thing is that I'm starting to like it.  But obsession makes you boring.  I'm trying not to be boring."

"You don't have to not curse around me.  My mother can curse like a sailor, and does."  John gives her a smiles.  "If obsession leads to boredom I must be the most boring guy in Oak Park.  Just, try to remember to be a kid.  My dad's been telling me that for years.  Which is a sad testament to my life."

"What's your obsession?"

"I've been doing the hero thing since I was little.  And now I'm focusing on trying to be a doctor, and I'm not finished with my freshman year of high school yet."

"Why a doctor?  It doesn't seem like you're playing to your strengths."

"Because it's something that I'll have to work for.  And I like helping people.  Always have.  What about you?  You seem to be sort of gung ho about the super hero thing.  Why?"

Sylvia has given this a lot of thought.  "I can't not be."  She looks at him.  "Do you read CNN?  Every day awful things happen, and I can only imagine that they always will.  Someday I'll be out of school, and I just know, whenever anything bad happens, I'll think, 'Could I have stopped that?'  And sure, I know some people just hide from that kind of thing, but imagine discovering, twenty years down the line, that you're that kind of person.  How wretched would you have to be?"

"Welcome to the club.  We should get t-shirts or something."  John says with a slight smile.  "We'd make a horrible couple."  he says softly.  then louder, "Your mom, the one that sews, making you a costume?"

Sylvia catches, or imagines she catches, a weird ghost of emotion--like something that never was--from John, and she's looking at him, thinking about that, even as she answers.  "Costumes?  For the dance?  Yes, of course.  Mitzi's not really happy unless she's making something.  Do you have one?  Are you part of Sammy's court?"

"Actually, I meant a costume for hero stuff.  I asked Laney to the dance.  And I think I'm wearing a tux.  She might change her mind, which I've noticed happens a lot.  Which leads me to another topic.  Wanna see if she can guess where there might be trouble Saturday night?  I thought You and Sammy and I and perhaps Donnie if he's interested in that sort of thing, could do a little community policing."

"'Want to see if Laney can guess,' you mean?  Is that her thing?"  Sylvia hasn't spent much time with Laney so far.  The noise, she's afraid to admit, irritates her.

"I think she has some sort of probability manipulation ability.  It's another one of the really esoteric powers and it's hard to define, but she's certainly demonstrated either an affinity for strange luck, or that she's a clumsy lunatic.  And I like her.  For all the wrong reasons, which I shouldn't bore you with.  Sorry."

"What are the wrong reasons?"

John looks her way, "You really shouldn't have to hear my self doubts.  I appreciate it, but it just seems whiny to lay them on you."

Sylvia gives him a dimpled smile.  "I can hear your self-doubts anyway.  Feel free."

It takes him a minute to relax, and Sylvia realizes he'd been tense all along.  Actually, all the time.  Since she met him.  "She needs someone to look after her.  Take care of her.  I'm worried that that's why I like her.  It appeals to some deep seated hero complex I have.  And I'm afraid that I'll undermine her some how.  She's had it rough, and I know that she needs to come into who she is again.  Although I think she thinks being paranormal is like having leprosy.  And I'm trying hard not to argue the point to death.  "

"Everyone has issues," she says with wise good humor in her eyes.  "When your issues fit with someone else's, sometimes it's a good thing, and sometimes it's a recipe for codependency.  As long as you make each other better instead of worse, you're all right."

She pauses.  "But my standards for mental health are peculiarly low.  As long as you're not trying to kill someone, you're all right."  And sometimes even then. . . .

"If I try to kill someone, I'll call that rock bottom.  I don't think it'll get that bad.  At least, I hope not."  They go a little further, "So, wanna participate in an experiment involving Laney and her maybe powers?"

Sylvia shrugs.  "Okay.  Casual dress, or are we trying to make a statement?"

"Up to you.  If I wear a costume, I always feel like I should do it all the time.  And then I get in trouble."

Sylvia, who was half joking, gives him a curious look askance.  "So you've worn a costume.  You've worn a costume that I haven't seen.  When?  Where?"

"Since coming here?  Just once.  The night we went to the cemetery after the witches, and it wasn't the witches.  It was dark, you probably didn't notice."

His language leaves gaps to probe.  "But before you came here?  You prowled the streets?"

John nods.  "My mom didn't mind if I wandered into trouble, or was helping a friend who was in trouble.  She really didn't approve of me looking for it.  It caused a few arguments in the house.  Dad worked out a compromise by getting me a costume.  It still didn't set well with her.  She worries.  She's a mom."

"But your mom is like you, isn't she?"

"Like me?  Neither of my parents have powers if that's what you mean.  My powers come from my dad's side of the family, oddly enough.  He's the nephew of the last girl to have the powers in the Super Girl line.  Dad's father is her brother.  It's one of those rare occasions where a male carry's the markers."

"Does the R factor usually travel through the mother's side?  X-chromosome stuff?

"Sometimes I wonder where what's happened to me came from.  It's like a little fairy-tale-slash-horror-story.  Somewhere in China there's some woman who gave me up because, I dunno, bad guys were closing in on her.  Or she was being inducted into some kind of Chinese military program.  Or maybe she had no idea.  Maybe she was a prostitute or an unwed mother."

"The R-Factor appears on the X chromosome, which is why there are historically more female supers than male."  He says.  "I suppose filling in the blanks might be tempting.  But, in the end I'm guessing it's not really that important is it?  To know I mean?  It wont change anything, will it?"

She shakes her head.  "I've never wanted to run off to China if that's what you mean, and I wouldn't trade Carolyn and Mitzi for the world.  But convergence of improbability isn't an entirely satisfying explanation to the questions, 'Why me?  Why now?'  Everyone else was chosen, or they were born into it.  But me?  Just a mutation?  Just an accident?

"Sometimes I worry that the difference between the good guys and the bad guys is that the good guys were chosen or that they have a heritage of power.  You, Colin, Donnie, Sammy, Sarah, Rob.  Me, I wasn't chosen.  I don't really have someone magic in my head telling me what to do and how to do it.  The only difference between me and someone like Torrance Shipman is this quavery matter of conscience and morals.  What if I slip?  What if it's true that power corrupts?"

"It's something that's gotten a lot of ink.  Books by retired supers, papers on psychology.  It's the nature versus nurture argument.  Just because someone was chosen doesn't mean they'll live up to some imagined standard.  There have been people who were born to a legacy of power and did awful things.  People who were chosen by, well whatever does that sort of choosing I guess, and turned their back on the whole duty thing.  It's human nature.  In my case it's not so much being a hero because of the people that are in my past.  My parents taught me to be a good person, to help out when you can.  as I got older I started thinking more and more about the legacy, and how I should try to live up to it.  Another reason I'm not the most normal teenage boy.  It's sad when your mother tells you you take everything too seriously.  And you realize you have to agree with her."

"Someone told me to rejoin the pep squad so I didn't look back on these years and resent not having done the normal things.  Is that why you do football?"

"Did football."  he emphasizes, "And yes.  My dad played in school, and when he and his friends get together they talk about it fondly.  No matter how many years pass, they still remember it.  I think I will too.  It was a chance to play in a sport and have something to talk about later in life with people who will never be able to understand the other things I've done."

"That's grim," she says with a touch of rueful pity.  "Jesus, we both need lives, don't we?  It'd be nice if there were somewhere people like us could go and feel norm--"  Suddenly there's a speculative, arch look on her face.  "Hey, how far have you gone?  I hear you and Sammy have been zooming all over the place.  Ever made it out to the West Coast?"

"I heard she went to Vegas with Elrod.  We've never gotten that far."  he taps her shoulder gently, "That's why you have to remember to be a kid.  It seems horribly bleak if you don't."

Sylvia's lips twitch, flattening into a faint expression of bitterness.  It's a micro-expression, and most people would miss it.  "So we should do crazy, reckless, teenage things, right?  How about New York?  Could you run to New York?  See, I'm thinking a lot of kids do tours of college campuses so they can figure out where they want to go after high school.  Maybe I should check out my potential campuses.  Maybe I should ask for applications.  In person."

John gives her a sideways glance.  "The West Coast and New York?"  he nods, "The Defenders and the Avengers.  You might want to call ahead.  I'd hate to get there and no one be home."

"I thought it'd earn me some hero cred if I could break into the base and just be there, waiting for them.  That's how it works on TV, anyway.  The plucky, indefatiguable, undeniable sidekick demonstrates through sheer pig-headedness that she belongs amid the heroes?"

"As much fun as it seems in the movies, it's rude.  You could ask, I know the Avengers are open minded.  Breaking into the Defenders is a little harder, but they might be looking to recruit in a couple years.  And there is always the NSA.  They hire pretty frequently compared to the other groups."

"They're my fallback plan," she says.

"Hey, your dad works for Eagle's Nest, doesn't he?"

"Eh, he worked in Paranormal Operations for the NSA in Maryland.  Not Eagle's Nest, but the division they're a part of.  If you want in, I can ask him to write you a recommendation letter and set up an interview."

"Hmm."  She holds out her hand, thumbs down.  "Eagle's Nest is out in the middle of frigging nowhere."

Thumbs up.  "They have big planes."

Thumbs down.  "They make you live underground in what is assuredly an ugly bare-ass bunker."

Thumbs up.  "You get a badge and a gun."

Thumbs down.  "People probably shoot at you a lot."

Thumbs up.  "You don't have to wear a goofy costume."

Thumbs down.  "You probably have to wear some kind of uniform."

Thumbs up.  "You get free food."

Thumbs down.  "You get free military-grade food.

"I dunno," she concludes.  "The Avengers and Defenders, they're old groups.  They have history.  You get the feeling they're all together because they want to be together.  It's their lives.

"Eagle Force, though?  It's probably just a job."

"The offer stands."  he says, "And I'll be happy to take you out to see either of the groups.  It's not too far, we're sort of in the middle."

"I am actually curious.  Do you think your dad could finagle a tour at Eagle's Nest?  Would they let us in to look around?"

"Sure.  So long as you don't mind them doing a security clearance check on you before hand."  he says.

"I'm fourteen.  What have I got to hide?"  Smith.  She's got Smith to hide.  But surely Smith, in his deep and contagious paranoia, has done something to lock that box in her head.

"It's not too serious a check I guess.  You're an adopted foreign national though, so it might take longer."  They stop across the street from the Wayne House.  "I should head home.  Call me if you ever want to go see some super heroes."

"I seriously will.  Ask your dad about it."

"Sure thing."  And then he's gone.