The Green Goo Investigation

[Tamara Sulik]

"Alright, who did this?"

The question, of course, received no answer. Tamara was pointing at a wall. Someone had splattered some green goo on it and it was dripping down, forming a small puddle on the floor. The tone used wasn't too upset but it certainly was inquiring. She was expecting an answer. Either no one in the corridor right now knew who did it or they preferred not to be called a tattle tale. Either way, Tamara was still left with a puddle of green goo and no culprit for it.

It wasn't like she couldn't understand if it was an accident. Weirder, more damageable things happened within these walls due to a power going out of control. She had seen it enough and dealt with the students, reassuring them that it was to be expected. But in the eventuality this was no accident, that someone tossed it on purpose for whatever reason, well this student needed to be found. And the cockier they wuold get, the smaller the object she'll give them to clean the wall will be. Being cocky including making her look for them.

It would appear some people had walked in the goo. It might not mean anything but it was still better than what she had right now. Tamara decided to follow some of the traces on the floor. If it didn't lead her to the one who did it, perhaps it will take her to someone who saw something and would talk.

"You there," she said as she reached a student. "Let me see your shoes." Again, her tone was not as angry as the woman could be but there was definitely something that warned said student she would not take no for an answer.

[Nico Martell]

See, the problem with phasing is that you sometimes forgot to look at your shoes. At least, that had often proven to be something of an issue for Nico, who could phase through a three foot steel wall and end up leaving a pair of sneakers behind. So when he'd actually phased his way through the puddle of green goo that he hadn't had a hand in messing with, he'd figured that would be that.

But he'd forgotten his shoes.

Some staff member came up and Nico turned to face her. He froze the moment he heard those oh so familiar words: you there. He turned to look at her. He looked up, making certain to look her directly in the eye. At her comment, he nodded, lifted up a shoe, and sure enough, a glob of green goo slowly dripped off it, stretching wide before breaking to the floor.

Nico looked at it for a while, then he looked up at the staff member. He blinked, then slowly shrugged his shoulders, trying to indicate that he hadn't the faintest idea how that got there, hopefully without angering this unknown authority figure.

[Tamara Sulik]

Tamara was not entirely dumb, this guy might have nothing to do with the green substance on the floor. But the fact remained that he did step in it and she was not about to go easy on him just because he might not be the one who tossed it there to begin with. While following the traces, she tried to recall if she knew of any student who might be able to cast out something like this. This boy, for example. She didn’t remember of him. For all she knew, it was a defense mechanism.

Or not. He seemed genuinely surprised to find that dripping off his shoe. Still, surprise was not going to let him get away this easily. Tamara dealt with enough students trying to shift the blame on someone else, she might have done something similar at their age, to know better. This one was not trying to defend himself. He didn’t even talk, didn’t say he had no idea what it was doing here. He just shrugged, and blinked. Tamara stared at him, wondering if that really was all she was going to get from him.

“You’re going to tell me you didn’t even notice a puddle of sticky greenish goo and you just stepped on it by mistake?” Tamara let out. She was not trying to be intimidating or anything but it seemed somewhat ridiculous. Even if you don’t watch down on your every step, this was kind of hard to miss.

[Nico Martell]

Nico blinked, blinked and then looked up at the teacher, official type person. He seemed to vaguely recall hearing about some kind of monitor or something. He presumed he was looking at her now, though he couldn't say with anything like certainty. She certainly had the whole air of authority thing going for her, he had to give her that much.

Nico also had to give her the question. he looked down at his shoe, then back up. "Phased through the puddle," he said by way of explanation, nodding in the direction of said mess. "Got a problem with shoes," he added a slight shrug, which required him to lower his foot, needing both firmly planted for balance and all. He wasn't sure what else he could really say, beyond attempting to look as innocent as possible. She was going to make her judgment one way or the other: whatever Nico said wasn't likely to sway her in the slightest.

Excepting responding to her questions, of course. That he would do. Politely. And curtly.

[Tamara Sulik]

Tamara met all kinds of students. Some just wouldn’t stop talking, trying to justify themselves and only further digging their graves while doing so. Others said so little that you actually had to pull the words out of their mouth if you wanted an answer. This one seemed to be in the latter category. And when it came to giving you as little words as possible, this one must be a master at it.Phased through the puddle. Sure, it said everything there was to say but seriously, the only way to make this shorter would be to say phase and puddle and expect the person to understand!

Still, what Tamara understood was that the guy pretended he had nothing to do with it. Now, she was not accusing him of anything. But he sure was not helping his case if all he had to say was that he didn’t watch out for his shoes. “So you phase right into the puddle and didn’t see it? Or anyone else around who might have anything to do with it?” She could believe him, eventually, but those students were really not helping themselves. She might not even get mad it. She was ready to believe it was an accident. Accidents were so common around here.

She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m not mad, I just want to know what happened... and you better clean that shoe before you spread more of this around,” she said. She was a little disgusted as she pointed down at his feet. The maintenance would love to be called and clean this mess. Oh my, she forgot to warn them! She looked behind at the traces leading to the puddle. No one better play with it and make it cover more of the floor while she was not there!

[Nico Martell]

Nico nodded at Tamara's question. yes, yes he had just phased into the puddle and didn't really see it. Or, well, that was close enough to count for what he was dealing with there. He had sort of seen it but had just figured that the whole phasing thing would work. Hence the comment about shoes.

As for seeing anyone else, well, he really hadn't, so he could honestly shake his head at that question. Though Nico probably wouldn't have said anything even if he'd literally been at the point where this stuff had been created. Well, unless the person doing the creating was a total jerk, which was a possibility but not a highly probable one.

oh, and now Tamara was doing the standard spiel. Nico tried to not look like he hadn't heard some variation of this a dozen times before, nodding along with it and attempting to look eager. He supposed he could lie about it, but he didn't like the possibility of her finding out and tracing it back to him. "Yeah, uh," he said, reaching down to push a finger at the goo, "is this stuff... toxic or anything?" He looked back up at the adult. She had clearly been a mutant longer than him, and she was also clearly supposed to know how this sort of thing worked, so, well, if anyone knew...

[Tamara Sulik]

Tamara needed to stop asking questions he could answer with yes and no because she got nothing out of him then. Anyone else would try to justify themselves but not him. He just nodded and shook his head, like his answers needed no development. You’d think one, even though he went through a wall, would try to look at his surrounding and notice the thing on the floor. It was disgusting enough to want to get out and not keep it on your feet, even if it was the sole of your shoes that touched it.

She stared at him when he shook his head but, again, he was not about to add anything to it. She sighed heavily. Well, she was making progress in finding who did it. She hoped it was a power that went off because then she would only have to look at the database for an ability that could do something like this. Because if it was just something spilled from a content, the list of possible culprits just went a whole lot longer.

“How should I know?” Tamara let out as he asked about the toxicity of the goo. “That’s why I’m telling you you should clean it off your shoes.” At least she knew it was not some form of acid or, if it was, it wasn’t strong enough to dissolve the wall and floor, otherwise there would already be a hole and she would have called maintenance a lot sooner. Which reminded her that she had to. “I’ll stay close, in case there is anything going on because of it,” she told him. She was not giving him any choice on the matter. And she would call for someone to clean it up while he took care of his shoes.

[Nico Martell]

Nico was tempted to fire back as the teacher asked how she would know. It wasn't as though she didn't have a lot more experience with this than he did. Hell, by virtue of being a mutant teacher she had to have dealt with this stuff a lot more than he had. Still, he knew better than to mouth off to a teacher, even when they seemed to be the type who probably wouldn't mind.

So he had to clean his shoes. Now, standing in the middle of the first floor of the dorm. Nico looked around for a moment, before figuring that he should at least take the shoes off. That required bending down and pulling them off easily enough. That left him standing there, holding his shoes, his grip shifting so that the goo didn't drip down on him and do anything worse. He really didn't want to think about what would happen if he accidentally got some of this stuff stuck inside him.

"How?" he finally asked, looking up at the teacher and holding up the shoes. He didn't mean to sound like a smart ass or anything, so he figured he should try using some more words here: "I seriously have no idea. Do you want me to go to, like, a bathroom or something?" He said it with the utmost sincerity and even tried some respect too. Couldn't hurt.

[Tamara Sulik]

It was not very tactful of Tamara to bluntly say she had no idea how toxic this green substance could be. But Tamara was not a very tactful person, period. And this boy was testing her patience by being so uncommunicative. He probably didn’t mean to but he still did. It was frustrating to have to guess what he wanted to say through his nods, shrugs and single-syllable answers.

She stared at him when he questioned her. She was about to point out how dumb this question could be but she stopped herself. “Come to the office. There is a sink, you can clean your shoes there. And I’ll be able to call the janitor,” she told him after some reflection. She gestured in the right direction. He was not the only one who could communication only with movements. And she wanted him to walk first so that he wouldn’t try to phase through a wall and run away.

“You saw no one when you walked through the wall? Maybe they saw something,” she asked him again. Maybe he wanted to cover someone, even a stranger, just so he wouldn’t appear like he could easily rat out people. Tamara needed to know though. How else could she know if she should report this for detention or as a mere incident a power going out of control caused?

[Nico Martell]

Nico could practically see the frustration forming on the official's face. He wasn't quite sure if he'd call that a good thing or a bad thing, probably somewhere in the middle. He didn't really want to be enough of a bother that she remembered him after this meeting, but at the same time, he didn't want to be around her any longer than he really had to, or, worse yet, he didn't want her to think that he wanted to hang out with her.

So Nico obediently followed the woman toward the janitor's closet. He certainly didn't mind the motions or the lack of words: it actually suited him just fine. He also recognized the "you go first" gesture for what it was, and he quite obediently took the lead, slouching slightly.

Did he see anyone? Again, Nico had to shake his head. He wouldn't have even expanded if he did know. "No one I knew," he offered, figuring that would help. "I haven't been here long. Canada," he knew the last might take a bit, but she'd figure it out easily enough. Plus, if she was busy decoding what he gave her, she wouldn't be thinking too much about what he'd said (or not, as the case may be).

[Tamara Sulik]

Oh great. The only person she could tie to this didn’t seem to be responsible and had not been to this school long enough to recognize anyone. She sighed, not hiding her disappointment in this to the boy. He was not really at fault but she would have wished she knew who did this. “Guess I’ll have to look at the files then.” Maybe a student had the particular ability of throwing that kind of substance. Her tone didn’t sound too pissed though. More like resigned. She didn’t think of punishing the person as much as finding out who did this. If it was an accident, well, it was an accident and she’ll warn them to be more careful next time. But if someone tossed this on purpose...

She tried to think of someone who could throw goo like this. It was some weird power, probably tied to a defense mechanism of some sort, but she could not recall reading about this before. Still, it got her thinking... “It’s not burning, is it?” Just because the boy was not cooperative, didn’t mean she wanted him to suffer. “You’re skin is not red or swollen or anything, right?” Yes, now she was concerned about him. She had no idea what the substance was after all. She was even ready to quicken the pace, something he didn’t seem to be thinking about.

It was not a new tactic of hers to get him to talk. Maybe it was her motherly instincts suddenly kicking in, she couldn’t say. She got him to the office and showed him the sink. “If there is anything, you tell me, alright?” she said as she left him to wash off the goo while she called the janitor to come and clean the puddle.

[Nico Martell]

Nico did feel at least a little sorry for the woman. She might have just been a cog in the awful machine for all Nico knew. He just didn't see how he could really help her at all in this, even if he did know anything. For once, he was almost tempted to just offer the truth there, but there was a saying back where he was from: tell the truth only to your madre and your priest, and think twice about your blood.

Instead he kept going, moving to look at the substance. He'd actually gotten used to looking for strange skin conditions and other signs that something funky was going on with his body. He twisted and looked around the foot for a bit, then shook his head. "All good," he verbally confirmed, looking back up at her, "and I will. Tell you, that is."

Nico gave another nod and then finished the last few steps into the closet. Nico began rummaging around, quickly locating the faucet. He began fumbling with it, reaching or it, adjusting, getting the water ready to start knocking this green crap off.

[Tamara Sulik]

Tamara was rarely acting like a mother figure around here, despite being a mother. They didn't know that though, for most of them, and she intended to keep it that way. Still, there were occasions where her motherly instincts kicked in and had her worried over a student. She was not going to wipe the green substance off his shoe and skin for him, no way, but she would worry that it might have affected him in some way. “If anything happens in the next couple of hours, don’t hesitate to go straight to the infirmary, just in case,” she let out as he assured her that it was all good. It might sound a little extreme but she was adamant about this. “It might be nothing but it’s better not to risk it, so if you don’t want to go now, at least make sure to head there if there is anything.” Washing it off should be enough though, right? The exposure was relatively small but she didn’t know what it was.

She still made a mental note to make sure his shoe was all clean and to check there was no green goo anywhere on him before letting him go. For now, however, she called the janitor to have this cleaned up. With or without a culprit, it had to go before more people walked in it and the whole corridor turned green.

Once that was done, she turned to look at Nico. “You’re all done?” He better not be one of those disgusted at the thought of cleaning their shoes. It wasn’t like it was a stinking stuff like poop but some had a very sensitive stomach. Tamara didn't feel like cleaning it for him. She grimaced though as she realised the shoe might be wet now, too wet for it to be comfortable to walk with it. Maybe she should have escorted him to his room instead, or had another pair nearby for him.

[Nico Martell]

Nico nodded as Tamara continued. Yeah, he kind of figured that would be a suggestion or what have you. He wasn't sure if he'd actually go through with it: would depend entirely on whatever happened to him. For now, he was more focused on getting this junk off his shoe. So the shoe came off and went under the water.

And then rub, rub, rub. Nico worked fairly hard at it, used to scrubbing stuff, as that was one of the many chores they'd made him do during his time in juvie. However, no matter how much scrubbing he did, the stuff didn't seem to want to come off his shoe. Nico actually stopped after a minute or so, twisting the wet shoe to realize that particularly fun reality.

He sighed, looking over to the teacher. No way to get around not talking for this, and he was starting to feel like he should be at least a little cooperative, given that she'd been more focused on helping him get things back to normal than administering punishment or anything like that. "It's not coming off," he said, holding up the shoe. "Must be water proof or something," he tilted it, watching the water drop off. Then he started looking around. "Don't suppose you'd have an idea of which of these to try?" he asked, gesturing at the various chemicals around him. he figured it was worth a shot, and likely she wanted this done and over as quickly as he.

[Tamara Sulik]

Tamara turned her head towards the boy when he spoke. He barely said anything to her the whole time, preferring to talk with nods of the head and monosyllabic words. She wondered what this was about. The fact she had some trouble getting maintenance people to clean it up probably had her look slightly pissed at him without it being his fault but that came off as soon as he mentioned some chemicals he might use to get it off his shoe.

“Uh...” she let out as she looked at said products. She grabbed one. She knew that stuff. Pretty toxic but efficient. Just the vapors of the stuff could give her a headache when she used it, during another job she had before coming here. “Let me,” she said, taking the shoe from the boy’s hands. She managed to find some gloves as there was no way she would use that on her bare hands. It might not burn the skin off of it but it would still burn a little, at least turn them red and require lots of clean water to get that off.

She seemed to have forgotten her desire not to touch his shoe as she poured some of the liquid on it and scrubbed it off. It took some time and lots of scrubbing from her part but it slowly washed off the boy’s shoe. She was not surprised. They could use that stuff to clean the dirtiest of grills so if there was one thing that may work in here, it had to be this. She often alternated with clean water, just because she could not stand the smell of it. And because she didn’t want to give the shoe back to him with that stuff still on. When she was done however, despite making sure not to soak the whole shoe, it was still pretty wet.

“You have other shoes? Because you’ll have to let this one dry,” she told him as she gave it back. The school offered at least two pairs right? So he should be fine. If not... well, she supposed she could still find him another pair, just for now.