You Can Only Blame Yourself

[Tamara Sulik]

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Tamara had a migraine. Doctors might disagree with her diagnosis, claim that migraines were actually a lot worse than this but she didn’t care and would call it that anyway. Her head was in a C-clamp right now and someone was having fun squeezing it more and more, probably in the hope for her cranium to crack open and her brain to explode from it. And this was all her fault.

Headaches seemed to be the most common side-effect to mutant powers, sometimes even when the ability didn’t have anything with brain. Something about focus or concentration, probably. Not like she would know or care to know. Her ability had to do with the brain. She could turn hers into a projector, her imagination being the film reel and the light her white scream so she could create holographic imagery for all to see. And she overdid it last night.

If asked why she did it, she would say she was bored. It was the truth, she had been bored out of her wits and decided this was a way like any other to pass the time. After copying objects, she suddenly decided to try and guess what Humphries must have looked like as a human being. He couldn’t have been a cat all of his life after all. She never heard of mutant cats. Her power might be impressive but it was also limited by her imagination. She had a good sense of the proportions but a cat’s head didn’t look quite like a human one and it asked perhaps a little more imagination than she had to make it look real. It looked more like a mashup of different faces she knew and thought might fit together.

It still kept her up for a long part of the night and the side-effects were still present the next day. She felt so bad. She just wanted to stay in bed all day with the blanket above her head so she wouldn’t have to deal with the light. And down a bottle of aspirin to deal with the pain. She might be able to fix the light but she realised, as she went to her bathroom, that she had no ibuprofen left. It was terrible news. And, of course, as she emerged of her room, looking more like a zombie than her usual self, she found none of her roommates to ask some from them. She decided to walk to the other dorms and ask there. The idea wasn’t as good as she thought, since she was also feeling dizzy. She went to room 102 and knocked, hoping to get an answer there.

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TAG: Ayane Somerfield

[Ayane Somerfield]

The woman took slow breaths as she pulled her self up on the frame she had attached to the ladder like apparatus, pulling herself up solely on her upper body strength, up. Release. Up. Release. She made these motions repetitively. She was trying to get to 50. She was a woman always trying to better herself. Be the best she could be. She wasn't the most academically talented, or the wittiest on the planet. But she had resolve.

She had some light music on in the background, focused on what she was doing. After everything that had happened in the last year or so. She was focused. Focused on getting better at her job. At protecting all of the kids. And to do that. She had to get stronger. Faster. She had slowed down since coming to the academy over a year ago. She had been faster on the force. She was working on getting her edge back.

That was until a knock came to her door. She dropped down, grabbed a towel and draped it over to her neck, moving to open the door. As the door slid open she saw Tamara, who she hadn't seen in quite some time and blinked slowly. "Hiya. Is everything alright?" She asked. 

[Tamara Sulik]

Tamara probably didn’t look so good. It wasn’t like she took the time to brush her hair or anything since the moment she pulled out of bed. She only wished to go back to bed afterwards and, besides, it would help prove she really needed some aspirin. Every step she took to the other door was like a pounding in her head. She was glad the staff was not sleeping in the same area as the students because the corridor would be so loud otherwise. Instead, she could drag her feet to the room 102 without too much damage done to her poor little head.

It took a moment and Tamara was wondering if she should not simply knock at another door instead but eventually this one opened and Ayane appeared. She tried a smile but Tamara was too tired for it. “Hi Ayane. Sorry to bother you, do you have aspirin or anything like that? My head is killing me,” she told the other woman. Tamara didn’t really care about the way she looked to Ayane or if she appeared as though she partied too hard last night. For once, it was not the case. Nothing heavy happened last night. Just boredom and the effect of it. She didn’t think about going into much detail about it though, she had enough to do with resting against the door frame so she wouldn’t feel like she might fall to the ground. Because dizziness was another effect that could happen when she forced her brain to work too much. What else it may look like, she really didn’t think about it.