6272/Rocky Evasiveness

Rocky Evasiveness
Date of Scene:	24 January 2019
Location:	Xavier's School - Wellness Center
Synopsis:	Jubilee talks with Mason about his habit of skipping powers class.
Cast of Characters:	Jubilee, Mason Steele

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Jubilee has posed:
Work. Actual work. Jubilee is kicked back behind her deck in the counseling office, throwing a ball up and down in the air and catching it with a smack of the palm. At times she will even bounce it against the wall. At times, her dark eyes glance downwards to the file in front of her laid open with Mason Steele's smug and flirty headshot on it. Her eyes roll upwards again, followed by another lob of the ball against the wall. For a new kid, he sure fills up a file with staff complaints in regards to attendance and being a general distraction with noise. She glances at the clock, then back to the file. ".. and he's late for this meeting."

Mason Steele has posed:
    Mason comes in at six minutes after ten. It's not a quiet entry, but it's casual, gripping the doorjam as he passes through it. "Hey," he says, "I heard I was supposed to meet here, right?" he asks, walking up and giving a quick drum of his hands on the back of the chair on the other side of the desk. "What's up?" He gives a toss of his hair that fell in front of his eyes, and offers one of those charming and disarming smiles that he's known so well for.

Jubilee has posed:
Rolling her feet off the top of the desk, Jubilee straightens up when she catches the ball from it's last rebound. Staring at Mason, she gives him a once over, then motions with a finger to the seat. "Park it, Steele. You know why you're here." She says as she closes his file up, then lobs it to the side on to a cabinet. "You're cutting a ton of classes, but more specifically your power training classes, which I see as one of the more important ones in your curriculum. What's up? Too cool for class or something?"

Mason Steele has posed:
    Mason doesn't let the stern command dampen him, and he sits his blue jeans down in the chair, one foot propping up against the back side of the desk as he does. "No problem. I mean, I got the basics done," he points out. "So I'm not gonna accidentally hurt anybody. I figure that was the important part and all. I never like, activate it unintentionally anymore."

Jubilee has posed:
"Mister Steele." Jubilee says as she leans forward a bit on the desk. "Go to class, or I will expel you. That's not an option. It will go on your permanent record and I'll even tweet about it with a really viral hashtag. This is not up for debate. You may be the hottest thing since bubble gum with your flirty smile and to die for eyes amongst the tween generation, but in here, you're a mutant, and you're a student like anyone else, and you are in no way ready for the real world once you step outside if something was to go wrong. You brained your girlfriend during a temper tantrum and you're lucky Josh was there, because otherwise that would be murder instead of a bad day. Look kid, I was just like you once. All attitude, running about malls, thinking I was invincible and then one day, my powers blew up an arcade machine and they sent the big boys after me. If it wasn't for the X-Men saving my butt, I don't know where I'd be."

"These kids here don't got what you have. Money, good looks, record sales, adoring fans. All they got is parents who hate 'em who dumped 'em off here and tried to forget about them, or outcasts who had to run away and found themselves here by luck or because we went looking for them. You have an /opportunity/ here, so don't screw it up, okay? Go to class. /Learn/ about your powers. Have fun. Then when you graduate, you can either come up to the big leagues, or go out in the real world and do whatever you want. But while you're here, you gotta at least pretend to give a damn, capice? It's for your safety, it's for everyone's safety. Check the ego at the door."

Mason Steele has posed:
    "Hey," Mason raises his hands as if in a surrender. "I'm not tryin' to be a jerk or anythin'," he says with a smile. "I mean, I get it. I'm really glad Josh was there, and that's why I went to the classes to learn how to not let those accidents happen again. But I got that part covered, I mean, wouldn't it be better for the time to be spent on those kids that got really scary powers, or want to be an X-man? I mean, I'm not hero material like you or Mr. Drake or Mr. Summers. You guys go savin' the world, right? I just play music that sounds good on the montage reel later. Besides, I got Julliard classes, too. You know they've accepted like 12 people in history before they reach college. I don't wanna screw that up."

Jubilee has posed:
"I don't want you to screw it up either, so go to class, suck it up and learn. Afterwards, you can do whatever you want." Jubilee flails a hand up in the air. "You don't have to be a superhero to go to this class. This class isn't about seeing if you will one day put tights on. It's about you learning your powers to the best of your ability so you /really/ understand their limits and control. What's the /real/ reason here, Mason?" She asks as she straightens up, softening her voice a bit. "Just you and me here in the room. Patient counselor confidentiality and all of that. What's going on? Do you think it's a waste of time or are you scared? Cuz', I can get both. I'm a slacker too, truuuust me. But I also know what it's like to be scared. My powers are kinda on my emotional level. If I am using them and I get super cheesed off, the more powerful my explosions can go. If I didn't have the training I do, I could really hurt someone, or a lot of people."

Mason Steele has posed:
    Mason shakes his head with a mock frown. "I dunno," he says, "I just don't like thinkin' about them," he says. "I guess I was kinda scared of them after the thing with Andrea, but now that I know the basics, I'm not really afraid of that happening again." He gives another shrug. "I know a lot of folks here, they got some drive to define themselves by what their power is. I mean, Andrea /acts/ like a wolf a lot of time, just seems to fall in her nature-super hot by the way," he gives a wink as if it's an inside story. "You got Josh who wanted to just help heal hurt he'd done, and he was a healing mutant guy. There was Tyler who wanted to the badassest fighter on the planet because he had super fast reactions. I just...I don't care. I don't want to be some sculptor with my powers, or launch bad guys using a rock catapult. I just don't care. I just want to be me, and not Mason Steele, the mutant. I just want to be Mason Steele, the me." He shakes his head. "You probably don't get it, you don't have millions of people picking apart every tweet you make, or a PR team that tells you certain things are good for your image and all that stuff. I thought since I was here, I could just be me, and not worry about what everyone else wants me to be.
    "I don't want to be a mutant," he admits, "I know we're all about accepting who we are as mutants and all that self-esteem stuff. But I don't want to be part of it all. I don't want to be the champion of mutant rights like Andrea, calling for equal treatment. And I don't want to deal with the crap that comes with being a mutant." He gestures vaguely outside, "I don't want to feel like I gotta show off how cool my powers are to impress people or make them into some community event. Powers class just seems to scream all of that stuff. I don't /want/ to control my powers, because in some ways, that lets them control me, too. Y'know?"

Jubilee has posed:
"Mason, not every kid here wants to be a mutant. The girl with green scales who's only power is .. having geen scales.. she's here because she can't be out there. Mason, you're very lucky to be who you are, in a position in which you can walk around normally. All we want to do is make sure that when you leave this school, that you are at your /best/ of who you are. That doesn't mean Mason Steele the rock guy. It means Mason Steele the man." Jubilee plucks up a rubber band to tease it about her fingers, working it about. "And Mason, every single mutant gets picked apart by millions of people. You don't need to be a celebrity to have that type of pressure. People take pictures of you because you're drop dead gorgeous and you're popular. People take pictures of the girl with green scales to make them a meme and ridicule her for years. The rest of us doesn't /have/ a PR team to make us look good, or to do damage control. You get me? No one here is going to pressure you to be like Andrea, or like Jean, or Scott. All we want is for you to be yourself, but to be yourself who can handle his powers in a way that when you walk out those doors, you know, in your heart, that you won't get hurt, or hurt someone else, or do something that exposes you if you don't want to."

Mason Steele has posed:
    "So..." Mason says, leaning forward in the seat conspiratorily as he lowers his foot to the floor. He gives a quick wag of his eyebrows. "I'm drop dead gorgeous?" he asks. Yeah, it's that look. What was the rest of what she said?

Jubilee has posed:
There is a roll of Jubilee's eyes upwards. "Nice try, Mason. I'm the Queen of derailing conversations. Get back on topic. I'm being serious here. The staff is concerned about you. You wouldn't be sitting in here if it wasn't an issue that needs to be resolved right here and now. Also, you're a kid. Gross." She wrinkles her nose at him. "You will go to class. If you skip one more time, I'll assign you to Logan for your peer mentor and I'll tell him to not go easy on you. You will also maintain at the bare minimum a C+ in that class. You wanna go to Juliards? Then shape up, because they still need our transcripts that say you're a model student. Got it? If you need to talk, like /really/ talk, you can talk to me dude. I'll listen and I'll do my best to align and all that empathy crap I had to get certified in, but don't bottle this up, okay?"

Mason Steele has posed:
    Mason gives a shrug innocently as she turns down the implication he offered. "I'm not trying to be bottled up," he defends. "And if you try to screw up Julliard I will so very be out of this place so fast," he warns with a raised finger, turning a little more serious. That's not a topic that he wants threatened, clearly. "I'm not trying to bottle stuff up, I just don't want to screw with it. It's not some weird emo stuff about how I feel out of place, I just...don't want to be some pro with my powers, not hurting anybody is good enough for me. Why is that so bad?"

Jubilee has posed:
"Nah dude, that would be /you/ screwing up your chance at fancy school by not /going to class/ and /passing them/. I don't care if it's mutant powers or math. You get me? It's a class that you have to take and what you signed up for when you decided to join us here." Jubilee says with a roll of her eyes upwards. "Mason, you aren't in control of your powers. Not using them, doesn't mean you are in control. It means you're avoiding them and then one day something is going to happen and it's going to be a real bad day. One of those TMZ bad days. Just suck it up, get through the class, prove to us that you're good and that's it." Her brows lift upwards.

Mason Steele has posed:
    Mason looks visibly frustrated at this point. "Jeez, fine," he says in a dismissive assent. "Don't gotta be such a hard ass about it." He flops back into the chair, and looks off to the outside. "So can I go then?" he asks, clearly just wanting the conversation to be over.

Jubilee has posed:
Furrowing her brows, Jubilee leans forward a bit, studying him. "I'm not trying to be a jerk here, Mason. I care about you, like I do everyone else. I just want to see you succeed when you walk out those doors. You're a very talented kid. Don't let fear, or ego, hold you back. This is apart of you, just like your fingers and toes are. It's nothing to be scared of. It's not something to ignore." She nudges a bowl of candy towards him. "You can go."

Mason Steele has posed:
    Mason gives a grudging nod. "Yeah, okay." He reaches out to pluck a piece of candy, unwrapping it and popping it into his mouth. He pushes himself up to his feet. "I'll catch ya later," he offers, a little less salt in his voice, back to a more neutral tone.

Jubilee has posed:
Watching him for a few moments, Jubilee gives him an amused grin on her face. "I miss being your age. Definitely was a lot more fun. Take care, dude. Don't do anything I've already done twice."