PLOT

There are moments when a person looks at something that is totally familiar in a way that makes it brand new. In some cases, it can lead to love. Others, to heartbreak. But for Jimmy, it meant he needed to do some cleaning.

The cell was a mess. It was, he figured, one step down from having to swim through his and Markus's dirty clothes. Ok, maybe two. Two and a half, tops. There weren't shirts dangling from the overhead light fixture, but there were things hanging from the bars at the end of the bunk beds. Those were the things that were lightly worn. The dirty stuff was mostly kicked under the bed. A pile had been started in the chair next to the lone window. He wasn't sure whose clothing that was.

No, the only thing he was certain of was that as soon as his roommate surfaced from whatever it was he'd done all day, they'd need to do something about the mess. If it was bad enough for him to notice it, then it was past time for it to be dealt with.. or so his ma used to say. It was one of the few surviving sayings of hers, remembered only because his brother Davey - sorry, David - was old enough to retain it prior to her departure.

"Dammit, Jimmy, you've got better things to be doin' than reminiscing," he muttered. "Focus." He scanned the room and gave a definitive nod. At least half of the mess was his, and since he was there he might as well get started clearing it up. "Right. Clothes... something tells me they belong somewhere other than the floor."

Markus had a pretty good idea of what was going on when he reached the door of his cell, and for a moment, he considered backing up and high-tailing it the other way. To say that the room needed to be straightened up was an…understatement. And Markus certainly wasn’t blind. He saw the steadily growing chaos each morning and contributed to it, because at the end of the day, he was tired, and his clothes ended up on the floor. He just kept telling himself he would take care of it tomorrow.

Seven days later, he was still telling himself that. He couldn’t help but wonder if he had been something of a bad influence on his new roommate. Well, he supposed Jimmy wasn’t so much “new” by now, having been there for a week already. But the point was, Markus knew firsthand how influential one’s habits could be. While at school in Pretoria, his roommate’s compulsive cleanliness actually motivated Markus to make his bed each morning, and that alone was a startling accomplishment.

He himself had never been the most organized. His room back home was always an accident waiting to happen, and Markus was always sure to keep the door shut lest his mother catch sight of the madness. For a few weeks, he could get away with it, but there was always that moment, like now, when there really was no option but to take a deep breath and do something about it.

And that’s exactly what Markus did: He took a deep breath and knocked on the door to alert his roommate of his presence. “Good afternoon,” he said brightly, attempting to hide his lack of enthusiasm with a smile. “I suppose it’s finally caught up with us, hey?”

He was never sure where to start. One’s room could be daunting when it decided to turn against them. Markus also realized he didn’t know where to start with Jimmy. Sure, they had been rooming together for a week, but when they weren’t sleeping, they were both off doing their own thing and rarely crossed paths.

Picking up a pair of jeans, Markus began folding—well, maybe folding wasn’t the word, but he at least attempted to maneuver the article of clothing into a square of sorts. “So, Jimmy,” he spoke while he worked, “how has your week been so far?”

He'd been at it for a solid five minutes when Markus returned. In that time, he'd only managed to stare a hole in a pair of socks. Or perhaps the hole was already there. It was hard to tell these days.

"Yeah," he replied, still eying the hole-ridden sock doubtfully. "I'm worried if we leave it any longer they might get organized and launch an attack, smothering us in our sleep." Jimmy shook his head to clear the image from his mind, but not before he decided the commander would be the Holy Left Sock and he'd have an outrageous French accent despite having been made in China. He grabbed the sock and shoved it into the laundry bag he'd momentarily forgotten he was holding.

It was the first week in a compound designed for and filled with people that could do extraordinary things. Only a few days before arriving there he discovered he had reflexes that were reminiscent of Peter Parker's Spidey Senses. He stuffed another handful of clothing into the laundry bag and replied, "It's been a week for the record books, I dare say." He paused to sniff at a shirt to ascertain whether or not it was clean enough to forgo a washing. It wasn't. "How has yours been?"

Markus watched briefly as Jimmy stared down a sock, before realizing that he was delaying the inevitable. He just…Markus really did not want to do this. Not right now—not ever. He was reminded of his father’s classroom desk, how the piles of student papers stacked here and there and everywhere looked so very jumbled, except that his father knew where everything was. There was order in the disorder. Markus wanted to believe that perhaps this was a parallel case, because, like his father, he knew where everything was. However, Markus also knew plain disorder when he saw it, which meant he had no choice but to recognize the state of the room and the necessity of doing something about it.

Pulling open a dresser drawer, he placed two pair of folded jeans in it and turned toward a pile of shirts.

That pulled a laugh from Markus as he picked up a shirt, folding it in half. Laughter made the task at hand a little more bearable. “With my luck, that just might happen. Better not take our chances.”

Shirts were the absolute worst—something about the sleeves and the funny angles…Sighing, Markus squished it into a square and placed it in another drawer. He glanced over as Jimmy briefly commented on his week.

“A day for the record books?” he repeated with a grin. “That exciting?” When Jimmy asked him about his own week, Markus paused, going back over it in his mind. “It’s been a quiet week,” he finally replied, thinking aloud. “Of course, I go to the biblioteek a lot— or the library, rather—and I don’t go to a lot of the sessions, so that might be why.” A sudden thought crossed his mind, and he added, “Oh, and there has been talk about people going missing. Just gone...” Markus knew that if he dwelled on that thought too much, it would only bother him, so he brushed it aside with a casual: “But I don’t know much about it.”

Reaching under the bed, he smiled triumphantly when he found the missing mate to one of his socks. "Aha. Ek jou gevind." The discovery seemed to improve his mood. “Hey, Jimmy, where are you from?” he inquired openly, placing both socks in the laundry bag. “I’m terrible when it comes to accents, and here there are so many that it’s almost hard to tell them apart.”

As he stuffed what he hoped were dirty clothes into his laundry bag, he mentally ticked off the ranks of the items in question. The Holy Sock's second in command was a t-shirt with a mustard stain. The army was small enough that they were the only two generals necessary. But there was the cavalry to account for, comprised of the pants. Infantry was the rest of the socks. Archers were the remaining shirts (because he didn't think his clothing could whip together submachine guns from dental floss and coat hangers).

He paused as he stuffed what he hoped was the last of his dirty clothes into the bag. He'd really just been personifying his clothing. Was this the first step toward madness? Or was he really just that nuts and hadn't been sober enough to notice until now?

Jimmy shrugged. "Not the day, but definitely the week. I hadn't discovered my abilities this time last week. Those agents got to me pretty quick." He set the laundry bag down and started folding the items he'd left hanging on the horizontal bars of the bunk beds, making two neat stacks of clothes he'd then pack into the drawers all at once.

His ears perked up at this news. It was the first he heard of it, but then again, he hadn't really spoken to anyone in the few days he'd been there. He turned to ask Markus to elaborate, but the look on the bloke's face said it would be better if he didn't. There were other ways to figure it out, he supposed.

Jimmy laughed. "You've got that right. I can usually pick out country of origin so long as they aren't oriental, but as for regional? No chance I'll get it. For instance, I'm pretty sure you're South African, but beyond that I don't know." He paused long enough to scent test another shirt before folding it. "I, on the other hand, am Irish. So's the accent."

That got Markus thinking. Somewhat impartially, he replied, “Really?”

Sometimes, it was easy to forget the reason he was here, that he could do things other people could not do…that the other residents also had special abilities that required their containment. True, it was all for the best, for their own safety as well as the safety of others, but the lack of interaction with the outside world wore on Markus sometimes, and for all his optimistic reasoning, there were certain things that just didn’t make sense when it came to the Gardiner Initiative.

Such as those disappearances he had mentioned to Jimmy. And some of the sessions. It’s like they were training for a barnie, for a right fight or something.

The utter impossibility and absurdity of such a thought had Markus chuckling to himself as he pulled another clothing article from some dark recess. “I have to keep reminding myself that it’s a good thing we’re here. The guards take some getting used to, but they’re probably necessary.” He gave his laundry bag a shake so everything settled neatly into the bottom. “Some people are relatively harmless, and other people are…not.”

Taking a quick look around the room, Markus was pleased to see that they were making progress. Slowly, yes, but surely. It was moments like this that made him wonder why he didn’t just straighten up his room every day and save himself (and others) the hassle. But, like his mother said: Dit sou so maklik wees nie. That would be too easy.

When Markus brought up accents, he was surprised and glad to hear Jimmy laugh. There wasn’t too much laughter to be found in the unit, so it was a welcome sound. At least, it seemed to take some of the edge off.

Markus’s jaw just about dropped. “Yes…Yes, I am South African.” Sitting back, he propped his hands on his knees and smiled. “Usually people think I’m from Nieu-Seeland or Australie. Pretty impressive.” He shoved a pair of pants into the laundry bag. “You say you’re from Ierland? Do you miss it? And is it really like the movies? Everyone drinking and being merry all that?”

Jimmy nodded in agreement. "Some of the powers these people have are downright scary. I definitely don't want to go against them in a fight."

He folded another shirt and stacked it on top of the others. There was still the pile in the chair to sort through, and he suspected they were both to blame for that accumulation. He'd have liked to think that it was a habit he could get out of, but he knew better. At least he had the presence of mind to notice when things had gotten too cluttered.

Jimmy smiled. He could understand how people would get Aussie and New Zealand accents confused, but South African accents just did not sound the same. It was always a wonder to him that people couldn't figure that out. But then again, he was shit with anything east of India, so he was hardly one to criticize.

He laughed and shook his head. "Not quite. Drinking is a main component, but we're no more happier than anyone else. We just usually are too drunk to give a damn, that's all." He paused. Did he miss it? At home he was a drunk. His father hated him. His brother would "rather not associate" with him. Mom was dead. He had no discernable ties to that place save for length of time spent there. So, did he miss it? "No," he said aloud. "I don't really miss it." He grinned and switched to a more playful tone. "Not yet, at least. Another week in these digs and that might change." He set another shirt on the pile. "What about you? Missing South Africa yet?"

Jimmy’s remarks regarding powers had Markus nodding in agreement. “No, I wouldn’t want to go against some of them in a fight either—or any of them, for that matter. I’ve never been much of a fighter.” Shrugging, he attempted to close an overstuffed dresser drawer. “I don’t have the build or the temperament for it…Then again, I knew this fellow back in college—a little fellow—and he was all the time getting in fights. Won a lot of them too, surprisingly.”

Markus looked over at the rumpled sheets of his bed and sighed. His thoughts were torn between straightening them and diving into them for a nap. Begrudgingly, he chose the first option. Something about it always seemed wrong, though. Why fix a bed when it’s only going to be messed up again in a few hours?

Markus laughed and said, “Sounds a little like the folks down in Cape Town.” They were known for being almost two-faced: one person during the day and a completely different person once night fell. The change had little to do with the passage of time and a lot to do with the mass opening of bars right before sundown.

The statement was short and Markus almost missed it, mostly because he hadn’t really expected it. It was very easy for him to forget that not everyone had such close ties to their home, and home often implied family, so there were a variety of reasons for Jimmy’s response. Markus didn’t even have a chance to guess at such reasons as Jimmy’s disposition quickly shifted to one of joviality.

He was momentarily caught between a smile and a frown. The smile came easier. “Yes. I missed South Africa the first night here, honestly. It’s got its fair share of problems, but I’ve always been there.” Still smiling, Markus added, “Well, until now. Here, it almost feels like I’m back in school again, with all the classes and scheduled meals amd rules.” Moving several shirts to another drawer, he was finally able to close the other one. “I guess we would be in the special classes, since we’re not…” Normal? Somehow, it felt wrong to say, so he finished with “…like everybody else.” It was less disconcerting.

A question manifested in his thoughts, and Markus found himself asking, “What makes you special, Jimmy? What can you do?”

Jimmy nodded, both glad and a little depressed that he had some real-world experience with the subject. "It's the little ones you have to watch out for. You expect big blokes to fight. They're big. That's what they're there for, right? But some of the little ones, they have superiority issues on account of their stature. Like those little yappy dogs. So, they fight. Sometimes they win. Depends mostly on speed and how large their opponent is."

He took the stacks of clothing and stuffed them as well as he could into the remaining drawer space. He was glad that he never had much problem wearing slightly rumpled clothes, because these were sure to be such. The laundry bag beside the chest was still bursting. It wouldn't last another day. He made a mental note to take care of that.

Markus' remarks on Cape Town put another smile on his face. Perhaps he'd go on holiday there someday.

Jimmy paused, leaning casually against the vertical post supporting the bunk beds. He caught the tone Markus used and knew exactly where this was going... which, come to think of it, might have had something to do with his ability. The docs said it would evolve into something more than just excellent Wac-A-Mole skills, potentially into a form of precognition. The idea had scared him before, but if this was a manifestation of his abilities (IF being the keyword - he'd only had them for a week, after all), then he thought it might not be all bad.

"The doctors call it 'superhuman reflexes', but I call it my Spidey Sense. I sort of just know that something is about to happen, and I react practically at the same time it happens." He shrugged and gave a small smile. " Really fantastic in a fight, but I'm not much of a fighter. Not yet, anyway. I imagine that's going to change soon enough." He crossed his arms, his body mimicking his desire to shift the conversation away from himself and his 'power'. "What about you? What are you in here for?"