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The Onsen - Tuesday afternoon.

It had been a helluva weekend and then Monday had happened. Kaidan needed to relax so he grabbed a towel and his swimsuit and headed to the Onsen for some quality soak time.

It was quiet when he got there. He had the pool to himself for the moment so he slipped in and leaned back against the rocks to soak. A small towel, one of the ones supplied, was dipped in the warm water, folded and dropped across his upper face.

His mind was still kind of processing but one of the things causing him some stress was a lack of check-in.

Laying there in the water, he sent out a tentative mental knock. "Jono? You up?"

[Onsen is Open!]

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//... More or less,// Jono replied, after a few moments' pause, glancing out the window into the backyard. //Yes, mate, I'm up.//

"How are you doing? You ok?" Hi, the guy who'd performed completely un-sterile emergency port opening checking in.

//Appear to still be in one piece,// Jono reported. //Might've appropriated one of the guest toothbrush packages for myself yesterday. Might've brushed my teeth far longer than was strictly necessary just because I could.//

'Having a face' was still a novelty, no matter how many times it happened.

"Any dysphoria?" He smiled a little about the toothbrush thing. That wasn't something he'd thought about, though he figured Jono'd be eating and drinking everything in sight and probably attacking Hannibal with kisses and stuff.

It's what he would have done, if it had been him.

//Ish. Takes some getting used to, going from half to whole again, every time.// He reached down to scratch Joni behind the ear as she brushed up against his leg. //I'm a hell of a lot more me right now than I have been, though.//

He didn't have blue carp lips. That was nice.

"Yeah, kind of figured. It's why I was checking in. Sorry about adding a whole new layer of hell to your Sunday, buddy."

//Beats Jack picking teeth and bits of rib out of her clothes, mate,// Jon pointed out. //It was ugly, didn't help I had no bloody clue what was happening, but overall that went far better'n it could've. And now I get to spend some time taking a face for granted right up until I don't, again.//

Because... honestly. He'd danced this dance so many times now, he was really sort of impressed the impromptu patch-job had lasted this long.

"To be crudely frank, she's kind of used to that," Kaidan grimaced, "but she'd have felt really bad if that had happened to you. Usually when she detonates people, it's on purpose and not from, y'know, trying to help them with a headache."

He paused a moment. "How much do you figure that was your body forgetting it shouldn't do that as opposed to the medigel kicking something off? Because if it's something medigel can do for you.."

They'd be able to fix it again, if Jono wanted to.

//Hell if I know,// Jono admitted, after a few moments of thought. //My body's rebuilt itself from ash and spite before. Bit of focus, I've been able to regenerate a few cells on my own, but I've never made any appreciable difference consciously, and unconsciously, it's only ever really kicked in when there's not enough left of me to think about it too hard. This... this is entirely new.//

It was an interesting situation, to be sure.

//Hell, for all I know, at least part of that was just because there wasn't enough of me left in my own head to act as a roadblock. I'm my own worst enemy, even at th'best of times.//

"You were pretty freaked out," Kaidan admitted, "It's the first time I've seen your flames burn anything at all."

And they'd been turning his internal organs to ash while he watched. Nightmare fuel.

//Honestly, mate... you're lucky they weren't burning you, too. I've leveled entire dormitory buildings with that fire in a panic before.//

Over a girl kissing him. Not his finest hour.

//It's an old problem. Something that ceased to be a problem once I understood them better. But I spent a good chunk of my life terrified that they'd burn everything away eventually, until I was just flame and bone.//

"I can barrier against fire if I have to," Kaidan said, "Or against a building falling on me. They weren't burning you at first, but it seemed like the more the pressure built the more you expected them to and.. well."

Ashes.

//Welcome to the joy of psionic powers,// Jono replied, wryly. //More I live with 'em, more I have to accept that it's literally all in my head. And given that, I'm still finding myself surprised at what it turns out I'm capable of, once I get over myself.//

A pause.

//Or the damage I'm capable of doing to myself and others, if I can't.//

Kaidan snorted physically and mentally. "Tell me about it. I'm the freak biotic who keeps breaking the mold."

//I would absolutely be leaning in to bump my fist against yours if we were sitting next to one another right now, you know,// Jono informed him.

Because... really.

Really, now.

//Nothing quite like defying expectation in new and exciting,// or horrifying, //ways.//

Kaidan chuckled. "Hooray for being the pathfinders. Better us than some other poor slob who wouldn't be able to handle it."

//Mate, I'm an athiest, and I still pray every day to whatever god'll listen that nobody else ever has to get what I've got.//

There was a reason he'd balked so hard and panicked his way halfway to oblivion when Raven had asked him to... essentially be a sperm donor to a child he didn't even have to be aware of... back when. No child deserved these disaster genetics.

"Does it travel in genetic sequence?" Kaidan wondered, "Biotics.. we don't try to have kids anymore."

Not since the breeding programs had shown there was no chance of producing offspring that survived more than a couple of months. The genetic damage was just too severe.

Jonothon sent Kaidan a soft note of sympathy.

Kids were complicated. Especially when history demonstrated their chances were so much worse than bleak.

//There's no telling what a mutant child will inherit from their parents. My family thought I was a flatscan until I blew my bloody face off. My great-granddad was just a firebreather, deemed lesser with a diluted power. I've got an ancestor who... well.//

There were a lot of things one could say about Apocalypse.

//My family tree isn't the typical mutant experience. The typical mutant experience is a bunch of first-generation children whose parents throw them aside like unwanted rubbish. I'm the lucky bastard whose family tree can be traced back a few thousand years, and none of it's great news. If I don't pass this nightmare on, I'll be passing on the family line itself, and that's worse.//

Kaidan grimaced. "Not of the good, no. The typical mutant experience sounds mostly similar to ours. Not so much anymore because things are a little better now, little more understood. My experience is odd because my parents kept me. Jack's.. is more typical. We were meant to be weapons and we were marked as dangerous the minute they knew there were human biotics being born."

//Meant to be weapons,// Jono echoed, vaguely. //Yeah, I've got a touch of experience there, myself.//

The one disadvantage to having a mouth again was that he was all too aware of just how badly certain memories still made him want to puke.

//And the extermination programs. Registration. Concentration camps. Vigilante cowards with large weapons who prefer picking off kids. You name it.//

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The Onsen - Tuesday afternoon.

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