Where Eli ended up daily in his life was a mystery solved moment by moment. As his mutation allowed him to travel relatively faster (and significantly more undiscovered) than most people, Eli could really end up anywhere with enough time and dedication.

But, today Eli found himself standing at an endcap today, leaning over to bend himself almost in half so he could see the books sitting on the lower shelves in the "Best of the Month" and "New Arrivals" section of the store. If he'd been paying more attention to his surroundings, Eli would have probably realized that he was blocking a large portion of the aisle with his bony ass, but this was Eli, and he was much more concerned with the books in front of him.

Titles like "Wild Thing", with it's broken glass-esque red and white patterning, and "Fairy Tale Interrupted", which won Eli's award for interesting name of the day, caught the mutant's attention, but it was the book entitled "Da Vinci's Ghost" that captured Eli and disappointed him the most. It was then that Eli decided to go browse another, more Spook-suitable, section of the store.

So, he wandered over into fiction, hands in the pockets of his Batman-themed hoodie, looking like a six foot six child wearing a pair of sunglasses for all intents and purposes. The illusion of man-child would have been made even more perfect had Eli been whistling to himself, but he was instead singing along to some Broadway music in his head, giving the fact that attention need not be drawn to himself any more than possible.

And even though he was essentially a 5 year-old in a 25 year-old's body, Eli had an intense love for reading books, including books outside of his normal compilations of myths and legends. Surprising as it was, fantasy wasn't the only genre Eli read. He had taken a liking to science fiction, provided that it didn't have a huge, obvious basis in physics or chemistry or biology or at least provided enough information for one of the other Xers to be able to explain it to Eli later on.

So, it was no surprise when Eli amassed a nice little stack of books to sort through later and figure out what he wanted to buy. It really didn't help that the sci-fi section was right next to the fantasy section, and Eli had no self-control. With a happy little grin on his face, Eli ambled around the fiction section a while longer, until he spotted the art and graphics sections and made a contented noise in his throat.

That faded almost instantly as Eli started towards his goal, rounding a corner of the bookshelves and nearly running into someone. "Oh, mierda, I'm sorry." Eli blurted out, quickly. He may not have been successful at observing his surroundings, but if the goal of the day had been to throw books all over the floor and annoy a random stranger, I would have to say that Eli deserved an award. At least a little ribbon.

It was a busy, busy life being the protégée or whatever role she’d walked into of Emma Frost, that was for sure. Or maybe that was just because Carmilla had gotten so used to marching to the beat of her own little drum that having to really make her life work to someone else’s schedule really didn’t work. Well. She was going to make it work, because she was really enjoying this little deal and wasn’t about to risk messing it up over anything as minor as getting used to playing by someone else’s rules again. It was much too nice a deal for that. And it wasn’t like she was chained to Ms Frost all day every day. She still had some time to go, do her own things, wander around New York and spend the new money she had on things.

Not that she did, much. She’d got a new wardrobe, all supervised by Ms Frost herself, mostly in shades of green – fine by her. She liked green. Maybe not all the time, but then she hadn’t quite realised just how many shades of the colour there were. Well, in theory, yes. Because obviously they went all from particularly light, pale shades through to almost-black, with as many in between as people liked, but she hadn’t really thought that they’d be able to get clothes in all of them. But then she’d never gone shopping with Emma Frost before, and clearly the rules were very different there. So she had her new clothes. No diamond slippers, but hey – she’d work with what she’d got. Tops, skirts, dresses, pants… From no choice, Carm suddenly had all the choice in the world. Well, she wasn’t complaining, even if it was taking her a good deal longer than usual to get dressed in the morning.

Plus she had makeup. That was a novelty too.

She also still had a poisonous, evil arm wrapped in expensive gloves so not everything was new.

She was also done with things Frosty today, and that was an expression she very carefully waited until she was halfway across the city to even think. Telepaths. Not that anything had happened to make her think the older mutant would react badly, and she was pretty sure that she expected some sarcasm in Carm’s head, but there was dumb and there was asking for trouble. She was trying to avoid either, actually.

Anyway, her time was now her own for a while and, given her new options, Carm had found herself in a book store, somewhere she hadn’t been for… Well. Ages. Living on the streets didn’t exactly give her much time to read, anywhere to keep them or any money to get them with, but now she felt like actually getting a halfway decent book to read. Maybe something useful about business or the like as well, to go with Ms Frost’s lessons. Which weren’t lessons as she’d always thought of them but potato, potato…

So, her first stop had been the non-fiction section, where she soon discovered she was in way over her head. Ok, that plan was out, at least until she’d got a better idea of what, if anything, she needed. On the way out, Carm did find a cool looking book on Norse mythology that she kept, and then it was off to the fiction. General fiction or crime – something a little edgier – she was a few years past ‘princesses’ and ‘true love’ stories, thank you. She paused at a corner, starting to look over the titles with the air of someone briefly at peace with the world around them, which was probably a bad sign to start with.

In short, she should have been paying more attention to things around her. As it was, Carm was only just able to jump back in time to avoid either getting run over by the huge moron who’d just run around the corner at her, or, worse, accidentally letting him touch her Stinger. It probably would have been fine, but she wasn’t about to risk ‘probably’. Books fell all around them, Carm growling angrily as her book was lost in the pile of his on top of him managing to draw the attention of everyone in the immediate vicinity. She turned a narrow-eyed glare on him as he apologised, not in the mood at all to just accept it with a smile. Oh no.

Of course, there was something of a mismatch between the towering man in the hoodie and Carm, five foot six at best and wiry in her new and expensive clothing. But she hadn’t ever let that worry her before. ”Why don’t you try looking where you’re going next time, idiot?” She snapped, bristling. ”Instead of trying to kill people. Maybe take off those stupid sunglasses when you’re inside, huh?” Her voice was taut with anger, as if she was resisting the urge to rip the aforementioned glasses off his face herself.

Eli, essentially, was a moron. No, no, don't get all fussy with me about that. He is. You cannot argue with his creator. He's entertaining and hilarious and talks to much and is totally crazy in a good way and has a good heart, but, after all that, he's a moron. A complete idiot. A dunce.

He should have recognized the ire and razor-edge of the words the girl threw at him, but he didn't. Eli was also sorry that he'd run into the girl, but hey, accidents were accidents, and he'd already moved on from the encounter after tossing a quick "lo siento" into the air and trying to pick up all his books. One for the pile, two for the pile, another for the pile, one more for the pile, and eventually Eli had gathered all of his potential purchases, filled to the brim with stories of far, far away or the final frontier or simply of life. The latter was less likely considering that Eli had been browsing the science fiction and fantasy section and considering that Eli didn't particularly want to read about other people's normal, everyday lives.

He would much rather live his strange life, thank you very much.

That being said, the six-six mutant looked down upon the girl whose day he temporarily thrown (accidentally tackled, maybe?) into chaos. Why, hola, green hair. She was pretty, in a way that even Eli could be talked into noticing by his senses, especially since Eli tended to think of people as "cute" at best and simply "normal" at worst. However, being pretty wasn't what caught his attention - the green hair did.

Eli caught himself before making the generally socially-unacceptable "oohing" noise he tended to make when excited by something, and instead charged headlong into the chattering. "I like your hair. Your hair color. Though I suppose your hair is nice as well, but en todo caso, they green is pretty awesome. Do you dye it?" Eli didn't have much experience with hair-coloring stuff, since his own hair was black and he really didn't think he could rock anything but black. BUT, he knew about colors and paint and stuff. To get that sort of dark green, it would have to be natural or she would have had to dye her hair a lighter color and then add green to get it to stick. You can't dye black/dark brown anything lighter than that.

He blinked a little, remembering that the girl had said something and that he probably should respond to it. "Oh, the sunglasses?" Eli pointed up to the accessory as he spoke, eyebrows raising to accent the question behind the frames. "I could take them off, yeah, sure." Shrugging was his response then, since Eli was evidently incapable of recognizing ire, and then the taller mutant actually did take off of his sunglasses, revealing his black eyes underneath. He grinned, and then spoke again. "I wasn't trying to kill you, though. Just ran into you. Mala mia."

Carmilla Black didn’t really wear heels. Why not? Mostly because, up til recently, new shoes hadn’t been something she’d worried about except when she really needed them. These days, other than formal things, they just weren’t her style and Carmilla preferred things she could move in without risking breaking an ankle. Heels, whatever they did for her legs, were out most of the time because running in them was more than risking a broken ankle. In her opinion, it was practically asking for it. On the other hand, it did leave her at a total disadvantage when talking to guys like this one, who towered over her. Ok, so no shoes she could stand up in would fix that height difference, but maybe it would have helped. As it was, she was going to just have to deal with it. Not that it was unusual, because the green haired girl wasn’t that tall, but she wasn’t used to people towering over her quite this much.

He was big. Very big. But, for better or worse, she wasn’t going to be intimidated. He could loom over her all he liked. This girl wasn’t going to be scared of some six feet whatever tall skeleton. Not when she could kill him at a touch. Not that she would. But maybe that was the problem. Carmilla walked around knowing that just by accidentally touching somebody and losing control at the wrong time she could put somebody… anybody in the ground. With her little finger, basically. She didn’t want that to deal with, and definitely not because some idiot couldn’t be bothered to look where he was going. And fear, much as she wasn’t going to admit it, wasn’t doing anything to lessen the anger bubbling like a witch’s brew in the pit of Carmilla’s belly.

The way he just seemed to brush it all off like it was just nothing didn’t help either. Yes, maybe she ought to have kept a bit more of an eye out for things like this, but it was his fault mostly.

But just ditching the fact he’d run into her, near run her over like a stray cat and seemed about as sorry about it as she and Terry’d been about breaking into the New Year’s Ball… he was being nice to her about her hair colour? Who was this guy?

”No,” she said waspishly, ”I don’t dye it.” She’d never dyed her hair. Never. Not even when maybe it’d made her life easier to dye it brown or black or something. Hey, she knew nothing about mutant DNA really, so would dye even work on her? Why waste her money on something she didn’t want and definitely didn’t need? No reason. No reason at all.

Carmilla was increasingly starting to wonder if this guy wasn’t all there in the head. He was about as out of it as anybody she’d ever met – including the stoned kids and the old guy out of his gourd on opium. ”Yeah, the sunglasses, bones for brains,” The green haired girl sneered, increasingly irritable, only to flinch for a moment as he did finally remove ‘em to show pitch black eyes underneath – and given the audience their little confrontation was netting, she almost certainly wasn’t the only one. But only for a moment, before she took a deep breath, fists clenched at her sides. ”Fine. Great. Whatever. I’m just wasting my time talking to you, aren’t I?” It was an utterly rhetorical question, but hey, why should he pay any more attention to that than he’d paid to anything else?

Blinking, Eli noted the tone of... something in the girl's voice, but the mutant was not known for his intelligence and ability to interpret things outside of his standard of life (read: extreme happiness). He was more or less known for being absolutely crazy and needing someone to pull him back to earth. Unfortunately, that someone was either absent or nonexistent, so Eli took life in stride and proceeded to be a lovable idiot.

"Oh, you don't dye it?" Complete ignorance for the irritation in the girl's voice led him to continue onwards, assaulting a topic best left quiet for most people, especially those endowed with unusual gifts. "So it's naturally green? Que es interesante." He proceeded to stare blankly at the girl's hair, mental gears grinding through their normal paces and landing smack dab in the middle of no man's land when a thought exploded. "I don't know much about sciencey things, but I'm guessing that makes you a mutant?"

Eli was honestly curious, since in his experience, you didn't run into mutants in average, everyday places like the bookstore. Well, everyone else did, if you considered Eli that mutant, but for Eli it rarely happened. He was content to have his mutant-interactions at the Institute, and Eli spent no time at all actually seeking out mutants outside of their gates. Why should he? He liked humans in general. Olvide eso. Eli liked people in general, and he saw no difference between humans and mutants.

For a girl he'd assumed was a human at first sight to suddenly become a mutant in his eyes? Now, Eli was curious. And you know what they say, curiosity killed the cat. Let's just hope that the scorpion doesn't kill the cat right now.

The lack of reaction from the girl about his eyes was something Eli noticed, if only because he'd been staring at her at the time, but for once in his life (or more likely, for once today) Eli actually did catch on to the sarcasm in the girl's voice. "Oh, uh." Now Eli was in a pickle. He'd caught the sarcasm, and it changed his perception of the entire situation. Was he really supposed to answer that question? Oh, but the girl wouldn't have asked it if he wasn't supposed to answer it, right? Deidades, why were people so confusing. Finally, Eli ventured a response, but it was less talkative and more unsure than his last statements. "I don't know?"

How was he supposed to know? Eli viewed the world as interesting, such that there were no interactions that were unworthy. Everything had its value, and Eli realized that most people did not accept this train of thought. It didn't matter to him, though, because he was who he was, and it wasn't his fault that people didn't understand him. Well, mostly.

Lovable idiot might be his default state, but the young woman who was the subject of his current company was definitely only seeing one part of that. And it wasn’t the lovable part either. She thought he was just an idiot.

Not helped, naturally, by the fact he’d just ventured right into the topic of mutation like he might talk about the weather. One of the board had told her they used to leave kids like this outside for the wolves, back in the ancient times. Frankly, today was making her reconsider that being a mean policy. ”Yes, it’s naturally green. Yes, that’s interesting. And yes, my hair is green, which makes me a mutant. The fact that I’ve got to tell you that normal people don’t have green hair makes you an idiot.” Yes, death by exposure at birth was looking like a good option, because then he wouldn’t be here to annoy her.

Technically, Carmilla had flinched at first at the sight of his eyes, all black without any relief, but she was angry and knowledgeable enough these days that her reaction wasn’t to scream and run – not that she’d ever been given to that – but to think ‘mutant’ and move on. This was particularly true when the subject of her own mutation had come up just moments before and he’d been surprisingly nonchalant about it. So, black eyes and weird whatever else equalled mutation, not demonic monster from the pits of whatever set of children’s stories was popular this week. Frankly, she’d have picked mutant anyway, although ‘escaped mental patient’ was also a popular choice. Yes, working for Emma Frost had done wonders for sharpening Carmilla’s biting wit.

It didn’t help his case that he effectively flinched verbally, showing her that he was uncertain in the face of her anger. Of course, there probably wasn’t anything he could have said that would help, but showing weakness in the face of the girl learning from Emma Frost was about as wise as swimming up to a shark while bleeding. True, Carmilla didn’t literally bite, but words could still hurt. It might have been alright, despite the heavily sarcastic way in which she rolled her eyes skyward at his confusion, but then, in the great race to decide between answering or not answering, he managed to pick the wrong option.

”You. Don’t. Know.” The green haired girl repeated coldly. ”You. Don’t. Know. I’m just going to go right back to my original thought – idiot. Do you have any brains in there or are your eyes black because there’s just empty space back there?” Caught up in the joy of ranting, Carmilla somewhat missed the fact that this guy apparently didn’t get rhetorical questions. Well, that was fine. ”Well, luckily for both of us, I know. And yes, I’m wasting my time here.” Limited patience thoroughly exhausted, she went to shove past him, on his left because accidental poisoning (even if the police couldn’t find any proof it was her) was still a bad plan. ”Just get out of my way.”

Eli pulled a face at the girl as she made it excessively clear to him that he was an idiot. Of course, this made absolutely no difference to Spook, who was simply here for the kicks and thought nothing of people being rude to him. "Regular people could have green hair. They could dye it or their one mutation could be green hair. That's not a real mutation, I would think, and people would probably be okay with it."

Humans were surprisingly lenient when it came to mutations that seemed human enough. Eli had just gotten the short end of the stick, with skeleton tattoos and the like. Hell, it was standard practice in the horror business to give Eli's style eyes to creatures they wanted to make look demonic or alien or insect-like. But green hair or other standard cosmetic mutations that weren't already linked to fear or discomfort were okay in society, especially since there were humans who tried to make themselves look different already.

Tattoos and piercings and all that jazz. There was even a procedure to give people elf ears, which Eli nonchalantly looked into and decided there was far too much blood involved for his comfort. I mean, if you even check out Zombie Boy or whatever his name is - he was accepted in modern day society and he was just a human tattooed up to look like a zombie. (Not joking.) Surely people whose differences were natural and semi-normal could be accepted, right?

Hah, maybe.

But this girl was not one to suffer fools, and so it was with a little confusion Eli held his books and moved aside to let her leave. The insults were nothing. Idiot was mild compared to things he'd been called before, and there was nothing short of actually physically hurting Eli that would incite any kind of emotion other than a practiced apathy and a touch of confusion. So, with a new enemy disappearing into the distance - well, a stranger who didn't really like Eli, at least - he simply shrugged and went back to his books. A few minutes later everything had calmed down once again, and though one or two of the bookstore patrons were still leery of the tall mutant, that was back to normal. Everything was normal.