The Curious Case of the Fantastic Feline Figure (ON HOLD)

Chapter 2- Marlon and Libitina

The corridors down to the dorm rooms wasn't quite as pristine as the rest of the school. Nevertheless, they were comforting and schoollike. Comforting was exactly what Tom needed right now; he was about to meet his new roommates and he really didn't want to get off on a bad start. All he could do was hope that they would be like Gil.

"So, besides you, I'll have two roommates?" Tom asked, clarifying beforehand now they were close to the room.
"Mhm." Gil responded dismissively, before elaborating a bit more to ease Tom's nerves. "Marlon, Marlon's sort of a dude-bro, at least on the surface. Deep down, he cares about his friends a fair bit. Lib, she's... Well she's more withdrawn."
Tom nodded, before Gil turned to him with a slightly more serious expression.
"I'll warn you now, Tom. When you first see Libitina, you'll worry about her. Don't. She's fine, she's stable, and it's an unfortunate part of her power."
Though he didn't particularly understand what Tom meant by this, he nodded again as they reached the room's door. With a click of the doorknob and a soft push, he entered his new room.

The room was tidy enough, especially considering one of the occupants was supposedly a 'dude bro'. The occupant in question would be the kid sitting on the bed closest to the door watching something on his phone with headphones. The kid was slightly tanned, his hair a light brown, medium length and sticking up around the headphones. When he noticed Tom, he paused and threw the headphones off.
"Yo, Gilly, this a new roomie?" Marlon called over, just a bit too loudly for an indoor space.
"Indoor voice Marlon, but this is Tom, yes." Gil responded. "Why don't you introduce yourself?"
"Welp, I'm Marlon. I can make cars come to life, which is sick! Or it would be if I could stop them being alive too... or control them... or if they weren't sociopathic... Anyway, what about you?"
"I'm, well." Tom began. "I'm Tom, I'm new and I have a cat head. I don't know if I have any other powers or not."
"Sick." Marlon impersonally responded. "Anyway, over there's Lib."
Tom hadn't even noticed the girl in the corner, sitting on her own bed reading a book. She had fairly pale looking skin, medium grey eyes and long black hair that tumbled curlily over her face in some places but mostly sat loosely around her head. Even from this distance, Tom could spot something wrong with her wrist.
"Anyway, new kid." Marlon continued, a bit quieter. "Need us to explain anything?"
"Yeah, just one thing. How exactly does this school work?"

"So, the classes all have one room and one teacher." Gil began. "There's twenty to twenty five students to a class usually, six to seven dorm rooms per each class, and all of the students learn basic classes other than their hour in the gym. Maths, French, English, History, Geography, Art, the sort. When you aren't in class, you can be in the dorms, your classroom for extra work, the field or the hall. Most people eat either in the field or the hall. Food is provided for all students for no charge."
"Do students in different classes tend to interact much?" Tom asked, not sure how many names and powers he'd be able to remember. Gil shook his head.
"The hall and field are loosely sectioned." Tom's classmate explained. "Nobody really speaks to anyone out of their class."
"You'll have to deal with the League in our class unfortunately." Marlon added with a pinch of exasperation. Before Tom could even let show his confusion, Marlon began to explain what he was talking about.
"They're this bunch of popular kids in our class. Five of em, bunch of jocks and the sort. Kinda bullies, some unpleasant powers. Don't worry about them."
Throughout the whole conversation, Libitina had stayed on her bed, sitting in silence, reading. There was almost an underlying guilt in Tom for not including her, but from her demeanour, he picked up that she was probably completely fine with not talking.

'Still', Tom thought, 'I should make the effort.'
So, leaving Gil and Marlon to talk, he approached Libitina and sat on the bed across from her.
"So, what are you reading?" Tom began, not fully expecting Libitina to respond.
"It's called Mysteriodes Apeirodes." she responded quietly a few seconds later, not taking her eyes off of the page she was reading. "It's a love story about a cosmic being falling into lust with a violent psychic."
She looked up from her book, catching Tom's blank expression of confusion.
"It probably reads a lot better than I explained it. You're free to read it at some point, if you want to."
Tom wasn't looking at her face anymore. His eyes had returned to her wrists, both of which sported a recent looking red scar down their length.
"My power is that I have control over my blood." Libitina explained. "Which means I can also control it outside of my body. This is the easiest way to let that happen. It doesn't hurt, trust me. Oh, yeah, that's your bed, by the way."
Satisfied by this, Tom rolled over onto his bed and lay down, fairly tired. His long day catching up to him, he fell quickly into a deep sleep.