Logs:Skill in Means

Skill in Means
Dramatis Personae Charles, DJ, Hive, Polaris	2023-12-16 "Whoa."
Location <XAV> Forest Clearing - XS Grounds
Like many such semi-secluded spots on the grounds, it's hard to tell at first glance how much work the groundskeeper has put into its upkeep. Certainly the wide, flat path looks deliberate, even with a thick blanket of fallen leaves to further obscure the sturdy wooden beams that pave the way, and a great oak that had been struck down in a storm years ago was expertly converted into log benches, the remaining stump carefully leveled to serve for a low table. The elegant wrought iron firepit now radiating cozy warmth and the shockingly comfortable folding chairs beside it do not usually live out here, though. They must have been set up earlier by Charles's valet along with the spread of snacks (vegetarian and otherwise) and hot beverages (caffeinated and otherwise) on the wide stump nearby, though Ashok himself is nowhere to be seen. In fact, it's startling how quiet it is here given it is only somewhat out of the way and it's a reasonably pleasant Saturday for December. A gentle telepathic influence steers wandering students and staff alike down other paths through the wintering forest, and even the fleet of drones that patrol the school gives this gathering a respectable berth while still keeping vigilant watch. Charles is riding a rugged outdoor wheelchair with wide inflatable tires and shock absorbers, which he has parked next to the fire. He's wearing a blue-gray tweed suit and a heavier version of his usual tartan lap blanket tucked around himself along with a matching scarf he's rarely seen to wear. He's returning the insulated mug with still-steaming Earl Grey to the cupholder on his chair, and folding his hands primly in his lap. "I'm not really sure there's much more that I can do to prepare you, gentlemen." His psionic aura probably does not feel very different from its usual ambient warmth (when he isn't making the effort to suppress it) to those without the relevant ability to look deeper, but to Hive, at least, it's obvious he's carefully engineered it to mask the fretful cool current under it. "I am as ready as I will be." Hive probably should have a wheelchair of his own by now, no doubt it would be an immense asset to his general mobility. With none in sight it's taken him a good deal more effort than necessary to get himself out here, but now he is comfortably ensconced by the firepit in a nest of blankets, his own hands folded around the cup already in his lap. Though for once he's not (yet) shivering, the untethered roots of his mind tremble -- anxiety, for sure, but underneath it there's a bright curiosity. Some part of him feels a touch of guilt over it, existential ethical dilemmas and the many years of war accrued between them pulling -- but not quite hard enough to weigh down his excitement at the thought of this new exploration. "Hngh," is what he grumbles aloud, with a frown and a mental impression dropped heavy on the others of the school -- Westchester -- the Eastern Seaboard -- all amalgamated into an extension of him that snuffs itself out in one stuttering mental slip. "Guess we'll see." Polaris is in a purple-and-black softshell jacket and rugged black jeans, sturdy steel-shank boots and a crimson scarf whose tails she's tucked under the jacket's collar rather than letting them drape or wave dramatically free as she would usually do. She's more or less calm for the moment, and cautiously pleased with herself over it. She's started meditating--well, started again, because of course she got really into that while running with Greenpeace--and is still prone to bursts of amazement at how effective it is followed immediately by embarrassment over being so amazed in mindshot of a practicing Buddhist telepath. Two? Practicing Buddhist telepaths? She can't remember, glancing at Charles (<< you can't just eyeball how Buddhist someone is wtf >>) sipping his tea as placid as ever and presumably unbothered regardless of his current religious practice. << he's also white, so maybe he gets it >> Hive's hypothetical is not terribly reassuring, but perhaps it says more that she doesn't find it terribly concerning, either. Everyone present had a better understanding of the task at hand than she does (for now), and she trusts that someone out of the three of them would have put his foot down if this were insanely ill-advised. Best not to reflect too long on how many insanely ill-advised things they've all probably done. "I've got the relevant Matrix quote queued up and ready to go." She bounces up onto her toes and, suppressing the urge to just take off (the meditation only does so much), settles back down onto the balls of her feet, centered but not bracing. << The what? >> surfaces in DJ's thoughts briefly but does not actually make it as far as being voiced before it's tucked away alongside myriad snatches like "do or do not, there is no try" and "the cake is a lie" in a neglected mental file for weird rift media? that he quite clearly has zero intention of ever looking up. His own extensive experience with Hive's esoteric power has left him minimally concerned as well. Rather than unsettling, Hive's cranky catastrophizing imagery feels (achingly, comfortingly) familiar, memories skipping across years and dimensions to an entirely different/entirely similar telepath issuing dire mental warnings. "Honestly, I'm just surprised you haven't tried this before." Underneath he's some odd mingle of impressed and disdainful, a, << been doing life on hard mode >> butting up against << why on earth have you been doing life on hard mode >>. He is not fully slipping into << (no wonder your Dawson fully lost it) >>, but he is trying to picture what med school would have been like if he'd actually needed to ever study on top of raid practice and feeling terribly exhausted even considering the prospect. Though his posture is casual, standing half-draped against the back of Hive's chair, as he takes a sip of his cocoa he is bracing mentally. "I do not think this is insanely dangerous," Charles hedges, perhaps also not very reasurringly. Hive can feel him setting aside the thoughts of the actually insanely dangerous things he's been doing before they can fully surface. "Not even with his injuries now, which is the main reason I am here at all. But things like this just did not occur me when I was teaching him, else that teaching might have gone a sight faster." The only bracing he does is holding himself back from the reflex to build more mental shields as he normally might in preparation for potentially contending with another powerful telepath. Granted, at just three minds Hive would not be inherently stronger than Charles, and if they were shields would be of little use anyway. The trick here would be catching them in time -- before they became the school, or Westchester, or the entire Eastern Seaboard -- if they started to slip. He actually slips into a meditative state here, letting Polaris sense enough of it and its context in his life that he doesn't need to tell her he is a practicing Buddhist, and very practiced at that. "Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is," he supplies mildly, appending the silent context that this is also a quote from the eponymous film which DJ has correctly clocked as weird rift media. "You have to see it for yourself." << he doesn't know kung fu, >> Hive is thinking, and the fact that this reflexive snark does not make it to his lips comes from a combination of wait, does he? uncertainty twinned with a grateful memory of Jax decade or more younger, gently explaining that more of the team would probably come to Game Night if geeks were not so deeply annoying. Maybe he should be meditating, too, but Practicing Buddhism notwithstanding his mind is edged with anxiety. It's certainly not the only thing affecting his mental touch -- the brain damage can take most of the credit there. His mental touch feels shakier than it ought to, thornier than it ought to, shoving sharp and fumbling shoots roughly out -- against DJ, into DJ, and the first heady moment of connection feels grounding and destabilizing all at once. It's a rightness shivering euphoric along the many pathways of his mind that have been straining for months without relief. But it's a hunger, too, rapacious and clawing for more as it reaches -- for Polaris, yes, but not just for Polaris because now at the edges of his abruptly ballooning psionic senses there's Ashok, not fretting but habitually lingering just in case Charles needs assistance way the way out here and then blipping bright into view, a pair of sophomores out for a ride one of the less-used horse trails heading at a comfortable trot back towards the stables and then the mansion itself, now-reachable and blazing fierce with so many minds to eagerly lose themselves in. "Is this just a telepath thing?" Polaris glances from Charles back to Hive, "this" clearly picked out against the still-serene background of her mind as "saying alarming things in reassurance". She doesn't really get much farther down that line of thinking, swept up into Hive before she was quite expecting it just yet. It's possible that DJ does in fact see The Matrix for himself in the moment she becomes them, given it was at the front of her mind, but it's very rapidly not at the front of their mind(s) any longer as they burgeon outward. What does survive her assimilation is the hard-won mindfulness still trying to ground them in their own body, only to find, perplexed and disoriented, that they have not one but three. Wait no, four. Six-- "It's a Buddhist thing," fires back much drier than DJ's usual tone. He is slipping into this sudden shift of personhood steadily enough, the fierce surge of his own desire washed back down with a slow sip of cocoa and a (mindful!) breath. At first he is reaching for the expanding boundaries of them to pull back, braced for Hive's hunger -- -- but not for the other that is waking, disoriented and frantic within them. From acute alienation to this abrupt deluge of selves and even for their mind the emotional whiplash is too much too fast. There's a distant warning bell is clanging here, telling them they were supposed to be careful, supposed to be anchoring, but it's soon drowned out in the more pressing panicked << don't leave me alone again >> << (please) >>. And now that reach pushes instead of pulling, with DJ's fluency but Dawson's pain, grasping desperately for what scraps of home might be left here. From where he's draped across the thick pale bough of an ancient beech overlooking the lake, Ashok's well-trained if altogether mundane psionic defenses go full up at the pressure of the ravenous mind shoving against his -- -- and do absolutely nothing to stop its intrusion. Such is life at Xavier's. They heave a very small sigh, and turn their attention back to the well-loved pages of The Divān of Hafez propped open in a fork of the trunk. The Professor will sort it out, probably. Charles watches it happen serenely in real time and knows what to do about it, but can't quite manage it before Hive is -- rather a lot more quickly than he expects -- too strong to check. He's reaching for Dawson before he realizes what he's doing, but once he does there's no panic, no pulling back. In the forest glade, his eyes have slid shut and his hands turned gently palm-up. He takes a slightly deeper breath in, as if he means to hold it as he submerges himself in Hive, but then he breathes out -- -- and the light in the forest feels warm even with the crisp chill of the winter solstice coming on fast. (Ryan's going to be crooning << ...winter is patient and quiet and strong... >> in their heads for the next little while) There's a path laid with a flash of yellow in the canopy that one boy is pointing out to another, with picnics by the lake and field trips to the Met and board games in the rec room through filters too bright and frenetic or too dim and still to bear. But Charles is still here. << (we are home) (this is home) (you are home) >> Somewhere within and amongst and between them, Ashok has leafed idly ahead to where a much younger Charles had underlined “I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being”. Just be here, now, Charles doesn't exactly say. You're not alone. Hive is so-helpfully leaning into Polaris's attempts at grounding -- now the outflung branching of their bodies is not disorienting but whole, comforting and comfortable. He is settling in -- to DJ's desire and Dawson's pain, yes, and also to --- << (home) >> << (we are home) >> Not the familiar grounds they spent so much time rambling and not the elegant halls of the mansion but here. Polaris's intensity and Charles's steadfastness. Home, built fierce and fragile by those that love them enough to weather this deluge without shrinking away. Some of the desperation ebbs within them and they're pulling back, furling roots back into a tighter-woven trunk, smaller now but stronger where they settle firmly back into the them that is just here, in this clearing. Hive is lifting his hand (steadier, with some of the processing now outsourced) to rub his knuckles hard against his eye. "Hngh," he says again. Though she has but a fraction of the others' experience navigating abstruse, complicated states of being, Polaris responds well to being oriented. While she's comfortable enough, for as long as it lasts, with how they have spread across the grounds, it's still easier when they are back down to just the bodies she can physically see. Her fingers flex one after the other--yep, that's the right body, good job--and her eyes are very wide when they finally manage to focus again, on DJ. She feels a bit absurd looking for Dawson there, knows at least intuitively that it made just as much sense to look for him in Hive, but she's not embarrassed. She knew he would be here, knew it would be hard, for him no less than them, and yet. And yet. "Welcome home," she offers, a little faintly, though the smile beneath the words is sharp and strong. Some unthinking part of both Dawsons has been bracing for a fight, readying for reprimand or some psionic leashing. The warmth that meets them instead puts a hitch in the violent outward lashing -- only brief, but that's all it takes. There's a flush in their cheeks as their fractured selves are reeled back in. Their fingers flex in time with Polaris's (it comes with a twinge of dissonance at the curl of their right hand) and when they manage a smile in return it's a little crooked, a little wan. "So, uh --" They're lifting a hand to rub at the back of their neck, and when Dawson thinks, << Magnets, how do they work? >> it meets an immediately reassuring: << oh! (that lesson) >> << (is what we're here for.) >> As they recede, the range of their psionic awareness does not shrink in quite the same way it normally does -- but then, that feels entirely natural, now. Charles's power, as strong in his singularity as in their multitudes, can still reach the mansion with ease, where it riffles gently over the minds they've just swept up and then released, checking for damage. Charles himself opens his eyes at a slight delay and plucks up his tea again. << (not the only reason) (but yes) >> His memories of other lessons with another magnetokinetic -- lessons for them both, really -- lend this one an aching familiarity, even if Polaris's bright senses are not so weighed down by a lifetime of war and deprivation, even if her zeal to defend is more leavened with wonder and curiosity. Even if DJ has more to teach her than focus and creativity and joy. They're putting those memories away, but there are no walls in the labyrinth that's written now in the intricate braiding of roots that form their trunk and they tumble fluidly -- -- into training with a different Polaris on the grounds of a different Xavier's School, and their collective mind is racked with grief and joy both as they let themselves sink fully in to a world of memories they've been straining for years not to simply drown in. Maybe it's strange that her grim determination looks more like her father's, but maybe that's just Hive deftly melding the necessary skills into her. Her focus here is sharpened by the backdrop of growing tyranny but that does not drown out the sense of exploration, of fun, that flows -- -- through all of them here, memories of her deft magnetic touch layering neatly onto Polaris's innate senses. The remapping that cements this facility into place is borrowed, too, a careful reorganizing of the complicated mental partitions through Hive's network so that even when his roots pull back again -- --the intricate play of electromagnetic field lines still connecting them speaks to Polaris with a clarity that she'd never known, with a strength she'd never wielded, in ways she'd never even considered. Except she had, in another life whose memories are already fading like a dream, though the skills they taught feel no less visceral. No less hers. She turns, raises her hand, and looks past its splayed fingers at the neat pyramid of steel beams at the other end of the clearing. It's too much for her power to lift, or very nearly so. She knows how to coax the Earth into lifting it for her, but knowing is one thing, actually doing it is-- --the immense gradient of the geomagnetic field answering the touch of her power, suddenly thrumming around and through her in all its unfathomable might. Her hand turns, drawn along by the graceful twist of the Earth's field that scoops up the entire heap of steel like a handful of jacks. Polaris stares wide-eyed, draws a fluttering breath, and lets it back out with a soft and wholly unironic,"Whoa."