Logs:Psychic Visions

Psychic Visions
Dramatis Personae DJ, Hive, Polaris
In Absentia Erik, Jax, Charles, Bryce, Dallen	2023-12-11 "I would say I can't imagine what it's like to survive a genocide, but --"
Location <XAV> Phoenix Room - Xs Third Floor
The guest rooms at Xavier's are spacious and comfortable, well-furnished suites readied for visitors. This one is among the smallest of the available suites, consisting of a small sitting room, a bedroom with queen-sized bed, and a large bathroom. The windows look out over the side yard, with its playground and playing fields. The decor in here heavily favours rich reds and dark woods, and the artwork that graces the wall leans fiery in theme. There is a fireplace, here, stocked with wood in the niche beside it; on the mantlepiece above it, small glassworked figurines of birds in reds and oranges and yellow look half on fire themselves, when they catch the light. The coffee table has been cleared off tonight to make way for a congeries of game pieces, from decks of cards of distinct size and design to colorfully printed cardboard tokens. Polaris is in the process of setting up a folding cardboard screen printed to look like the interior of an elegant but eerie mansion, carefully perching cardboard ravens along the top. Though she did not come straight from work, she is still redolent of coffee in her work clothes--a black babydoll shirt with two overlapping horseshoe magnets forming the shape of a heart over a black-and-purple striped long sleeve shirt and black jeans. She wiggles the last piece into place and picks up the instruction booklet, her gaze bouncing critically from it back to the game laid out before her as she checks for what she might have missed. Ah, yes. She pulls a stack of color-coded portrait cards from the box and lays them out in a neat row, considering which she would like to pick as she does so. Thinking about the other players, not yet present, bring a warm flush of pleasure and anticipation. She forgets to pick a Psychic and goes back to the instruction book instead, flipping to the setup instructions for the Ghost and setting it behind the screen in readiness. << I hope I'm gonna be the ghost. >> Hive's headache-inducing voice precedes him, together with some amused skepticism in the form of a mental image of Polaris attempting to deliver Secret Clues from behind the obscuring screen. Any thought of DJ being the ghost is simply not given any room in his mental space. He's at the door soon after, pushing it open with a shoulder. Despite the short trip up from the kitchen he has packed his foods carefully into a cooler bag slung over the crook of his arm. He sets the bag down on a chair, starting to unload the tupperwares inside onto an end table -- larb chicken lettuce wraps, small spicy corn cakes, tangy fried eggplant, two thermoses. He frowns at the spread afterwards, fingers grasping absently at the air like they can pluck from it the memory of what he's forgotten. Maybe it works, too, because a moment later he's cursing quietly under his breath: "... you don't need utensils, do you." He doesn't seem like he's planning to go back down and fetch any; he just drops into a seat at the table instead. << Obviously you're gonna be the ghost. >> Polaris's attention flicks back to the portrait cards, starting to pick out a Psychic before she's shortly distracted again by Hive's arrival. She considers the spread, tipping her head from side to side. "I don't need utensils, but I think it's probably neater for game-playing purposes if we have them. DJ can grab them." She swipes out a message on her phone, then another: (Polaris --> DJ): Hey, grab some utensils for dinner? (Polaris --> DJ): Food and game are ready when you are As the phone slips back into her pocket she's perching herself on the arm of Hive's chair to give his shoulder a squeeze. "Thanks, I am starving and that smells wonderful." She hasn't got much of a noticeable appetite above her jangled nerves, but she's looking forward to the meal anyway. "Was kind of a tense afternoon in Freaktown, so I haven't eaten since lunch." "If he even checks his damn phone he can." Hive reaches out to pick up the game's rulebook. He flips it open as he sits back, leaning up against Polaris's side. His brows knit, though not quite at the rules; he's doing only a moderately good job of covering his worry when his eyes flick up to her. "You hurt?" is followed quickly by, "-- anyone hurt?" "If he doesn't, I'll just uh..." Polaris waggles her fingers toward the door, though her mind is picturing (very vaguely) the kitchen downstairs. "...definitely not float some forks up here with my brain or anything. It'll take him like half a microsecond longer to run downstairs after he gets here." She settles her arm across Hive's shoulders. "Nobody got hurt! But it did get hairy, and I flexed those de-escalation skills hard." Her recollection comes in quicksilver flashes of a hostile encounter in the plaza. It didn't come to blows, perhaps in part because Polaris's "de-escalation" was heavily backed with intimidation. "I don't like that people are afraid of me on account of--you know, Dad. I like it even less when I have to lean on that." She hesitates, not really meaning to get into something until her mind is already falling into it: a glimpse of a haunted-looking Erik sitting beside her in Riverdale's common house, the town outside shocked into quiet, sleepless exhaustion in the small hours after the Ne'ilah attack. "Last time I talked to him, he offered to teach me more magnet shit." "Oh, yeah, people should definitely just be afraid of you on account of you." Hive has relaxed into a wry tone after this assurance that nobody was hurt. It's a short-lived amusement, his teeth gritting down hard at that flash of memory. "Last time --" begins a little strained through his clenched teeth but then eases into a slow deep breath. "Really don't think he's exactly a shining example of community protection." Polaris gives an exaggerated roll of eyes. "Obviously I don't want people to be afraid of me. But if I was going to have a rep I'd prefer it be cuz I'm a badass, not cuz he..." She hisses a quiet breath through her teeth, successfully not conjuring up shaky disturbing footage blazing with fire and light. "I mean. He fucked up, but--you know what happened, that whole situation was fucked up. He didn't handle it well and this isn't an excuse but like, the man was at Auschwitz." She draws in a deep breath. "I still don't want that rep when I'm protecting our community, though." "Sounds like an excuse." Hive's scowl has sharpened out of its resting dourness into a more deliberate acidity. "Didn't handle it well is getting cranky at people who don't deserve it, not goddamn braining Jax when he's actually keeping people safe. Didn't handle it well is getting drunk and making an ass out of yourself, not the cruel fucking abuse that he --" Here his mouth snaps shut, lips pressing together thin in time with a heavy squeeze of psionic pressure that takes longer than it should to pull back. Hive's fingers have crumpled dents into the glossy pages of the rule book. He lets it go with a sharp-hard puff of breath. "Sorry. That night was just -- more fucked up than you know. That man is goddamn dangerous. To the community, yeah, but to the people close to him even more, I worry about what he might --" His eyes lift to Polaris, fixing on her face a moment before dropping. He lifts his hand, digging its heel against one eye. "Sometimes it's good for people to be afraid of you," he finally says. "Not your people, but the ones who want to hurt them? Think it can be a hard line to walk, though. Making sure those people stay goddamn terrified of you and your people know you're a safe place to turn." The shrug of his shoulder is small and jerky. "What rep do you want?" Polaris blinks down at Hive, taken aback. The words "it was an accident" dissipate unspoken at "cruel fucking abuse", which she tries and fails to fit into her admittedly spotty context of his life. << (I don't even know who's close to him) >> However bewildered, it does not even occur to her to doubt Hive's claim, and against all her efforts to avoid it she's spinning up wildly improbable scenarios around it. "What did he do?" she asks, not making any effort now to obscure her dread and alarm. "Like, terrifying to our enemies and safe for our people to turn to sounds like a pretty great rep. I think Erik focuses too much on the first one and that can go to some real bad places." She doesn't say aloud that she knows he's gone there before, but it's clear enough to Hive, as is her hope that he's come back and learned better. "I'm sorry, I can't -- I shouldn't have -- it's not my place to --" Hive's teeth grind in time with a sharp and frustrated hiss of breath. For an instant there's a small defeated slump to Hive's shoulders, before they tighten again. His voice is flatter when he continues, "Just. If he pulls even a hint of his crap with Charles again, I will personally fucking lobotomize him." He smooths at the pages of the game book in front of him, fingers pressing down at the creases he's bent there. "I would say I can't imagine what it's like to survive a genocide, but --" His hands turn up a little helplessly in front of himself, and this time the curl of connecting roots that press up against Polaris's mind is deliberate, if brief. Polaris's eyes go wider, briefly strange and bright as she integrates what Hive said with her existing mental map of her father's relationship with his ex. It resolves into a memory of Charles leafing through his photo albums (which contain precious few photos of him), the strain in his smile that she'd attributed to the bittersweetness of memories given new context now. "I didn't know they were still close," she murmurs, reflecting dimly that is probably, in fact, a Bad Thing. Where Hive breaks off, her mind inserts her sense of DJ, his steady carriage belying the bright frenetic nervous system and the breathtakingly fierce passion underneath. << That's why Erik went to Charles, >> she reasons, certain that her concept of what trauma-dumping on an ex looks like is not adequate to what actually happened, given the intensity of Hive's reaction, which she's now holding up to Wendy's misgivings. She leans into the curl of his psionic roots and presses her cheek to his head, angry but not particularly surprised. "DJ would never." That wired-bright signature is approaching, now, blinking suddenly into sensibility and then slowing to a more sedate walking pace once he is on the right floor. His mind is anything but sedate. He's turning over his last patient at Mendel with a mental note to consult with Hank before he leaves here; he's turning over patients of an entirely different sort with a mental note to vaccinate the latest of Freaktown's incubating clutch of chicks; he reminding himself next time he turns on his phone to text the Smallreds a photograph of a rare snow bunting he caught out at Jamaica Bay this morning; he's pushing back (and back, and back) a familiar heartsick ache at the thought of his family back home, the siblings he never saw manifest, the little girls he should be teaching board games to now. He's trying not to be apprehensive about this evening, trying to wrangle his eager longing into something less needy, trying to stop the reflexive reach of his mind. He stops outside the door longer than necessary -- a few moments longer, though to his rapidspiralling thoughts an eternity as he works to corral his mind into some semblance of peace. A deep breath -- a knock, though he doesn't wait for an answer before entering. He is coming straight from work, neat button-down and khakis and his Mendel Clinic ID still clipped at his hip next to his everpresent unassuming pouch of ball bearings. He's setting his backpack by the door, drifting over to kiss Polaris on the temple and wonder if he should do the same for Hive. "... smells delicious." << You never check your fucking phone, >> is coming with a grumpy thud as DJ approaches, though the tension in Hive now is probably outsized for just some missing flatware. << we need utensils. >> That settles that question, then. No kiss for Hive, although mostly because DJ has vanished as soon as he arrived, disappearing in a ripple. Towards the kitchen, back again before the door has finished swinging shut behind him; as he drops into a chair he is turning his phone on. He gives a quiet huh, checking his messages as he sets three sets of utensils down by the food. Polaris tenses, but in a pleasant way, thrumming with excitement at DJ's expected approach and then fluttering with delight at the kiss. DJ is gone and back before she has time to vacate her perch, and she's barely conscious of the decision to kiss Hive on the temple herself as she rises only to sink back down on the couch across from DJ and barred from the mysteries behind Hive's game screen. Barely conscious, but not wholly unconscious, either. "Those JV Proud Boys turned back up in the town square this afternoon," she tells DJ, as casually as she can manage, "but I talked them down and no hands were thrown." Revisiting this reminds her how they'd gotten on the topic of her father to begin with, but this time she leaves off complaining about her second-hand reputation. Hive's mind is starting to press up against DJ's before he's finished settling into the chair. The growing pressure recedes at Polaris's small kiss. "No hands thrown this time." Hive's brows scrunch with this addition. He's riffling through the sets of cards that Polaris has set out for him. For a moment he's frowning deeper, but as he picks out the ghost cards he glances over the screen to the others and something briefly lightens his expression. His shoulders have begun to unclench as he tucks the spare cards back into the box. "She's considering extracurricular magnet lessons in case they're more aggro next time, though." DJ has briefly distracted himself texting Bryce and Dallen bird pictures, but shuts his phone off as soon as this is over, the reflex behind this equal parts lingering paranoia and a different habit, long ingrained before the war that very firmly believes family home evening should not be interrupted by the outside world. << should we have invited them? >> is a uncomfortable uncertainty; he's trying to feel out what the boundaries of family are to all involved and coming up short. The mention of the fascists is a guilty relief when it interrupts this musing: "Oh, good," swiftly gives way to: "... not good, I mean. I just. No fighting is the best kind of fighting, right?" He's turning extracurricular over in his head with more weight than it should have, thinking of the raid team's practices and thinking of the children in the mansion below and thinking of years spent in another world learning how to be altogether more deadly. "... gonna start Freaktown Magnet School? Class sizes would be pretty small, I think." Polaris finally picks her character, based largely on the color of the card and game piece, which in this case is purple. "It was a very idle considering," she admits. "The Headmaster of Magnetism has been on sabbatical." Though that sets her fretting, not for the first time in recent weeks, that Erik might have been disappeared by the government, or for that matter killed. But, also not for the first time recently, she pushes past it and studies DJ over the neat rows of specialized cardboard pieces laid out on the table. "You taught me some magnetting, too, when we were training for Dirac." She's thinking through DJ's extensive--more extensive than hers, very likely--experience with her power. "Too bad you can't show me directly, or feel what I'm doing to give feedback." "If the government killed or captured the Master of Magnetism -- during goddamn election season -- trust me, we would've heard about it." Hive's gruff tone does not, admittedly, suggest that Erik simply choosing to piss off into the unknown should be a particular comfort. Whatever relaxation he has been finding in setting up the game is seeping back away. He starts to pick up his deck of cards to shuffle them but puts them back on the table when they start to slip messily from his unsteady fingers. Reluctantly, then: "He could." Somewhat automatically, DJ is picking the green set of pieces. His eyes snap up before he sets his tokens in order. The strain of his mind towards Hive's briefly intensifies, then pulls guiltily back. "I do know a bit about how magnets work," he allows, cautious. "But are you -- should we --" The we there encompasses more than just the three of them at the table, and he's fixing his eyes on Hive's deck of ghost cards rather than look his not-quite-partner in the eyes. Polaris nods slow and wordless, not exactly comforted though the stress quiets enough for her to be annoyed at it now. She pushes past that, too, and leans forward, propping her chin up in one hand. Her eyes follows DJ's to the cards at a delay, and her mind comprehends his words at an even greater one. "For what it's worth, I think he probably wants me to get better at this shit, too." She does not, in fact, think that is worth very much, but she does think it's true. That doesn't make her feel any less selfish for pulling mentally toward someone who doesn't even currently exist. "It might be a good chance to feel things out, if you think you can do it without like." Her lips compress. "Frying one or more of our brains?" "Shit, there's very little limit on the number of brains I could fry right now." This dubious reassurance comes with a sharp sliver of a grin. Hive rubs absently at the side of his head, then, carefully, draws himself a hand. "Could ask Xavier. Do this shit with a spotter. Can't spend the rest of my goddamn life scared of my own mind, anyway. Feel like if I stay here too much longer I'm gonna forget how to leave this Hotel California-ass school." "Real vote of confidence, there." DJ is determinedly not thinking about the last time Hive's power tore open his mind. His tokens blip from his hand to land neatly in their places. "If you liquefy our brains," this threat is oddly chipper, "I will definitely come back and haunt you."