Logs:Seeking Refuge
| Seeking Refuge | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-09-02 "My X-Men have been missing since Thursday." (Part of Mojo TP.) |
| Location
<NYC> The Refuge - Staten Island | |
from: Charles Xavier <charles@xaviers.edu> to: Hive <bua.suphamongkhon@gmail.com> date: Aug 31, 2024, 3:54 AM Subject: Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi I am loath to disrupt your refuge, but I've urgent need of your assistance. I'd rather not explain in an unsecured medium, but it is potentially a very concerning situation. Yours, C. --- from: Charles Xavier <charles@xaviers.edu> to: Hive <bua.suphamongkhon@gmail.com> date: Aug 31, 2024, 11:07 AM Subject: Re: Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi It's not a planet-killing superweapon level of emergency. The subject line seemed funny and apropos at 48 hours without sleep, but I shouldn't like to mislead. Yours, C. --- It's early Sunday morning, though not absurdly early, when a cluster of texts arrive on DJ's phone, wherever it's been left.
--- <NYC> The Refuge - Staten Island The swath of destruction that the dimensional anomaly carved here in 2020 has been swept away and transformed into a large compound, practically a neighborhood in its own right. Much of the grounds are given over to meticulously landscaped parkland. Here are manicured gardens abutting half-wild groves, playgrounds and playing fields, a swimming pool as well as a fishing pond, and even a few acres of farmland. The residences, from the founder's house to the miniature arcologies and the slightly larger guesthouse, are styled like abstract beehives. So, for that matter, is the vertical hydroponic farm that produces far more food than the earthbound fields. In fact, there is a great deal of beehive imagery throughout, and even absent specific styling, hexagons are still more common than squares or rectangles in the construction of spaces and objects, all of which are thoughtfully designed with an eye toward community and comfort. At the heart of the Refuge is the meetinghouse that crowns the hill where the 121st Precinct once stood: architecturally distinct from most LDS houses of worship, this one looks from afar like an abstract sculpture of a conch shell in gleaming white quartzite. The floor plan is built on a Fibonacci spiral with a relatively gentle rise in elevation for the first four quarter-arcs before shooting up into a steep organic spire that can be seen for miles around. It's Sunday evening when a Xavier's School van arrives at the gate of the Refuge and wends its slow way up the hill. The sinking sun has set the spire of the meetinghouse aflame, which grants the community a soft secondhand twilight. Ashok parks by the cluster of houses nearest the meetinghouse and, despite the excellent adaptive modifications of the van and his employer's decades of experience navigating the world from a wheelchair, rushes to get the door and ramp sorted out. Luckily for his valet's nerves, Charles is too distracted feeling about for their host telepathically to tip himself out of his chair or the vehicle as he might have done otherwise. His mind feels little like its wonted confident, controlled warmth, his shielding weak and erratic and spilling cold fear at unpredictable intervals. By the time Ashok gets him safely out of the van he has given up on his search and just sends out a single << Hive(DJ)(Dawson) >> layered with pleading and distress before burying his mind in shields to stop himself spreading psionic chill all over the peaceful little community at supper. Charles looks almost as awful as his mind feels, his skin ashen, his eyes shadowed, and his posture hunched, such that it's not at all easy as usual is to forget he is pushing seventy-five. He's dressed neatly, at least, if quite casually by his standards, in an unstructured blue linen suit, a soft knit dress shirt in very light pink, charcoal trousers, and black penny loafers. His valet is dressed plain and unassuming but as irreproachably put-together as ever in a blazer and camel slacks, but he's looking just a bit pale, himself. Without asking, Ashok overrides the motor on his chair and wheels him toward the founder's house planted on a promontory just below the meetinghouse. There's an answering psionic flutter immediately and almost reflexive at that pleading like quiet wings flickering overhead -- it's just a brief riffling sweep that is pulling back when there is not any imminent sign of danger. They haven't gotten far at all towards the house when DJ actually emerges, dressed plain in straight-leg jeans and workboots, a green and blue short-sleeved plaid work shirt. His stride would be extraordinarily brisk for a normal person; for him maybe it's extremely deliberate. His brow has pulled, deep, into a frown, by the time he's neared. "Dr. Xavier. Ashok." For a second his jaw works, but then he just turns his hand out towards the door to his house. "Come inside, please. Whatever's happened, we can talk over supper." Charles's << (thank you) >> sounds distant through the layers of psionic defense. Ashok says it aloud almost in time with him, with a small swell of pride that he heard Dr. Xavier at all, in his present condition. << Thank God, someone sensible. >> He isn't at all broadcasting this sentiment, but his anxiety -- not just for Charles but numerous others -- makes it hard to ignore. Charles only speaks once they're inside, for some obscure fear the vastness of the world might swallow his quiet words. "I am dreadfully sorry for interrupting your supper -- and your refuge. My judgment might not be at its most sound." His fear seeps through shields weakening with merely the effort of speech. Ashok follows their host, scrupulously quieting his thoughts but not so successfully quieting his hunger. "Our doors are always open to those in need, Dr. Xavier." There are quite a few people having supper in here, though DJ is leading them around the busier dining room into a quieter more secluded study in back. There are three meals being set out in here already, by a pair of young clean-cut white men who though definitely not in any way identical manage to give off an unsettlingly similar vibe in their neat-pressed khakis and polo shirts and crew cuts. DJ only takes a seat once they're alone again, the doors closed secure. "You look like like you haven't slept in days." Perhaps Charles has some familiarity with the clone vibes common to young Mormon men, especially strong for those recently returned from mission, but Ashok does an uncharacteristic double-take at the Nice Boys laying out their food, before hastily nodding his (entirely genuine if slightly flustered) gratitude. He bites back the urge to answer for Charles; possibly he has not been getting enough sleep, either. Charles has been making efforts -- faintly sensible behind his failing shields -- to Pull Himself Together, and he's not wholly unsuccessful. To DJ's observation he nods heavily. "I didn't want to waste a single minute, though I have assuredly passed the point of diminishing returns on that. After enough sleep deprivation, aforementioned poor judgment tends to perpetuate itself." His defenses have relaxed enough that it's easy to sense his internal juggling -- less attention to his shields now so that he can dredge up something like an appetite, but his cold dread is seeping out again. "My X-Men have been missing since Thursday. They vanished simultaneously -- and one of our new teachers, too, though I imagine she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time." There's a deliberate shift in DJ's own mind where a borrowed tangle of thick prop roots has (carefully, politely) been constructed in calm and quiet obfuscation around the somewhat frenetic jangle beneath. Probably he should ask permission before mixing-and-matching of other people's minds, but he does not, quiet and swift where a psionic runner curls out, burrows itself into Charles and Ashok both; almost in the same instant the connection is deftly getting tightly sequestered such that almost the only bleedover left is a strong shared hunger. Possibly for Ashok, at DJ's processing speeds, the entire hiving-and-recalibration might not even be noticeable; Charles, though, can definitely clock the psionic sleight-of- He probably can now, too, feel Hive (here with them; here/them, starting his day on the other side of the world), though that connection as well is currently under a very careful if different sequestering, its tight partitioning kept firm in place by DJ's careful touch. "All of them?" Perhaps to Charles, long familiar with being hived, it feels a little odd not feeling what's happening right now in DJ's mind, though somewhat hazily he can feel some rapid shifts of calculation. Then, far less hazily, a swift rooting through Charles's own memories (should DJ have asked before this? He does not) as DJ sits back with a glass of water, sipping at it slowly. "Gosh, but that's poor timing." Despite his impressive skill at psionic self-defense, Ashok does not, indeed, seem to notice at all. He's fretfully hoping Charles will finally get down a proper meal, even if only for etiquette's sake, and eagerly waiting for DJ to say grace. "All of them." Charles had expected this to happen at some point, and already knew something of DJ's facility with Hive's power as well as his processing speeds, but is still obscurely impressed beneath his profound relief at not needing to explain everything, aloud or otherwise. By the time his mind -- admittedly, working slower than usual -- gets around to pointing out the relevant memories, DJ has already found that frostbitten turn in the hedge maze of his mind. "They're all competent people with a vast array of experience and expertise between them. Perhaps that ought to be reassuring, but I fear any situation that could keep them away for this long -- if they are still alive -- must be incalculably dangerous." DJ sets his glass back down, and puts Ashok out of his misery with a thankfully very short and to the point blessing over the food (a rich peanutty vegetable stew that is surprisingly tasty given that it was almost assuredly cooked by very, very white people.) "We will look," DJ promises Charles, "and after you get some food and some rest I'll tell Hive you need him. But if they all vanished at once -- from your mansion --" He is glancing to the window of his study, and then back to Charles. "You might want to reach out to SHIELD, or Tony Stark. They have ways of detecting if some interdimensional -- event happened. It would be better than wondering forever." Charles relaxes very slightly, but even without altogether allowing himself to hope, the effect on his dysregulated mind is dramatic. He nods his silent thanks as he tucks into the stew. He would in fact have done so purely for the sake of etiquette even if it were not delicious, but it is, and he was not altogether unaware he needed to eat. Ashok relaxes considerably at DJ's assurance, and further at Charles showing what looks suspiciously like actual interest in his food. Perhaps he would be at least a little proud to know he was in a certain sense supplying that interest, but mostly he's just chalking it up to the food being, in fact, delicious. He's doing an admirable job not dwelling on how startled he is -- certainly DJ is very white, but Hive plainly rubbed off on him quite a lot. The word "SHIELD" riffles through Charles's recent memories. He has contemplated this several times in the course of talking to his contacts around the world these last few days. "SHIELD has been watching us for some time, but not closely enough to suggest they know much about the X-Men or Cerebro. I would dearly love to keep it that way." Here he shunts his thoughts away from -- someone in SHIELD's employ. He can't really hide anything from DJ right now, but even in his current state his skill in sleight-of-mind is formidable. He isn't depending on that, however, so much as the wordless request to leave that line of thought be. "I hadn't really considered Stark separately from them, though it seems rather obvious now that you point it out -- why, he must have created the technology SHIELD uses to detect such anomalies." There's a shadow of his usual priggishness in the pinch of his brows. "I should not like him finding out too much about my school, either, but I've known him for much longer and that..." He isn't actually sure where he wanted to go with that. "Well. It isn't nothing." Whether the "something" is a boon or a bane, he does not care to speculate. "Yeah, he put -- a lot of work into it, when our worlds first broke." DJ is, politely, leaving that line of thought be. He's quiet -- not for all that long a time, really, but for him it's an age, something flickering rapid and opaque in the part of him(/them) that Charles can't quite feel. Eventually he blinks, looks down at his plate. "I'm sorry to say that Tony Stark already knows all about your school, Dr. Xavier. And you. I'm afraid you don't really know the man at all." His mechanical arm hitches, stiff and more noticeably uncomfortable than it often is, as he reaches for his food. "But he and I go a long way back." Charles freezes in place as he processes what DJ just said, but the fresh spike of fear it sends through him feels almost perfunctory, lost in the noise of his existing stress. The shifting and folding of the labyrinth that contains Charles's artificially (near) perfect memory is not as swift or smooth as usual, but the moment that it retrieves from last July to drop into the present is -- "-- because Mr. Allred has listed you as his medical proxy," he's explaining to the man on the other end of the latest in a chain of phone calls that started on the flight back from Lassiter with what was left of the raid team. He's parked his chair between Hive and DJ's beds as if interpolating himself would help him reach their mind(s) somehow. "I regret to inform you he has suffered extensive neurological damage following a psionic attack. I think for the moment it is best if he continues receiving care here at --" Tony Stark cuts off the eloquent and highly persuasive speech he's prepared with with a brisk "Yep" before hanging up. Charles blinks as his eyes and mind refocus on this DJ(Hive), hale and as whole as perhaps they can be. Though still exhausted and frightened and bereft, he sounds almost -- almost -- like himself again when he allows, primly, "I suppose that does explain a few things." | |
