(no subject)
8/22/2006
Logfile from Emma
=XS= Storm's Room - Lv 3 - Xavier's School
Spacious and furnished in sable and sand, the room is airy and draws light from the broad glass windows. The decor is subtly modern, suggesting sleek efficiency in its smooth lines. There is art in the room -- minimalist, a single piece of African art on one wall. The clock that hangs above the desk serves as complement to it, blown glass black and marked with golden Roman numerals.
Despite the age of the place, despite the fact that it rests on the footprints of two still-older houses, there are no ghosts that dwell in the Xavier family mansion. This is a domain for the living, but still, in the depths of the night, there are Things that stir. One of them is a tall, slender figure, burnished auburn hair crowning her head, that has a tendency to go wandering silently about the upper levels of the school in the dead of night, wrapped in a graceful blue silk dressing gown. Jean cannot sleep. Jean wanders.
Headblind Emma cannot sense the passage of her nemesis, and it is doubtful if she really cares at this point. Emotions dampened down to null levels, thoughts more active and aware than before, but still just as tightly focused. She sits on the floor, back to the side of the bed, knees pulled up and supporting her arms, the short silk gown she'd claimed climbing up to bunch around her hips.
Floorboards creak, at least, but they are part and parcel of the noises of an old house cooling in the night. They creak a bit too regularly, however. Up one hall, down another, a short detour to the kitchen, and Jean's back up the curved stairs again, this time with two cups of chamomile tea in hand, black but for honey and lemon. If stopped and asked just -why- she does what she does next, there would be no answer, but in the watches of the night, there's none to ask it. Knock, knock, knock, on a familiar door with an unfamiliar mind behind it.
Inside, Storm's head lifts, and her eyes narrow on the door. Does it matter who is on the other side? "It's unlocked," she rasps and waits.
Jean looks rather less the avenging death goddess today, and the cool snarking seems to be in abeyance as well. With a rustle of silk, the door opens just wide enough for one hand to poke in, a cup and saucer balanced on the palm and sending up wisps of calm-scented hot steam.
Emma considers the cup and hand. She considers taking the cup and shutting the door on the hand. She considers who the hand belongs to. And then she lumbers to her feet with the ungainliness of long inactivity, and crosses to the door to take the saucer. She leaves the door alone and turns her back on in to carry the saucer to what looks like an untouched dinner tray left on the desk. There is a small clatter as other dishes are rearranged to make room for it.
Jean considers this considering, still gifted with the awareness that Emma has been denied. The hand and the teacup remain all the same, and when Emma shambles over to retrieve it, and then turns away, Jean lets herself the rest of the way it. She settles on the edge of the bed with her own teacup, and sips, making silent saucer eyes at Emma over the rim of it.
Emma turns to look over her shoulder and sighs at who her stolen peek turns up. "What? Is there some sort of bizarre nighttime ritual with her that you've been missing, dear?" she asks, her own weariness deepening the already alto timbres of her host's voice.
Jean simple continues watching, eyes alert on Storm's face and ignoring Emma's acerbic phrasings that are issuing forth from it. Eventually, she states that "You're not perfectly identical after all. You wear her face differently. Maybe she's doing the same with yours." Disconnected, abstracted, she blinks once, owlishly, and then returns to her tea. "Your throat sounds horrible. I don't want her in pain when we put you back where you belong."
"Optimistic, or perhaps you know more than I've been told," she mutters, dumping out a chair and dropping into it. She does take the cup with her however. To blink bovinely over the rim back.
Moo. "Speculation only. Charles has been keeping his own counsel, as he's fond of doing. Or do you mean our hairbrained speculation about how we're going to put you both back where in place?" Jean questions, silk rustling again as she sits up and smooths her robe across her lap, and continues to watch The borrowed flesh across from her, light face turned to dark one. Eventually, unevenly, "God knows why I'm offering this, but is there anything I can do to make this," A hand takes in the room, the borrowed body, the situation at large, "Easier?"
Emma growls and turns her head to the window; the darkness on the other side beckons, promising escape. From the room, the borrowed body, the situation at large... It matches the darkness of mental blindness. "Talk to me. Telepathically," she asks, the request coming without volition.
<< As you wish, >> Jean replies with alacrity, and with tangible amounts of relief accompanying the words, despite a surface attempt to snark. Mind-to-mind, she can turn away and not look at this stranger that is Storm, or hear her voice shaping words the way she'd never phrase them. Her teacup clinks against its saucer, and she looks out at the darkened grounds as well, allowing a few barriers to drop and her mind to spill out and brush against Emma's. But while telepathic barriers may be loosed, a grand high wall of personal ones is growing higher by the second, along with a murmured undertone of 'this can't possibly be a good idea'. << What's it like? >> she wonders, striving for a neutral question and... partway succeeding. << Having her powers at your fingertips. >>
Emma doesn't answer immediately. Instead her own attempts at the flimsy shielding capabilities allowed non-telepath's crumbles and nearly nuzzles the contact. She has no discognizance to affect her, and so she turns to look fully at the red-haired Black Queen. She shapes her response carefully, permeating it with bland indifference and mild disdain to defy the welcome relief in her touch. << It itches. >>
Of all the things the dethroned Black Queen has come to expect at 3 AM, being telepathically cuddled by the White Queen is not one of them. There's some quality of the needy, half-drowned kitten about it, however, and so Jean's reflexive recoil away is a muted, awkward thing, aborted halfway to forming as her mind catches wind of it and slams down further steel walls around it. It's a thin thing then, this shared bit of mental contact, seeping out through the cracks like stale water from an aging cistern. << Itches? >> she echoes, distantl curious. There's a sense of a mind tumbling about, twisting itself to perceive this statement from a different angle. << Like something needs to get out, or like something should be there and isn't? >>
Emma's desperation for the contact denied her hisses and sinks claws into the contact, weak and blunted as they may be. << The former. I /feel/ the air. Or at least what little is able to circulate in here. >> She bites each word off precisely.
Ow. -Bad- kitty. Jean's mind prickles and recoils, scored red and scratched where the contact-points are forced. "Emma," she states aloud. "Take it -easy-." There's a sense of mental reordering, of a cleansing breath taken on mental spaces to match the slow, steady sigh that escapes her on the physical plane. Up she rises, tea in hand, to stroll over to the window and throw it open to let in the night air. The mental contact firms up a bit, laced with tooth-gritted patience and a second sigh. Jean's thoughts remain her own private preserve, but the level is now what it always is between them, with glimmers and glimpses and half-finished insights, her mental aspect that of a broody falcon on her perch, complete with an image of a kitten attached to her jesses. << Why not let loose a little, then? >> she questions. << It's night, everyone should be indoors. Go rain on any curfew-breakers sneaking in. It might let you (me) sleep. >>
<< I don't know how, >> Emma sulks, grudging even in that admission of inadequacy. << Last time I used her powers, I unleashed a small /tornado/. >> The level may be the same, but it is on Jean's terms, and Emma has no power to push the borders of the allowance, or to clear the sludge of her own coalescing thoughts.
<< Mind over matter, >> Jean suggests, taking refuge in that blessed ivory tower of scientific curiosity. She can talk shop pleasantly with Kavita Rao, she should, therefore, be able to test out her best friend's hijacked powers with a strangely-needy Emma Frost, yes? Determination and an alert focus at odds with the soft stillness of the night limn the edges of her mind. << How would you go about giving a small nudge to someone to make them move out of your way? A small one. Try that with the weather. >>
Hijacked suggests complicity, Ms. Grey. Emma drains the cup of tea cooling rapidly in the breeze from the window, and sets it in the saucer with a slap hard enough to make a person wince. << Are you an expert in these powers then, in addition to your own? >> she coos sweetly, anger and embarrassment and tension curling around the words like the fog slowly creeping across the grounds three levels below.
<< No, but I -do- help teach an entire school of young mutants how to use -theirs-, Emma darling. >> Jean points out with a sniff echoed with mental crispness, apple-tart and tangy. The return of the grar seems, paradoxically, to leave her at her ease. Emma is still Emma, the apocalypse is -not- nigh, and lions still like lambchops. Out the window she leans, her own tea and saucer hovering in place as she's gone and absently left them alone. << Fog. >> she reports. << Must've tapped into the lake or... something. >>
Emma ponders pushing her out the window. An idle thought, really, blossoming under the strange comfort she's taking in the telepathic exchange. The night air chills rapidly and interacts with the warm air already in place. Emma's control is barely conscious. << And you will teach me what takes years of practice in a few short minutes? How many of those teach of the year awards /do/ you have hidden in your closet, darling? >>
<< Oh, you're not ever going to be at Ororo's level, honey, don't flatter yourself, >> Jean replies, tantalizingly precarious in her position and quite smugly secure in it all at once. Telekinesis, like anonymity, is a warm blanket. She reaches back idly, hair tumbled and tossed by the artificial wind, and plucks up her teacup again to finish it off before it cools. << Short of huge emotional distress, you're not going to be able to do more than make it rain a little, maybe break off a tree branch, before you pass out, I'd bet. -She's- not called 'Storm' for just anything. >>
Emma growls and shifts in her seat uncomfortably. The skin surrounding the fine hairs on the back of Storm's arms contract, prickling and lifting in warning. If only she was anywhere near Ororo's level, she might have been able to interpret her body's reaction. Benign clouds coalesce above the mansion, boiling and darkening in response to the body's power, if not the inhabitant's call. << And there is no reason for huge emotional distress here, is there? >> she sneers, and then the room explodes.
Well, explodes in light and sound, actually. And with enough concussive force to knock Emma backwards and out of the chair and leave her gasping for breath. The smelled of scorched insulation permeates the room, and it is hard to tell if the sudden headache is from the sudden over extension of her powers or the ringing in her ears.
Emma doesn't really care. She's too busy wondering what the /fuck/ just happened, and if perhaps she isn't under assault.
Jean has not gone SPLAT, although we are not sure if Emma would particularly care about that either. Jean, finished with taking a tumble past a second-story dorm window, (Jones goggles in shock.) manages to catch herself before she can hit the ground, and alights barefoot in amongst dew-covered grass in a sudden flare of Phoenix flames. Irritation percolates upwards towards the open window.
Hers isn't the only source. Others in the mansion, awoken or otherwise, by the crack of the lightening strike start to agitate. Emma rolls to her hands and knees and scrambles to her feet, finally noticing the other woman's absence. "Oh, /damn/."
From far down below, Jean picks her way out of the grass and over to the garden path, one hand lifting her dressing gown's hem up and out of the way as she takes a 3 AM stroll through the rose garden, en route to the mansion's front door. << Feeling any less itchy now? >> she wonders, grumbling merrily all the while in an undercurrent of << ...stupid lightning bolts, half-blinded... ...stupid-wet-kitten >> and other incoherencies. << Good -night-. >> And away goes the telepathic content. Jean now attempts to jiggle the front door to let herself in undetected. << Not a -word-, Charles, >> is flung more privately.
Less itchy, but no less /scared/, now. A minute later, Emma sticks her head out the door and sneaks out to find the restrooms.