Trying to find her voice again

[ozren]

I'm not sure what you think you're doing here, I thought we talked about this. Okay, I talked, you apparently ignored me. You have a lot of things going on, and no time, and-

Wait, speaking of the time you don't have, aren't you supposed to be working on the next chapter of Kai's thing? Because he sounds pretty impatient to me. Or you can just sit here and dream about what I could be doing instead of what you should be doing, that works too. I think.

...If you end up focusing on me more than you have been, we'd better figure out the powers thing. I was getting a lot better with everything before that dressing room imploded. I could really help people now! Still not becoming an X-Man though, or whatever it was you wanted for me. Teamwork still isn't my thing.

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Late replies are the best replies?

[i_rule_me]

Trust me lass, you're better off staying as far away from the X-Men as you can. Sure, the spandex brigade's got their uses, but there's altogether too much collateral damage on the way.

Always!

[ozren]

[Oh no, she forgot about the spandex. See, there's another reason the team thing isn't happening.]

At least someone agrees with me! Being on a team's too dangerous, who wants to make friends and watch them die? Or watch innocent people die, that's even worse. I'm not really cut out for the traditional superhero thing anyway.

[A gigantic fire-breathing dragon made of chalk doesn't exactly inspire feelings of safety in most people.]

:-D

[i_rule_me]

[David pauses. He had his issues with the X-Men (most notably their reliance on glorified child soldiers, a tradition started by his own dear old departed dad), but team-ups he's learned to appreciate. He would have never stopped The Fiend without the gathering of super-folks who'd come to aid him. Sure, they all hated him for various reasons, but they had his back when he needed it looked after.]

Aye, I know the feeling, though I think we'll agree to disagree on the whole "having friends" bit. Sure, they might seem a burden at times, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that no one wants to rule a mountaintop alone. You might have all the power you could ever want to keep yourself safe, but with no one watching your back, hubris can make fools of us all.

[Even with the power of gods at his command, David still needed people. It kept him grounded, and reminded him of the responsibility he had as a result of all that power.]

[ozren]

Well...I don't mind having friends. [She didn't. It was nice having someone to hang out with that shared her interests. Heck, even if they didn't. It was just a little nerve wracking at times.] I had a couple in that dressing room my mun had me in. But having friends that are also your teammates seems like it's asking for trouble.

I don't need to be responsible again.

[Wren frowns, hand slipping into her jacket pocket to play with her battered box of chalk.]

...They weren't teammates. Or friends. Exactly. But it doesn't matter now. [It totally does Wren, don't think you're getting off that easy. She does actually crack a grin for a second, shaking her head.]

Okay, that last bit sounds like me. I mean, I wouldn't want to risk anyone else, so I'd end up relying on my drawings to keep me out of trouble. And while I've gotten better, I'm nowhere near strong enough for that.

[She pulls the box out of her pocket and waves it around.] They're solid enough like this, but I can always try metallic paint.

[i_rule_me]

You do realize that you rely on your friends as much as they rely on you, yeah? It's not a one-way street, or at least it shouldn't be. [David chuckles, remembering Scott pleading with him "Why didn't you tell me what you were planning?". Despite himself, he'd learned something that day.] It's a hard lesson to learn for folks like us, so used to the world stabbin' us in the back.

[He pauses.]

A while back, I learned something about myself that I'd rather not have known. My future? I was either going to die horribly and take the rest of our kind with me, or my lady love was going to die trying to stop me. I tried everything I could to keep it all from happening, including keeping the people who actually gave a shit about me from trying to help me. Didn't want anyone to get hurt, you know?

[David raises a hand, and conjures an image of a large, branching fractal fern above his hand.]

That knot at the top there? That was my end. Every path I looked at for a way out inevitably led there. It was maddening. I didn't think anyone could help me, so I used people as I needed 'em, but kept 'em away otherwise. Nearly cost me everything, it did. [He laughs.]

I ended up callin' on the X-Men anyway, to solve the one problem I couldn't work out myself. Credit where it's due, they're the lot you want on your back when it comes to punch-ups and such.

[A quick poke around Oz's head later.]

Chalk's a good way to go. Your constructs might be flimsy, but more easily remade, chemically-speaking. Simpler tends to always be better in my experience. Did you know that Magneto's not actually resistant to the forces of gravity? [David grins, remembering the time he lifted Magneto's helmet off of his bald head by just manipulating it's relative gravity.]

[ozren]

It wasn't something that I gave much thought to when I was little, actually. Or recently. We just hung out and played games. Or I showed off my drawings. I guess it wasn't the 'relying on each other' definition of friends.

[She should be more upset about that, but when she lets herself go, things like a chalk Godzilla rampaging through the corridors happen.]

[Listening to his story, Wren's about to say how awful that would be, knowing your future ended like that - or even knowing it at all - but the image suddenly appearing chases that thought out of her head. At first, her only response is a squeak, but then she's edging closer, staring up at it.]

That's...wow. I mean, that, [and she gestures upwards] not the- the other bit's just scary. I guess people having your back in that case is definitely worth it.

[If Wren knew she was dealing with a telepath, there might be a lot more squeaking (and some potential glaring) going on, but instead David gets a huge smile out of her.]

Only flimsy in a chemical sense for sure. My Godzilla knocked holes in the wall, and he was just chalk. I've done stuff with all sorts of ink and paint, my food's edible, and my doors actually work, but that one doesn't have much to do with-

[Wait Magneto what. She breaks off abruptly and stares at him. Where'd Magneto come into this? Oh wait, metallic paint, right. Okay.]

He's not? I mean, he flies, right? Or is that something else?

[i_rule_me]

Aye, I get that. Guess my experiences are a wee bit different than most. Didn'nae have the most stable of upbringings. Most o' my "friends" were the sort who could survive the mess I brought into the world.

[And he smiles.] Aye, it was. It all ended for naught anyway, but I came out the other side a better person than where I'd started.

[Her powers fascinate David, if only because, despite the multitudes within him, he's never had anything quite like that, unless you count Chain's virus-like dopplegangers.]

He does aye, but Magneto's just changing places around the magnetosphere, that wee magnetic field around the earth. Gravity though? It comes from underneath us. [He points at the ground.] It seems weak, but that's only because we take it for granted, and it's workin' on a bigger scale. I beat the old man by liftin' the helmet right off his bald wee noggin usin' the forces o' gravity against him.

[David's never been particularly careful about hiding the fact that he's always had multiple powers, and usually, most people figure out who he is pretty easily. It was kind of nice not having that immediate fear reaction most had for him.]

[ozren]

Mine was pretty okay. At least until my parents died when I was six. [They would be those not-quite friends that she felt responsible for. It wasn't her fault, not in any sense, but she's going to be holding onto it a while.] But my aunt did okay raising me. That was about where I stopped having friends, I was too worried that they'd die on me.

I'm glad things got better for you.

[Wren glances down at her chalk box for a second, then laughs at the image of a bald Magneto. She's only ever heard of him through her mun, but she would have liked to have seen that. She's not a troublemaker, honest.]

Thanks for the science lesson! I should pay closer attention in school.

[Still smiling, Wren pulls a piece of green chalk free and kneels down, beginning to sketch while she talks.]

I've only ever met two other mutants. Well, three, including you. What can you do? I can animate my drawings, like I mentioned; they're essentially me, you can tell what I'm feeling sometimes by watching how they react. I can also make food real...It tastes better than it looks.

[The chalk lines are starting to come together in the shape of something with wings; it's not going to be very big, maybe four feet tall.]

I can teleport too, it's tied to those doors I told you about. I'm not very good at it though, I keep coming out in the wrong places.

[Okay, sketch done. It's a dragon on roller skates, of all things, and Wren crouches beside it, watching as the chalk outline fills itself in from the outside. The drawing rises from the ground, fully three-dimensional. It flaps it's wings to get it's balance and lets out a roar that's almost more of a squeak. Giggling, Wren looks up at David.]

Whoops. I'm Wren Morgan, by the way. It's nice to meet you.

[i_rule_me]

I'm sorry tae hear that. My folks were...well they were awful, but neither had any real business tryin to raise a kid. Ended up being raised mostly in a lab after things went south for me.

[David could go on and on about the horrors inflicted on him by Moira MacTaggert, but that's not what he's here for.]

When you're as powerful as I am, it pays to know a wee thing or two about the forces you control. There's...not much I can't do, if I'm honest. You might've heard my name, though odds are not. I'm...David Haller. Some call me "Legion".

[David listens to Wren talk about her powers, nodding.]

You might try visualizing where it is you wanna be going when you're making your doors. It's just a guess, but when your power's workin', it's looking in your imagination or somesuch for directions on what to do. That's how it works for me, sort of.

[And just like that, both unintentionally and as a demonstration of what David means, he's pulled Wren into the Qortex Complex, a dreamlike landscape in his mind full of twisting spiral pillars and strange creatures. David himself looks almost alien, with smoking quid tentacles erupting from his head instead of hair.]

This place's...well...it's how I visualize my powers working. The beasties about are the ones I've yet to merge with, get their powers back. A bad thing happened to me when I was a wee lad, split my mind and my powers into hundreds o' little pieces. Been working on getting 'em all back for a long time.

[ozren]

In a lab?

[Okay, that's bad. She wants to take back everything she's said recently about her life not being to her liking. The dragon pretty much has the opposite reaction to Wren; while she's shocked, the drawing simply clomps away, deciding to ignore the conversation. Okay, she can let that part of herself do that.]

Things you can't? [Yeah, this maybe makes up for those only two mutants she's met. 'Legion', huh?]

It would be a bad thing if I'd heard of you, then. [Or so she guesses, by the way her mun is snickering. So rude.]

I've tried that, but honestly it works the best if I'm panicked. Not, really panicked and can't think, then I either end up who knows where or it doesn't work at all. But panicked enough.

[Because apparently that's a thing that's possible. And she kind of wants to head that direction when she finds herself very definitely not where she just was without even a hiccup. No chalk dragon, check. Creatures that look like something out of a movie, check. David...

Well.]

We're in your mind? [This is certainly a first for her. Wren takes another look around at everything, then back at David. She almost wants to know what could have caused him to split this badly, but no...Nope. Don't want to know.]