Student-Teacher Conferences We Won't Be Repeating (Nathan, Marius, Angelo, Haroun, a wall)

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Marius stops by Nathan's office to hand in a more extensive version of his independent study proposal. Nathan is crankier than usual, and headache-plagued - neither of which he connects to the 'precog-be-gone medication' working its way out of his system. Fortunately, Angelo remembers that Nate with a headache is rarely a good thing. Unfortunately, he realizes this too late to do anything. Then there are precognitive visions getting shared and power feedback-loops and people reacting to things they don't understand and entirely too much random chaos. In the end, Angelo's the last man standing. Yay Angelo!


"Here you go," Marius said cheerfully, immediately presenting a folder of neatly-typed documentation. He managed to find a reasonably flat level of desk and slid it towards Nathan before flopping into the chair. "Thesis, summary, paper outline, preliminary bibliography, all that."

Nathan raised an eyebrow, very carefully not glancing at Angelo, who was hard at work at the second, smaller desk. "You're rather jumping the gun, aren't you?" he asked Marius, inclining his head at the chair. "You can't have finished your research yet."

Angelo was paying no attention to the conversation in the room. And not even Paying No Attention. It wasn't like it had anything to do with him, really.

Marius put his gloved hands behind his head and grinned. "Got enough to finalize my topic. The conference in DC was dead useful. Even had a panel on mutation in university athletics. Talked to a few blokes interviewed on the subject, too." He nodded at the folder on Nathan's desk. "Got it cited."

"And did you look into interviewing methodology before you started quizzing people?" Nathan asked waspishly. He had a headache and his mood was... well, crappy, all things considered, and Marius blithely skipping key process stages was vexing. Very, very vexing.

"Did." Marius shrugged without dropping his hands. "If it's not the proper format I'll redo. Still have all the basic information. I've done interviews before." He'd found live experts were a great cheat in doing research, and his father's business-related rolodex had ensured some interesting contacts. "Is that not allowed? It was a conference, so I bloody well hope the speakers were qualified."

Nathan bit back the obvious retort to that - telling Marius he was being mouthy would just encourage him to be more mouthy, and that wasn't productive - and turned his attention to the paper. "I'll send you references," he said crossly. "Articles you can read, about format. There are ways to present it that are more effective than others, and if it's a good interview, you want to make the most of it."

"If it helps," Marius agreed amiably. "I can rewrite before the next deadline. Haven't gotten too much down solid yet, mostly quotes and statistics and that. Got pointed to a couple good sources I haven't gotten a chance to dig into yet, so there's that still."

"Written sources are easier to manage," Nathan muttered, rubbing at his forehead. The pain behind his eyes was getting sharper all of a sudden. Another stealth headache. Joy. Cranky and distracted, he didn't stop to think about the last time he'd been having stealth headaches, and looked up at Marius. "I'll look at the outline. I trust it's an outline of topics you want to cover, and you haven't actually formulated arguments just yet if you haven't finished your resear---ow." Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, grimacing.

Angelo looked up sharply at that. Headaches were not a good sign, ever. "Nathan?"

Even Marius couldn't miss a sign like that. He straightened up, cocking his head. "Oi, are you okay?"

"Don't... nag at me, either of you," Nathan growled, then put the lie to it with a gasp of pain and a very obvious clutching at his head. His peripheral vision was full of blue sparkles, and he cursed as he felt the swelling pressure in his mind. "Oh, shit--"

Marius jolted back in his chair as Nathan's entire body spasmed, the man's head coming back sharply against the padding. It wasn't the sudden movement, or even his alarm at the seizure, there was something in his head--

Angelo was up and out of his chair the second Nathan started to convulse. He ignored the projection with some effort. "Marius, help me", he snapped, trying to still the older man.

The vision washed over him like a tsunami, slamming him from now into then with jarring force. Someone had his arms pinned from behind, and someone else was suddenly there in front of him, a stranger with a blood-covered face and a grim expression, and then a kick to his ribs was driving out all his air...

Let me go. Marius grabbed wildly at his head, felt dull pain as the convulsing teeth tore into his scalp. He bolted from his chair at the blow to his gut, and still the presence wouldn't release him, wouldn't be pushed away. In his mind something dark and furious and terrified was screaming Get out. Get out, get out get out

And Marius fought back.

Angelo, meanwhile, was struggling to immobilise Nathan. Even with the advantage his mutation gave him, Nathan was a much larger man and it was a struggle. "MARIUS. Goddammit. Go and get Moira. Now."

Nathan, lost in the vision, felt something lash out at him, something that wasn't a part of whenever he was just now, and it triggered something else. A flickering shift into a different room, and he was laughing, laughing and crying at the same time. There were hands on his shoulders, someone standing behind him - Gideon, because the cold radiating out from the physical contact, the numbness, was so familiar.

You can't have them, you can't HAVE THEM! He tried to lash back, parry the invading mind, and he couldn't breathe suddenly. Suffocating, again...

Angelo was thrown back by a wave of TK that broke against the opposite wall. The contents of the room exploded outwards in a flurry of books and paper and anything else loose enough to hurl.

Only Marius was unmoved. The impact of projectiles and hot red prickle of undirected force only made the thing in his head angrier. Snarling through his hands, his vision almost black, the boy took the power that beat at him and flung it back on its source.

Haroun, for some reason, had a tendency to be in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time. This time, he was on his way to the library to return a set of Harlequins and pick up a new set (it was hard to hide his reading habits from the school librarian. Luckily for him, Shan was more amused than anything else.) when Nathan's study exploded.

With a thought he dropped his books and then flipped on his internal X-Men Comm. ~Medical emergency. Nathan's office. Looks like a telekinetic explosion. Moving to investigate.~ he subvocalized and then moved in.

Somewhere in the whirling chaos of the room Marius registered the opening of the door. He caught a flash of dark skin and familiar aura, and through the haze his memory returned with: pain. His wild attack suddenly given a split-second of focus, Marius lashed out at the only target he could.

Angelo, sitting dazed against the opposite wall, saw Haroun start to come in and then exit again rather less voluntarily. But on the plus side, Marius was no longer throwing everything in the room around. Slowly and painfully, he got up, moving towards the other boy.

Haroun came to staring at the ceiling. As he evaluated his status, several things occurred to him. One, he _hurt_. He felt like he'd just bodychecked a commuter train. Two, there was something lumpy and uncomfortable under his back that was really irritating. And third -why was he lying down in the middle of the hallway? And fourth, why wasn't his body listening to him?

Marius was kind of a mess, having lacerated his own scalp with the teeth in his hands, when Angelo got to him, and distracted. Grabbing his shoulder, it was quick enough work to lay him out. It only took one well-placed punch, after all.

Sprawled on the floor where the clash of TK had sent him, Nathan shuddered, moaning as the images shifted again and he was somewhere else entirely, lying amid the debris of... something, and there was a shape bending over him, someone else shouting Gideon's name in outrage...

Not there. Not quite, the tiny part of Nathan's mind that was actually processing this registered, and he clutched at his head, curling into a fetal position as more images cascaded viciously through his mind. Waves on the shore. Vast grassy plains, and snow-covered mountains, and Gideon sitting across from him in a helicopter, smiling tightly...

When Charles reached out and stilled the flow of images, easing him down gently into blessedly empty unconsciousness, Nathan didn't have the presence left in the here and now for even a moment of gratitude.

And that just left Angelo, standing in the middle of the wreckage with Haroun incapacitated outside and Nathan and Marius unconscious. "....well, shit."