xp_logs | Ghost of a Chance: Tiny Moment of Truth

(Backdated to this afternoon) Cain and Doug drop in on Quentin to see how he's doing. Quentin has a little secret, and it eventually comes out.

Doug knocked lightly on the door to Quentin Quire's dorm room, and then, when there was no answer, he knocked a little louder. "I'll talk to him first, if it seems like nothing really bad is going on with whatever his power is," Doug told Cain. "Quentin?" he called as he knocked a third time.

"I'm -fine-, Jer. I told you." Quentin finally called back, in a exhausted tone of voice. "I'll be at the raid at nine, like I said." And then there was a thump, like a shoe hitting the door, and a whimpered. "If I don't die first ... Ow. Fuck." barely audible through the closed door.

Cain looked up and down the hall, then motioned for Doug to step aside. Checking again to make sure the hall was empty, he cocked one finger backand then flicked it right above the doorknob. A muffled crack was heard, and the door swung open as the lock fell out of the door in a number of pieces.

"It was like that when we got here," Cain insisted innocently.

Doug chuckled and shook his head. Pushing the door open quietly, he entered. All the shades had been drawn, and there was virtually no light inthe room. "It's not Jer," he called to where Quentin lay on his bed with an arm over his eyes.

Quentin looked over his arm, winced at the movement, and then returned his arm to it's comfortable place blocking the last few photons from his eyes. "Please be a hallucination..." he groaned.

"Hah, you don't know from hallucinations, Quire," Doug said with a smirk. The events of the week had been surreal to read about on the journal system. "How you feeling?" he asked, an actual modicum of concern in his voice. "Hadn't seen you in class all week, or in the lab, or even on WoW."

Apparantly convinced at, at the least, if Doug -was- a halluction, he was a persistant one, Quentin pushed himself up to a sitting position. "Fine. I have a headache. You don't need to worry about it. Go away." He said, in a stilted and tight tone of voice. "You can gank me tomorow."

Attempting to explain the vision he'd had, and how he'd reached the conclusions he'd reached, would probably take too long, and probably aggravate Quentin's headache. "You're a mutant, too, aren't you?" he asked simply, pulling up a chair from Quentin's desk and sitting down near Quentin's bed. "Did something go wrong with your power? Have you known about it long?" he continued.

~Oh, Fuck. He knows. ~ "No. Nothing. I'm fine. Go away." Quentin said flatly. "I have a headache, and you're making it worse." In the back of his head, a thousand awful ways Ramsey could've found out played. Marie-Ange could've told him. Ramsey could be a telepath himself. He could have put that black hole thing in Marie-Ange's head, and maybe this was a big setup just to out him and then blackmail him. ~Maybe that's how he's so well off. He's blackmailing other mutants. Oh, God, it's just like that episode of Babylon 5. . ~

Doug shook his head. "You already know I'm a mutant. You know about Xavier's. If there's something wrong with your power, there are people there that can help. You wouldn't be the first one with a crazy power mixup, not by a long shot." He chuckled. "Hell, I've had my power drive me insane a couple times."

"I'm not insane, I didn't do anything, leave me alone!" Quentin snapped. "There's nothing wrong with my power, I don't use it, I didn't use it, I just have a headache." God, why wouldn't Ramsey just leave? "I don't care if you tell everyone I'm a mutant, just leave me alone and go away."

Cain looked around the dorm room. Jesus, enough computer gaming magazines to wallpaper the mansion. He kicked around on the floor, Maxim, Stuff, FHM ... ... jesus, the geek couldn't even bring himself to buy realskin mags, this was getting more pathetic by the second.

Except Quentin's body language positively radiated guilt as he wouldn't meet Doug's eyes. "You're lying," he said softly and slowly, leaning in slightly.

"You've used your power. You know what it is, and you've used it before. What don't you want me to know, Quentin?" he asked calmly.

~Crapcrapcrapcrapshit~ Quentin put both palms flat on the bed and willed his hands to not twitch, not grab the sheets, not move. "I'm not lying. I don't use it. Not ever." He didn't move - he almost didn't even breathe. "No unfair advantages. I don't get anything anyone else had. Has."

Quentin had corrected himself very quickly, and his fingers were positively twitching with something. "What did you do, Quentin?" Doug asked, boring in and leaning even closer, a frown beginning to work its way onto his face.

"Nothing. I didn't do anything ..." Quentin said again, for what felt like the billionth time. "If you want to know so bad read my mind or something." There, and now if Ramsey was a telepath, he'd know and probably wipe Quentin's memories and turn him into some kind of vegetable or something sick and perverted, like he'd read in, oh, every other sci-fi book, ever, but he'd leave him alone and stop looming and he wouldn't let his big friend who was the size of a Humvee pound him into paste.

Doug blinked. Quentin looked a little scared when he looked over at Cain. Doug had expected that, the groundskeeper intimidated people just by walking into a room. But whenever Quentin's eyes skittered over to Doug, he looked positively terrified. Something just didn't add up here. "Let me rephrase, Quentin," he said in a low growl. "What the hell did you do that you're so scared shitless about me finding out?"

"You already know or you wouldn't be here so just wipe my brain and go away!" Quentin squeaked, backing up along the bed all the way to the wall. "You put the black hole there anyway!"

Black hole? Doug frowned. He shook his head, confused. "Black hole? What black hole, Quentin? I haven't put a black hole anywhere."

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry I made the crack about your girlfriend and the blowjob and all the stuff about you being rich and cheating on exams with mutant powers!" Quentin said in desperation. Maybe if he apoligized, Ramsey would go away and not push too hard about anything else. Maybe he really hadn't put the black hole in Marie-Ange's head and it was just some weird thing about her head.

Suddenly, it all fell into place in Doug's head with an almost audible click. The 'men's magazines' on the floor, with every cover model a redhead. The English-to-French dictionary on Quentin's desk. The mention of a 'black hole'. There was only one person Doug knew who had the telepathic equivalent of a black hole, and that was... "Marie-Ange," he breathed. "You did something to Marie-Ange, didn't you. DIDN'T YOU!" he yelled, practically in Quentin's face.

Quentin cowered, holding one hand in front of his face, and pushing the other out towards Doug to try to push him away. And then realized. If Ramsey wasn't going to start ripping things out of his mind, then Ramsey wasn't a telepath. Probably. And it was worth a shot. And so, in the midst of flailing, he set his teeth, and leaned forward, trying to get some contact with Doug. Face. Hand. Neck, he didn't care.

Whatever it was that Quentin could do (and by the mention of the black hole, Doug was guessing telepathy of some sort), he had obviously made up his mind to use it. His outstretched hand grasped desperately toward Doug. Doug's shields were definitely better than average from the required psionic defense class Emma Frost had taught when she had been a teacher at Xavier's.

But the better defense was to make Quentin think about things other than using his power. Doug's reaction time was very quick, and thought became action, his fist flashing out in a right cross that hit Quentin just below his eye. As the other young man sagged back into his bed, Doug exploded upward out of the chair, putting distance between himself and Quentin. "You piece of shit," he hissed. "You tried to force her. What makes you any different from those frat boys who rape girls in bathrooms at parties because they're bigger and stronger? If she'd wanted to be with you, I'd have done my best to accept that. But you tried to -force- her." Doug cocked his fist back again, ready to beat Quentin to within an inch of his life. Then he belatedly remembered Cain's presence, and looked over at the older man.

Cain just folded his arms, pretending to be interested in a poster of Simpsons characters on the wall. "I didn't see that," he said flatly. "I might not see it another four or five times if it's of any concern."

He'd never been -punched- before. But it still meant Ramsey had to touch him to do it, and it hurt, and his head was ringing and he had to make him stop before he hit him again or turned him into a little cube of all his component minerals or sucked all the salt from his body or sent him to Mars or whatever Ramsey could do. And thought was faster than anything, and Quentin lashed out with his mind ~Go away, leave me alone!~, he tried to command.

Only to come up against what seemed to him to be nothing less than a wall of always changing numbers and letters and words. Computer code, and characters in Japanese and symbols and things Quentin had no idea what they were and so many numbers. He reared back, covering his face with his hands. "What ARE you?"He pleaded.

With Quentin's hands covering his face, it was child's play to punch him twice in the stomach, after which the telepathic pressure at the back of Doug's mind let up. "I'm the Cypher," he told Quentin grimly." Get up and get dressed," he ordered, arms crossed over his chest. "I think someone needs a little lesson in telepathic ethics."

Cain reached out and put a hand on Doug's shoulder. "Enough," he said quietly. "There's a line here you don't wanna cross, trust me. Go out in the hall, I'll bring this kid out when he's ready." He glared menacingly at Quentin to let the boy know this wasn't exactly a show of mercy. "Go simmer down, Doug," Cain reiterated.

His hands clenched, Doug obediently walked out into the hallway like an automaton. He looked assessingly at a wall, pondering lashing out at it. He decided against it, even though it would have relieved some of the anger simmering inside him. The wall hadn't done anything to him. Slowly uncurling his hands, Doug grimaced. It was possible he had some anger management issues. That new psychiatrist Ms. Frost had hired was going to have a field day with him.