Pietro and Rachel, Wednesday afternoon
Dec. 13th, 2006 01:43 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsPietro discovers Rachel playing hooky from her mother. It's entirely possible that he's not a baby person. Luckily, Nathan intervenes before anything gets broken.
Rachel Kinross had never heard of Houdini, and in years to come, wouldn't appreciate the comparisons that came along with stories of just what an escape artist she'd been as a child. This afternoon, however, she was still several months short of her second birthday, gleefully giddy at having slipped away from her mother's office in a moment of inattention on Moira's part, and very contentedly exploring more of the mansion.
Tiring of climbing the stairs, she floated up the last several and came to a gentle bouncing stop on the hardwood floor. The front hall was empty, and she giggled, gray eyes huge and delighted as she pulled herself to her feet and made her still slightly-unsteady way in the general direction of the Professor's office.
The mansion grounds were getting excruciatingly cramped, and he'd probably covered every inch of them a hundred times since his arrival, but Pietro still made it a point to run circuit at least once a day. It gave his computer time to process a set of images for data, for one thing--and for another, well, if anyone actually was keeping an eye on his GPS monitor, it wouldn't hurt to keep them on their toes.
His computer had probably run through its job queue by now, he thought, and angled back toward the mansion, half-dreading the discovery of which horror-show the decryption program had found for him this time. Contemplation of the possibilities kept him distracted as he zoomed up the front steps and into the hall, but reality managed to seize his attention just in time to hurdle the toddler in his path. He skidded to a halt, looking back--that had been a little closer than he liked, and Dayspring didn't strike him as particularly forgiving where his daughter was concerned.
Rachel, startled by both the sudden appearance of a very strange psi-imprint where there had been none before, and the fact that someone had just jumped over her, sat down hard on the hardwood floor. That Pietro was looking back to see if she was all right didn't register. She had fallen, and that was unacceptable. She burst into affronted tears.
Oh, hell, the child was crying now. Had he--no, he couldn't have grazed her, at the speed he'd been going she would have been, er, in quite a bit more serious trouble. Probably it was just the surprise.
It was going through his skull.
Somebody was going to show up any second and demand to know why he was assaulting the baby, Pietro just knew it. He would have to deal with this before that happened. Somehow. Wanda was good with babies. There'd been babies in the caravan, and they hadn't cried all the time. One picked them up, or something, and bounced around like an idiot, and then they stopped.
Rachel was supposed to be a prodigy. Maybe he could just ask her to stop instead. That would be faster and far less humiliating, which in Pietro's estimation were two very good things indeed.
"Please stop crying, Rachel," he ventured. "I didn't mean to surprise you, but you're not hurt, and everything's all right, so there's no need to cry."
"Bad," Rachel said, sniffling and staring up at him with very wounded gray eyes. "Bad. Boom." The lovely - and rather delicate -antique table placed against the wall just beside where this little tableau was taking place rattled ominously. #Bad!#
"No, you're not bad," Pietro replied, a little panic edging his voice. "Please don't break the table. No boom." He shot over to the table, trying to steady it. "Leave the expensive table alone, there's a nice baby . . ."
Oh, she knew this game. Rachel smiled, and while it was one of those bright baby smiles, the look in those tearful gray eyes was anything but innocent. "Boom," she said, and the table rattled again, the small, antique glass bowl sitting on top of it sliding perilously towards the edge.
Pietro shot her an exasperated glare as he caught the bowl. "That wasn't an invitation to actually be bad and prove me wrong, you know. At least you're not screaming anymore, and I suppose that's progress. Why don't we go find your mother and ask her if you're supposed to be wandering the mansion all by yourself?"
"Pbbbth." Rachel levitated up off the ground until she was at eye-level with Pietro, wrapped securely in a TK bubble. "Mama. No. Boom!" She started to rotate in her bubble, displaying her usual complete lack of attention to the forces of gravity - and then giggled. Something like an invisible finger poked Pietro in the chest, and Rachel burbled something that had an uncanny resemblance to the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth. Her pitch, as usual, was perfect, even when she was upside down.
"So you're not supposed to be wandering the mansion all by yourself. And you're very nearly as smart as your father thinks you are." Pietro rubbed his chest thoughtfully. "But we really ought to return you to your mother before she starts to worry." He reached out a hand--perhaps he couldn't reach her through the bubble, but she might let him push her in it.
"Oooo..." Rachel pushed back happily. It wasn't that much of a push, given the circuit-breaker in her head, but it was roughly the same level of force she would have mustered to fling a squirrel or three. Noticeable, in any case, and several of the pictures on the wall beside Pietro rattled.
"Stop that," he said irritably. "If you break something I can think of half-a-dozen people who will be annoying about how it's really my fault, and I don't want to hear it. Come along, Rachel, your mother's waiting."
Rachel folded her little arms, visibly pouting. "Bzzzt," she pronounced suddenly. Her gray eyes were very wide and very intent, locked on his face. #Bzzzzt?# The telepathic echo of it was more complex than what had seemed like a simple bee-mimicry, aloud.
At the end of the hall, Nathan, who'd emerged from his office at Moira's exasperated warning that the baby had flown the coop again, paused out of sight, listening to the exchange with a certain amount of wonderment.
#Bzzzzt...# Definite layers to the telepathic projection, images layered on top of each other and sped up like a movie on fast-forward. Bees floating over flowers and Charles in his office and looking up at Wanda from her lap.
"Bzzt?" Pietro muttered, his eyebrows going up. Then the penny dropped, and he snorted. "Yes, bzzt, I suppose. You know, your father said more-or-less the same thing. Clever little mischief-imp, aren't you?"
"Frighteningly so, sometimes," said her father as he stepped out into view, raising an eyebrow at his wayward offspring. Rachel giggled and bounced towards him, like a telekinetic basketball dribbling herself. "She slipped away from her mother, again. Sorry, Pietro - she didn't throw anything at you, did she?"
"I gathered. And no--she almost broke the table there, though. I'm afraid I startled her a little coming in. I'm still not entirely sure why she decided to stop crying, but I'm also not going to look the gift horse in the mouth." Pietro gave Rachel a mildly severe look. "I think somewhere in all that interest in one of the first truly posthuman consciousnesses and whatever other nonsense I was spewing when last we spoke, I managed to lose sight of the fact that she's still a baby."
Rachel giggled as she made a perfect landing in her father's arms, giving him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. Nathan smiled tolerantly. "Yes, she is," he said, "and as far as I'm concerned, she can stay a baby for as long as her little heart desires. Although I'm not as afraid of what's going to happen when she's old enough to start dating as I used to be. The fact that she'll be able to put any boy who looks at her the wrong way through the nearest wall is very reassuring to me."
Pietro grinned evilly. "What, you're not worried that she'll put a boy in one of those handy bubbles specifically so that they can look at her the wrong way without worrying about . . . anyone's wall-related impulses?"
"No, because she knows her loving father will only have her best interests at heart, and not question his judgement..." Rachel blew a raspberry at him, and Nathan threw back his head and laughed. "She understands more English than we give her credit for, I think, but she's infallible at getting the underlying tone."
Pietro snickered. "Yes, and at this rate, someday she's going to start sneaking around with Morty Toynbee Junior, and I am going to find you and laugh."
The comment got an only half-facetious glare from Nathan, and more than slightly maniacal laughter from Rachel. Who 'got' tone all too well, really.
Rachel Kinross had never heard of Houdini, and in years to come, wouldn't appreciate the comparisons that came along with stories of just what an escape artist she'd been as a child. This afternoon, however, she was still several months short of her second birthday, gleefully giddy at having slipped away from her mother's office in a moment of inattention on Moira's part, and very contentedly exploring more of the mansion.
Tiring of climbing the stairs, she floated up the last several and came to a gentle bouncing stop on the hardwood floor. The front hall was empty, and she giggled, gray eyes huge and delighted as she pulled herself to her feet and made her still slightly-unsteady way in the general direction of the Professor's office.
The mansion grounds were getting excruciatingly cramped, and he'd probably covered every inch of them a hundred times since his arrival, but Pietro still made it a point to run circuit at least once a day. It gave his computer time to process a set of images for data, for one thing--and for another, well, if anyone actually was keeping an eye on his GPS monitor, it wouldn't hurt to keep them on their toes.
His computer had probably run through its job queue by now, he thought, and angled back toward the mansion, half-dreading the discovery of which horror-show the decryption program had found for him this time. Contemplation of the possibilities kept him distracted as he zoomed up the front steps and into the hall, but reality managed to seize his attention just in time to hurdle the toddler in his path. He skidded to a halt, looking back--that had been a little closer than he liked, and Dayspring didn't strike him as particularly forgiving where his daughter was concerned.
Rachel, startled by both the sudden appearance of a very strange psi-imprint where there had been none before, and the fact that someone had just jumped over her, sat down hard on the hardwood floor. That Pietro was looking back to see if she was all right didn't register. She had fallen, and that was unacceptable. She burst into affronted tears.
Oh, hell, the child was crying now. Had he--no, he couldn't have grazed her, at the speed he'd been going she would have been, er, in quite a bit more serious trouble. Probably it was just the surprise.
It was going through his skull.
Somebody was going to show up any second and demand to know why he was assaulting the baby, Pietro just knew it. He would have to deal with this before that happened. Somehow. Wanda was good with babies. There'd been babies in the caravan, and they hadn't cried all the time. One picked them up, or something, and bounced around like an idiot, and then they stopped.
Rachel was supposed to be a prodigy. Maybe he could just ask her to stop instead. That would be faster and far less humiliating, which in Pietro's estimation were two very good things indeed.
"Please stop crying, Rachel," he ventured. "I didn't mean to surprise you, but you're not hurt, and everything's all right, so there's no need to cry."
"Bad," Rachel said, sniffling and staring up at him with very wounded gray eyes. "Bad. Boom." The lovely - and rather delicate -antique table placed against the wall just beside where this little tableau was taking place rattled ominously. #Bad!#
"No, you're not bad," Pietro replied, a little panic edging his voice. "Please don't break the table. No boom." He shot over to the table, trying to steady it. "Leave the expensive table alone, there's a nice baby . . ."
Oh, she knew this game. Rachel smiled, and while it was one of those bright baby smiles, the look in those tearful gray eyes was anything but innocent. "Boom," she said, and the table rattled again, the small, antique glass bowl sitting on top of it sliding perilously towards the edge.
Pietro shot her an exasperated glare as he caught the bowl. "That wasn't an invitation to actually be bad and prove me wrong, you know. At least you're not screaming anymore, and I suppose that's progress. Why don't we go find your mother and ask her if you're supposed to be wandering the mansion all by yourself?"
"Pbbbth." Rachel levitated up off the ground until she was at eye-level with Pietro, wrapped securely in a TK bubble. "Mama. No. Boom!" She started to rotate in her bubble, displaying her usual complete lack of attention to the forces of gravity - and then giggled. Something like an invisible finger poked Pietro in the chest, and Rachel burbled something that had an uncanny resemblance to the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth. Her pitch, as usual, was perfect, even when she was upside down.
"So you're not supposed to be wandering the mansion all by yourself. And you're very nearly as smart as your father thinks you are." Pietro rubbed his chest thoughtfully. "But we really ought to return you to your mother before she starts to worry." He reached out a hand--perhaps he couldn't reach her through the bubble, but she might let him push her in it.
"Oooo..." Rachel pushed back happily. It wasn't that much of a push, given the circuit-breaker in her head, but it was roughly the same level of force she would have mustered to fling a squirrel or three. Noticeable, in any case, and several of the pictures on the wall beside Pietro rattled.
"Stop that," he said irritably. "If you break something I can think of half-a-dozen people who will be annoying about how it's really my fault, and I don't want to hear it. Come along, Rachel, your mother's waiting."
Rachel folded her little arms, visibly pouting. "Bzzzt," she pronounced suddenly. Her gray eyes were very wide and very intent, locked on his face. #Bzzzzt?# The telepathic echo of it was more complex than what had seemed like a simple bee-mimicry, aloud.
At the end of the hall, Nathan, who'd emerged from his office at Moira's exasperated warning that the baby had flown the coop again, paused out of sight, listening to the exchange with a certain amount of wonderment.
#Bzzzzt...# Definite layers to the telepathic projection, images layered on top of each other and sped up like a movie on fast-forward. Bees floating over flowers and Charles in his office and looking up at Wanda from her lap.
"Bzzt?" Pietro muttered, his eyebrows going up. Then the penny dropped, and he snorted. "Yes, bzzt, I suppose. You know, your father said more-or-less the same thing. Clever little mischief-imp, aren't you?"
"Frighteningly so, sometimes," said her father as he stepped out into view, raising an eyebrow at his wayward offspring. Rachel giggled and bounced towards him, like a telekinetic basketball dribbling herself. "She slipped away from her mother, again. Sorry, Pietro - she didn't throw anything at you, did she?"
"I gathered. And no--she almost broke the table there, though. I'm afraid I startled her a little coming in. I'm still not entirely sure why she decided to stop crying, but I'm also not going to look the gift horse in the mouth." Pietro gave Rachel a mildly severe look. "I think somewhere in all that interest in one of the first truly posthuman consciousnesses and whatever other nonsense I was spewing when last we spoke, I managed to lose sight of the fact that she's still a baby."
Rachel giggled as she made a perfect landing in her father's arms, giving him a sloppy kiss on the cheek. Nathan smiled tolerantly. "Yes, she is," he said, "and as far as I'm concerned, she can stay a baby for as long as her little heart desires. Although I'm not as afraid of what's going to happen when she's old enough to start dating as I used to be. The fact that she'll be able to put any boy who looks at her the wrong way through the nearest wall is very reassuring to me."
Pietro grinned evilly. "What, you're not worried that she'll put a boy in one of those handy bubbles specifically so that they can look at her the wrong way without worrying about . . . anyone's wall-related impulses?"
"No, because she knows her loving father will only have her best interests at heart, and not question his judgement..." Rachel blew a raspberry at him, and Nathan threw back his head and laughed. "She understands more English than we give her credit for, I think, but she's infallible at getting the underlying tone."
Pietro snickered. "Yes, and at this rate, someday she's going to start sneaking around with Morty Toynbee Junior, and I am going to find you and laugh."
The comment got an only half-facetious glare from Nathan, and more than slightly maniacal laughter from Rachel. Who 'got' tone all too well, really.
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Date: 2006-12-13 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-13 09:25 pm (UTC)