Morgan & Manuel | Thursday late morning

[x-copycat.livejournal.com]

Manuel sees a possibility to grasp control of his powers through the aid of someone else's mind.
Follows her run in with Adrienne

Change was not within his narrow perspective however, he did adapt well to it considering he preferred to resist it on a more regular basis when it suited him. A new mac laptop suited him to change. At least where this change was concerned. He sat at the kitchen table, lunch forgotten beside him while the pad of his finger traced lightly over the mouse pad of the computer. His dark eyes fixed on the screen and the white earphone plugs drowned out the voices in the hallway while it did nothing for the emotions within. His composure was held steady, despite the constant inward battle. Remaining very still, his breathing shallowed when a very sensual body sauntered and brushed past the counter in front of him and he looked up briefly in acknowledgment.

Morgan was in that blissful state one reached after a shower that followed the kind of workout that made your legs start to turn to jelly. If she wasn't drenched in sweat then she simply hadn't accomplished anything in a workout. Morgan was nothing if not productive today. She was humming lightly to herself as she headed into the kitchen, her primary objective being a bottle of water and the creation of a fruit salad with pretty much any fruit she could dig up. Morgan was calm, happy and relaxed. She wanted to curl up with a book, perhaps, or possibly attempt to watch a movie. The latter would surely lead to her falling asleep or boredom and therefore didn't make it long in consideration before being rejected.

Of course she noticed the guy at the kitchen table when she entered. He looked vaguely familiar but she was sure she hadn't actually met him. When he looked up Morgan gave him a brief smile and nod, choosing to forgo any verbal greeting when she spied the earphones. Without missing a beat she continued on to the fridge to sift through to find what she was after.

The contented frame of mind seeped in from her to him and while he did feel sedated in mood, it only amplified his mood. His eyes returned to the Mac and traced over the pad again, dragging and dropping music into files, sorting his downloads. As an after thought, he pulled a plug from his ear but didn't pull his eyes from the screen. Blue flower, red thorns, the depth of his eyes bore into the screen until he broke the silence between them. "Adjusting well?" he asked.

Her head popped up over the door of the fridge to make sure it was the same person talking and someone else hadn't floated in without her noticing. Same guy. "I guess," she shrugged and pulled a couple kiwi out to add to her growing variety of fruits in her arms. "I'm easily adjusted, mostly there's too much free time. Kind of unnerving in a way. That and deceptively bitchy people pretending to be all sweetness and lace." Morgan laid her array on the counter only to fetch a bowl, a knife and a cutting board. Ah, sharp shiny things, she hummed happily in her head as she began to rinse and then cut up her fruit.

"Ah, I see you've met three quarters of the population then. They are ridiculously cheery and accommodating, however I believe you should appreciate their diversity from our counterparts." Humans, though he did not express that vocally. "Are you rooming alone, or with someone?" He preferred a room alone but he had to give in to having a roommate, whom he didn't see much of. Thankfully.

Oh, so everyone was that cheerily obnoxious? That was just great to know. Still, there was a small handful of people around that she'd met and liked, one of which had oddly turned out to be Nate, so that was something. A handful of people was more than some people ever got. "I'm alone. I think it might have something to do with the gun," she shrugged. "Or teaching. Though that's a new development so who knows. You sound like you're just thrilled to be here, how come?"

"A long and redundant story I don't care to share." He said nothing of the gun, though he was surprised she had one. "You do not strike me as the teaching figure. Especially from the way you handle the knife. A chef perhaps?" Very comfortably, he noted mentally. Comfortable and very accurately. "Teach a cooking class?"

Morgan shrugged, "That's fair enough." If he'd tried to skirt around the issue she would have pressed it. She would have been unrelenting and blatant. But he had the sense to say he didn't want to talk about it and Morgan respected when people managed to have the balls to say that to someone. Few people ever said that, they just talked around it. "Cooking? Me? Nah. I'm replacing their self-defense teacher."

Rotating his hand, Manuel flexed it before drag and dropping another song into a play list. "You are not what I expected to see as a self defense teacher. This is not one of those ludicrous courses that gives feeble women false hopes to defend themselves against a rapist twice their size, is it?"

"Damn, you are cheery, aren't you?" Morgan tried unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh. She spun around to look at him, knife still in hand. "No, this would be one of those courses that teaches a person to understand their body and its physical capabilities without depending upon their mutation so they can incapacitate an attacker. Preferably through non-lethal means but I can teach lethal ones to people if they really want me to," she paused and then revised. "And don't tell Xavier I did. Besides, large people tend to depend on their size and brute strength a lot. They are fairly easy to incapacitate." Morgan tilted her head, peering at Manuel carefully, sizing him up. She was willing to bet he was about her height. He only had maybe ten, twenty pounds on her at most. But there was a tiredness to him, whether it was physical or mental exhaustion she wasn't sure. He wasn't exactly the biggest guy ever. "What would you expect to see as a self-defense teacher? Someone like Garrison?"

"If you enjoy Air Supply. No. I was thinking of someone... bigger. However, considering your personality type at face value, I am sure you are more than adequate to instill some defense that they will forget to use when they're faced with something much worse than size." He smiled faintly at his own contradiction and moved three more songs around before closing the program and opening another one. "Dare I ask what your abilities concerning mutation are. What were the prerequisites for the position? Experience?"

Morgan laughed. "You have no concept of how to learn or be taught how to fight, do you? Self-defense is not a workshop you take once and think it will do any good for you. It's ongoing and it gets drilled into your head. You have to make it muscle reflex so your body reacts without you having to think about it. If you're relying on your brain for your reaction you'll end up unconscious, mugged and raped before you choose what to do." She couldn't wipe the look of amusement off her face. This guy was such a typical guy. The last one she'd met tried to grope her in a bar. He got a black eye and needed stitches in his side. His fault entirely, she maintained. "I copy people, genetically. As for experience," she shrugged, "it's not something I'm talking about. Nothing personal."

"Nothing personal taken," he replied. "And yes, I do understand the concepts of fighting and how to learn. It takes years of practice to instill defensive reflex and if you haven't seen yet, you will eventually see that not many people here linger for years, or even months. Your classroom size may vary from time to time." Her mutation snagged his interest immediately and Manuel looked up from his screen, giving her his full attention. "Define genetically. To what degree do you copy individuals, if you do not mind me asking."

Morgan shrugged, clearly she was just not going to be bothered by this. "Not all things take years. And if people do not continue to train after they leave then it is entirely their fault, innit? I'm going to actually teach them, but if people around here are always in so much trouble I'm hopeful they'll pay attention." Honestly, she didn't care if they got something from it or not. It was required for the students and it was a way for her to pay Xavier back for the room and board he didn't want to accept money for. "Genetically as in physically down to your blood type, fingerprints and voice. Also down to your DNA, which includes your powers if you're a mutant and a mental imprint, but the last two take some time to copy."

He wasn't about to get into a discussion about how useless a self defense course was as opposed to personal training. There was no point. He did, however, work out the finer details of using her power to his advantage. "How well are you able to control their powers once you attain it?"

"Depends on the power. Part of it is being able to rationalize it myself, know what it's supposed to do and how it's supposed to work. Part of it is having seen it work. And part of it is the person's mind." Morgan set the knife down and hopped up on an empty part of the counter. "Alright, I'm not sure how great I'm going to explain this so bear with me. I pick up mental imprints, psi-patterns. It's kind of your thought process. I get no memories, no knowledge. So I start off with no control over anything. But I can rationalize things the same way the person I mimicked does even if I don't know why they think like that. So I can use their rationale and whatever I know of the power to help me control it. Normally it's more of an on/off switch thing I'm going for. I don't stick around in most bodies long enough to learn much control over their powers or for it to matter." She was pretty sure he was asking for a reason but Morgan didn't bother asking her what it was. He'd tell her or he wouldn't.

Manuel closed his laptop. "Just to clarify. What if the mind you were mimicking was damaged, but had complete control before that damage but no longer does. Would that affect your ability to control then?" He was sure that he understood her powers but the attempt to find a loop hole was laced in his focused interest on her. "Would it still be considered an on and off switch and would you still be able to understand the power if that person no longer does?"

In tried and true Morgan fashion she cut out the beating around the bush he was doing. After popping a piece of a strawberry in her mouth she fixed her gaze on him. "How's your mind damaged? I don't know that I've dealt with a damaged mind before. But my mind isn't damaged. If you still intellectually know how to control your powers and you can still rationalize it but you can't get a grip on it then, yeah, I might be able to do something. I'm pretty good at switching telepathy on and off at this point and telekinetics. If it's a mental based thing it might not be too difficult. Depends. Only one way to find out. Why, what do you do?"

"I do not know," he said honestly. Manuel didn't feel like going into details about it, so the less he said, the better, regarding what happened. "There was an accident. Before the accident, I had absolute control over my powers. Now I have none. I am an empath. I can project as much as I can receive. Copying me would give me possible insight into why I'm not able to regain control as before. Would you be interested in teaching a different sort of defense?"

Well, that was new, to say the least. Morgan wasn't even sure what to say to that. An empath. So he received everyone's emotions and he could project his own onto them? Jesus, it was like telepathy gone haywire. Though, you couldn't say the girl didn't like a challenge. "Sure. But you're talking about direct skin-on-skin contact for at least ninety minutes straight for me to be able to pull it off. Get to seventy-five and lose contact and you've got to start all over with me. And I need to know about your mutation. How it works, what you're capable and not capable of, how emotions manifest whether it's a mental construct or something more tangible like something you can see. The better you can explain it to me the better I can figure it out when I'm you. No sugar coating, no pulling punches, dead honesty."

He wasn't inclined to give all the information about how his power worked but if this could help him establish his faults and where his problem rested, he was sure he could overcome his concern about others knowing how his power worked. He didn't plan on showing her his world, however, he could give her a summary of what he had been able to do before and he could think of only one thing that was worth doing during those ninety minutes of physical contact. "I will be sure to indulge you in all the finer details of my powers." Manuel mocked a smile. "Then we can hold hands and watch a movie."

He was so lucky he went the holding hands and watching a movie route rather than the 'hey baby I'll rock your world for two hours' route. That one would have been followed by a warning of appendage loss. "How sweet, it's like I'm fourteen and on a date with the cutest boy in school all over again." Morgan stopped herself from laughing but she did grin at him. A movie was going to be torture for her. She never made it through entire movies, always getting bored and moving on to something else instead. He wasn't exactly looking like he was in the most energetic state though so any and all alternatives were out. With any luck he wouldn't get too annoyed when she started to mutter to herself to keep herself amused.

Morgan looked down at herself and made a face. "Right. After I find other clothes." She plucked at her tank top and then looked at Manuel. "Your body would never fit in this and it'd look really silly trying to."

"I'll give you some clothes," he said, sliding his laptop off the table and leaning over the side to place it in the bag. "Another day. Not now. I'll send you an email when I'm ready for it." He had to gauge when he was feeling well enough to go through something like that where she copied him right down to his powers and then used the powers to help him control his own. That was, if it all went according to the plan he had formulating in his head. "I'll leave the choice of movie to you. Try not to pick something romantic or boring. I'm not dead."

"E-mail rendezvous, now I really do feel fourteen." She knew she was probably a bit more amused with that than he was but she wasn't really caring. "Just try to not pick the most inopportune day ever, yeah? Guys have a knack for that and I have a feeling picking up empath abilities is pretty much going to suck." Morgan shrugged, not very bothered by it despite her view on what it would be like. "Lots of action and things blowing up is all that can really hold my attention. Otherwise I get restless." She made a note to have a book with her anyway, just in case.