AK/DM: Laurie and Crystal VS Quentin Quire

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Laurie and Crystal, teaming up to confront Quentin, answer the age-old question "How do you stop a telepath from using their powers?"



Quentin kicked back on the chaise lounge in the top-floor penthouse suite. When you had an entire luxury hotel at your disposal and a new best buddy who could make the systems do anything you wanted, well, that meant it was finally time to get what you deserved.

In Quentin's case, that was a magnum of Cristal and a plate of expensive caviar, all arranged and delivered by the completely automated systems. Which was a good thing after they'd managed to get all the patrons out of the Malik Dubai, with the exception of that son of a bitch Ramsey and his friends.

The fact that their keycards had mysteriously vanished off the hotel's tracker wasn't of any concern. Milan was going to fix that personally, and all Quentin had to do was relax. He closed his eyes and let his mind roam free. No harm in screwing with people, he thought. If they were friends of Ramsey, obviously that meant they were the same kind of overly-entitled assholes, and anything that happened to them was fair game. They probably deserved it for something.

It was almost too easy to brush the mind of one of the blonde girls, but instead of finding fear, Quentin got a flash of something else entirely. Something very close.

He opened his eyes just as the door to his room burst inwards.

"Oh crap."

"Honey, we're home!" Laurie said in a sing-song voice from behind Crystal. She'd always wanted to say that to someone and she grinned at Quentin in a completely not reassuring at all way.

Quentin stared at the two blonde women, the bottle of champagne in his hand falling to the floor, shooting the cork out violently in a not-Freudian-at-all moment.

"Oh...oh...all right," he stammered, trying to put on a brave front. "You two want to play? Do you even know who I am? I'm Kid Omega, bitches! I'm your worst nightmare. In fact, let me show your worst nightmare to you!"

He placed his fingertips to his temples and grimaced at Crystal, focusing intently. However, where eavesdropping on the random thoughts and dreams of strangers had been easy, this was like running headlong into a brick wall.

Feeling Quentin's "knock" on her shields, which were very much up since Crystal had known she would be facing a telepath, Crystal eyed the man in front of her and frowned. "Excuse me," she said in an icy voice, "are you attempting to gain access to my mind? Do you not know that this is an act which is most impolite? Do you not understand that actions such as yours are a large part of the reason humans fear mutants? Do you not realize that you look like an idiot and have probably watched one too many reruns of Star Trek?"

"They should fear me!" Quentin shouted, unconsciously recoiling from Crystal. "They should fear all of us! But you're just like them, aren't you? Just like Ramsey, trying to hold back those of us who can actually make a difference!"

He reached down and grabbed the champagne bottle by the neck, glaring at Crystal and Laurie. "So I suppose I'll have to man up and do this the old-fashioned way," he said, psyching himself up as he charged at the two women, bottle over his head like a club.

Laurie stepped forward around Crystal as Quentin charged them, allowing the tight control she held on her powers to loosen as she concentrated on the nauseous feeling that she'd had only hours before. She knew Crystal would be able to guard against it, and she wasn't affected by her own powers so that just left Quentin, and the rapidly spreading pheromones she's released around her.

"You know, you'd do a lot better if you stopped talking like some guy from a super hero movie, and started realising the seriousness of your current predicament," Laurie noted calmly, side stepping the swipe he took at her with the bottle. "We're not afraid of you."

While Crystal could prevent herself from being affected by the release of pheromones in the air, thanks to being able to move the air containing them away from her body, this didn't mean she wasn't able to tell that they were in the air around her. Quite the opposite, in fact: in order to keep herself from being affected by the pheromones, she had to sense their presence. Which is what kept Crystal from creating an air wall to keep Quentin from being unable to reach her or Laurie. Hopefully Laurie could handle this. Crystal did not like anyone trying to mess with her head, and it would be much better if she didn't have to do anything to Quentin. Just a small push to concentrate the pheromones on Quentin, that was all.

"Yes, you have given people a reason to fear you," Crystal told Quentin, attempting to remain calm. "This is not a necessary action, however. Giving them reasons to fear us does not serve any sort of positive purpose. What sort of worthwhile difference do you believe that you can make by giving people reasons to dislike and mistrust mutants?"

Quentin could feel his stomach churning - obviously one of them was doing something to him. Trying to take him on two-on-one, just like that coward Ramsey tried. "Because they should fear me!" he shouted hoarsely, gesturing at Laurie and concentrating on the thought of scrambling her mind, punching her in the brain, anything to make her stop.

Laurie, unlike Crystal had very little shielding against psi attacks, even with the training she'd been doing with the X-men. She gasped, and held a hand to the side of her head, trying very hard not to scream at the sudden feeling of ants crawling on her brain. At least, that's what it felt like, a series of creepy, stinging pains all over. It had the side effect of breaking her concentration, and her powers shut off, unluckily for Quentin it wasn't as easy as that to air the room out.

"NO!" It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on. "Leave her alone! Imbecile!" Without moving or even lifting a finger, Crystal lifted Quentin up into the air, spinning him around. Enraged, the Attilani slipped into Portuguese. "~How dare you! You do not deserve your abilities! They are gifts, and you are misusing them! You do not deserve to be a mutant! No one should have to fear us!~" Not sure if the spinning would be enough to break stop Quentin's psionic attack against Laurie (and mad as hell, memories of what Maximus had done to her coming to her mind unbidden) Crystal slammed Quentin up onto the ceiling, then released her hold on the air surrounding him, allowing him to drop to the floor.

Ignoring the fallen man, Crystal then turned to Laurie, a look of concern on her face, wanting to reach out to her but not sure how well that would go. "Laurie, are you all right?"

Laurie nodded, hands falling from her temples now that the pain had stopped. She had a splitting headache, and an anxious, violated feeling as if someone had reached inside her and touched things that should never be touched by an outside hand. Apart from the times when she thought her parents might die, it had to be one of the worst feelings she'd ever experienced.

She walked on unsteady legs to where Quentin lay and reached down to tilt his chin upwards to face her. He seemed dazed, but not badly hurt. "How do you stop a telepath from using their powers?" she asked Crystal, feeling along Quentin's body and legs to make sure nothing was broken. She knew it must seem strange that she was checking the man over after he'd just attacked her but falling into professionalism seemed to help the dirty feeling she was currently experiencing.

"I find that slamming them into walls does the job quite well," Crystal said dryly. "Now, Mr. Quire, are you going to behave, or do I need to demonstrate another method of preventing telepaths from using their abilities to harm others? Say, for example, removing the air from your lungs? I usually find that this tends to stop people from doing just about anything. Not always, mind you, but you are not one of the rare exceptions to that rule, are you?"

Quentin gritted his teeth, choking back a mouthful of bile. He tried once more to reach out with his telepathy, but found... nothing. "No..." he moaned, realizing that the drug's effects were wearing off. Milan had said it wasn't as potent as Kick, but it couldn't be leaving him weak now, could it?

"I... I want..." he stammered out, then collapsed bonelessly to the floor. "I want to talk to my lawyer..." he murmured before going completely limp.

Laurie felt for a pulse, and sighed with relief as she felt it strong and steady. You could never really tell how a person might react to her power, and she had no desire to really hurt the man.

"So, I guess it's 'carting him back to our room' time then," Laurie noted, glancing over at Crystal with a hopeful look. "You wouldn't happen to be able to float him, would you?"

Crystal nodded, and Quentin's body rose into the air, steady rather than spinning this time. "Do not worry, Laurie, I will be keeping an eye on him. Let me know immediately if you feel him attempting to gain access to your mind. He will be very, very sorry if he decides to try to do this again."