Adrienne & Nico - Visions from the Past

[x-staffofone.livejournal.com]

Adrienne gets (forced) to read the Staff of One, revealing clues and questions about it's precedence, but also peeking into a part of Nico's life she wasn't aware of.



Nico was sitting in the middle of a deserted classroom, meditating. It had become weirdly easy to just relax and enter the state of mind where she could almost see the energy flowing from everything around her, and tap into it. It was a bit scary, but she was getting the hang of draining something like a pencil and then making Mia the Dark Werelight appear, and she could already control it to the extent of keeping her away from people; Nico wasn't sure a werelight was meant to bite others. The Staff of One was lying on a nearby desk, since she didn't want to tap into it by mistake, and Nico was cross legged over another desk. Actually, she was floating; all her focusing allowed her to raise a couple of inches from the desk. Eyes closed, an absent expression covered her face as she focused on the feeling.

"Whoa." Adrienne stopped in her tracks when she noticed a levitating Nico sitting on one of the desks in the math classroom. It was something she thought she'd be used to by now, living with people who could fly or move things with their brains, but the sight still caught her off guard.

But since the young woman wasn't affecting her trip to the classroom in any way, Adrienne turned her gaze away and focused on the task at hand- moving around the desks and touching them with a hand to make sure no one had been cheating on their last math test.

In any other scenario, Nico would've blushed and fell to the ground, attempting to explain Adrienne she wasn't really good at it, and that it wasn't such a big deal. Actually, Nico wasn't even aware of the fact she was hovering; it had been Amanda the one who had mentioned it on later training sessions. So the 'whoa' passed unnoticed as Nico remained lost inside her own head; she registered the new source of energy that had just entered the classroom though, but it was discarded right away since it was obviously someone, and Nico wasn't fond of the idea of draining a living being.

Eventually Adrienne would pass close to Nico though, but she stayed as oblivious as before. The Staff of One didn't seem so calm though; as the older woman approached, it actually trembled a little on it's place, and then moved in Adrienne's direction an inch.

Her own experiences with meditation giving her a degree of respect for people who were practicing it, Adrienne tried to move unobtrusively and quietly throughout the room but she couldn't hold back an exhalation of breath as she noticed the staff move. "What the fuck?" she muttered, before the thing seemed to jump off the desk it was resting on and shoot into her hand, causing her to enter a reading with the feeling like she was being slammed against a wall.

~Darkness, warm and soft. It was like levitating in hot air, but the air was so dense it felt like a comfortable pressure, a sheet that surrounded and wrapped. There was also sound, but muffled; voices discussing far away. Silence. Silence. Silence.

"NONONONOPLEASEGETOFFME!!" The voice was suddenly silenced with a heavy 'thud!' another voice, deeper and lower, growling as sobbing could be barely heard. The sobs didn't last though, the warm cover of darkness becoming tighter and tighter. "When blood is shed...", the voice was weak, but it sounded clearer than anything; the void was pierced by a haze of cold white light. "Let the Staff of One emerge." Pressure, the feeling of becoming material, coldness, light...human flesh, one that seemed to not be there, and a second one that was burnt as it emerged. The room was now visible, the light showing the dirty sheets on the floor, and huge naked man next to them, his chest burnt, the in comparison tiny girl, covering the best she could, staff in hand, face twisted in fear and rage. IT could feel her, the anger and darkness swelling inside of her, the void where IT rested peacefully rising like a deathly tide; the man could see it too, as he started to beg her for mercy, that he didn't want to hurt her, that he had a wife and children and that he would be a better person from now on, promise. But it was too late for him.

"Burn."

And so he burnt.~

Frantically, Adrienne tried to reach the part of her that was in the real world and make herself let go of the staff, the scene she'd just witnessed searing into her consciousness and bringing bile into her throat as nausea swamped her body. In addition to the image, which was disturbing enough, the fact that she could feel the heat of the air as if she was the staff was something she had never experienced before and she wanted to get far, far away from it. She managed to wrench her fingers away from the staff, yet it remained in contact with her palm as if of its own accord. Panicking a little now, she attempted to turn her powers off as she had been practicing, but the scene before her shifted and with an almost physical wrenching she was pulled into a second reading.

~The town rested down in the valley; it's extension was considerable, the latest technology applied to improve the cultivates and the feeding of the animals. Water was nearby, and so the villagers had to worry only about the plagues; they had been lucky though, and the expansion had been unavoidable. From the edge of the mountain where she was standing, the woman smiled. She could be easily described as Nico in a couple of years, more or less, the raven black hair long enough to kiss the ground, the black dress covering her entirely, but still managing to define her grown, mature body underneath. Her eyes were completely black.

The woman smiled at the town as a mother would smile to her sleeping child, and then stepped into the nothingness...and flew. She was at the very center of the town soon enough, the sleeping villagers unaware of the woman up there. Extending her hands to the sky, her smile changed drastically to a predatory one, teeth turning into sharp fangs, black cracks growing from the sides of her eyes onto her face. "It is time." Even her voice was somehow Nico's. "The time has come, my Master demands a sacrifice, my Servant deserves a body, I deserve eternal life." She started to chant then, her lips moving fast, her voice turned into a murmur in which words seemed to become impossible to identify, her hands held high as the wind started to increase in speed around her and the town; it apparently wasn't strong enough to do anything but moved the trees a bit, and maybe wake up a couple of villagers, but then she lowered her hands, and the wind stopped being just wind, and became a sea of darkness; like a black snake circling the town, first bringing ground, houses, people and animals all together, and then making them all a single thing, raising it to the woman, piercing her skin and going through her. The sky had suddenly became violent, thunder and rays breaking the calm of the night, as the darkness that once was a town expanded, and it kept on expanding until it covered everything...and then faded.

The woman was still there, panting, her clothes ragged, her face full of black cracks, a sickening smile on her face; in front of her, a golden light took shape, and stood there in front of her. "My Servant, my tool of everlasting power. I am your only owner, and only to me you shall reveal your secrets. For that you are...the Staff of One." The light finished to materialize, and then merged with the woman; her voice remained clear though. "My Staff of One."~


Her hand still open, Adrienne was flooded with relief when the staff finally disconnected with her palm and fell to the floor with a clatter. The woman with the fangs, the one who looked and sounded like Nico set her shivering. The image of Nico with the naked man had her staggering with nausea as it assaulted her eyes, and no matter how many times she tried to blink it away the picture remained as clear as if she were standing in the room with them. The two scenes kept hammering at her even though she had disconnected with the staff, and Adrienne had just enough time for a thought about the oddity of that fact before the circuit breaker in her head severed her from consciousness, causing her to fall to the floor with a thud.

"Miss Frost? Can you hear me? Adrienne!?!?"

Nico had pretty much fell from where she was the moment Adrienne had managed to let the Staff of One go, or when this decided it was enough; Nico had actually grabbed the Staff when it was still lunging around the woman, and jammed it into her chest; she could tell the Staff of One was weird hot, when it usually kept a chilling temperature the whole time. She had called for help, but was unsure of moving the woman by herself. Nico was aware of Adrienne's power, but didn't know what could cause her if she passed out. So she had placed her head on her lap, bringing out some napkins from the Klennex's boxes she was getting used to carry, and tried to stay calm; she had to stay calm. What the hell had happened? Had she hurt her teacher? She was lost on her meditation, and wouldn't have noticed a thing if Adrienne's energy and the Staff's had...vibrated as the artifact seemed to latch on the woman.

"Please, please open your eyes..." She felt like crying, and was unsure of how long she had been there; has it been half and hour, or two hours? Amanda wouldn't like this at all, and the idea of facing disapproval hit her like a slap on the face.


The first thing Adrienne became conscious of when she regained her senses was that her head was in someone's lap, which confused her because she remembered that Kane was in Israel. She was about to mumble something about being in Morgan's lap when she opened her eyes and saw Nico's face, which caused the images to come flooding back to her, sending her rocketing into a sitting position and turning on Nico like the girl was some sort of dangerous beast. "Where's the staff?" she demanded, looking around the classroom and trying to remain calm.

"Why did you make me read it?"

Nico's face went for worried to tense and really close to reach her critical point. Placing a hand on her chest, she tried to make a sentence that had some sense. "Put it back in; I didn't know if it would do that again; Ms. Frost, I didn't do it! I swear!" Tears started to roll down her cheeks; she knew she hadn't done it, but she felt guilty anyway, and the idea of having hurt Adrienne only made things worst. "I'm sorry!" Her voice came between cries as she covered her face with her hands, feeling pitiful and stupid. "I wasn't paying attention and it moved on its own! I should have been looking at it." Nico's cries went higher, and talking stopped being an option.


Rubbing the bump on her head from her fall, Adrienne watched Nico like she were some sort of bomb waiting to go off. People crying always tended to have this effect on her- she had no idea what she should do or say. "Uh... well," she began, wishing she were one of those people who could hug the crying girl or pat her on the head or something, "if you didn't do it then there's nothing to cry about, is there? I believe you." Part of her was warning the other part not to trust the girl, that trusting young women was how she'd gotten hurt all too recently, but the crying was making her want to reassure Nico that everything was alright. And besides, for all she knew the staff could have moved on its own. It was magic, after all. Magic made absolutely no sense to Adrienne. "You were meditating; you couldn't have been looking at the staff while you were meditating. And there's no real harm done, right?" Other than her aching head and the disturbing images she couldn't shake loose from behind her eyes.


"Come on, enough crying," she ordered gently, getting shakily to her feet and holding her hand out for Nico, "get up and tell me why your staff jumped at me on its own. Was it because of my mutation?" Did Nico even know what her powers were? "Or does it do that to everyone?"


Nico stopped crying, or rather forced herself to stop crying, which translated on a tense and stiff silent face, as she tried to regulate her breathing. Even when Adrienne was saying she believed her, it wasn't hard to think she didn't mean what she was saying; even if the older woman made sense about her not being able to check on the Staff of One, Nico could have easily locked the door, or found a better place, or just kept the damn thing inside of her; she felt guilty none the less. Grabbing Adrienne's hand, Nico got on her feet, her movements shakily as Adrienne's. "I-I don't know", managed to say as she sniffed hard, one hand rubbing her eyes. "The Staff...sometimes I think it has its own agenda; I don't think it thinks, but I can tell when it likes something, and when it doesn't." Nico finally looked straight at Adrianne, her eyes reddened and puffy. "It doesn't like the nicest stuff, for what I can tell; sometimes...I think it tries to protect me, but I think it really just wants to protect itself. Ms. Frost, I'm really sorry, I should have thought better before leaving it like that."

Nico took another breath as she tried to stop shaking. "You...I think you see the things that happened to the objects you touch? Something like that?" Nico blinked, wondering for a second what could someone with do with such an ability, and then realized the reason behind the question. "Did you see something?"


"Yes, and yes. I see the history of objects I touch," Adrienne elaborated, leaning on one of the desks for support. "I can read the desks and discover if someone was hiding a cheat sheet to a test as they wrote it. Or I can read your staff and find out everywhere it's ever been, I can see everyone who's touched it. Usually I control the timeline of what I see, and usually it begins at the object's creation and moves forward, but with your staff... it..." brow furrowed, Adrienne shook her head. "It was one of the strangest readings I've ever experienced. Usually I watch the history around the object, but it's as if I'm staring at a television set- I'm not actually there. I can see and hear and sometimes smell things, but with the staff, it was as if I was the staff. I could feel the staff being pulled out of your body. It was eerie. After the first scene-" the description of which she didn't mention- "I tried to let go of it, and I could feel myself coming back to the present but it pulled me back in, took me back in time and showed me its creation."

Nico listened, holding her breath as Adrienne spoke. Her mouth opened to ask something, but she let the woman continue and finish first. "So it was different..." Maybe it had to do with the fact Adrienne had touched a magical object? Now they would need to talk with Amanda no matter what. Nico muttered another apology as the woman kept talking, still feeling pretty bad for the whole thing. "So you saw how it was done? How it was? I mean, it shouldn't be such a complicated procedure...right?" In truth, Nico felt the Staff of One couldn't possibly have a simple, normal beginning. There was something else though. "What else did you see Ms. Frost; you said you felt how the Staff went out of my body...so you also saw me? I think you can tell me, since it can't be something I don't know already."


"Yes, I saw its creation," Adrienne answered with a nod. "It was created through magic, as far as I know. By a woman who looked like you, only scary. Her eyes were completely black, and she could change her teeth into fangs. She chanted, and a sort of wind came and it was if..." she frowned, closing her eyes to review the images in her head, trying to find the best words to explain what she'd seen. "It was if it ate an entire town, to take its power maybe?" She knew Amanda's magic was powered by cities, but wasn't sure if this was entirely the same situation. As far as she knew, Amanda didn't damage the cities themselves when she used them for power. "This wind that swept over the town went into the woman, and then a light was in front of the woman, and it turned into the staff, and the woman finished the chant. Her face had gotten... cracked somehow? Black cracks." She shuddered at the image.

As for Nico's question about the scene where Adrienne had seen her, she shook her head. "As for seeing you, I think I'd feel more comfortable if I didn't mention what I saw, if that's alright with you." Mentioning it would lead to talking about it, talking about Nico killing a man for, Adrienne presumed, raping her, and Adrienne didn't want to talk about that.

"I...don't understand. Someone like me? Destroying a town?" Fangs? Cracks? Black eyes? "Wait a minute...alright, don't freak out, please, oh please don't freak out, but when I get, absorb energy to use my magic I..." Nico closed her eyes, quickly opening that perception she was more familiar with now and where she could sense energy more easily, and then opened her eyes; they weren't entirely black, but her whites were greatly diminished by the apparently extended irises or pupils...but it wasn't that; the blackness of Nico's eyes seemed to be like a black mist, slowly expanding and retreating. Nico's eyes then returned to normal, as the girl gave a concerned look at Adrienne.

"So...one of my family made the Staff of One? That's the only way that you seeing someone that looked like me in a vision of the past have some logic..." The other bit of Adrienne's vision, the one involving her..."It's alright; I don't want to know then." But what did the other read mean? Nico wasn't shaking anymore, but felt an uneasy twitch on her stomach as she tried to make sense of what she knew now.


Nico's eyes changing had Adrienne stiffening with nervousness, and she didn't really relax when the girl returned to her normal appearance. "It might have been someone related to you," the older woman admitted, "or the staff, if it really has its own agenda like you mentioned earlier, might have put your face on someone else just to fu... mess with my head?" Knowing nothing about how magic worked, Adrienne reminded herself to talk to Amanda at the earliest opportunity to ask just how possible it was for the staff to have its own agenda. "But she didn't look exactly like you, so yes, it does seem like the two of you are related."

One hand messing with her hair, Nico sighed. "This is incredibly unpleasant." So not only her parents, but apparently other Minorus were on the dark magic side of the street. "I honestly apologize, Ms. Frost. I think...I should leave now." With that, the girl sighed again, as she made her way out of the classroom slowly and silently, still feeling the staff burning in her chest.