xp_logs | Log: Fourteen and Maya

Backdated to the 10th October

Maya comes across Fourteen while looking for the lair of a fox. Things do not go as expected, for either of them.

Maya had been spending a lot of time in the woods around Xavier's since she'd arrived at the mansion. Not enough to alarm Wade, or send anyone out looking for her, just enough to keep her winning personality from going that step too far into truly outstanding in its negativity and sheer abandonment of all things considered acceptable in social gatherings.

It would have amused Maya to imagine what the mansion residents would say to the fact that how she was; when with them, was not, as they no doubt thought, the depths of angry and disagreeable that she could be. Instead, it was a mere scratch on the surface of a much deeper well, the bottom of which she'd never reached.

Thanks to the natural world on their doorsteps, they would never have to find out, except perhaps Haller, whose job it was to help her manage it.

Today she'd been following a trail of a vixen, hoping if she were quiet enough the fox would lead her to its den. If she could find it, she might come back during the right season and watch the fox kits.

It had led her a merry chase so far, the trail lost multiple times, enough that she was tempted to ask Wade how good he was at tracking. Her Father had shown her the basics but she hadn't had much interest in listening back then, sure she'd never need the skill.

She burst from the edge of the woods on the southern lawn and spotted a group of other residents who looked suspiciously similar. Some sort of weird pseudo-mutant cult, perhaps?

"Um, hi?" She called out, long since having given up on any of the people automatically knowing enough sign language to be able to have a reasonably complex conversation in it. "You didn't happen to see a fox?"

Fourteen had expected to be alone all day. There'd been too many people fluttering about to bother her recently, and although she'd recently made a... an acquaintance in one of the other residents, she was far from feeling comfortable. But the walls had been far too constrictive today, so she'd grabbed her things and headed for the yard.

The interruption had not been planned.

That said... unplanned din't strictly mean unwanted or unusable. Fourteen had spent quite a bit of time getting a feel for the other members of the mansion through their postings, so her guest wasn't exactly unrecognized. Still, Esme didn't even look up from her sketchbook. "I don't believe we have, no."

"I'm Maya," Maya said, wondering if wandering off would be considered rude or if she'd have to go through torturous 'small-talk' first. "I don't really want to talk to you, can we just pretend I wasn't here and move on?"

Celeste cocked a brow. "You introduce yourself like that to everyone you meet, or am I somehow special?"

“Oh, I’m sure you’re Special, but I’m mostly in a hurry,” Maya replied with a smirk, looking to her left where the woods started again. “I’m kinda trying to find a fox at the moment, you can come with if you want.”

Celeste did something she hadn't done much since arriving at the mansion: she threw back her head and laughed. Fourteen's other bodies quirked a lip. Well, well, well. Wasn't this interesting? Sophie put down her book, Esme took off her headphones, and as one the sisters stood. Irma stretched out her back (and Phoebe did a quick shoulder roll). "Aren't you just a delight?" Sophie asked, with a small (and slightly mocking) smile. "Please, lead the way."

“I am. It’s what everyone who meets me says, how absolutely delightful I am,” Maya noted with a grin as she turned and took off back into the woods. She paused at the entrance, looking around for signs as she reached out to the spirits around her. It didn’t always work, some places were too asleep to really answer her, and considering she had to do an emotional reading version of twenty questions even when they did, it wasn’t exactly the easiest way to go about things. “I think she went this way.”

Fourteen wasn't really dressed for hiking in the woods, five times over. At the very least she'd have to be careful about where she stepped. Heels and tree roots were hardly the best of friends, after all. She took a moment to do what she did best: watch and learn. And then, she let the psychic fibers of her power roll out and begin to blanket the area.

No luck, at least not for Maya, who had no idea what Fourteen was currently doing and thus fell back on what her father had shown her. She began looking for tracks or signs that an animal had been nearby. Unfortunately for Maya, the woods were somewhat well frequented by a variety of animal and human wildlife and her knowledge of any sort of tracking beyond erstwhile magical ability was rudimentary at best.

“Don’t suppose you were taught any kind of tracking at posh school?” Maya asked over her shoulder as she flung herself in a feat of pique against one of the trees, to lean, arms crossed and scowl fully formed. She’d really wanted to see those kits. “Stupid fox.”

Despite herself, Fourteen hid her amusement well. "You don't handle setbacks well, do you?" Not that 14 could really speak, if she were being honest.

“No,” Maya said, eyebrows raised as her arms loosened slightly, the gentle pressure of the spirit of the woods calming her irritation. “Why should I?”

Sophie began to leisurely pace around the edge of the small clearing they'd found themselves in. "Depends on who you ask, really. Because it's expected? Because it's a marker of maturity? Personally, I don't care either way, but you have to know the rules before you can play the system."

Something on the edge of her senses twinged her telepathic net. A mind flitted just on the edge of what she could sense, darting deeper into the forest.

“What makes you think I don’t know the rules?” Maya questioned, unhooking her arms from their fold and sliding down the tree to lean against it with her hands now on her knees. She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in the forest. “Besides, maturity according to who? Some adult who thinks they know everything about you or a society who barely functions it’s so weighed down by its own privilege and lack of any actual desire for change? Did you know that we’ve known about Climate change since the 60’s and nobody gave enough of a care to do anything about it, and still don’t. Why the heck should I care about anything those type of people say about maturity? Anyway, doing what’s expected just means people know they’ve got control of you.”

"No," Celeste shot back as Sophie continued to track the mind of what she presumed was the fox. "Doing what's expected means people think they have control over you. People trust what they understand and destroy what they don't. They get so wrapped up in their safe little worlds that they refuse to dig below the surface when everything looks like it should because they're comforted by the normalcy. Standing and raging against the machine just means you're the nail that gets the hammer."

“What does it matter if you’re just doing what they want anyway?” Maya asked, genuinely curious now. Most people in the mansion weren’t willing to have an actual debate with her, too busy concentrating on her delivery rather than her actual words. “Whether they only think they have control over you, or actually have control, you’re still trapped in their expectations either way. I’d rather be a nail and have to work at avoiding the hammer than just be a slave who only thinks I’m free.”

"So instead, all you're doing is sacrificing the power that comes with social acceptance in the hope that others will do so as well to form a group of power for change, rather than manipulating your way into more power that you can then leverage on your own without relying on others. People let you down when it matters. If it's something you care about, the only person you can rely on is yourself."

“That’s true but power is a trap anyway,” Maya noted, feeling a headache growing at the back of her skull, she needed to move, standing still was making her twitchy as hell. “I don’t want power over others and I’d rather simply go off grid; than stick around on only the possibility that I could change something if someone else tried to control me. If you can’t be honest and have people care and make a change, than what’s the point?”

"The point is that you'll never get anything you want, like that." She tweaked the fox's natural instincts ever so slightly and was rewarded as it abruptly changed paths, now headed directly towards their little clearing. It was ultimately a simple trick, learned over several misspent summers of her youths. Suppress a few learned behaviours, send an instinct or two into overdrive, and the fox danced to her tune. She turned back to the younger girl, who she was quickly growing to actually tolerate. "You'll settle. Take whatever scraps the world deigns to give you. The world doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about anyone. What it gives you may be what you want. Odds are, it won't be."

The fox they'd been chasing burst from the low brush into the clearing. Celeste crouched down, letting the fox approach. "Can you really be happy," she asked, slowly petting the fox, "to live a life like that?"

“You’re very invested in my coming to see your point of view,” Maya noted idly as looked at the blood slowly dripping onto her shirt from her nose. That was not normal, nor was the pain trying to spear its way through her head right now. “I…” Maya would have finished that sentence, probably brilliantly according to her but the fact that she’d just collapsed and passed out cut off any brilliance that might have been forthcoming.

Huh. 14 let the fox go, and (free from her influence) it darted into the brush and disappeared. She had something far more interesting to focus on now, anyway. This was only the... third time she'd managed to debate someone into an aneurysm, after all. It was still a novel experience.

Still, she was suddenly put in the awkward position of being alone, in the woods, with an unconscious fifteen-year-old. If she'd had anyone to suspect as being a possible mastermind of a smear campaign, she'd have called this an excellent move. As it was, it was just extremely bad fortune that she was in this situation now. Still, she'd come out here looking for an opportunity. If there ever was one, it'd be now.

She kept a figurative eye on her surroundings as she slowly stalked over to the younger girl's prone form, searching for any signs of duplicity. She doubted she'd find any (nosebleeds on demand were generally a touch out of the range of skills for the average teenager, after all), but it never hurt to be cautious.

When she was reasonably certain that Maya really was unconscious, she crept down and gently touched a well-manicured nail to the younger girl's temple and listened... Well, wasn't that fascinating? From the look of the damage, she wasn't the first one to have found her way into Maya's mind. Recently, too. Now who could have... She watched the exchange between Maya and the drunk telepath that had clearly decided that the veneer of civility only applied to other people. Arrogant and reckless in a way that gave other telepaths a poor reputation, his work was the mental equivalent of trying to scramble an egg with a sledge hammer. It was so tactless, so amazingly pointless in its brutality, 14 couldn't help but be offended on the behalf of telepaths everywhere.

Still, as fascinating as that was, she was here for a reason. A reason that was currently still passed out, although the nosebleed had seemingly abated.

One deep mental scan later, she was pretty sure she'd figured it out. The younger girl's powers had gone haywire with exposure to the quintet of bodies. Fourteen was certain that her powers had somehow subconsciously recognized them as a single person and tried to copy them all simultaneously. The sensory feedback and cognitive dissonance had caused the headache and nosebleed as her powers had slammed the hard reset button on the last 30 minutes of her memory, wiping them all out for her own protection.

The fact that Maya could possibly recognize her as a single person was worrisome. She checked around again. Nobody was nearby, and nobody had seen the two of them leave to enter the forest. She certainly spent enough time here and it was likely dangerous enough.

She played with the idea for a minute longer before discarding it. Even if she could get away with it (which she doubted, not willing to under-estimate the super-powered members of a place she didn't know), it didn't sit right with her. She'd had more fun debating the younger girl than she'd had all week, and was hesitant to throw it away unless absolutely needed.

Still, she took a moment to reaffirm the quickly-fading memories into Maya's subconscious. She wouldn't remember the exact wording, or who she was talking with, but the general feeling of their conversation would linger on. She considered suppressing the memories of the damage done by the other telepath but ultimately decided against it.

Her work done (and confident there wouldn't be any blowback onto herself), she lifted the younger girl and returned to the mansion. She'd leave her leaning against a tree on the edge of the woods before returning inside. In time, she'd either awaken herself, or someone would spot her and bring her inside. Either way, it wasn't her problem any longer.