Tandy, Garrison, Adrienne, and Emma
Sep. 13th, 2017 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsWhile helping out at the District X soup kitchen, Adrienne has an encounter with an unknown mutant and her powers go haywire, so Tandy and Garrison enlist Emma's help to try and help her.
"If the definition of a sandwich is that it's meat between two pieces of bread then how is a hot dog not a sandwich?" Adrienne asked Tandy as they handed out hot dogs on paper plates at the soup kitchen. The baseball team Adrienne owned donated the unused hot dogs to the kitchen after games.
"Are we having sandwiches?" Asked a young man in line, squinting at the hot dogs in the steam tray.
"No. It is hot dogs." Tandy responded to the young man before turning to address Adrienne, "Adri, I love you but a hot dog is not a sandwich. If the bun breaks..." She made a point and broke two buns in half. "And then add a hot dog in the middle then you have a sandwich. Please back me up here Mr G."
"It's what Twitter has turned culture into. People arguing about the definition of a sandwich, making burritos out of ice cream, and convincing people that vaccines give you the clap." He shoveled out a few big spoons of potato salad, giving the people in line a smile. It always struck him how... ordinary people at the soup kitchen looked. There were some that were obviously living rough; unkempt and rumpled. But most, he wouldn't even look twice at on the subway and they needed assistance.
"You'd better eat that sandwich now," Adrienne told Tandy with a frown. "I'm not having busted hot dogs served to these people. We have standards here, Tandy," she deadpanned, then turned to Garrison. "How do you make a burrito out of ice cream? What kind of voodoo is this? Why have you never made me a burrito out of ice cream?"
"I only reinforce your bad decisions regarding alcohol and sex. For bad decisions about food, you're on your own." Kane said, slightly distracted by the young man at the end of the line. Despite the heat of the day, he was huddled inside a too large hoodie, slightly shaking as he waited for his turn.
Tandy stuck her tongue out at Adrienne, but ended up giving the hot dog sandwich to the next person in line. "Here you go." She gave a smile, "By the way, thanks for helping out. Uncle Mike appreciates it." She turned to the young man in the hoodie, "One hot dog or two?"
Adrienne shrugged off the thanks before giving Tandy a look that clearly said just because we're basically made of money doesn't mean you can give out two hot dogs to people! The lines at the soup kitchen seemed longer every time she was here, but the costs of food and supplies weren't going down.
He reached out for the plate with one hot dog but suddenly shied away. Jerking like he'd just been slapped, the man collapsed to the ground and started to convulse.
"Oh, for fuck's sakes," Adrienne exclaimed, ducking under the table to get to the convulsing man without having to go around Garrison, Tandy, or the line of people. Part of her knew she should leave things to Garrison, the trained first responder, but she was trying really hard to be more 'helpful' in the mutant community lately, what with some guilt about being a closeted mutant herself. And she had still had her cpr and first aid training from being a teacher. She beat Garrison to the man's side by a second or two. "Tandy, call for an ambulance," she called out, even though she could see from the corner of her eye that Tandy already had her phone out. She scooted closer to the man and grabbed his arm to start putting him in the recovery position.
"Hang on-" Kane started. The convulsions had come so suddenly, he was concerned that drugs were involved. Unfortunately, that often meant unintentional violent reactions. The young man reached out and his hand palmed the side of Adrienne's face for a moment. Not hard. Just a touch. Adrienne's head snapped back like he'd punched her with full force.
Images and sounds exploded before her eyes. It was like hundreds, maybe even thousands (she didn't think to count) of televisions on full volume. She hit the ground hard, unable to focus on stopping her fall thanks to the barrage of sensory input. People. Her mind was filled with people. Babies, old people, every age in between. Lives, playing from beginning to end, simultaneously. What the actual fuck? she managed to think around the outpouring of information she was struggling to digest. It made no sense. What was it? What was she Reading? How was she Reading people she wasn't touching?
Before she could figure it out, more imaged flooded her head. The floor of the soup kitchen. The chairs. The walls, light fixtures, appliances. Garrison. Tandy. (Luckily the images were coming in such a torrent that she couldn't focus too much on their particulars, for which she was thankful.) The people inside the building. The pavement outside the building.
The images just kept coming, spreading out from the soup kitchen through District X. While still struggling to comprehend what was happening, Adrienne dove into the astral plane and hurriedly began tossing out the memories that were rapidly filling up the Repository inside her head.
Tandy's cell slipped from her hand as the scene unfold. "Back up." Tandy yelled at the people where starting to gather. "Sister Beatrice. Get my Uncle." She wasn't going to get the police involved, not with the way they treated Mutants. Tandy came around the line and started to pull people away from Adrienne. "BACK UP I SAID!" They started to move away from the two.
"Babe! Babe, stay with me!" Adrienne's eyes underneath her eyelids were moving at ridiculous speeds, shifting every which way. He grabbed her cellphone and thumbed in the password before tossing it to Tandy. "Emma's emergency number is pre-loaded. Tell her we need her brain here NOW!" He yelled, holding Adrienne as the convulsions started.
Catching the phone, Tandy called the pre-loaded number and didn't wait for a hello when she heard the other line picking up, "You need your brain here, something is wrong with Adri. Her powers are overloading."
"Adri, hold on..." Her shaking was getting worse and froth was starting to spill from her mouth. Kane didn't know what to do, trying to support her the best he could to keep her from injuring herself.
It was the only number she always answered, not matter where she was, and it only took a few seconds for Emma to excuse herself from the meeting she was in and get herself into a private room. Reaching out with her mind, she slipped into her sister's without effort What met her, however, was not the normally reasonably ordered (to an Adrienne-value of ordered) mindscape but a maelstrom of impression. Overloading, Tandy had said, so Emma slipped past Adrienne's outer mind and into the Repository. This wasn't the neatly ordered pairs of shoes put away in a shoe closet that it had been last time Emma had looked. Instead a wild-eyed Adrienne stood within it, frantically hurling shoes out of one door, even as new ones flew, an unending stream through the other door.
"Guy had a seizure. She tried to help- this." Kane was holding her, his attention all based on trying to not to react, because his reaction was about turning people into paste.
"Emma, help her!"
~I'm trying,~ Emma responded, continuing to fling shoes out of the Repository, trying to be faster than the flood of impressions, fairly certain she was losing. Even as she kept trying to clear Adrienne's mind, she reached out to the "guy" that Garrison had mentioned, but a quick scan of his mind showed nothing intentional or malicious. He was obviously a mutant of some kind and an interesting one, but he was no more than an unwitting catalyst here. Dismissing him, Emma turned her mind back to Adrienne's psyche.
~I don't know what's happening, Em!~ Adrienne exclaimed in a near-sob, though she felt a twinge of relief that her sister was here to help her. Emma could fix it. Emma always fixed shit like this. ~I think- I think it might be the dust? I think I'm- I'm Reading dust?~ She took a moment to make a face. Ew. ~But I can't-I can't make it stop.~ She was having trouble keeping her focus on what she was 'saying' to Emma, feeling as if she were drowning in 'shoes.' ~Can you... shit. Can you- I dunno, put in a block, or something?~ Xavier had done that once, years ago, when certain Readings had caused her mind to start short-circuiting.
But part of her knew, even as she thought it, that this was different.
~I don't know,~ replied Emma, who had long ago given up telling comforting lies to her sister. ~I'm certainly going to try.~ She didn't wait any longer, knowing already that she was losing the battle to outrun the Readings flooding Adrienne's mind. Reaching out, she spun as large and solid a psychic shield as she could create around the space in which she and Adrienne stood. At first it just surrounded them, but slowly she pushed it back until it was about as large as the Repository. But even with all of her considerable power concentrated on building the walls, Emma could feel the unrelenting thud of Readings battering against the shield, an endless stream of damage.
Adrienne looked up at the shield and took a couple seconds to just breathe, trying to calm herself, but the continued onslaught of Readings made it impossible to relax. ~Shit. I don't think it's working. It wasn't like this last time.~ 'Shoes' continued to rain down on the shield, beginning to put dents in it. ~Shit, shit, shit.~ It wasn't going to hold. ~I don't know how much longer we can keep this up. Any other ideas?~ she asked, trying to sound casual despite the panic rising again.
~Turning you off and turning you back on again?~ Emma said, trying to keep her tone light, even as she desperately shored up a section of the psychic shield that was shuddering under repeated heavy blows. ~There's no psychic link between you and the mutant that started this - he's not driving it. It's all your power. I can see if I can turn your power off completely, but I'll have to drop the shield for a few seconds - I can't concentrate on both.~ She reached out, too Adrienne's hands in hers. ~Are you okay if I do that? It's not going to be pleasant.~
~That's okay,~ Adrienne nodded. ~I-I can take it. Hopefully,~ she added as an afterthought. ~Guess we- we won't know til we try, right? If.... if you think it might work, do it. Can't leave Gar alone too long,~ she tried to joke. ~They- they aren't freaking out out there, are they?~
Garrison had been forced to hold Adrienne's jaw immobilized so she wouldn't bite off her own tongue while convulsing. "Emma, whatever you're doing, it's not working!"
Emma frowned as Garrison's words intruded, ~Of course they are, sister dear,~ she said. ~You're very good at scaring us.~ She leaned forward and lightly kissed Adrienne's cheek. ~I'm sorry, this is probably going to hurt.~
Emma dropped the shield around herself and Adrienne, and winced as the rain of shoes began again. Tearing herself out of the Repository, she sent a hurried, ~I know, I'm trying,~ to Garrison and scanned rapidly around, searching for the source of Adrienne's mutant power.
For a few moments she was puzzled, unable to find the source, but then she realised what she was feeling: that Adrienne's power had expanded so rapidly that it was now diffused completely throughout Adrienne's consciousness, an expansion so rapid that it was filling all of the space. All of it; if the expansion kept on at the same rate, Adrienne's memories, personality, everything, would have no room to persist beneath the influx of memories that weren't her own.
Emma flashed back to the Repository, rebuilt the shield again around her sister, who was cowering down beneath the onslaught of Readings. ~I'm sorry,~ she said. ~I can't do this quickly. Not quickly enough to save you. I can make a box for you, all the important parts of you, and you can sleep inside it, while we try and work out how to fix this. It may take some time.~
It was difficult to process what Emma was saying, properly process it, while being battered about by a painful onslaught of psychic footwear, so Adrienne didn't take much time before she responded. ~Yeah? Well. Shit.~ There was no point trying to barter or beg for another outcome. She had no idea what was happening to her, so she had to trust Emma. And she did trust her. Kind of ironic, she thought to herself, though she knew Emma could probably hear her. Made so many shitty decisions in the past thanks to not trusting my sister. Wait, is that irony? What does the song say? Oh, right. Time crunch here. ~Okay. Do what you have to do. I appreciate it.~ She tried not to think about Emma's last statement and instead hope that Emma could fix this quickly. Hope. Still an uncomfortable new feeling.
~It'll take me a few minutes. Enough time for au revoirs,~ said Emma. Using the smallest portion of her power she could afford, Emma reached out to Tandy and Kane, a thin psychic link between them. She stabilised it and then turned the rest of her formidable mind to building a safe place for her sister to rest while they worked out how to fix this.
"If the definition of a sandwich is that it's meat between two pieces of bread then how is a hot dog not a sandwich?" Adrienne asked Tandy as they handed out hot dogs on paper plates at the soup kitchen. The baseball team Adrienne owned donated the unused hot dogs to the kitchen after games.
"Are we having sandwiches?" Asked a young man in line, squinting at the hot dogs in the steam tray.
"No. It is hot dogs." Tandy responded to the young man before turning to address Adrienne, "Adri, I love you but a hot dog is not a sandwich. If the bun breaks..." She made a point and broke two buns in half. "And then add a hot dog in the middle then you have a sandwich. Please back me up here Mr G."
"It's what Twitter has turned culture into. People arguing about the definition of a sandwich, making burritos out of ice cream, and convincing people that vaccines give you the clap." He shoveled out a few big spoons of potato salad, giving the people in line a smile. It always struck him how... ordinary people at the soup kitchen looked. There were some that were obviously living rough; unkempt and rumpled. But most, he wouldn't even look twice at on the subway and they needed assistance.
"You'd better eat that sandwich now," Adrienne told Tandy with a frown. "I'm not having busted hot dogs served to these people. We have standards here, Tandy," she deadpanned, then turned to Garrison. "How do you make a burrito out of ice cream? What kind of voodoo is this? Why have you never made me a burrito out of ice cream?"
"I only reinforce your bad decisions regarding alcohol and sex. For bad decisions about food, you're on your own." Kane said, slightly distracted by the young man at the end of the line. Despite the heat of the day, he was huddled inside a too large hoodie, slightly shaking as he waited for his turn.
Tandy stuck her tongue out at Adrienne, but ended up giving the hot dog sandwich to the next person in line. "Here you go." She gave a smile, "By the way, thanks for helping out. Uncle Mike appreciates it." She turned to the young man in the hoodie, "One hot dog or two?"
Adrienne shrugged off the thanks before giving Tandy a look that clearly said just because we're basically made of money doesn't mean you can give out two hot dogs to people! The lines at the soup kitchen seemed longer every time she was here, but the costs of food and supplies weren't going down.
He reached out for the plate with one hot dog but suddenly shied away. Jerking like he'd just been slapped, the man collapsed to the ground and started to convulse.
"Oh, for fuck's sakes," Adrienne exclaimed, ducking under the table to get to the convulsing man without having to go around Garrison, Tandy, or the line of people. Part of her knew she should leave things to Garrison, the trained first responder, but she was trying really hard to be more 'helpful' in the mutant community lately, what with some guilt about being a closeted mutant herself. And she had still had her cpr and first aid training from being a teacher. She beat Garrison to the man's side by a second or two. "Tandy, call for an ambulance," she called out, even though she could see from the corner of her eye that Tandy already had her phone out. She scooted closer to the man and grabbed his arm to start putting him in the recovery position.
"Hang on-" Kane started. The convulsions had come so suddenly, he was concerned that drugs were involved. Unfortunately, that often meant unintentional violent reactions. The young man reached out and his hand palmed the side of Adrienne's face for a moment. Not hard. Just a touch. Adrienne's head snapped back like he'd punched her with full force.
Images and sounds exploded before her eyes. It was like hundreds, maybe even thousands (she didn't think to count) of televisions on full volume. She hit the ground hard, unable to focus on stopping her fall thanks to the barrage of sensory input. People. Her mind was filled with people. Babies, old people, every age in between. Lives, playing from beginning to end, simultaneously. What the actual fuck? she managed to think around the outpouring of information she was struggling to digest. It made no sense. What was it? What was she Reading? How was she Reading people she wasn't touching?
Before she could figure it out, more imaged flooded her head. The floor of the soup kitchen. The chairs. The walls, light fixtures, appliances. Garrison. Tandy. (Luckily the images were coming in such a torrent that she couldn't focus too much on their particulars, for which she was thankful.) The people inside the building. The pavement outside the building.
The images just kept coming, spreading out from the soup kitchen through District X. While still struggling to comprehend what was happening, Adrienne dove into the astral plane and hurriedly began tossing out the memories that were rapidly filling up the Repository inside her head.
Tandy's cell slipped from her hand as the scene unfold. "Back up." Tandy yelled at the people where starting to gather. "Sister Beatrice. Get my Uncle." She wasn't going to get the police involved, not with the way they treated Mutants. Tandy came around the line and started to pull people away from Adrienne. "BACK UP I SAID!" They started to move away from the two.
"Babe! Babe, stay with me!" Adrienne's eyes underneath her eyelids were moving at ridiculous speeds, shifting every which way. He grabbed her cellphone and thumbed in the password before tossing it to Tandy. "Emma's emergency number is pre-loaded. Tell her we need her brain here NOW!" He yelled, holding Adrienne as the convulsions started.
Catching the phone, Tandy called the pre-loaded number and didn't wait for a hello when she heard the other line picking up, "You need your brain here, something is wrong with Adri. Her powers are overloading."
"Adri, hold on..." Her shaking was getting worse and froth was starting to spill from her mouth. Kane didn't know what to do, trying to support her the best he could to keep her from injuring herself.
It was the only number she always answered, not matter where she was, and it only took a few seconds for Emma to excuse herself from the meeting she was in and get herself into a private room. Reaching out with her mind, she slipped into her sister's without effort What met her, however, was not the normally reasonably ordered (to an Adrienne-value of ordered) mindscape but a maelstrom of impression. Overloading, Tandy had said, so Emma slipped past Adrienne's outer mind and into the Repository. This wasn't the neatly ordered pairs of shoes put away in a shoe closet that it had been last time Emma had looked. Instead a wild-eyed Adrienne stood within it, frantically hurling shoes out of one door, even as new ones flew, an unending stream through the other door.
"Guy had a seizure. She tried to help- this." Kane was holding her, his attention all based on trying to not to react, because his reaction was about turning people into paste.
"Emma, help her!"
~I'm trying,~ Emma responded, continuing to fling shoes out of the Repository, trying to be faster than the flood of impressions, fairly certain she was losing. Even as she kept trying to clear Adrienne's mind, she reached out to the "guy" that Garrison had mentioned, but a quick scan of his mind showed nothing intentional or malicious. He was obviously a mutant of some kind and an interesting one, but he was no more than an unwitting catalyst here. Dismissing him, Emma turned her mind back to Adrienne's psyche.
~I don't know what's happening, Em!~ Adrienne exclaimed in a near-sob, though she felt a twinge of relief that her sister was here to help her. Emma could fix it. Emma always fixed shit like this. ~I think- I think it might be the dust? I think I'm- I'm Reading dust?~ She took a moment to make a face. Ew. ~But I can't-I can't make it stop.~ She was having trouble keeping her focus on what she was 'saying' to Emma, feeling as if she were drowning in 'shoes.' ~Can you... shit. Can you- I dunno, put in a block, or something?~ Xavier had done that once, years ago, when certain Readings had caused her mind to start short-circuiting.
But part of her knew, even as she thought it, that this was different.
~I don't know,~ replied Emma, who had long ago given up telling comforting lies to her sister. ~I'm certainly going to try.~ She didn't wait any longer, knowing already that she was losing the battle to outrun the Readings flooding Adrienne's mind. Reaching out, she spun as large and solid a psychic shield as she could create around the space in which she and Adrienne stood. At first it just surrounded them, but slowly she pushed it back until it was about as large as the Repository. But even with all of her considerable power concentrated on building the walls, Emma could feel the unrelenting thud of Readings battering against the shield, an endless stream of damage.
Adrienne looked up at the shield and took a couple seconds to just breathe, trying to calm herself, but the continued onslaught of Readings made it impossible to relax. ~Shit. I don't think it's working. It wasn't like this last time.~ 'Shoes' continued to rain down on the shield, beginning to put dents in it. ~Shit, shit, shit.~ It wasn't going to hold. ~I don't know how much longer we can keep this up. Any other ideas?~ she asked, trying to sound casual despite the panic rising again.
~Turning you off and turning you back on again?~ Emma said, trying to keep her tone light, even as she desperately shored up a section of the psychic shield that was shuddering under repeated heavy blows. ~There's no psychic link between you and the mutant that started this - he's not driving it. It's all your power. I can see if I can turn your power off completely, but I'll have to drop the shield for a few seconds - I can't concentrate on both.~ She reached out, too Adrienne's hands in hers. ~Are you okay if I do that? It's not going to be pleasant.~
~That's okay,~ Adrienne nodded. ~I-I can take it. Hopefully,~ she added as an afterthought. ~Guess we- we won't know til we try, right? If.... if you think it might work, do it. Can't leave Gar alone too long,~ she tried to joke. ~They- they aren't freaking out out there, are they?~
Garrison had been forced to hold Adrienne's jaw immobilized so she wouldn't bite off her own tongue while convulsing. "Emma, whatever you're doing, it's not working!"
Emma frowned as Garrison's words intruded, ~Of course they are, sister dear,~ she said. ~You're very good at scaring us.~ She leaned forward and lightly kissed Adrienne's cheek. ~I'm sorry, this is probably going to hurt.~
Emma dropped the shield around herself and Adrienne, and winced as the rain of shoes began again. Tearing herself out of the Repository, she sent a hurried, ~I know, I'm trying,~ to Garrison and scanned rapidly around, searching for the source of Adrienne's mutant power.
For a few moments she was puzzled, unable to find the source, but then she realised what she was feeling: that Adrienne's power had expanded so rapidly that it was now diffused completely throughout Adrienne's consciousness, an expansion so rapid that it was filling all of the space. All of it; if the expansion kept on at the same rate, Adrienne's memories, personality, everything, would have no room to persist beneath the influx of memories that weren't her own.
Emma flashed back to the Repository, rebuilt the shield again around her sister, who was cowering down beneath the onslaught of Readings. ~I'm sorry,~ she said. ~I can't do this quickly. Not quickly enough to save you. I can make a box for you, all the important parts of you, and you can sleep inside it, while we try and work out how to fix this. It may take some time.~
It was difficult to process what Emma was saying, properly process it, while being battered about by a painful onslaught of psychic footwear, so Adrienne didn't take much time before she responded. ~Yeah? Well. Shit.~ There was no point trying to barter or beg for another outcome. She had no idea what was happening to her, so she had to trust Emma. And she did trust her. Kind of ironic, she thought to herself, though she knew Emma could probably hear her. Made so many shitty decisions in the past thanks to not trusting my sister. Wait, is that irony? What does the song say? Oh, right. Time crunch here. ~Okay. Do what you have to do. I appreciate it.~ She tried not to think about Emma's last statement and instead hope that Emma could fix this quickly. Hope. Still an uncomfortable new feeling.
~It'll take me a few minutes. Enough time for au revoirs,~ said Emma. Using the smallest portion of her power she could afford, Emma reached out to Tandy and Kane, a thin psychic link between them. She stabilised it and then turned the rest of her formidable mind to building a safe place for her sister to rest while they worked out how to fix this.
