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xp_logs The lake at the Xavier compound was large enough to need a boathouse, and to still catch a glimpse of water as far as you could see while standing on the back porch of the mansion. It was surrounded by trees and bits of a rocky shore.
At the other side of the lake a deck had been set up that lead out toward a dock. It wasn't really meant for a boat, just for recreation. On the deck were three outdoor chairs and a cooler. Jean sat in one of the chairs, reading a book as she waited for two of her students. She was dressed casually for the occasion with a pair of black tights, a flowery forest green shawl, and a gold tank top.
Betsy had once again underestimated how chilly it would be and was now shivering in her light blouse. She wasn't familiar with this part out the grounds so she quickly stopped to scan her surroundings until she spotted Jean on the deck. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth and started walking towards her teacher.
Quentin was last, fashionably late, as always. Emphasis on the fashion. Between the black sports coat emblazoned with epaulets and chains, bow tie, ripped skinny jeans, and platform boots, anyone could be forgiven for mistaking him for a K-pop idol fresh off a music video set. Forgiven by anyone else, of course, not Quentin, who did not know the meaning of the word. He stopped short of the dock and raised an eyebrow.
"What's this about?"
Jean closed her book, rising from her chair to stand when the two of them finally arrived, a study in contrasts: an unsteady slip of a girl shrunken into herself, and the boy who's every iota of existence screamed 'notice me' down to his fingernails.
"So you didn't fully read the email I sent you, good to know," she said with a smirk as she offered Betsy the throw blanket she had been covered up with earlier.
"Betsy Braddock, this is Quentin Quire. The two of you both have something in common: You're both telepaths. I normally work with you both one on one but I figure it'd be good to do a dual session and work on psionic battle techniques on the astral plane today. Unfortunately they happen more often than you'd like so it's good to be prepared. Sound good?”
“I did read it,” Betsy said defensively. “It just looked a lot warmer before.” She grabbed the offered blanket and pulled it around her shoulders before turning towards Quentin. “Hello, Mr. Quire. I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you but if we are due to practice fighting later I’m not sure how accurate that would be.”
"It's just Quentin," he corrected her. "I like your hair." He turned to Jean, still displaying his leery expression. "Combat? You expecting some violence we're going to encounter?" Not that Quentin was a stranger to that, and the prospect of being better able to administer harm rather than be on the receiving end was attractive.
"Sorry, just Quentin," Jean said with no challenge. "And I was talking to him about not reading the email, Betsy. Not you."
She turned and looked out over the lake a moment.
"I'm hoping nothing ever happens ever again, but after everything that's happened over the last few years I'd rather everyone be safe than sorry. My goal is for all the psionics to be prepared to defend themselves just in case," she said.
She motioned to the chairs on the deck for them to sit.
"This is optional, of course, but I highly encourage it."
“Sorry.” Betsy sighed. “And yeah, it makes sense. As much as I would love to pretend that the world is all sunshine and roses, we’re not exactly anyone’s favourite people at the moment.” She sat on one of the chairs, pulling her knees up to tuck the blanket around them.
“So, how do we do this?”
"First," Jean said, sitting back down. "I know we're all familiar with getting onto the astral plane but I want to go over some combat basics. Are you okay with all of this, Q?"
He shrugged and took the remaining seat, smoothing the tassels of his epaulets and folding one leg over the other, portraying telepathic royalty in beach chair on a lake dock. "Whatever. Lead on, Doctor." He opened his meager mental walls to allow the pair to connect to him with ease.
Taking a seat, the world around the three of them fell away, and the shimmering mirrored lake became the floor all around them, surrounded by an impossibly blue sky dotted by clouds. Jean stood in the middle of the mirrored ground wearing the same clothes she had in the real world.
"There are two parts to combat: defense, and offense. Today we'll learn small parts of both, and build on that as a foundation," she said. As she stepped forward, a transparent, mirrored form seemed to rise up from the floor, delayed by a moment or two, like a re-wind.
"For the first part of the lesson we'll focus on strengthening your mental armor," she said, as her clothing shifted to what appeared to be her X-Men uniform, except it seemed a little harder than real fabric, like a shell. She turned to Betsy.
"Can you show me what your mental armor looks like, if you have any?”
Betsy gave the other two an embarrassed look as a surprisingly historically accurate (if slightly ostentatious) set of medieval tournament armour began to form around her. “Me and my brother used to play knights a lot when we younger, so this seems to be what my brain comes up with,” she shrugged.
She kept the helmet tucked under her arm for now and glanced at Quentin, curious to see what the other younger telepath would come up with.
Not to be outdone, Quentin's clothes transformed in the blink of an eye. A sheer dark green dress, a knight's gauntlets not unlike Betsy's, a breastplate with broad shoulderplates, and a gold helmet . . . no, more like a golden headdress, bearing buildings and spires, like a miniature city on his head.
"What? Janelle Monae's Archandroid slaps."
Jean glanced between the two of them, quirking a brow with a smile.
"Creative," she said. She nodded to Quentin. "Could use a little more body protection though. More like...Met Gala meets Lord of the Rings. Or something period appropriate. Whichever. Try again?"
He rolled his eyes. "Please, this shit's all metaphor, we all know that. What's important is I feel protected, and Cindi Mayweather's covering my ass. Wearing the X-fetish gear or some Renn Faire costume isn't gonna save me.”
While Betsy showed no outward reaction to the Renn Faire comment, some of the more superfluous details on her armour smoothed themselves out, leaving just the functional steel plating. She turned to look at Jean. “What’s next?”
Jean tried not to roll her eyes at Quentin as a city rose up from the silvery surface of the ground, shaping into the weathered streets of NYC.
"Now, the two of you are going to fight me. We'll take it slow, and try to work up from there. Don't be afraid to hold back, your opponent won't either. Sound good?"
Quentin did not know how to fight, per se. He had skipped most of the combat sessions when he was in Generation X, and forgot what little he had learned. And he was usually the object of beatings, not the perpetrator. But it was his victimhood that had coincidentally prepared him for psychic battle, as his telepathic manifestation—instigated by one of many encounters will schoolyard bullies—taught him how easy it was to manipulate the astral plane.
So it was just a simple thought that twisted this scene into Inception, with one of Jean's summoned skyscrapers bending over itself to crash down on her.
Just before the skyscrapers struck, they quickly turned to ashes and floated away on the wind, which caught Jean's hair along with it.
"Good. Imaginative. Quentin has some experience with shifting the astral plane already," Jean explained to Betsy as the buildings seemed to rewind and form back into their regular shapes.
"It's a good idea to try a variety of styles against your opponent, from the grandiose to the more simple or subtle," she added. As she spoke, the sewer grating from underneath Quentin disappeared, leaving the open maw of the sewer below.
"It helps to conserve energy and also sometimes set the tone of the battle. Your opponent might want to go even bigger, which could risk tiring you out more quickly. It really depends on the person, though," she said, nodding to Betsy.
"Alright Betsy, how about you next?”
Right. Subtle. For a moment Betsy seemed frozen, then her form flickered and reappeared behind Jean. She needed a weapon - a thought later she held a small dagger in her hand and used it to swipe at Jean - low down on the abdomen to maximize damage while trying to stay out of range of where the other woman could easily defend herself.
Jean was not anticipating something so small after Quentin's grand gesture, and she nearly got astrally filleted, but managed to dodge at the last minute save for a light slash to her armor. She responded with a telekinetic blast toward the other woman in an attempt to send her backwards.
"Good," Jean said, walking over to reach out her hand to help her up.
Betsy flickered again, but this time instead of moving she seemed to blur at the edges, as if another shape dressed in black was superimposed on her astral self. She grabbed at Jean’s outstretched hand but rather than let the older telepath pull her up she attempted to yank her to the ground and roll herself on top of her.
There was something---no---someone there that shouldn't have been. Jean furrowed her brow at the aberration. The darkness made her narrow her eyes. Shadow King. Came the instinctive reply, laced with a quickened breath.
So when the form reached for her, Jean immediately jumped back as chains erupted from the floor a moment later, trying to snag Betsy.
"Very funny, slipping out the rug from under me. So to speak." Though he had fallen through the trap, Quentin caught himself and waited for the right moment to strike back. So here he was, standing atop a column of sewage spouting from the sewer like a geyser, though his armor remained pristine. He snapped his fingers and mimicked Jean's trick, though this time, a dozen manholes appeared around her, like the face of a clock, and exploded, the sewage water rocketing into the sky before gravity sent the polluted torrent back to the earth.
Jean was focused on a different matter, and when Quentin made his move, she responded quickly, a barrier of glass springing up around them.
"Quentin, stop," she said urgently, then added mentally to him only. ~There's something else here with us.~
Everything stopped; in the blink of an eye, the manholes and sewage were gone, and Quentin was back to the clothes we was wearing on the material world, though they glittered as he reinforced them with his powers. He did not need any special armor. After all, Quentin's best armor was his knowledge of himself as a person, that he was no one else's. That combined with an inflated sense of his own self-importance.
~Where's Braddock? Does it have her?~
Jean fell silent a moment, taking a glance around. ~Betsy's still here. Not sure yet what I'm sensing with us. But there's something. Something...dark.~ The world around them shifted to plain nothingness. Less to concentrate on. Now that she had moved from instinct she had come to realize this wasn't who she thought it was.
"Betsy? Are you okay? What just happened?" she said gently.
Betsy had evaded the chains with uncharacteristic dexterity but seemed confused at Jean’s questioning. “What do you mean? I’m fine. You dodged my attack and countered, then Quentin came back in with the water. That was an interesting trick with the chains though, and the manhole covers too, I wouldn’t have thought of using the environment like that,” she nodded towards Quentin. “Both of you obviously have more experience with this than I do. With the misdirection as well, getting the opponent to doubt their allies, right?”
Quentin turned and glared at Jean. ~There's nothing wrong with her. Why the fuck are you going on terrifying me like that? Goddamn, woman.~ He turned back to Betsy, still eyeing her warily, though that was not much different than how he normally looked at people, anyway. "It's easy. This whole world exists as a plaything for telepaths. Just think about it and you can make it."
Jean was silent a moment or two. She didn't really reply to Quentin, just met his eyes unflinchingly before looking back to Betsy with a light smile.
"Yes, that's true. I'm sorry...I must have been imagining things. Let's try that again, now that you've seen a little bit of how it's done," she said.
Betsy let the little dagger reform in her hand and started stalking towards Jean, seeming to aim towards her left flank. Then another Betsy appeared, a mirror image of the first, feigning an attack on the opposite side. Yet another one was creeping up from behind her. Several more Betsys popped up, some in the same medieval armour the original was wearing, some dressed in black garb that seemed to blend in with their surroundings. They swarmed around Jean, trying to overwhelm her with co-ordinated jabs of their daggers.
~I think I’m getting the hang of it!~ The thought came from all around them.
The barrage was unexpected, with far more experience and tactical precision than the girl had let on. Because Jean had a feeling it wasn't entirely Betsy in control. It allowed for a slash to the arm, bouncing off of hardened leather armor, another slash to the stomach with the same bounce, leaving light scrapes in their wake and a faint sound of sizzle and wisps of smoke from the cut. Battle tested mental armor. Jean studied the figures as they attacked, fending them off one by one behind an invisible, focusing on one of them in the black garb, but not letting on that she was her target.
Then, when the figure moved to strike, Jean let the shield drop and shot a brilliantly white psi-blast of light at her, aimed to blind and distract, but not hard enough to hurt--too much. She wanted to see what would happen to the other Betsys if she separated one from the herd.
As the light faded it revealed the Betsys in states of disarray; her control didn’t allow her to keep track of them all after a direct attack. While most of them were making jerky clockwork movements in no particular direction a few were starting to refocus their attention on Jean, gathering up behind her. The one she had directed her attack on smirked at her and curtsied before winking out with a small popping sound.
~You could take her out while she’s focused on me?~ The thought she sent to Quentin had an almost apologetic tone to it.
Quentin stood aside to monitor the encounter, now more curious about Betsy and her techniques than in the actual training Jean offered. Even though she claimed to be a dilettante, she was picking things up quickly. He hated to admit it—and he would never actually say so out loud, of course—but he was impressed. And, with the scare Jean had given him, more than a little terrified.
He almost turned his next attack on Betsy, to see what she was truly capable of. But then he figured he would just earn Jean's wrath for disobeying training parameters, and nobody had time for that, so he aimed and the missile battery he conjured at Jean instead, launching half a dozen targeted bombs of pure focused telepathy. Though if an errant missile hit the other student, he couldn't be blamed. All part of the learning experience.
Still focused on trying to figure out the extra Betsy (was she an alter like one of Haller's? Was it a parasite?), Jean's eyes widened, barely noticing the sneak attack before it was too late, mainly because she was only planning on training Betsy at the moment and not expecting Quentin. But she never told them that so she couldn't fault them there. Especially given the teamwork.
She managed to deflect one of the bombs with a telekinetic shield but barely, causing her to stagger. As some of the other missiles came she thickened the shield and it warped until it became more opaque and gooey, as heavy sparks of pink energy collided the shield and bored in, getting caught like ballistics gel.
"Hmm," she managed to grunt with a faint smirk, halfway between annoyed and impressed. An errant psychic missile glanced one of the Betsys that had been sneaking behind Jean and caused her concentration to finally falter. The apparitions began to dissipate until only one was left standing, her suit of armour now slightly more battered. "Yield." She raised an eyebrow at Quentin. "I did assume we were targeting her," she said mildly.
"Accidents happen," he replied in the same tone. "Are we done here, Jean? I have things to do. Crimes to solve. Drugs to snort."
Jean eyed Quentin a moment with the last comment, then she nodded. "Yeah, we're done in here for the day. Let's head back to the real world," she said. The world itself that she had constructed began to disappear and the real world fell in to place around them.
Betsy closed her eyes against the disorientation of moving back to the physical plane. As her awareness of her body increased she realized she was still clutching something in her hand. She raised the object for inspection; it was the small blade she had conjured up on the astral plane. “Huh. Well, that’s… Something.”
The faint purple glow of the dagger caught Jean's attention. Shadowy figures, psionic daggers, and unconscious malice....there was a lot to unpack here from this training session.
"It definitely is."
At the other side of the lake a deck had been set up that lead out toward a dock. It wasn't really meant for a boat, just for recreation. On the deck were three outdoor chairs and a cooler. Jean sat in one of the chairs, reading a book as she waited for two of her students. She was dressed casually for the occasion with a pair of black tights, a flowery forest green shawl, and a gold tank top.
Betsy had once again underestimated how chilly it would be and was now shivering in her light blouse. She wasn't familiar with this part out the grounds so she quickly stopped to scan her surroundings until she spotted Jean on the deck. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth and started walking towards her teacher.
Quentin was last, fashionably late, as always. Emphasis on the fashion. Between the black sports coat emblazoned with epaulets and chains, bow tie, ripped skinny jeans, and platform boots, anyone could be forgiven for mistaking him for a K-pop idol fresh off a music video set. Forgiven by anyone else, of course, not Quentin, who did not know the meaning of the word. He stopped short of the dock and raised an eyebrow.
"What's this about?"
Jean closed her book, rising from her chair to stand when the two of them finally arrived, a study in contrasts: an unsteady slip of a girl shrunken into herself, and the boy who's every iota of existence screamed 'notice me' down to his fingernails.
"So you didn't fully read the email I sent you, good to know," she said with a smirk as she offered Betsy the throw blanket she had been covered up with earlier.
"Betsy Braddock, this is Quentin Quire. The two of you both have something in common: You're both telepaths. I normally work with you both one on one but I figure it'd be good to do a dual session and work on psionic battle techniques on the astral plane today. Unfortunately they happen more often than you'd like so it's good to be prepared. Sound good?”
“I did read it,” Betsy said defensively. “It just looked a lot warmer before.” She grabbed the offered blanket and pulled it around her shoulders before turning towards Quentin. “Hello, Mr. Quire. I would say it’s a pleasure to meet you but if we are due to practice fighting later I’m not sure how accurate that would be.”
"It's just Quentin," he corrected her. "I like your hair." He turned to Jean, still displaying his leery expression. "Combat? You expecting some violence we're going to encounter?" Not that Quentin was a stranger to that, and the prospect of being better able to administer harm rather than be on the receiving end was attractive.
"Sorry, just Quentin," Jean said with no challenge. "And I was talking to him about not reading the email, Betsy. Not you."
She turned and looked out over the lake a moment.
"I'm hoping nothing ever happens ever again, but after everything that's happened over the last few years I'd rather everyone be safe than sorry. My goal is for all the psionics to be prepared to defend themselves just in case," she said.
She motioned to the chairs on the deck for them to sit.
"This is optional, of course, but I highly encourage it."
“Sorry.” Betsy sighed. “And yeah, it makes sense. As much as I would love to pretend that the world is all sunshine and roses, we’re not exactly anyone’s favourite people at the moment.” She sat on one of the chairs, pulling her knees up to tuck the blanket around them.
“So, how do we do this?”
"First," Jean said, sitting back down. "I know we're all familiar with getting onto the astral plane but I want to go over some combat basics. Are you okay with all of this, Q?"
He shrugged and took the remaining seat, smoothing the tassels of his epaulets and folding one leg over the other, portraying telepathic royalty in beach chair on a lake dock. "Whatever. Lead on, Doctor." He opened his meager mental walls to allow the pair to connect to him with ease.
Taking a seat, the world around the three of them fell away, and the shimmering mirrored lake became the floor all around them, surrounded by an impossibly blue sky dotted by clouds. Jean stood in the middle of the mirrored ground wearing the same clothes she had in the real world.
"There are two parts to combat: defense, and offense. Today we'll learn small parts of both, and build on that as a foundation," she said. As she stepped forward, a transparent, mirrored form seemed to rise up from the floor, delayed by a moment or two, like a re-wind.
"For the first part of the lesson we'll focus on strengthening your mental armor," she said, as her clothing shifted to what appeared to be her X-Men uniform, except it seemed a little harder than real fabric, like a shell. She turned to Betsy.
"Can you show me what your mental armor looks like, if you have any?”
Betsy gave the other two an embarrassed look as a surprisingly historically accurate (if slightly ostentatious) set of medieval tournament armour began to form around her. “Me and my brother used to play knights a lot when we younger, so this seems to be what my brain comes up with,” she shrugged.
She kept the helmet tucked under her arm for now and glanced at Quentin, curious to see what the other younger telepath would come up with.
Not to be outdone, Quentin's clothes transformed in the blink of an eye. A sheer dark green dress, a knight's gauntlets not unlike Betsy's, a breastplate with broad shoulderplates, and a gold helmet . . . no, more like a golden headdress, bearing buildings and spires, like a miniature city on his head.
"What? Janelle Monae's Archandroid slaps."
Jean glanced between the two of them, quirking a brow with a smile.
"Creative," she said. She nodded to Quentin. "Could use a little more body protection though. More like...Met Gala meets Lord of the Rings. Or something period appropriate. Whichever. Try again?"
He rolled his eyes. "Please, this shit's all metaphor, we all know that. What's important is I feel protected, and Cindi Mayweather's covering my ass. Wearing the X-fetish gear or some Renn Faire costume isn't gonna save me.”
While Betsy showed no outward reaction to the Renn Faire comment, some of the more superfluous details on her armour smoothed themselves out, leaving just the functional steel plating. She turned to look at Jean. “What’s next?”
Jean tried not to roll her eyes at Quentin as a city rose up from the silvery surface of the ground, shaping into the weathered streets of NYC.
"Now, the two of you are going to fight me. We'll take it slow, and try to work up from there. Don't be afraid to hold back, your opponent won't either. Sound good?"
Quentin did not know how to fight, per se. He had skipped most of the combat sessions when he was in Generation X, and forgot what little he had learned. And he was usually the object of beatings, not the perpetrator. But it was his victimhood that had coincidentally prepared him for psychic battle, as his telepathic manifestation—instigated by one of many encounters will schoolyard bullies—taught him how easy it was to manipulate the astral plane.
So it was just a simple thought that twisted this scene into Inception, with one of Jean's summoned skyscrapers bending over itself to crash down on her.
Just before the skyscrapers struck, they quickly turned to ashes and floated away on the wind, which caught Jean's hair along with it.
"Good. Imaginative. Quentin has some experience with shifting the astral plane already," Jean explained to Betsy as the buildings seemed to rewind and form back into their regular shapes.
"It's a good idea to try a variety of styles against your opponent, from the grandiose to the more simple or subtle," she added. As she spoke, the sewer grating from underneath Quentin disappeared, leaving the open maw of the sewer below.
"It helps to conserve energy and also sometimes set the tone of the battle. Your opponent might want to go even bigger, which could risk tiring you out more quickly. It really depends on the person, though," she said, nodding to Betsy.
"Alright Betsy, how about you next?”
Right. Subtle. For a moment Betsy seemed frozen, then her form flickered and reappeared behind Jean. She needed a weapon - a thought later she held a small dagger in her hand and used it to swipe at Jean - low down on the abdomen to maximize damage while trying to stay out of range of where the other woman could easily defend herself.
Jean was not anticipating something so small after Quentin's grand gesture, and she nearly got astrally filleted, but managed to dodge at the last minute save for a light slash to her armor. She responded with a telekinetic blast toward the other woman in an attempt to send her backwards.
"Good," Jean said, walking over to reach out her hand to help her up.
Betsy flickered again, but this time instead of moving she seemed to blur at the edges, as if another shape dressed in black was superimposed on her astral self. She grabbed at Jean’s outstretched hand but rather than let the older telepath pull her up she attempted to yank her to the ground and roll herself on top of her.
There was something---no---someone there that shouldn't have been. Jean furrowed her brow at the aberration. The darkness made her narrow her eyes. Shadow King. Came the instinctive reply, laced with a quickened breath.
So when the form reached for her, Jean immediately jumped back as chains erupted from the floor a moment later, trying to snag Betsy.
"Very funny, slipping out the rug from under me. So to speak." Though he had fallen through the trap, Quentin caught himself and waited for the right moment to strike back. So here he was, standing atop a column of sewage spouting from the sewer like a geyser, though his armor remained pristine. He snapped his fingers and mimicked Jean's trick, though this time, a dozen manholes appeared around her, like the face of a clock, and exploded, the sewage water rocketing into the sky before gravity sent the polluted torrent back to the earth.
Jean was focused on a different matter, and when Quentin made his move, she responded quickly, a barrier of glass springing up around them.
"Quentin, stop," she said urgently, then added mentally to him only. ~There's something else here with us.~
Everything stopped; in the blink of an eye, the manholes and sewage were gone, and Quentin was back to the clothes we was wearing on the material world, though they glittered as he reinforced them with his powers. He did not need any special armor. After all, Quentin's best armor was his knowledge of himself as a person, that he was no one else's. That combined with an inflated sense of his own self-importance.
~Where's Braddock? Does it have her?~
Jean fell silent a moment, taking a glance around. ~Betsy's still here. Not sure yet what I'm sensing with us. But there's something. Something...dark.~ The world around them shifted to plain nothingness. Less to concentrate on. Now that she had moved from instinct she had come to realize this wasn't who she thought it was.
"Betsy? Are you okay? What just happened?" she said gently.
Betsy had evaded the chains with uncharacteristic dexterity but seemed confused at Jean’s questioning. “What do you mean? I’m fine. You dodged my attack and countered, then Quentin came back in with the water. That was an interesting trick with the chains though, and the manhole covers too, I wouldn’t have thought of using the environment like that,” she nodded towards Quentin. “Both of you obviously have more experience with this than I do. With the misdirection as well, getting the opponent to doubt their allies, right?”
Quentin turned and glared at Jean. ~There's nothing wrong with her. Why the fuck are you going on terrifying me like that? Goddamn, woman.~ He turned back to Betsy, still eyeing her warily, though that was not much different than how he normally looked at people, anyway. "It's easy. This whole world exists as a plaything for telepaths. Just think about it and you can make it."
Jean was silent a moment or two. She didn't really reply to Quentin, just met his eyes unflinchingly before looking back to Betsy with a light smile.
"Yes, that's true. I'm sorry...I must have been imagining things. Let's try that again, now that you've seen a little bit of how it's done," she said.
Betsy let the little dagger reform in her hand and started stalking towards Jean, seeming to aim towards her left flank. Then another Betsy appeared, a mirror image of the first, feigning an attack on the opposite side. Yet another one was creeping up from behind her. Several more Betsys popped up, some in the same medieval armour the original was wearing, some dressed in black garb that seemed to blend in with their surroundings. They swarmed around Jean, trying to overwhelm her with co-ordinated jabs of their daggers.
~I think I’m getting the hang of it!~ The thought came from all around them.
The barrage was unexpected, with far more experience and tactical precision than the girl had let on. Because Jean had a feeling it wasn't entirely Betsy in control. It allowed for a slash to the arm, bouncing off of hardened leather armor, another slash to the stomach with the same bounce, leaving light scrapes in their wake and a faint sound of sizzle and wisps of smoke from the cut. Battle tested mental armor. Jean studied the figures as they attacked, fending them off one by one behind an invisible, focusing on one of them in the black garb, but not letting on that she was her target.
Then, when the figure moved to strike, Jean let the shield drop and shot a brilliantly white psi-blast of light at her, aimed to blind and distract, but not hard enough to hurt--too much. She wanted to see what would happen to the other Betsys if she separated one from the herd.
As the light faded it revealed the Betsys in states of disarray; her control didn’t allow her to keep track of them all after a direct attack. While most of them were making jerky clockwork movements in no particular direction a few were starting to refocus their attention on Jean, gathering up behind her. The one she had directed her attack on smirked at her and curtsied before winking out with a small popping sound.
~You could take her out while she’s focused on me?~ The thought she sent to Quentin had an almost apologetic tone to it.
Quentin stood aside to monitor the encounter, now more curious about Betsy and her techniques than in the actual training Jean offered. Even though she claimed to be a dilettante, she was picking things up quickly. He hated to admit it—and he would never actually say so out loud, of course—but he was impressed. And, with the scare Jean had given him, more than a little terrified.
He almost turned his next attack on Betsy, to see what she was truly capable of. But then he figured he would just earn Jean's wrath for disobeying training parameters, and nobody had time for that, so he aimed and the missile battery he conjured at Jean instead, launching half a dozen targeted bombs of pure focused telepathy. Though if an errant missile hit the other student, he couldn't be blamed. All part of the learning experience.
Still focused on trying to figure out the extra Betsy (was she an alter like one of Haller's? Was it a parasite?), Jean's eyes widened, barely noticing the sneak attack before it was too late, mainly because she was only planning on training Betsy at the moment and not expecting Quentin. But she never told them that so she couldn't fault them there. Especially given the teamwork.
She managed to deflect one of the bombs with a telekinetic shield but barely, causing her to stagger. As some of the other missiles came she thickened the shield and it warped until it became more opaque and gooey, as heavy sparks of pink energy collided the shield and bored in, getting caught like ballistics gel.
"Hmm," she managed to grunt with a faint smirk, halfway between annoyed and impressed. An errant psychic missile glanced one of the Betsys that had been sneaking behind Jean and caused her concentration to finally falter. The apparitions began to dissipate until only one was left standing, her suit of armour now slightly more battered. "Yield." She raised an eyebrow at Quentin. "I did assume we were targeting her," she said mildly.
"Accidents happen," he replied in the same tone. "Are we done here, Jean? I have things to do. Crimes to solve. Drugs to snort."
Jean eyed Quentin a moment with the last comment, then she nodded. "Yeah, we're done in here for the day. Let's head back to the real world," she said. The world itself that she had constructed began to disappear and the real world fell in to place around them.
Betsy closed her eyes against the disorientation of moving back to the physical plane. As her awareness of her body increased she realized she was still clutching something in her hand. She raised the object for inspection; it was the small blade she had conjured up on the astral plane. “Huh. Well, that’s… Something.”
The faint purple glow of the dagger caught Jean's attention. Shadowy figures, psionic daggers, and unconscious malice....there was a lot to unpack here from this training session.
"It definitely is."
