xp_logs | Pete, Nathan and Askani, afternoon of Tuesday, June 29th

(Way backdated to June 29th, when Nathan was recovering from his week of no sleep and Amanda was still working on recovering her English.) Pete finds Nathan in the sunroom, and the two of them have a Very Serious Talk with Askani about her motivations and plans for the future.

Pete found Nate reading in the sunroom, and lowered himself into a chair opposite him, leaning his crutch against the chair.

"Afternoon mate. You busy?"

Nathan smiled faintly, closing the book and setting it aside. "Not particularly," he said. "Charles wants me taking it easy for a while, so I've just been... avoiding the kids, mostly." He eyed Pete, sighing a little. "You've got that look, and I think I probably know why."

"Yeah, I figured you might." Pete smiled thinly. "I've been staying clear of these Askani that you're sharing your head with. Makes no fucking odds to me why we need to stop horrible shit happening, you know? I mean, I trust you. And Charlie's says you're still running the show in there, and if he's happy, I'll go along. But it strikes me that if they're going to be fucking with my family, especially when the last time I spoke to her she wasn't up for the speed learning route, I think I need to get a better idea of what the score is here."

Nathan sighed again, more heavily this time. "Askani swears up and down that this wasn't her seizing the opportunity to get her way, but I'm not sure I trust that." Askani muttered in the back of his mind, and he grimaced, shaking his head a little, irritably. "What say I call her out here, let the two of you talk this over? Given that I was out like a light at the time, I'm not much help here."

Pete looked a little dubious. "If you're sure it's not going to fuck you up too badly, then yeah, that'd be good, cheers. Anything I should know before you do?"

"Just... try to be diplomatic," Nathan said with a pained smile. "It's my powers she borrows when she does this. She might be treating me like I'm made of glass this week, but let's not push our luck." Pete nodded, refraining from comment yet still looking vaguely mistrustful, and Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, letting Askani emerge and project herself. He felt a twinge of pain behind his eyes, but he opened them and saw her sitting in the chair next to his, regarding Pete steadily. Red robe, this time. Not a good sign.

"Greetings," she said to Pete, her accent only lightly edging her voice this time.

Pete didn't bat an eyelid at her sudden appearance.

"Afternoon. Like I was just saying to Nate, I think you and I need to have a chat, before we develop problems between us. See if we can't save us all a lot of needless sodding about later on. See, I'm all for building a future that's better than the one you lot seem to have come from, but you seem to be completely sure of how to go about it, and I haven't got clue one why everyone's so happy to trust that you're right."

Askani smiled slightly, as if amused by a private joke, and glanced at Nathan. "I did wonder when someone would ask me that in a serious manner, as opposed to the boy's raving," she admitted, and then turned back to Pete. "What would you have of me?" she asked forthrightly.

"Well, let's start with the basics. Get the really offensive stuff out of the way first. Because de la Rocha's a nut, but he's not completely wrong - we really don't have much but your word for who you are and what you're doing, unless I missed a memo. I mean, I'm more or less happy that you're not doing a number on Nate's brain, such as it is." He flashed Nate a quick grin. "But that doesn't mean you're telling him or us everything. So I guess question one is: why should we believe anything you say?"

Askani tilted her head a little, bright green eyes going briefly distant as she contemplated the question. "You have my word," she said, "and you would have Xavier's, for the asking. He and I have spoken at length - his is not a mind I can conceal things from, at least not in my current form." The smile came back, turning almost wicked, and Nathan groaned inwardly. "Although you cannot know that for sure, can you?"

"~Sister,~" Nathan said a bit sharply, and Askani looked back at him. "You're avoiding the question," he said. "He didn't ask whether or not he could believe you, he asked you why he should. Slight difference there."

Askani shrugged. "An interesting philosophical question - why should any of us believe anything?" Her gaze moved back to Pete, that smile still playing on her lips. "As I cannot transport you to the thirty-eighth century to see my world for yourself, Wisdom, I am at a loss. What proof I can give, I have given."

Pete smiled wryly. "Well, that's about the answer I was expecting, but it was worth a shot. I'll go along with the idea that you can't lie to Charlie for now. So, if I've understood right, the plan is to stop the future you came from from ever happening. But you seem to be doing everything you can to bring it about by teaching people your language culture and techniques, which says to me that you're either telling lies about what you really want, or that you haven't thought it through, or that I'm missing something about how you intend to do things."

"Only three options?" Askani asked almost teasingly, and Nathan blinked at her. She was enjoying this, he realized... which was truly bizarre, all things considered. "And must they be mutually exclusive?"

"Askani," Nathan said in protest, and she gave him a look that could only be described as 'innocent'. Which was just plain frightening. "Would it kill you to take this seriously?"

"Apologies, brother," she said, smiling and waving a hand aimlessly at Pete. "He reminds me rather strongly of the first head of our intelligence service. I was quite overcome with nostalgia for a moment."

She looked back at Pete, her expression growing serious, almost grave. "But to answer your question. My future was lost because of a clash of ideologies. The Canaanites were merely the most violent proponents of 'the other side', believing as they did that mutants were born to rule and all others were flotsam to be swept away. Most of my society shared those views to some extent. My Clan was a lone voice for the idea that genetics should not dictate power." She raised both hands, palms up. "What we teach is not meant to duplicate our future. Our language, culture are tools, ways in which we hope to strength the assimilationist philosophy here, in this time, where it may do some good. Before the weight of history swings to the supremacists." Her smile was dry this time, almost bitter. "History is very heavy, Wisdom. Eighty years of war was not enough to win us survival, let alone success in my time. But a breath of change here may turn into a greater wind as it blows across the centuries. That is what we hope."

Pete frowned. "Well, it's an idea, I guess. But while that all sounds very nice, and very noble, there's plenty of stuff you've done that's less nice and noble. Hell, you hi-jacked Nate's brain for a start, and you've taught Amanda your language the fast way, when I know she didn't want you to three days ago, and for all you come up with reasons for both, I know a fucking pragmatic streak when I see it, and I've got some idea of what living a life at war does to people, and I start to wonder: what happens if Nate, or Amanda, or anyone else round here decides that they want to do something you lot don't like?"

He leant forward slightly. "I mean, you're already dead, and if you get what you want, you're never going to exist. Sounds to me like you don't have anything left to lose. Which probably means that there's not a lot you won't do to get what you want."

"Noble?" Askani actually looked surprised, then almost vehement. "We are not attempting to be 'noble', Wisdom, not in the slightest. This is nothing but pragmatism... nothing." She leaned forward in her chair, her eyes heating up, glowing red-gold. "Do you think we did not have our own precogs? Do you truly believe that we lived as we did because it was 'nice'? When I say our future was lost, I do not mean only for us!"

Nathan stared blankly at her as her voice rose. When she stopped, as if for breath - although he was fairly sure a psionic entity didn't really need to breathe - he swallowed and said it. "You... were precognitive," he said slowly. Askani's gaze snapped back to him, and he smiled a bit wanly. "That's how you were talking to me in the first place, wasn't it? How we could connect..." He gave a weak laugh. "Oh. Making so much more sense now."

Askani stared at him for a moment, her expression slightly wild, but then nodded, turning back to Pete and going on a little more calmly. "There is nothing to lose," she said, meeting his eyes unflinchingly. "And much of what I have done has been questionable." She raised a hand, pointing to Nathan without looking at him. "I nearly killed him, as a start. Our only connection to this time, our only chance to change things, and I nearly killed him a dozen times over. I have made mistakes, and I cannot say I will not continue to make mistakes." The light in her eyes faded finally. "But pragmatism can be balanced with respect for freedom of will. I will endeavour to do so."

Pete's frown deepened. "Looks like you make a lot more sense to me than I thought you did. Well, it sounds like you've got the best of intentions, Askani, but I have to say, there's not a lot more frightening than pragmatism and a fucking holy cause."

He leant back again.

"Just so's we're really clear: I can live with you being pragmatic. I can even live with your holy cause, because when you get right down to brass tacks, it ain't a bad one. I can live with 'em, hell I'll help you out if I can. But if you fuck with Amanda again like you did the other day, however expedient it is, then you and I will have a big problem."

"Likewise," Nathan muttered a little less firmly than he'd intended. He eyed Askani, his mind going over and over what it meant that she was precognitive, and he was coming to a conclusion he really didn't like. At all. "I told you that already," he said, as she looked at him, "but consider it said again." #I can forgive you panicking, once, and only because she didn't come to any harm,# he added telepathically.

Askani nodded. "Understood. Fully," she said a bit coolly, studying the both of them almost speculatively. "I truly do not wish her any harm. She has a hard road, and has chosen even harder." Nathan almost asked her if they could please not discuss Manuel, just this once, but she went on immediately, changing the subject. "Is there anything else you would have of me, Wisdom?" She gestured at Nathan. "He is not fully recovered, and it is his energy I am draining, to manifest. I am reluctant to stay long."

Pete smiled thinly.

"Well, you're a soldier. So I figure you've got more specific plans than your pretty fucking nebulous idea to teach everyone at this end of history to play nice. And if you don't now, I'm willing to bet that you will. I wouldn't mind talking them through with you at some point, because it ain't just Amanda I worry about, but it'll keep 'til Nate here isn't about to fall over again."

"I'm fine," Nathan said a bit harshly, staring at Askani. "And it's entirely too convenient to use me as an excuse - I notice you do that on a regular basis. Why don't you go on a little?" He turned back to Pete. "She's been telling me for quite a while now that her future is based on certain things that happen here in our time. Hasn't gotten much more specific than that. Of course, I've been busy getting kidnapped, shot, and trying to kill myself with sleep deprivation, so maybe there just hasn't been time for this conversation yet." He glanced back at Askani, raising an eyebrow.

Askani proceeded to manage an entirely different sort of innocent look. More 'carefully blank', with a definite edge of 'I might know something, but do you think it's going to be yours for the asking?' "There are... influences, in this time period, that will echo through history," she said, an undertone of displeasure to her voice as she divided her steady gaze between the two of them. "There is a saying, Nathan, one I have seen in your memories... 'History is written by great men', I believe it goes. It is not far from the truth." She smiled very faintly. "Great men who espouse ideas of mutant supremacy with great enthusiasm, in particular, could be a disproportionate influence."

Pete raised an eyebrow at the blank look. "Well, that's sodding dandy. So you're going to talk in vague phrases and attempt to lead us around by the nose? Do we look like we came down with the last shower? I mean, yeah, I can think of a couple of names I'd put on a list of mutant supremacists, but d'you have anything more than 'they had disproportionate influence'? Something we can actually act on?"

Askani tilted her head at him. "Him," she said with a frown. "Those surrounding him, and those that follow after. I thought I was being clear. The other?" She shook his head a little. "No subtlety in this language of yours. None at all."

"Linguistic problem, I think," Nathan said to Pete with a bit of a grimace. "Or something like that. Askani, more details would be good."

"The other," she repeated again, visibly getting frustrated. "There is Xavier, and then there is him. Do you not know whom I mean?"

"Depends. Lensherr - Magneto - is the obvious choice, but what I'm getting at is that you're going to need to do your best to give us concrete names and events, because I don't entirely believe that you don't know more than you're letting on, and I'm never keen on acting when I only know the little bits and pieces that someone else thinks I need to know. I've had plenty of that, cheers."

"Easier said than accomplished," Askani said, glaring at him and gesturing at Nathan. "I am blind, save for what I see through his eyes, and his precognition is... impaired."

Nathan stared at her in something close to disbelief. "Then maybe you shouldn't have screwed around with it like you did?" he suggested angrily.

She met his eyes squarely. "The why of any situation is secondary to the situation itself," she countered.

Throwing things at her, not an option. "Shut up," Nathan said wearily, closing his eyes for a moment as he tried to deal with yet another piece of new information. Impaired, not burned out?

Pete looked deeply skeptical, and more so after Askani's last comment. "Maybe you can't see the future, but you must have had histories, or you wouldn't be so damn sure that it's people in this time that set things in motion for your time."

He glanced at Nate.

"How're you doing? I can do without the Doc putting me on an all-porridge diet just because you won't say if you're tired."

"Tell me something, Wisdom," Askani said before Nathan could answer, and he winced a little as he felt her tug, a bit sharply, at his mind. "How many details can you give me concerning the life of the central figure of this country's dominant religion? Specific, accurate details of his actual actions in history and how they affected the development of your civilization? He is, after all, only two thousand years into your past."

"Would you please SHUT UP?" Nathan snapped at her, his temper slipping its leash. "For fuck's sake, this is not a debate!" Askani raised an eyebrow at him, and he went on rather more heatedly than he should have. "Did it occur to you that if you share whatever details you are working with, we might be able to help you fill in the gaps?" She started to reply, but he cut her off. "Show us, if you can't explain it for whatever reason..."

Pete raised an eyebrow. "I'm with him. Every time you've been pressed for details, you've got all evasive, and done your level bloody best not to answer the question, which ain't exactly inspiring trust. And to answer your question: I can tell you more or less fuck all. But I was gambling everything on going back to 20AD to stop Jesus from getting anywhere in the first place, if I even thought there was a slight chance I'd be doing that, I'd have done all the reading I possibly fucking could on the realities of what he was up to before they nailed him up. Or I'd have got someone else to do it and brought them with me. I might get next to jack shit, but I'd have done it. So what've you fucking got?"

"Very well," Askani said, looking almost grim. "You wish to see for yourself, Wisdom? I can show you what I saw, what I know - because it is a combination of visions and history, as nebulous as you seem to consider the former. But you will remember that it is you who wanted this, if so. I want no accusations of interfering with your mind."

"Wait a-" Pete started, but cut off as he felt the pressure on his brain, and reacted on instinct. His shields were pretty solid anyway, but he clamped down on everything, anger at having his mind violated turning to icy calm, that familiar detachment as he methodically threw up a screen of confusing, irrelevant memories, flashes of childhood, rows with his father, a drunken night with a particularly memorable ex, while picking out a particularly horrible one to try and trap the intruder in, settling in an instant on last year's trip to the Arctic research station, where they'd all gone mad, and he'd had to kill every last one of them.

Nathan barely had a chance to stiffen as Askani pulled him along with her, into Pete's mind. #~STAB YOUR EYES, YOU--# His mental roar was cut off as he was suddenly standing somewhere else, at least his astral self was. Nowhere he knew, Nathan thought, glancing around at the corridor, the unmarked doors, registering a very specific sort of sharp chill in the air, before he turned on Askani.

"I ought to kick you right back out of my head!" he raged at her, appalled. "What the hell are you doing?"

She raised an eyebrow, and the part of him that was still thinking clearly absorbed the fact that the red robe had changed to armor. "Precisely what you and he asked," she said, a bit irritably as she looked around. "Only we appear to be trapped in a defensive construct..." She closed her eyes. #Oh, Wisdom?# she called out silently, an almost mocking edge to the words. #Have you changed your mind?#

No response. Nothing to lead them out. Keep them there, hold them out. It'd been a while since Pete'd had to use his training, but in his strangely altered thinking, it seemed like only yesterday.

Make the memory as real as possible.

The breath had steamed as they'd rushed him, trying to hold him down, pin him to the ground, get the dampener off his wrist. He'd recognised Jacobsen from the conference a couple of years ago as he led the group of them into the room, but the look in his eyes, that awful hunger...

"How the fuck am I... are any of us supposed to trust you when you do things like this?" Nathan snarled feverishly at her, trying to wrestle control back, the only thing on his mind getting out of Pete's head. He did not do things like this to his friends, didn't invade their minds... "Take us back out of here! Now!"

"I will not have either of you doubting my resolve," Askani said stonily and started to stride down the hall. "You wished to know, so you will know."

"Fuck you! You're breaking the agreement! Again!" Why couldn't he get control back? It was his telepathy she was using to do this, but every time he reached out he glanced off something smooth and hard, some kind of shield...

Askani stopped dead, her eyes narrowing as two figures came around the corner and towards them. "Interesting," she said calmly, and Nathan stared at the two... he didn't even know what to call them, there was something in their eyes, something very wrong with their minds. They started running, clearly intending to attack, but Askani raised a hand and they thinned out into mist mid-step, vanishing. "Come along, Nathan," she said almost imperiously and strode forward again.

Frustrated, feeling thoroughly helpless, Nathan followed her, wondering whether attacking her physically might have some effect. They were in Pete's mind, on his turf. The rules might not be the same, might allow him to do... something? "Fuck," he muttered shakily. Lesson number five hundred and sixty in why I should have started doing something with my telepathy years ago... Nathan gritted his teeth, telling himself that if he was going to make a move, he had to wait for an opportune moment. Otherwise she was liable to brush him aside quite casually.

He couldn't help but take in some of the details of their surroundings as they went, though - reflex, and he couldn't have turned it off if he'd tried. Some sort of scientific facility, from what he could see through the occasional open door, but something had very clearly gone wrong. There were signs of fighting, even dead bodies here and there as they moved through the halls.

"Enough," Askani said finally, almost hissing the word. She stopped dead, suddenly enough that he ran right into her, and Nathan swore as her hand shot out and locked around his wrist. The base blurred around them and they were suddenly outside, beside the door of a bunker of some sort in the middle of an arctic landscape. Nathan tried to break her grip, but she held on, her eyes fixed on the door. A few moments passed, Nathan still trying futilely to pull away, before the door opened and a parka-clad Pete stumbled out. Askani reached out and caught his wrist, too. "I dislike this setting," she said, and abruptly, they were somewhere else.

A booth at the back of a pub. Pete looked at at the pair sitting opposite him with flat, dead eyes, then sipped his scotch, holding the glass up to catch the light.

"Tastes great, but for some reason, I just ain't drunk." He looked back at them. "Well, you got me. Fucking get on with it, then."

Askani gave him a stony look and then the bar was gone and there was just the booth and the three of them, floating through some sort of void. Nathan grabbed at the edge of the table, almost instinctively - he was sitting on the very edge of the booth, after all - but Askani merely shook her head at him.

"Look up," she said to them both, and Nathan felt dizzy as he saw what was above him, a shifting mass of color that seemed to flow almost like a river. "This is a representation of my own visions, what I can recall from my memory. My awareness of history functioned in both directions - back as well as forward - when I was alive. I can still identify certain key points. Here, for example," she said, pointing out some kind of obstruction - like a rock, almost? - that, when they floated in for a closer look, turned out to be an image. A moment, with two men on a catwalk in the center of a great round room. "Has this happened already?" Askani asked. "Do either of you know?"

Pete stared up at the image, brow furrowing, as he recognised Xavier and Lensherr.

"Yeah, I think it has. I think there should have been a couple of other people there, but I had to do a write up on something like this last year."

He turned to Nate.

"I think it's what Lensherr did that had Charlie nearly wiping out all the non-mutants, just after Stryker had him trying to to do for all the mutants. Stryker's kid ought to be up there as well, but I think that's what we're seeing."

For a moment, Askani almost looked shaken, but she covered it instantly and went on. "See," she said, pulling them 'back' a little. "See how it warps the flow following it, changes the direction of the stream?" There were other 'rocks' that seemed somehow to follow that one, almost in a straight line, but she pulled them across the stream instead, honing on something else entirely. "And here," she said, indicating a moment where an older woman, her face just visible through the faceplate of her protective suit, bending over a microscope in a pristine white lab. "This is where another change begins, I believe. Something medical in nature, something that produces dangerous changes in the mutant genome over the centuries... I attempted to track this back through what records survived, to gather more details, but I failed. The trigger event, if I've identified it correctly, is sometime within... a hundred and fifty years of this time, perhaps."

Pete rubbed at his forehead. "I start to get the idea. But if we're already a century and a half past us, then there's fuck all we can do about this one, isn't there? Or are there other moments like this, nearer our time?"

"Perhaps. But it is nearly impossible to match retrocognitive images to the fragmentary records that survived to my era." She pulled them backwards this time, to New York and a building that Nathan stared at and thought that he should know. He'd seen pictures of it... wait. The New York Hellfire Club? He blinked at Pete, who was peering intently at the image. "Here," Askani said. "This place, these people... their actions echo for centuries. Small actions, in and of themselves, but potentially very dangerous in the long term."

"Yeah, I know this lot. This, we can actually do something about. Hell, two of the faculty and one of the students are part of this club at the moment."

Pete paused, thinking for a second.

"Of course, we still need to decide what to do, but even just knowing that they're important beyond Daddy Shaw's little games is useful. Got anything else coming up in the next few years, or is this the big one?"

Askani looked mildly distressed, almost fearful again. "Him," she said, drawing them back to that first moment and then lingering, a startling play of emotions crossing her face. "Farther ahead... see where the images blur? It is difficult to sort out - too many potential paths, and I'm uncertain which was taken..."

Nathan tried to pay attention as she drew them forward again, but something was happening. Changing. Everything was lit in eerie blue, and the booth, the stream, even Pete and Askani were fading as he felt himself falling towards the moment she indicated. Distantly, he heard someone shouting, unintelligible words that sounded like an angry challenge, and he had only enough time to recognize his own voice before the mindscape vanished around him.

He opened his eyes, shaking slightly, his hands grasping the arms of the chair as if he was holding on for dear life. Across from him, Pete was blinking as if he was waking up from a nap. "Are... are you all right?" he managed to ask as Pete focused on him.

Pete shook himself, doing his best to feel normal again. "Got a bit of a headache, and I'm not fucking happy with her, but I'll live. You might want to point out that people these days like to be asked in so many bloody words before getting guests in their head." He shook his head again. "God, I hate that..."

"Give her an inch and she takes a mile," Nathan said, still shaken. "She's not supposed to be doing that anymore, grabbing my powers without asking. Think I need to go back to Charles and let him have at her again." He turned his attention inward for a moment and listened, but couldn't hear her. Just a murmur that was more agitated than usual. "I'm not sure what just happened. I don't think it was her that cut that off there..." He shook his head, cutting himself off. "I'm sorry," he said tiredly, focusing on Pete. "I just... fuck, I didn't expect that to happen. I shouldn't have called her out here to talk to you... it makes it easier for her to pull shit like that."

Pete waved a hand, dismissing the apology. "Not your fault. I was the one wanted to talk to her, remember? Shit, I can even see why she had to show rather than fucking tell, I just don't like it. I'll cope. How're you doing?"

Nathan took a deep breath, trying to shake it off. "Going to have a hell of a headache in a bit, I think. But never mind that, though... I'm disturbed, Pete. I didn't know she was precognitive. Never even guessed, and I don't like what that means."

Pete looked a little confused. "Well, I get that it means that she hasn't been telling you everything, and yeah, I'd be worried if I had someone like that living in my head, but is there something more than that?"

Nathan laughed, a breathless sound with very little humor in it. "I'm maybe just trying to drive myself crazy here," he confessed shakily. "What she said about not being able to lie to Charles... it makes sense. She's not what she was. But it makes me wonder whether she just... let me believe what I wanted to believe about how this all happened." He mustered a faint smile. "I mean, what's more likely? That I somehow fixed on a single time period just because it... hit some of my buttons, or that this ungodly-powerful psi was reaching out trying to find a sympathetic precog in an early enough time period to do some good?" Nothing from Askani, still. Not even a murmur of displeasure. Nathan took a deep, unsteady breath. "I suppose it doesn't really matter," he said, telling himself to move on. "She's given us a little in the way of detail, at least. I'm sure there's probably more. And if my precog's not actually burnt out after all, maybe we can get more. I'll have to talk to Charles again, see what he thinks..."

"I'd guess at a little from column A, a little from column B, but I dunno how much of that is wishful thinking. But you're right - however it happened probably doesn't make a lot of odds any more." Pete managed a slightly tired looking smile. "In my professional opinion, she's mad as a badger, but at least she's broadly on the side of the angels. If you talk to Charlie about the state of your brains, I'll have a quiet word with Emma about the Hellfire Club. I don't think we can do much more than that for now."

He leant back with a sigh.

"You know, I think I almost liked it better when all I had to do was kill people because they were mad bastards. None of this taking care of weird kids and worrying about the fate of the future nonsense."

"Part of me agrees wholeheartedly," Nathan said with a weary snort, "but I don't know, Pete... as much as the complications are doing their almighty best to piss me off - or drive me insane, in certain cases - I think simplicity is overrated." He glanced at his watch, curious to know how much time had passed during all of this. More than he'd thought, he saw. "Much as I'd like to continue the bitch session, Moira's decided she's going to watch me eat until she can trust me to do it of my own accord again. And I am currently late for lunch."

"Get going then. I'm not having her deciding that all this was entirely my fault, and doing something terrible and medical to me in revenge. I'll go and catch one of the kids doing something they shouldn't. That always improves my mood."