xp_logs | Nathan, Jono, and Askani, backdated to around September 15th (Reply)

Hit the Way-Wayback Machine for this one... Jono arrives at Nathan's suite for his first lesson with him and Askani.

With a little trepidation Jono stopped in front of the door he thought was the right one. The rooming changes as well as the influx of new people at the mansion had left him feeling more unbalanced than he liked to admit, and he didn't relish the idea of walking around with a map in hand. The hallway was empty and quiet, the clock not having quite yet reached the better side of the morning. He raised his hand and knocked.

In the second bedroom he and Moira had turned into a study, Nathan heard the knock, but hadn't really needed to hear it to know that someone was there, and who that someone is. "Come in, Jono," he called back, closing his laptop and sticking the Hindi exercises whose marks he'd been recording back into the right folder. As he heard the door open, he got up, coming out into the main room of the suite. "Hey," he said, smiling briefly at the young man who stepped in.

Jono stood just in front of the door, barely in as it was, in his normal defensive pose, arms crossed over his chest. He nodded at Nathan, eyes flicking around to take in the space he was in. "Not a bad time?" he asked, as if he'd been hoping it would be.

"You rescued me from marking, actually," Nathan said, a touch of wryness in his voice. "I should be thanking you." He gave the young man a quick measuring look, assessing the body language. "Have a seat? I mean, we could do this with you standing by the door, but that could be awkward..."

"Awkward?" Jono's head snapped up and he looked around for a place to sit. "That spells out the whole life of a teenaged boy." He knew he was acting hostile again, in a situation where he really couldn't afford it, so he gathered his thoughts close and sat on a chair. "Where do we start?"

Nathan sat down in another chair, taking a deep breath. "How were you doing with the visualization exercise I asked you to do?" he asked. "Got the image of yourself in your mind clearly?"

Jono flicked his eyes evasively up at Nathan, then looked at the floor. "I tried. It's hard to imagine myself whole anymore." Then he seemed to remember something and looked up again, frowning. "But I still dream I'm human, if that helps any."

"It's a start," Nathan said briskly, wondering if this was some sort of guilt thing. He'd read the files and knew what had happened with Paige. With psis, mind could sometimes be matter, as Charles had once said to him. "But you need to do better. If you don't have the right image in your mind this won't work." Not that he was positive it would work anyway, but the self-image was a necessary first step. You couldn't reshape what you didn't have clearly visualized.

There was still a dubious look about Jono, but he straightened from his slough, obviously not yet ready to give up on himself. "Braddock had me do meditation excercises to prevent me from blowing things up. I've been working on them, but I still get easily distracted. Hear too many people at the same time when I'm not thinking loudly."

"We could always do this in the Box," Nathan suggested. In fact, that probably wasn't a bad idea. "Askani's in here - " He stopped, tapping his temple. " - so being inside the Box's shields wouldn't keep her from sticking her oar in if she wanted."

The Box. "Not one of my favourite places," Jono replied, not thrilled by the idea in the slightest. The place had a nasty habit of interfering with him to the point of disabling him completely. "But if you think that's something I should do..." his voice trailed off grudgingly.

"Why don't we try doing it here, first? If you're still having problems, we can always move to the Box." Nathan leaned forward a little. "You okay to link with me?" he asked calmly. "It'll make it easier for her to watch you."

Privacy really was a fine concept in theory, but it really didn't work as practice at Xavier's. Jono nodded. "Yeah," he added out loud.

Following Askani's murmured instructions, Nathan reached out to the young man, imagining an outstretched hand. #Whenever you're ready,# he sent gently, leaving it for Jono to make the first move.

Jono's hand twitched, lifting up a little before dropping back into his lap as if he'd thought to the hand reaching for him had been physical. Instead he closed his eyes, removing one more source of disturbance, and concentrated on the landscape inside his head. Locating Nathan was easy, easier than finding Paige, or Sarah, or Angelo, even when they were in touching distance, and Jono attributed that to Nathan actually knowing what he was doing and having the benefit of experience as well as training. #I'm here,# he announced a bit needlessly, taking the hand now, in his mind.

It had been a real struggle to deliberately create a mindscape when he'd first begun preparing for these sessions with Jono; mindscapes were something he usually did instinctively, but Askani had pointed out that wasn't feasible for these purposes and had drilled him until he could do it with fractionally less trouble. #You're all right?# he asked, releasing Jono's 'hand' once they were both securely on the mindscape, a smooth marble floor under a glittering starscape. The Askani's starscape, of course; she'd insisted on that.

#Yeah.# Jono hesitated for a second, looking around carefully. It was... different. Peaceful. For some reason he'd expected something like the world through the technomage's eyes in England. He focused back on Nathan. #What's going to happen now?#

#Why this, of course,# Askani's voice murmured, sounding gently amused, and she took shape on the marble floor beside them. Her robe almost blindingly white, her green eyes like glowing emeralds, her red hair so bright it seemed almost like living flame, she was the most vivid thing on the mindscape. #Hello, Jonothan.#

"Jono, this is Askani," Nathan said 'aloud'. "Don't be fooled by the youthful exterior. She's a hundred and twelve years old. And, well, dead, but--"

"But death or life is in the eye of the beholder," Askani said almost cheerfully, winking at him. "Especially when it comes to people like us," she said, turning back to Jonothan. "Mind is matter."

And all Jono could think of was if his fate was to get stuck living inside someone else's mind and just what sort of a life could that be? Or unlife, depending. "Nice to meet you," he said finally, nodding at Askani, squinting a little as if her brightness hurt his eyes. In truth he was terrified; he didn't want to become someone who had to live through someone else.

"Sometimes there are no alternatives, if one wishes to exist at all," Askani said almost briskly. "But we will endeavor to make sure that this is not the case with you, shall we not?"

She was talking to him as well, privately, and Nathan turned his attention to Jono, giving him a quick smile. "Can you feel the energy around you?" he asked.

Turning his head again, as if he could see the energy, Jono hesitated. "Yeah, it's- yeah." There was something nearly magnetic about Askani and he returned his gaze to her, studying her.

She smiled at him, almost conspiratorially. "It is, how would you say it... raw material?" She held up a hand, and an intricate pattern of light took shape floating in the air above her palm. "It is all patterns, Jonothan. The world around you, the cells of your body... all merely patterns of energy."

"Can you see them?" Jono asked suddenly, watching the light scintillating in the air. "I mean, the things the rest of us can't? Those patterns?"

Askani nodded. "So can Nathan. It is just below the surface of what you see with your eyes," she said. "And there are many, many layers. To rebuild your cellular structure, you only need to be able to access perhaps the first half-dozen."

Oh, really. Just the first half-dozen. "That sounds easy", the tone of Jono's voice was a little sharper than he intended, and he shook his head. "How do you do that, then? Decades of study?"

"Nathan here has stumbled into a few dozen layers, all within a few months," Askani said. "Stumbling being the operative word."

"Be nice," Nathan told her, and then focused on Jono. "Meditation exercises," he told the young man. "All based around patterns she'll show you. Apparently that's the best way to ease you into it. I had a training exercise go wrong back in August to 'thank' for breaking through onto that level - we want to make sure, especially given your condition, that it's a little easier on you."

'Your condition'. It sounded like he had leprosy or something. "Maybe it wouldn't matter even if I stumbled onto them as well. I mean, maybe I'd know enough then to make myself better no matter how much worse I had gotten..." Jono's voice trailed off, and he swung to look at Askani again. "Why have you never done this yourself?"

"Here and now, you mean?" Askani shook her head. "Because I have no power of my own in this form. I merely borrow Nathan's. I believe he is quite capable of this himself, but to maintain it for me for more than a few minutes at a time would be enormously draining on his energies. As well," she went on, a dry edge to her voice, "I would not take the option, even were it available, if none of my people could do the same."

"Yeah, so, talk about voices in your head," Jono noted, raising an eyebrow at Nathan. "Thanks, though, for wanting to teach me. No offence, but I don't want to end up like you. What are the meditation excercises like?"

"I don't particularly want you to wind up in my state either," Askani said wryly. "You have far too much of your life to live yet." She 'tossed' the pattern upwards, where it swelled into immensity, revealing that it was infinitely more complex than it had seemed in its smaller form. "This is where we begin," she said.