Sunday afternoon, Jamie and Nathan

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After this log but before this one, Nathan tracks Jamie down to talk about how Jamie's powers revelation might affect Jono's recovery. Jamie pokes fun at Nathan's TK-vision and they brainstorm for a bit, and Jamie, sneaky little monkey that he is, manages to get Nathan to stop beating himself up for blowing up his student.



Jamie stretched out on the couch, something random on the TV. It was a good afternoon for random TV somethings; he'd only had to flip back to the ubiquitous Law and Order reruns twice.

He really, really had to stop laughing, Nathan told himself, snickering as he strode down the hall. He had alarmed that poor boy, after all. And the thoughts he was having about playing up the paranoid schizophrenic angle strictly for Forge's benefit were really very evil. Entertaining, but evil.

He strode right past the rec room door - and then stopped as he sensed Jamie's rather unique mental signature. "Hey, you," he said cheerfully, turning back and coming through the door. "I was going to grab you, wasn't I?"

Jamie popped his head up over the back of the couch. "Hey, Nathan. Yeah, you were." Jamie grinned. "Something about the funky backsplash from your fiancee being a genius, wasn't it?"

"You do go for such interesting phrasing," Nathan said dryly, coming around and flopping down into one of the armchairs. "Feel like a bit of an experiment?"

"Just enjoying the dynamic fluidity of the English language, is all. And sure, what did you have in mind?" Jamie sat up. "You think I might be able to help Jono?"

"I'm not sure yet. I think there's a possibility, here, but I need to understand what you do from a psionic standpoint, as well as a scientific one, before I do anything else." Nathan leaned back in the chair, reaching into his own mind and making a few adjustments, glad he'd spoken to Charles about this already. This way they could go ahead and do this now. "Would you mind duping for me, Jamie? I want to take a look at you on the psionic level as you do."

"Aww, and here I was hoping it'd be complicated. Ready whenever you are."

What Nathan saw as his circuit-breaker temporarily cut out as Jamie duped was... well, pretty much unlike anything he'd ever seen before. There were unmistakably psionic energy patterns there, but the rippling around them, the sense that the world had just taken on an extra dimension... Nathan squeezed his eyes shut as both Jamie and the dupe glowed incandescent. "Okay," he said a bit shakily, waiting for the circuit breaker to reform. "That was... odd."

Both Jamies blinked at him, slightly out of sync. "What?" one of them asked. "You okay?"

There. Nathan opened his eyes again, tentatively, and was pleased when his vision was normal again. No headache, either. Maybe he'd been overly jumpy? "I'm fine," he reassured the Jamies. "Just... been a while since I did that. You're really something to look at with TK-vision."

One of the Jamies raised an eyebrow. "TK-vision?" the other one asked. "If you start wearing a red cape I call dibs on being first in line to point and laugh."

Nathan laughed. "I don't know what to call it," he said. "New quirk. Well, new within the last few months. I see some sort of psionic sub-level of reality. On that level, your duping is... really quite something."

"Neat." Both Jamies grinned. "I'm not gonna tell the Doc we could've figured me out months ago if we'd gotten you to take a peek. Wanna see the other half now?"

"I wouldn't have any idea what I was looking at if she hadn't figured it out already," Nathan pointed out, adjusting the circuit-breaker again. "But sure. Go for it."

"Yeah, but it would have clued her in that there was something going on and she could've been a genius sooner. Instead she had a few extra months of wanting to hit me over the head with a list of all the physical laws I was apparently breaking." One of the Jamies reached out and touched the other one, and then there was one.

Same visual effect, but in reverse. Nathan shook his head in wonderment. He'd missed that, he reflected as his vision faded back to normal. "Well, this is food for thought," he said. "Once I can hear Askani again clearly I'm going to have to let her hash this through. You wouldn't mind duping for her once she's able to watch properly?"

"Heck no. Happy to." Jamie cocked his head. "They're, um, okay in there, right? The concussion didn't . . ."

"They'll be fine," Nathan said reassuringly. "Between the concussion and the psionic backlash, things just got a little scrambled." He laughed a bit sheepishly. "It reminded me of the week back in the summer when I didn't sleep, actually. Buzzing in the back of my head... only this time apparently they weren't cursing me out for being an idiot, at least."

"Well, hey, that's an improvement." Jamie grinned. "Maybe one day you won't bonk your head anymore and they won't have to buzz at all."

Nathan laughed aloud. "Moira keeps telling me all these horrible stories about second concussion syndrome and all... I'm not sure if she actually thinks I go looking for them or what."

Jamie snickered. "Hedging her bets, maybe. You do seem to fall over a heck of a lot. 'Course, who'm I to talk, I actually died." He shook his head. "And Jono blew up. Any theories you can come up with, before Askani weighs in?"

"The patterns..." Nathan waved a hand. "There seems to be a pull about them. For something you do unconsciously, it seems very... smooth, too."

"Well, I have been practicing. It didn't used to be this reliable, and it sure didn't used to happen just snapping my fingers." Jamie rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. "Now I almost wish you'd been around with your TK-vision the first time I did it, to have a comparative baseline. This pattern stuff . . . do you think it's something Jono could learn? I could try to slow it down, maybe, if that'd help . . . I've done a couple tricks before that might mean I've got some room to grow yet as far as how much control I have over the actual duping progress."

"The good thing is that he and I have been working with patterns all along," Nathan said. "Patterns are what the Askani psionic arts are based on, so he's predisposed to seeing them already. More so in the form that he's in now." Nathan made a thoughtful noise. "I need to talk to Askani," he said again, "but if you could work on trying to slow down the duping process, possibly... I think that's the best bet, if he's going to find something useful in it."

Jamie nodded. "I'll try, then. And I'll take a shot at getting the tricks I know I can do down to where they aren't desperation moves, because maybe there's something helpful in there too."

"Can't hurt to try. I'm at a bit of a loss at the moment, given that I still don't know how I produce solid bodies for the Askani when they manifest."

"Hm." Jamie pondered that for a moment. "Can you look at yourself with TK-vision when that happens, and see what you're doing? Or doesn't it work that way?"

"I haven't been able to experiment much," Nathan said thoughtfully. "Not since Charles put that circuit-breaker in... but I'll have to try, since watching you just now went all right."

"Let's hear it for healing." Jamie blinked, struck by a thought. "Hey, what's--how's Jono containing himself now? I mean, he's not a constantly exploding wreaker of destruction, because I think we'd've noticed one, but if he doesn't have a body . . ."

"There's one of the questions of the hour," Nathan murmured dryly. "My guess? He's done enough work with the Askani patterns at the time that he's unconsciously using them to keep himself contained."

Jamie nodded. "Makes sense. Maybe, if this whole ectoplasm experiment doesn't work out for him, he could try learning to contain himself in some other shape than 'glowball?'"

Nathan nodded. "There are still plenty of options to try," he said. "Obviously finding him a way to make a new body for himself again is the preference, but..." He shrugged helplessly. "We're in uncharted territory here."

"What, just here?" Jamie replied dryly. "Hey, three weeks ago for all everybody knew I was dancing on the graves of several pretty important principles of physics. Maybe we're making it all up as we go along, but we've got a pretty good track record for that."

Nathan rose from his chair with a somewhat weary-sounding chuckle. "If you're trying to cheer me up, Jamie, it's working. Amazing how fast I went from 'Oh God, I blew up my student' to 'Let's make a list of all the ways we can fix this'."

"Who, me?" Jamie asked, the picture of innocence. "Cheer you up? Why, that would be completely uncharacteristic behavior for me. There's no suggestion whatsoever of that kind of trend."

Nathan waggled a finger at him. "Don't think I forgot the chocolate chip cookie therapy, Madrox," he accused cheerfully as he turned towards the door. "I have my eye on you."

Jamie stuck his thumbs in his ears and wiggled his fingers at Nathan. "Just gives me more time to invent Askani knock-knock jokes."