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I Wanna Be Sedated; 5/23 morning (Quentin/Rachel)
Topic Started: Jun 16 2013, 10:19 PM (384 Views)
Quentin Quire
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That's MR. Arrogant Shit Stirring Asshole, thank you!
Mutant Camp - Admin
Okay, got it. Floating was definitely a whole lot easier with visualized rafts (must be some kind of subconscious thing). All he had to do was let the voices do their thing, while ignoring the more annoying ones. Blah blah blah, sort of like he'd done with every Language Arts teacher he had in middle school. It could work.

It did, however, require a coconut drink as a thank you to Big Sis. And one for him too, seeing as he was at it. After all, floating around pretty much required that, right? But while the floating was going well (if he said so himself), he did have one more question. Or maybe a few dozen, but better to go with one at a time, he figured.

How, exactly, did you figure out whether or not people were actually talking, as opposed to picking up on what they were thinking? It seemed like it should be some kind of no brainer, but he'd been screwing up with it for days. And while he didn't much care if people got annoyed with him for answering their thoughts, it'd be good to know whether or not he was.

Rach seemed to appreciate the drink, setting it on a little force field-type ledge, then looked over at him, arching one eyebrow. *General rule of thumb that works for pretty much everybody?* she sent, grinning just a little herself, *If they’re talking out loud, their lips are moving.*

Quentin wrinkled his nose at her, figuring she was messing with him, then paused. Actually, that did kind of make sense. Sort of low tech, yeah, but pretty practical overall. He nodded and got ready to settle back on his raft again, but she wasn't done.

*But hold up a bit, because we kinda need to backtrack here, Little Bro,* Rachel added, lifting her hand to ward off any more questions. *If you want this to work without the Big Sister issued water wings, that is,*

Oh man, she was doing something to keep him afloat? Quentin sighed. He'd honestly thought - well, that did explain why he wasn't floundering this time, he supposed. He just thought he'd gotten the knack of it. Anyway, though, she seemed to be pretty serious about whatever it was she wanted to say, so he nodded for her to go ahead.

*See, this isn’t about tuning people out. That’s the opposite of what you need to be doing.*

Quentin frowned, trying to figure out what she meant. She couldn't possibly be suggesting he actually listen to each and every one of those voices, could she? He'd go nuts, just from the sheer quantity of stupidity floating around.

*Look,* Rachel started again, and suddenly her raft thing disappeared, leaving her floating in the water sort of stretched out. *This is floating. Voices go in, voices slosh around, voices are company. All of them.*

He nodded. Yeah, got that, then watched as she floated up a little, leaving a think column of air between her and the water. *This is tuning them out. It’s just another way of pushing them away,* Rachel explained, frowning slightly as she extended the field a little more to dim the voices further, then looking over to her little brother once again. *And it works pretty well, for a while, at least if you’re strong and focused enough. But you have to stay strong, and stay focused, because this is what starts to happen if you get that even just a little bit wrong.*

The air cushion under her sort of deepened, pushing down on the water's surface, which started making like a slow whirlpool. One that got bigger and faster, then abruptly collapsed, pulling Rachel in under the water. Startled, Quentin sat up on his raft, peering over the edge after her, his eyes widening. Granted, it was just some weird visualization thing, but...

Well, she'd said it herself. Nothing was realer than what happened in your head.

After just a moment or so, though, Rachel reappeared, sitting on her bird raft as if she'd never been anywhere else, other than that she was shaking her head and tapping at her ear. *Eugh. Psychic blowback is the worst,*

"Looks like," he said drily, feeling stupid for being worried. After all, Rach knew what she was doing, and knew that he knew that. "So, no giant air cushions. I get that. But it's not like you listen to all the thoughts all the time, right? I mean," he gestured vaguely, "that'd be like, hundreds and hundreds of conversations, all at once. You can't really actively listen to all of them."

He hoped not, anyway. If you did, well, he might be going back to the shades on the windows method, and just leaving a couple "up".
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Yeah, sighs and frowns. Understandable, for definites, for Little Bro, and it was a shitty end of a deal that he’d got stuck with, having to deal with all of this pretty much all at once, without time to stop and absorb parts at a time.

But he’d nodded, at least, amongst all of that, so Rachel went on, explaining the basic point as best as she could, and keeping with it, rather than getting into one of those pointless back and forth arguments about whether or not people and their thoughts were stupid with her new little brother, even though that would totally have been the kind of pointless unresolvable argument only siblings could have.

Ticking important moments that had been missing in her life off the list later, explanations now, since these? Were ones that were looking like they could probably make some difference for stuff and things that might keep Quentin’s brain from being hammered with a righteous whirlpool of blocked out mental voices.

Or... well, mental poetic license there kinda, maybe, but Rachel still thought she’d made her point well enough.

Next time though, she had to figure out how to give the demonstration without actually going through this herself. Psychic blowback? Definitely the worst.

"Looks like," Quentin said drily, doing a pretty good job of casual that Rachel was pretty sure (though not definite, since psychic blowback and all) hadn’t been nearly so composed while she’d been disappearing under layers of agitated mental static. He did still seem kinda on the way to troubled though, for all of that. "So, no giant air cushions. I get that. But it's not like you listen to all the thoughts all the time, right? I mean," he gestured vaguely, "that'd be like, hundreds and hundreds of conversations, all at once. You can't really actively listen to all of them."

Rachel paused in the business of clearing ‘water’ out of her ears, tilting her head to the other side (or the mental image of her head, but... yeah, they were all clear on that part of the page, really) and giving that a considering look. *Depends on what you mean by ‘actively’, I guess,* she replied after a moment. Following every single one of them with full attention, all at once? No, even with the Force, she couldn’t do that. But guessing a bit from the sense she was getting from him when he’d asked the question, that literal an answer might not really be what he was getting at. *I don’t block any of them out,* she added, with a slight shrug.

She’d always liked hearing other people’s thoughts. Stupid or not stupid, it hadn’t come into it, and maybe that was just because she’d been four when she’d first noticed it, and it just hadn’t ever occurred that that might be a thing. Whatever the origin, this was just... how it worked.

Leaning over a little, Rachel offered her new brother a smile that was equal parts rueful and sympathetic. *There is a reason why I said it was my way, and everyone else’s. It’s not because mine is better, or cooler, or more complicated,* she told him simply, then shrugged again. *It works for me. It pretty much always has.*

For other people, different things worked. And all of that was okay, whatever it turned out to be that did work.
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Quentin Quire
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That's MR. Arrogant Shit Stirring Asshole, thank you!
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Okay. So, Rachel was providing sisterly help with the rafts and stuff, helping him keep afloat in the sea of voices in his head. It was nice of her - really nice, because the noise had been driving him nuts - but not a long term solution. And apparently, blowing off the voices he didn't want to listen to wasn't an option unless he wanted to get sucked under.

Still, though - she couldn't possibly be listening to all of them, all the time, could she? Like, actively listening, that crap teachers preached in school when they wanted you to pay attention to them instead of the way more interesting stuff in your own head. And if you weren't, how was that any different from letting the voices go blah blah blah and blowing them off?

*Depends on what you mean by ‘actively’, I guess,* she said, pausing in the act of knocking virtual water out of her equally virtual ears. *I don’t block any of them out,* she added, with a slight shrug.

Yeah, he got that. No blocking. But ignoring wasn't the same thing as blocking, was it? He opened his mouth to point that out, but Rachel was leaning over, offering a sympathetic smile. *There is a reason why I said it was my way, and everyone else’s. It’s not because mine is better, or cooler, or more complicated,* she told him simply, then shrugged again. *It works for me. It pretty much always has.*

It worked for her. He nodded at that, but his attention turned towards inwards for a moment. Her way. Everyone else's way. So...the point was, there was more than one right way to get there.

And where there was more than one, there was usually more than two. He just needed to figure out something that would work for him.

Taking a deep breath, he dissolved Rachel's construct, erasing the ocean and rafts. In their place, he built up a digitalized world, with simplistic, squarish clouds, trees, and pitfalls. It'd been a long time since he'd played Super Paper Mario, but he'd kicked ass at it before the pens.

Not quite the original game, though. Instead of Mario, he inserted a version of himself, complete with pink mohawk and hound marks, holding an oversized gun labelled "banishing ray". With a mischievous grin, he visualized Rach in a Princess Peach gown. Somehow, he didn't think she'd appreciate it as much as she had the coconut drink, but hey. Even with the red hair, she was a natural.

Next thing next. He let the other voices, some of which he could recognize, most of which he couldn't, appear on the screen, turtles and shrooms and other Mario world inhabits, except these bore recognizable faces. Most of them were too far away to bother with right now, but he took aim at the closest and fired, watched it shrink down and disappear, banished to Flopside. There, but not there, its "voice" reduced to a whisper.

He fired off a few more shots, sending the rest of the nearby Flipside inhabitants off, knowing that at any time, he could flip himself over as well and bring them back again. Not quite shades on windows, and a far cry from floating, but the noise in his head gradually quieted to a murmur. Turning to Rachel, he grinned and blew at the tip of his ray gun.

*It works,* he said proudly, hoping she wasn't going to punch any holes in it. It was taking some effort to hold the image, and maybe it needed a little tweaking, but it was a whole lot easier than trying to float, and the mental silence wasn't going to drive him insane.
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Alright, so she’d provoked... thinking?

Thinking was good. Or could be good. Rachel was willing to believe it was going to be good here, because Little Bro had that look about his brain. Like a badger. (Badgers were all about the thinking, she had that on good authority from Meggan, and what kind of authority could be better?).

After a few moments, her new younger brother seemed to have sorted through something, taking a deep breath and dispersing all the supports she’d loaned into his brain in one sweep. Instead of the ocean and the rafts (and her poor sad mostly undroken psi-drink), a not-quite three-dimensional video game world rose around them, all pixellated trees and bottomless holes, and...

...ooooooh, that was so totally a classic Mario it wasn’t even funny, because it was too busy being awesome.

Curious about where exactly Quentin was going with this, Rachel poked her head around, running grinning eyes over the scene before them, and chuckling appreciatively at the appearance of Quentinirio, mohawking and tattooing it up. Again with the big gun, but... yeah, that had to just be a boy thing, and...

...oh now, what was that he’d put her in? Eyebrows lifting quickly, Rachel glanced down, surveyed the expanse of pink that had bloomed around her, and shook her head very slightly. Just like that, the Peach dress shook itself out, washing through into the gold with orange accents that belonged to Daisy, and thus were clearly far more appropriate. Daisy had more fun, this was self-evident truth.

Still, with that minor edit included, the red-haired telepath was more than ready to go back to observing with interest to see exactly where this idea might be going. Voices, appearing as shellcreepers and sidesteppers and koopa troopas with the faces of real people populated the world, but rather than go old school with the classic bouncing jump, Little Bro took aim and fired with his blasting-

-ray.

Wait, he hadn’t just....? But it didn’t take more than an instant for Rachel to doublecheck that her new little brother wasn’t accidentally switching off other people’s brains to make his life easier, just... oooh, that was cool. Inverting the signal to flip it over to effective nearly-muting negatives. Neat!

And there he was, turning back to her, and blowing an imaginary smoke off the end of the gun (always, the gun) with a butter-melting (or not melting, but that was a phrase Rachel had never really understood) grin. *It works,* he said proudly.

*It does,* Rachel approved with a big grin of her own, and a little bit of clapping, just for good measure. *I almost want one of my own.* Oh the fun she could have had... and come to think of it, one good costume turn deserved another, right? Smirking to match that mischievous grin Little Bro had been turning on her not so long ago, Rachel winked, and tweaked, and put him into a Tanooki suit, because that was just way too adorable.

*So, Little Bro,* she declared, twisting a little this way and that to get a better look at this recolored dress she’d been stuck in (you wouldn’t want to do it every day, but a skirt like this had its own sort of weird charm), *Now that’s sorted, are you ready to go find a Bowser?*
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Quentin Quire
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Okay, he wasn't even done with the mental image and Rachel was editing?

Quentin shot her a mock-reproachful look as her Peach dress sort of shook and restyled itself into Daisy's. Had he messed with her bird shaped rafts? Noooo - well, okay, he'd sort of dissolved them there in the end, but he hadn't turned them into fish or squids or anything first. Still, he had to admit that peachy-pink wasn't really her color, and he had a world to build. It wasn't worth arguing over.

A few trees here, some clouds there, the Mario-verse characters outfitted with human faces, and Quentin-Land was ready for a test drive. Rachel looked as if she were going to protest when he aimed the gun at the first of them, but apparently decided to trust him. Which was...yeah, cool, actually. There seemed to be a lack of that around here, so getting some from his sister was.

Yeah, cool.

In any case, the trust was definitely deserved, because his banishing ray worked exactly as he'd envisioned. Granted, he wasn't clear on the mechanics of exactly how it was actually working, but given that the voices in his head quieted to a comfortable murmur, he was prepared to waive that for the moment. He could figure it out later.

Right now, he felt as if congratulations were in order.

*It does,* Rachel approved with a big grin of her own, and a little bit of clapping, just for good measure. *I almost want one of my own.*

"Hey, you're welcome anytime," he said magnanimously, matching her grin with one of his own as he waved his really big gun (RBG) around expansively. Which...yeah, okay, he was pretty sure that meant he'd just invited Rach to snoop around in his brain anytime, but whatever. She was his big sis with the amazing mind powers; she'd probably figure she could do that anyway.

And...now she was grinning at him. It was an evil sort of grin, and he followed her eyes downward.

Oh, no way! No. Not happening. He let out a snort of laughter as he turned a little to get a better idea of just what she'd done to him, saw the tail, and shook his head. Granted, he'd picked Mario, so the options were limited, but there was no way he was wearing a Tanooki costume. None. He bit his cheek a little and concentrated, and the furry costume wavered and morphed, flickering at his unconscious request to his old black hound uniform before morphing into a t-shirt and green overalls. Not much of an improvement, granted, but at least Luigi'd always been the cool one. Just for good measure, though, he added a hat sporting a prominent Q. After all, it was his mental construct.

*So, Little Bro,* she declared, twisting a little this way and that to get a better look at this recolored dress she’d been stuck in (you wouldn’t want to do it every day, but a skirt like this had its own sort of weird charm), *Now that’s sorted, are you ready to go find a Bowser?*

Quentin's eyebrows shot up, and he peered at Rachel from over his slipping glasses. *You added a Bowser?* he asked incredulously. Somehow, beyond the basics of flipside and flopside, he hadn't really pictured playing Mario in his head, though he had to admit the idea had its own appeal. *Where'd you put him? And do we need anything special to get rid of him?*

If so, he should probably get to work and build it in now, from the beginning. Nothing worse than getting to the boss level and finding you had to go all the way back to town.
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It did work. More than that, it was more than just a little awesome, and definitely deserving of a round of big teeth-displaying grins and some applause, which Rachel speedily supplied. Telepathic psi-block discipline via mental video game halls? Yeah, she kind of almost wanted one of her own.

*Hey, you're welcome anytime,* said her new little bro, waving around that oversized gun he’d been using in a way that would have earned him a serious talk about firearm discipline and a lot of disappointed silences from Daddy, if he’d been there to see it, but received another grin from Rachel.

A grin that sort of had to go on and turn just a little wicked the next moment, as a new thought of what to do with her shiny new standing invitation to poke in his brain occurred to her. Little tweak here, little recostuming fun of her own, and... yes!

The Tanooki suit totally looked adorable, no question. Kind of a little Max from Where the Wild Things Are, only with better colors, and stripes in the tail. And it was all worth it just to see the look growing on Little Bro’s face as he caught on, looked down slowly, and found his newly furry glory.

A snort of laughter, and indignant look and a shake of his head, but then he was already catching on, working the concentration face and redoing the tweak. A black Hound suit replaced it for a moment, but then it was Luigi-green, with a Q stuck on the hat for good measure. Not too shabby at all, and Rachel nodded approvingly once more, while maybe doing just a little swishing of skirts and checking out of her own dress again. You wouldn’t want to get used to one of these things, but they definitely had some fun potential.

But since the all-important costume changes were figured out, not to mention the problem of voices overpowering you in your own head, it was back to the other things. Was Little Bro ready to go find a Bowser?

Judging by the look of surprise that followed, eyebrows shooting away up into the Q-cap, and glasses heading downward by the laws of conservation of motion (or something... that was how they worked, maybe?) the answer to that was a... well, actually, Rachel wasn’t sure. That was more confusion than nerves, which wasn’t exactly what she’d expected.

*You added a Bowser?* he asked incredulously.

*Huh?* Rachel replied, wrinkling her nose with some confusion of her own. Her?

*Where'd you put him? And do we need anything special to get rid of him?*

Oh, he’d been taking that literally? Yeah, maybe sticking within theme hadn’t been the most clear thing she could have done to bring this up, huh? Words, they were still not her friends, even when they were mental ones. *I didn’t put in anything,* she said, tilting her head to try to figure out how to backtrack and explain this one. *Bowsers usually find their own way into your head,* she decided on finally, keeping her mental voice soft as she looked across at Quentin over the Mario-floor. *They’re the things that get stuck in there. Don’t you think you have one?* she asked him.

*Same as mine.*

In the air, Rachel formed a shadow’s suggestion of a silhouette. Diffuse, not quite distinct, but the beard, the armor, the psi-inhibitor band around the temples would be recognizable to anyone who knew Him.
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Quentin Quire
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A Tanooki suit. When he'd invited Rachel to pop in any time, he hadn't expected her to dress him up in Mario's stupidest looking outfit. Still, he had to admit he probably deserved it (at least a little) for having dressed her as Peach, and it was easy enough to fix.

Luigi'd always been the coolest character, anyway.

Her next question floored him, though. Was he ready to find a Bowser? He hadn't really programmed any in - other than "shooting" the voices in his head, he hadn't really figured you could actually play mental Mario games. The idea was really cool, actually, and had huge amounts of potential he was going to have to think about, but it raised a really important question.

If Rachel had added a Bowser, did they need anything special to defeat it? Nothing sucked more than getting to the boss level only to find out you had to go all the way back to the beginning (probably the location of Keller's brain, assuming the guy had one), to get something you didn't have with you. Not that they didn't have time, he guessed, but...

Yeah, easier to just bring it with in the first place.

Rachel looked confused by the question, so apparently they weren't on the same page. *I didn’t put in anything,* she said, tilting her head to try to figure out how to backtrack and explain this one. *Bowsers usually find their own way into your head,* Mmm. Sort of like Storm's thoughts about his super car, maybe? But that didn't seem to fit the vibe he was getting from her, so he waited instead of guessing.

*They’re the things that get stuck in there. Don’t you think you have one?* she asked him.

Quentin paused. Things that got stuck in his head; well, he'd gotten plenty of things stuck in his head by outside sources, but he didn't think that was what she mean. Song lyrics? All the time. Certain really odd ideas he'd gotten from listening in on Reed Richards seemed to stick around, but again, he wasn't sure that was what she was going for. Other than that...

*Same as mine.* she added, and a shadowy figure formed in the air. No details, but he recognized it immediately anyway and instinctively took a couple of steps backwards, raising his gun to put it between him and the image.

Ahab. Yeah, okay. If he didn't qualify as a boss, Quentin didn't know who did.

Fighting an urge to run (because yeah, not Nate the dweeb, and this was his brain), Quentin assumed an offensive posture, grit his teeth, and fired off first one blast of banishing energy at the mental image, then another. Which accomplished absolutely nothing so far as he could tell, and shit, if he couldn't handle a fake version of the asshole, what was he going to do when faced with the real one?

Which was gonna happen. One way or another, it was inevitable. Rachel'd said he wasn't dead, after all; sooner or later, he'd be back. The bosses always were.

*So, what's the secret attack?* he demanded of Rachel, his gun still blaring psionic energy at his apparently intangible target. There's some way to get rid of him, right?

There had to be, didn't there? Rachel was proof of that.
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Okay, so judging by the oddles (like oodles, only not quite as many of them) of puzzling steaming off her Little Bro and his thoughts right now, attempts at explaining the concept of a Bowser, as it pertained to things that got stuck in the inside of your head weren’t really going as well as Rachel had intended. Words, she failed at them. It was known.

So better to forestall some of that confusion, or at least cut it off before it went too much further, because the thoughts about music, Reed Richards (he’d been pis-spying on Reed Richards, of all the people on this Helicarrier? That was... different) weren’t getting them any closer to the point she’d been trying to make. Words hadn’t worked very well for her (they never did), so Rachel went back to pictures, drawing a mental image - or at least the shadowy outline of one - out into the air between them.

Of course Little Bro had one. Same as hers - Him.

Yeah, that had worked then. Maybe a little too well - maybe she should have thought this out better before she started it, because the teenager, or his mental image of himself took one step back inside his mind, and another, that oversized gun rising up defensively in front of him.

Then he stopped, shifted that posture, looking more like the surly, angry brown-haired kid who’d thought his name was Nate that Kiwi Black had described, and fired that gun into the misty suggestion of Ahab. And again and again, though the image wasn’t really there, even by mind standards, and didn’t even ripple under the assault.

*Hey, come on now. You’re shooting at a memory. That never works,* Rachel tried to say, raising her own hands half-placatingly, but not doing anything else to interfere with his assault of the intangible image.

*So, what's the secret attack?* he demanded, his gun still blaring psionic energy at his apparently intangible target. There's some way to get rid of him, right?*

Alright, he really wasn’t going to stop while it was still there, was he? With a brief shake of her head, Rachel dissolved the image, and just for good measure, pulled them both back out of the astral plane, back to the room in the Helicarrier, where their bodies were still lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Surroundings that were a little more solid might not be a bad thing for where this was going.

“Depends a little on what you mean by get rid of him,” she said, sitting back up, tucking her feet back under her knees so she sitting cross-legged, looking over at him seriously. “Out of your head? That’s a long game, and it’s never going to be completely over.” Probably not what he wanted to hear, but there was no secret cheat code out of this, that was the truth of it. Just dealing with it, piece by piece, till you were at a point where it wasn’t the biggest thing lurking in your brain any more.

That was the theory. If she’d ever got there, though? After last night, Rachel was less sure about that than she’d been for quite a while, but she kept those thoughts locked up tight, well out of reach of somewhere Little Bro could hear them. Tilted her head back to the other side, still watching him, and giving herself time to try to pick her words better than she usually bothered. “But out in the world? We’re going to do that today,” she told him soberly. “Take him down, make sure he never hurts anyone again.”
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Quentin Quire
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Not gonna be sick. Or cower. He definitely wasn't going to cower, or curl up in the fetal position, or any of the other half-baked ideas that automatically popped into his head when he saw the shadowy image Rachel was projecting. Not him. Not even if it was Him.

Which it wasn't, right? Just some kind of psychic projection thing, same as the turtles and the shroom people and whatever. Still, Rachel was there, watching, and Quentin grit his teeth and offloaded his gun at the figure. She'd said he was the boss level, right? If he kept shooting -

Or not. The image never wavered, no matter how many psionic bullets he fired off.

*Hey, come on now. You’re shooting at a memory. That never works,* Rachel said. Fine, then. There had to be some way to get rid of him, right? Some kind of secret attack or hidden weapon or...

The image dissolved abruptly, and suddenly, they were jerked out of Flipside and back into his room. Quentin blinked a little at the abrupt transition, trying to calm his breathing as he stared up at the ceiling. Right. Not real, and maybe he'd gotten a little carried away.

Maybe.

Damn it, he could start breathing any time now. Rachel was going to think he was a total idiot.

“Depends a little on what you mean by get rid of him,” Rachel said, and he turned to see her sitting back up. Which...yeah. He was going to do that. Any second now. “Out of your head? That’s a long game, and it’s never going to be completely over.”

Huh? That definitely caught his attention, and he gave Rachel a confused look as he started to push himself up to a sitting position. She had, right? Except she'd said that Ahab was still her boss level villain, so maybe...

She was looking at him as if she were thinking something over, her head tilted to one side. “But out in the world? We’re going to do that today,” she told him soberly. “Take him down, make sure he never hurts anyone again.”

"Al-riiight!" he exclaimed, sitting up the rest of the way abruptly, and with enthusiasm that was totally at odds with the sick feeling in his stomach at the thought of seeing Him again. No reason Rach needed to know that, not when she was trusting him to go with her on the whole mission thing, and with any luck she wouldn't pick up on it. He could definitely do this if she wanted him on board. "Is that why you came looking for me?" he asked, adjusting his glasses and grinning over at her. "Because I'm totally there. Just tell me what you want me to do."

He was going to need some kind of uniform, though. Somehow, he didn't figure the boxers and t-shirt look was what the Resistance usually wore to this kind of shit. They definitely hadn't in Florida. But he figured Rachel'd get to that soon enough.

And yeah. He could do it. Or at least, he could do a whole lot better job of it than Nate had, busting out of the Bronx.
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Yeah, so a little bit of solid ground - or rather semi-solid bedspread - wouldn’t go amiss right now, would it? Not that Little Bro wasn’t doing a pretty damn good job of holding his brain together, considering the things he had running through it just now, but for all the fun things you could do (and had done) in the Astral Plane, Rachel was still a firm believer in the uses of stepping back into reality when you needed to get back in touch with things like breathing.

He’d be okay, though. Right? She was mostly pretty sure about that, though it looked like maybe he’d need another breath or two before he joined her sitting up, and that was fine. She could answer his question from here, or at least try to do it.

And in the category of ‘Getting Rid of The Bowsers Out of Your Head’... it was a two part answer. First part, that was the stuff inside your head, and that probably wasn’t going to be what Quentin wanted to hear right now, because the only real answer there was that that sort of thing took time - a long time - and even then, it was never going to be completely over.

You couldn’t get someone like Him out of your head all the way, once he’d gotten in there. If you could, he’d never have been able to do what he did. But with the right things in your head, and the right people around you, enough time would shrink that down.

Like she’d thought, that seemed to confuse the pink-haired boy. Or maybe it just hadn’t been what he’d wanted to hear, but it got him halfway to sitting up, and as he did that, Rachel decided to just press on with the second part of her answer. Speaking to out here, in the real world? Getting rid of Him was going to happen today. Taking him down, and making sure that he’d never hurt anyone else in this world again.

"Al-riiight!"

Little Bro was up all the way, bolting to seated with enough speed that you almost expected to see signs of whiplash, but the enthusiasm in that? It wouldn’t have been hard at all for Rachel to see that it didn’t go all the way through his brain, even if she hadn’t just been inside that brain, watching him let loose all over shooting at a memory that hadn’t even been there.

"Is that why you came looking for me?" he asked, adjusting his glasses and grinning over at her, and making such a good, hopeful job of it that Rachel couldn’t help but smile a little sadly in return. "Because I'm totally there. Just tell me what you want me to do."

He wanted to be part of it. Of course he did. And you couldn’t say that he didn’t have something like a right, to get to see his monster gone, once and for all. Also, apparently, by the sense of a few thoughts here and there - to get his clothing sorted. Well, that was a priority worthy of a Grey, at least, in spite of the hair color. But still, Rachel had to shake her head. “No,” she told him softly. “‘We’ didn’t mean ‘us’, Little Bro.” It hadn’t been why she’d come here, either - except that this was part of the things that had happened and were happening that he needed to know about, and who knew when someone else would have remembered to tell him.

“Sorry.” She leaned toward him, reaching with one hand to give his a quick, apologetic squeeze. “This thing is going down today, and you’re not ready for that.”

Not this soon, and not like this.
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Now he knew just why Rachel'd popped in.

Taking down Ahab. Part of him (he wanted to call it Nate, but honestly, he had a feeling there was a good bit of Quentin in there too) cringed at the thought of coming face to face with the Houndmaster. Seeing him in the safety of his own head was one thing, and even that was a little too close for comfort. Seeing him in person??

Yeah, not a great thought. Except for the part where it was, because being there to see the guy go down would make it all worthwhile, and he had no doubt that Rachel could kick the guy's ass any day of the week. She had that whole mega-powerful vibe going, and all the self-confidence to go with it.

So yeah. He was in.

Rachel, however, was shaking her head about something, which wasn't exactly giving him a warm fuzzy feeling. “No,” she told him softly. “‘We’ didn’t mean ‘us’, Little Bro.”

Quentin stared at her incredulously. What did she mean, not "us"? Who was she planning on taking along then? Because if she could find anyone in this place who had more of a right to be there than he did, he didn't know who it was.

“Sorry.” She leaned toward him, reaching with one hand to give his a quick, apologetic squeeze. “This thing is going down today, and you’re not ready for that.”

"What do you mean, I'm not ready for that?" he demanded, sliding off the bed and giving her another of what he was starting to think was going to be a serious of incredulous look. "It's not like I haven't been there before, right? And I took down hounds in Florida a couple of days ago. Nose bleeding, brain bleeding, and personality switch and all." And yeah, maybe he'd sorta let the one slip away from him, but c'mon. That was one, and had he mentioned the whole bleeding brain thing?

"Besides, Mom's there," he pointed out, as if that should make the whole thing obvious. Which it did. Yeah, there was maybe some alternate dimension Jean hanging around here, and he got that Rachel had the whole family-by-extension theory going, but this one was Jean they were talking about. Whatever she'd done to his head, she was still...

Well, she was still Mom. If that didn't give him a right to be there, he didn't know what did.
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No. Not ‘us’. Not like he was meaning. He could stare at her surprised like that as much as he wanted - Rachel kind of figured he would, too - but it wouldn’t change the basic fact, or leave her with anything to say to that but a brief, sincere apology that she was kind of figuring wouldn’t cut any ice either.

He wasn’t ready for this. For facing Him, and for seeing what would have to be done in the pens today. She’d faced Him herself. But she’d done it after five years - with Kate and Scrapper and Ororo and Logan, and with Kitty and Kurt and the rest of Excalibur. She’d had time, support, and she’d only gone when she was ready to face Him on no terms but her own. Aside from Him, this was nothing like it had been for her.

"What do you mean, I'm not ready for that?" Little Bro was off the bed, on his feet and staring at her again just about before the sentence was all the way done, but Rachel stayed where she was, pulling her hand back into her lap and meeting his look with a steady, solemn one of her own that said she’d meant exactly what she’d said. He kept on though. Of course he did. "It's not like I haven't been there before, right? And I took down hounds in Florida a couple of days ago. Nose bleeding, brain bleeding, and personality switch and all."

“Hounds,” Rachel pointed out quietly. “Not Him.” As soon say that catching a Wolverine made you ready to hunt down Logan.

He had an answer for that too, though. "Besides, Mom's there.”

She should have seen it coming, shouldn’t she? Whatever it was that Mom had done to him here, apparently it had been enough to leave the deep, burned-in conviction of that relationship even when he’d been trying so hard to rid himself of everything else that might have linked him to ‘Nate’.

Nevertheless, it caught Rachel off guard in a sudden wash of memories. Mom. The half-remembered one that had been her mother, the one who’d hugged her at the wedding, and asked her to be part of the family, the ones she’d left earlier huddled up in the room not far from here, fighting each other for space within one mind. They slid through her mind, and for a second, Rachel had to sit there silently, teeth caught on her lower lip, until they’d gone through.

“No. She’s not,” she said after that brief moment had passed, shaking her head slowly, and sadly. “Yesterday SHIELD had Him send her to Stamford, in Connecticut. They were going to have her publicly destroy a group of public schools, and remind everyone of the Mutant Menace and the Destroyer of Worlds,” explaining further, paying out her words in slow, measured phrases in order to keep her voice steady. “A team from here intercepted her before that happened, and took her out of Stamford.”

Rachel had to swallow once, before she finished the explanation with two simple, painful sentences, keeping her eyes locked on her ‘little brother’. “They had to fight her. She died.”

So, no. No, she wasn’t there at the pens today.
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Okay, there was absolutely no good reason why he couldn't handle himself at the Pens, let alone anything else that came along. Hell, he'd managed to fight off a couple of hounds down in Florida - well yeah, one had gotten though and taken off Victor's arm, but c'mon. He'd been trying to juggle three at once, with his brain bleeding and a multiple personality crisis in progress. He'd kicked ass there, and he'd do better now. Rachel didn't have any good reason to leave him behind.

“Hounds,” Rachel pointed out quietly. “Not Him.” Which, okay, was a valid point, but still. It wasn't like she wasn't going, right? And other people from the sounds of it.

Besides, Mom was there.

He felt an odd rush of emotions from Rachel - nothing he could immediately sort out, though he did catch some kind of image of the Jean from the other dimension in one of the helicarrier rooms, looking as if she were pretty messed up. Or at least - no, the memory'd had green hair, not red. Had to be alternate Jean, then. Was she hurt? He opened his mouth to ask Rachel, then closed it when he realized she was sitting there, her teeth chewing her bottom lip.

*Rach?* he asked quietly, wondering what was wrong, but she shook her head and looked sad.

“No. She’s not,” she said after that brief moment had passed, shaking her head slowly, and sadly. “Yesterday SHIELD had Him send her to Stamford, in Connecticut. They were going to have her publicly destroy a group of public schools, and remind everyone of the Mutant Menace and the Destroyer of Worlds,” Once again, he opened his mouth to protest, then closed it when he realized she wasn't done. Or possibly, wasn't anywhere near done. “A team from here intercepted her before that happened, and took her out of Stamford.”

Well, that was good, right? The Resistance had her, and they could...well, fix her or something. He'd broken Hound conditioning, and so had his new big sis. It couldn't be that hard. Except...given the way Rachel was swallowing, he wasn't altogether sure it was good news. In fact, he was pretty sure it was anything but, and he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach he couldn't attribute to his headache or the amount of Tylenol he'd downed in less than twenty-four hours without eating anything, or a delayed side effect of bouncing around on virtual pink rafts. What... .

“They had to fight her. She died.”

She'd...no. Quentin stared at her, trying to find some way to deny the words, even though he wasn't getting anything from Rachel that let him in any way doubt that what she said was true. But...it couldn't be true, could it? Jean - Mom, she couldn't be...

He closed his eyes, only barely aware that his fingernails were digging into his palms, that he was biting at his bottom lip. When he reopened them, he met Rachel's and nodded, swallowing hard.

"Right. I'm still going," he insisted, jaw setting stubbornly.

Because...well, he wasn't going to cry over a mom who hadn't been his, however real the memories might seem. But he was sure as hell going to do something. Taking on the cause of it all sounded like the best option available.
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No way to make this easy. No way to make it anything other than straight up hard, so Rachel didn’t stop to wait for the questions or protests or anything that was half-formed on Quentin’s lips. Shook her head to shake off the implicit question when he used her name, pointed her mind at the explanation that needed to be given, and started giving it.

Mom wasn’t there. Not even what little had been left to her of herself after He had finished the rest of this world had started.

Back in the universe that was home now, she’d wanted to believe that wasn’t true, that Mom from there wasn’t right, couldn’t really know what she was talking about. That there would have been something left, something that would fight, that could be brought back, the way she, Rachel, had brought herself back, each death she’d had to cause hurting more, turned inward, into fuel to keep herself going, building a way to break free and reclaim herself.

But Mom had been right after all, hadn’t she? There hadn’t been anything left to her but pain and guilt and sorrow, and a desire for an end that had almost lost both of them yesterday. As it was... Quentin would want to know, so Rachel told him, in the sparest outline possible, because that way she could say it and keep herself together.

The Resistance team had managed to take Mom from Stamford. They’d had to fight her, and she’d died.

Three clauses, and that was it. By then, that was the only way it could have gone. You couldn’t doubt that, even if the look her new ‘Little Bro’ was wearing said he was trying to find a way to do that anyway. He wouldn’t find it though, Rachel knew - no more than she’d been able to find it when she’d wanted to. Not after her baby sister. Not after meeting Mom here, or what was left of her, tangled up and still fighting for control of a mind to give herself an end.

Rachel pushed that away to the back of her mind, swallowing any doubt and locking it away in a prison of Summers’ will-power as she gave Little Bro the space and the silence to work through it like he needed to. Biting his lip, stabbing his nails into his own palms, eyes shut tight, fighting his own mind to keep control of his emotions. She knew that feeling, the need to slot it all back into place before you could go on and admit the rest of the world into your head again, so Rachel only watched him, maintaining a half-shadow of a mental presence, near enough to be there if he needed it, but not intruding, while she worked on assembling her own thoughts into something that wouldn’t all come crashing down if pushed.

Mom would have to find a way to live with that, fight it down. This one could - she had help, she had Daddy, and she had Rachel, Uncle Warren, even people here who already cared about her. She - and Mimic, however odd and wrong and strange that was - would have to find that way, to go on after this. It was possible, Rachel knew. Kate and Peter Rasputin had done it. Moira had done it, and would have to do it again here. Too many people here in this world had had to do it...

"Right. I'm still going," [Quentin] insisted.

Rachel looked up at him, green eyes grave and steady as she took in the resolve, the stubborn way he’d set his jaw. Not stubborn enough, though. Not his fault - he wasn’t a Summers. He wasn’t born into that. Probably lucky for him in a lot of ways, but here and now?

“No, you’re not,” Rachel told him simply, without a trace of doubt in her voice, then sighed, leaning forward, facing him. Not stubborn enough, maybe, but he had the right to the fullest explanation that she could give him. “If we had months,” she began, gesturing with one hand briefly, as though making an offer, “even a few weeks to get you ready, to make sure you’d be able to do this, to be there - then I’d go to bat for you with the others Little Bro, and say you had a right to be there, whatever objections anyone else raised.” Logan was part of this today, and he at least would still have raised them, even then, but he owed her for three knife wounds to the gut and all the months after Spiral had found her when he’d left. Maybe the others would have too, but that wasn’t here or there either, because there weren’t months, or even weeks to build Little Bro’s powers and his mind to where they’d need to be to be there.

“But it’s happening today,” Rachel continued, soft but firm, “and it’s going to be bigger, and harder, than you’ve even started to think about yet, and it’s about a whole lot more people than just you or I.” Too many, and with too little that could be done for them. “What they need comes before what we want,” Rachel told her little brother, who ought to know that as well as she did, whether he was a Summers or not. He’d been there. “This can’t afford to go anything other than absolutely perfectly.”

And with you there, she left unspoken, though he could read it in her mind if he chose, we can’t guarantee that it would, for them or for you.
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Rachel looked...about as wrecked as he felt, he decided as he opened his eyes and looked over at the redhead. Which he made sense, considering Jean was actually her mom, and a couple of dimensions didn't really put make much of a difference from what he'd figured out of Rachel Summers Logic. In a way, that just made it that much easier to respond. Maybe Jean hadn't been his real mom, but it still felt like she had been, however much he might insist otherwise.

There might not be any way to ever sort that out now, but there was one thing he could do. He was going along.

Rachel looked up at him, with a serious expression he fully expected to be followed by a nod. “No, you’re not,” she said instead, and before he could fully process that, she sighed and leaned forward. “If we had months,” she began, gesturing with one hand briefly, as though making an offer, “even a few weeks to get you ready, to make sure you’d be able to do this, to be there - then I’d go to bat for you with the others Little Bro, and say you had a right to be there, whatever objections anyone else raised.”

Quirking one eyebrow up and ignoring the stab of pain that shot through it from his piercing that really, really hated when he did that, Quentin waited for the inevitable "but". Because yeah, it was hanging there, no doubt about it, and there was no point arguing until she was done making her point.

“But it’s happening today,” Rachel continued, soft but firm, “and it’s going to be bigger, and harder, than you’ve even started to think about yet, and it’s about a whole lot more people than just you or I. What they need comes before what we want,” she said, and his jaw set sulkily. “This can’t afford to go anything other than absolutely perfectly.”

"What're you going to -" he started to ask, reaching out to take a look, and caught the rest of Rachel's thought, obviously left there for him to pick up on. Right. If he came along, things might not.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sis," he shot back sarcastically, not acknowledging the genuine concern for him that he'd picked up on. Which yeah, that was nice, and yeah, he got what she was saying. Needs of the many, blah blah blah. But...

"This sucks," he pointed out, though really, she should get that. She'd been there herself, right? Done the camps, done the pens, had the scars of her own even if she'd somehow figured out how to turn them on and off again. And yeah, it was easy for her to say "if such and such", but that wasn't the case, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about that. Or about the rest, because if she wasn't going to back him, no one was. Hell, if half of them had their way, he'd probably still be wearing a collar.

"This whole place sucks," he amended as he sat back down on the edge of the bed, leaning forward a little and resting his arms on his legs, staring at the floor more to avoid her eyes than because the floor was at all interesting It pretty much sucked, too.
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