Room 528, Wednesday Evening

[icecoldfrost]

It had been three whole days, and the rest of her family had not yet shown up wielding lawyers and demanding she be turned over, so Emma was starting to relax again.

So to celebrate, Emma had the radio up, a mug of hot coco, and was playing chess against herself, French homework ignored for the moment. Sometimes (usually) her sense of relaxation was a little different from most people.

[Fixed the broken internet, so open door & open post to celebrate!]

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[intraspective]

"Maybe," she admitted. "But I can say honestly that I don't have that in mind to do tonight?"

[icecoldfrost]

"Good," she said. "Getting in catfights with hair-pulling is so undignified."

"How goes the practicing?"

[intraspective]

She didn't need to ask what sort of practising.

"Not bad, I don't think?" Ino replied, wandering into the room to claim a chair. If Emma didn't like it, Emma would tell her so, Ino figured. "Ain't so great at doing it--automatically, though, you know? And if I get distracted I lose where I was goin' with an attempt pretty quick."

[icecoldfrost]

"It will get better," Emma promised. "It took me almost a year to reliably be able to read someone when I wanted to, instead of just picking up stray thoughts. Singling people out in the noise is confusing at first."

[intraspective]

She rested her chin against her arm. "It's just weird. It's not so bad 'cause if it gets too much--turning it off I'm strong at. But it's a bit like... bein' blind and then seeing and not quite sure what you're seeing is because you don't have a frame of reference for it. A year?" She sighed. "I suppose that's not so long as things go."

[icecoldfrost]

"It will probably go faster for you, since you don't have to focus on keeping everything out," Emma replied. "My focus was initially on keeping the voices out, before I could concentrate on letting particular ones in."

[intraspective]

"You think so?" Ino toyed with a bit of hair. "Guess I'll have to see. It'd be--nice--to be all caught up and knowin' of what I can do."

A beat.

"Do you think it's possible to implant a suggestion in someone's mind for them to act on once a trigger word has been said?"

[icecoldfrost]

"Oh yes." Emma was completely smug. "That's something I've been working on, and so far, results are favorable."

"I don't know how long it lasts for, as I rarely get the chance to follow-up, but I ought to check-in on one or two of my subjects."

[intraspective]

"Is it hard to learn?" she asked curiously.

Because who needed the baby steps, right? Oh, Ino.

[icecoldfrost]

"I didn't really 'learn' it? I was angry, and my will was stronger, so I just...overwrote a few things," she said, regretting yet again that telepathy lacked its own verb-tenses and vocabulary. "Like a having a desire to eat bugs every time someone sees the color blue, or they hear the word 'car,' things like that."

[intraspective]

Ino chewed on her lower lip. "Do you think you could show me sometime?" she asked, with a sidelong glance. "Or should I just focus on getting the rest of it up to par first?"

[icecoldfrost]

"It's best if you focus on everything else, first," Emma pointed out. "You don't want to accidentally break them, rather than just add to them."

[intraspective]

"Depending on who it is, I don't care much 'bout breaking them," she admitted. "But point taken."