Emma's Flat, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. [Feb 2nd, Afternoon, Marvel Time//Friday Afternoon, Fandom Time.]

[icecoldfrost]

Emma had...drunk. A lot. And had only her mutant metabolism to thank for not having alcohol poisoning. Hallelujah, genetic awesomeness. The only thing saving her from an epic hangover was using up the vast majority of the hot water in the building, more coffee than God, and eating an entire box of frozen waffles. Candy had already departed for her own apartment, to shower and finish sleeping off last night's revels, leaving Emma and Jono alone to talk shop.

"So, are you going to tell me why your brain feels like swiss cheese - more than usual - or do I get to guess?" Emma crammed the last bite of waffle in her mouth in a manner that should not be physically possible before pointing her fork at Jono. << You promised. >>

[OOC: For that dude!]

Comments

[icecoldfrost]

"Ugh, you're making it sound like I said that out of consideration for your feelings or something," she said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "It's totally self-interest. If you see what I do and how I do it, next time you can do it yourself instead of making me play nursemaid."

She loves you too, Jono.

[furnaceface]

//There's that, too,// Jono agreed, not bothering to conceal his mild amusement at her protest. //... Actually starting to get to... to a point where maybe I'd be up for learning a bit more about what I'm capable of. Not just for everybody else's sake, for once.//

For as twisted up and broken inside that he was, he was finally, finally getting to a point where maybe he wanted to try to better himself for his own damn sake, too.

[icecoldfrost]

"Oh my God, he might actually live up to his potential," Emma deadpanned. "Will wonders never cease?"

[furnaceface]

//Don't get too excited now, or I might realize what I'm doing,// Jono replied, equally deadpan. //I'm just... tired of being afraid of myself. I figure everybody else is already doing an excellent job of that for me, they don't need my help.//

[icecoldfrost]

"Thank you!" Emma yelled, throwing up her hands in VICTORY. "I didn't even have to roofie you this time! It's a miracle!"

"Wait, are you real-Jon or pod-person-Jon? Just checking."

[furnaceface]

//I doubt I'd admit it if I happened to be a pod person,// Jono pointed out. //But it's more likely that I've just had my fill of bullshit I can't fix while I'm at odds with my own bloody body. My mind, I'm working on. Probably will be forever, fine, I've made my peace with that one. But...//

He shrugged his shoulders.

//I just came to terms recently with the fact that one of my biggest fears is myself. And I'm dangerous, fine, but in those rare and very refreshing moments when nobody else is in control of my powers, I was thinking maybe it would be nice if perhaps I was.//

[icecoldfrost]

"Of course you're dangerous. Humans are dangerous. You and I are spectacularly dangerous creatures, and it's part of what makes us fabulous." Ego, thy name, as always, is Frost.

"Now then, let's take a look at that brilliant little brain of yours, hrm?" she continued, coming back over and taking a seat on the floor. "How much work have you put into creating your shields? Do you have a preferred visualization?"

[furnaceface]

//Walls,// he replied, making himself comfortable across from her. //They're... simple. Straightforward. I can pull a wall up in seconds if I need to. And for the most part, they work. Shite against stronger telepaths, though, at least when I'm not at my best.//

Karla crumbling them to dust while he was a broken and bleeding mess on his bathroom floor came to mind. But then, that had been while he was powerless and headblind. It had been a wonder he'd been able to pull up walls at all, back then.

[icecoldfrost]

"We can work with walls. The nice part is, they're easy to patch. And while they are fairly simplistic to break... there's ways around that," she said. "...I assume you are familiar with the works of Escher?"

He had broken her out of the Labyrinth, after all. But Emma preferred not to talk about that. It still hurt, for many reasons.

[furnaceface]

And if she wasn't going to mention it, he certainly wasn't about to. Instead, he just nodded a little.

//Intimately enough, yes. You're saying I ought to make it so that it's difficult for anybody to tell which way is up, in my head?//

[icecoldfrost]

"You're in charge. Wherever you are becomes the center of the maze. Spin it 15 degrees and walk ten paces. Move the walls. Maybe a gap turns into a pit of spiders. Hell, flip the maze upside-down for shits and giggles. You shape your reality when it comes to your own mind," Emma replied. "Have you ever seen the interior of mine?"

[furnaceface]

//If I did, it was lifetimes ago,// Jono replied, shrugging his shoulders a little. //I once found myself stuck quite by accident in the head of a telepath who rather enjoyed cat-and-mouse games, so I have some idea of what you're saying...//

He tamped down thoughts of the last place he'd shown somebody in his head. Nobody deserved a walking tour of Neverland. Not even people he didn't want to have in there.

[icecoldfrost]

Emma was a lady - and, actually, trying to help for once - so she outwardly ignored anything Jono was projecting.

"Here," she offered instead, holding out her hand. "Take a look, if you like. Besides, it may help you feel more in control if you look in my brain first, to see that I don't have any ulterior motives beyond giving you control of yourself."

[furnaceface]

Jono tilted his head a little, and then nodded, reaching for Emma's hand.

//It might,// he agreed. //And I'll admit I'm curious to see what the inside of the head of somebody who's not a member of the Blood actively plotting to murder Karla looks like.//

He'd seen a lot of those, lately.

[icecoldfrost]

What Jono would find was, instantly, a featureless white space. No floor visible, only fog rolling around up to his ankles. No landmarks, no sun, no sky. Just white.

"Can you find me?" The voice was everywhere and nowhere at once, before a thousand-million shadow-Emmas clad in different clothes faded in-and-out of view. Ghosts in streets that didn't exist. "Why put up walls when you can be an open book?"

Emma, it should be stated for the record, was kinda a bitch.

[furnaceface]

All-white eyes glanced around the white space, looking at the ghosts as they came and went. He was different in this shared headspace, just as much fire as flesh, melting between all of the faces he knew to be his own, like glowing embers shifting across burned wood.

He was still discovering who he was all over again. Even he wasn't certain which face was his, and so he was keeping them all until he could be sure.

"How...?" He turned on his heel, reached for the Emma nearest to him with a hand that had fire shifting over it as though his skin was made of burning oil. "Are they echoes, or reflections, or...?"

[icecoldfrost]

"Will-bes, might-have-beens, and wishful thinking," replied a voice beside him, and there was Emma, solid, clad in white and with hair so impossibly blonde it looked almost silver. "Whatever I want them to be, actually. Oh, the ones that are echos have more autonomy than the rest, but they're all still me and I am them, and I have the control."

All of them stopped, suddenly, to turn and look at them before vanishing completely with a wave of Emma's hand. "They make lovely camouflage, if one doesn't mind occasionally being reminded of poor fashion choices."

[furnaceface]

Emma-in-white. Now there was a familiar sight, and Jono had to take a moment to register that it was this Emma standing in front of him.

"Fashion choices are the least of my worries," he decided, pursing lips that were pink, no, blue, no, just flame, before shrugging his shoulders a little. "With the exception of one rather unfortunate costume back in my New Warriors days. And some of the hair I wore in the 90s..."

He would never admit to that mullet, and you couldn't make him.

"Hell, I might have more echoes than most to choose from. And wishful thinking is something that I rather excel at."

[icecoldfrost]

"Don't we all," she sighed, shaking her head. "Most of us have far too many regrets and wishes that will never be filled - might as well make use of them."

"But this? This is what an interloper finds. A step further in and further up?" Emma offered her hand again, this time with a grin. "Don't worry, you can't burn me."

[furnaceface]

Jonothon simply nodded and reached for Emma's hand with his own. Grey skin with black-tinted nails, covered in oil-slick fire. Thin, deft, pale fingers. A musician's hands.

He was smiling a little, his expression wry on a face that was only half-there, a wonder his lips were visible at all with the way he'd been utterly hollowed out, and then little more than a skeleton on fire for a second or two before that was swallowed up in flesh again as well.

"I have to admit, now you've got me curious," he replied, nodding. "I have to give props to anybody who manages to get beyond this as it is."

[icecoldfrost]

"A few," she said simply, "--only the ones I've invited."

--and they dropped through the ground to land in...stars. Above, below, all around. Encompassed by the night sky.

"The way I see the world," Emma informed him, reaching out to pull a star close to her, cupping it in her hands. "People's minds, every one. Oh, I can turn it into a room or a car or put whatever physical projection on it I want to make it more defined, but this is my throne room, as it were. The center of the maze."

[furnaceface]

Jono loosed a low whistle then, turning slowly to take in the sight of the starfield around them.

Minds, all of them, so much neater than the mess of auras that he saw when he reached out, little glimmers of consciousness that writhed and twisted and bled into one another if he didn't pay enough attention. White noise. A dull roar.

"You've got this down to an art, haven't you?" He raised a hand just slightly, but didn't dare touch anything around him, not out of fear of damaging anything, but out of respect that he was being shown this at all.

You didn't touch anything when you were a guest inside a person's head unless you'd been invited to. It wasn't yours to touch.

"It's beautiful... Stars. I never would've thought of stars."

[icecoldfrost]

"Really? With your lastname, I'd think it would be an obvious choice," Emma quipped, blowing on her star to send it dancing back where it came from. "Anyone in particular you want to see?"

[furnaceface]

"Nobody it would be especially healthy for me to ask to see," Jono admitted, shaking his head a little. "A long list of the dead, better left alone. Hell, even I'd be..."

In London, for one. Possibly just coming to the realization that it was entirely possible that he could be the first Starsmore flatscan, a disappointment even to the family that had thrown a long line of genetic disappointments.

... Or maybe he was making out with Gayle somewhere. Perhaps he was even younger than that. Hell if he knew. He wasn't about to do the math.

"Whoever you see fit, luv. I leave it up to your better judgment."

[icecoldfrost]

"I can recall people from Fandom, too, you know," she pointed out. "It doesn't have to be someone here-and-now, although that helps."

She thought about it a moment before holding out her hand, palm-up, and a bright, steadily-pulsing light with a faint aura around it, began to coalesce, rotating slowly. "Your friend, Doctor Lecter. Remarkable mental discipline, for a human."