fandomtownies | Groovy Tunes, Saturday

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Groovy Tunes, Saturday

Jono had told Karla after Raven's kidnapping that he was intending to spend more time in Glacia from then on, and that's exactly where he'd been all week. Today, he was making use of a weekend taken to himself to open shop here on the island. Glacia moving at double time meant that one shift here was going to take both of his days off there, but honestly, he'd far more readily opt for a day spent listening to music in his own shop over two days bumming around Sidra, failing at avoiding being noticed by the locals.

Of course, when you were only taking one day a week to be anywhere near a business you owned, that day was inevitably going to be occupied by things like, oh, paperwork. Readying pay for the employees. Listening to Pearl Jam so as to not lose one's sanity while doing so.

Jonothon's weekend, folks.

[OOC: No idea if or when I'm going to lose power, but so far 45,000 people in the province have, and counting, so I'm not holding my breath. Still, open until the storm blows me out to sea, never to be seen or heard from again!]

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Jalian had been exercising in the park and walking through the town when the pink...THINGS...had overtaken her yelling about fun.

She had tried to explain to them that she wasn't having fun at the moment, but they didn't really seem to be listening to her (or anyone else, come to that).

In desperation to escape from the ever-increasing volume and pinkness, Jalian dove through the nearest door and slammed it shut behind her, holding it to make sure they couldn't get in.

//Er.// Jono blinked up from the sheet listing the hours that his employees had put in this past week at the girl who was holding the door shut behind her. That had been quite the entrance, right there, hadn't it? //I'm going out on a limb and guessing here and now that you're not here to preorder the new Jazon Mraz album.//

Welcome to Groovy Tunes?

Jalian had no idea what that was. Or where she was or what was going on. What she did know was that she hadn't heard that voice with her ears.

//Mindspeech?// she asked, excited and bewildered. //You can mindspeak?//

Jono really hadn't been expecting that much excitement at the 'sound' of his voice. Usually when he spoke to new people, he found himself bracing for some sort of flinch at best, or a violent reaction of some manner at worst.

Excited bewilderment wasn't even typically on the list.

//Well, yes. It's actually the only way I can speak. You don't run into many people around here who can these days, though.//

A far cry from back when he'd been a new student and it felt as though everyone he ran into was not only a telepath, they were also far better at it than he was.

Jalian eyed the door dubiously, but those pink things didn't seem to be following her, so she ~~hurried over~~ strode boldly toward the person mindspeaking to her. //I thought there would be nobody else to mindspeak with.//

And he was a male! That was odd. But clearly a person, and it had been so long since she'd been able to mindspeak with someone.

//It's an ability that's rare here, at best,// Jono allowed, nodding a little as he glanced at the door, to see what had her so spooked.

... That was a lot of pink. Good lord.

//Is it something that many people can do, where you're from?//

//No other persons.// Jalian shrugged sadly. //But Corvichi speak best that way. Voices too high for persons' ears.//

He'd get an impression with that word of square, furry, tentacled aliens and mixed affection, exasperation, and a little bit of anger.

It was a very distinct sort of impression, and Jono tilted his head slightly in curiosity at it. The anger, especially, had him wondering.

There was certainly a story there, somewhere.

//The Corvichi, and also you. Where did you pick it up, then? Er, if you don't mind my asking, of course.//

//ghess'Rith taught me.// Another impression of one of those aliens, the affection and anger both stronger and mixed with hurt. //Older silver-eyes maybe too old to learn, che said. Where did you?//

Now, that was even more fascinating. Telepathy as a learned skill?

//It just sort of happened one day,// he admitted, and he wasn't quite able to keep the impression of bitterness and fire from his words as he said so. //It's a part of what I am. Fire and thought all twisted into one another and not much else. I've had teachers, but only after I began to communicate this way.//

His bitterness and the impression of himself he gave fascinated her, and Jalian drew a little closer. //Fire?//

//Fire.// Jono hesitated for a moment, and then decided that if she was the sort to wilt away, she would've done so at the mention of the flames. He was probably still preferable to a pack of Pinkies, anyway.

He reached up and pulled down the top of the wrappings on his face, letting his flames spill out, though ready to put them back again if need be.

//Quite literally.//

Edited 2014-07-06 02:09 (UTC)

Jalian stepped even closer, fascinated. //But you are a person!// she protested. The rest came out more as jumbled emotions than words, she was so confused and excited. //You sound like a person. Fire doesn't speak! How are you fire?//

She sort of really wanted to pull down those wrappings and just look and touch for herself, but it seemed like that would be pretty presumptuous.

//I'm both,// Jono replied, going for the easiest explanation he possibly could, and deciding to feed her curiosity by pulling his wrappings down just enough to expose the rest of what would have been his face. //A person who became fire. Or perhaps fire that was living inside the man all along and just grabbed the chance to break out. Even I'm not completely certain which.//

The X-gene was one hell of a drug.

"But..."

Jalian reached out with her mindvoice in question. //Show me?//

Jonothon balked a little at that, bunching up in the shoulders as he puzzled out just how to react to that. She seemed harmlessly curious, and he could hardly fault her for that. Someone who could speak in a voice she'd never heard from another human, standing there on fire? Yes, that probably would raise a few questions.

//It's... gruesome,// he cautioned, mentally checking that his telepathic walls were still in place. //Likely confusing and a bit disjointed. I can show you some, if you want, but it might take some sorting, first.//

His mind was damaged goods.

Jalian nodded firmly. //I am a huntress, not a child. I am not afraid. My mind is strong.//

Anyone who'd ever tried to teach her could attest to that.

Jono considered that for a moment more as well. He wasn't going to simply let her in. He didn't even let Karla in these days, unless they had sat down and talked about it thoroughly before the fact, and this girl was still basically a stranger. But he didn't see any harm in dredging things up to present to her, keeping the worst locked solidly behind that mental wall.

And so he did, pulling memories and impressions out that strung into one another, like a chain of notions and feelings and sensations and knowledge. There was, first, the knowledge of what a mutant was, a sense of the history there, though he was hardly going to let her peek at his family's connection to Akkaba so much as that firebreathers tended to run in the genes. There was a vague sense of who he had been before the fire, all music and anticipation and a feeling of inadequacy because while his granddad expected greatness from him, all of the rest of his family could see was a boy at seventeen with no powers at all.

And then, tied into that, there was a very vivid, acute sense of the moment that had all changed. He would have given only impressions of it, but that memory rested in his mind in triplicate at least, one of the very few memories that had been left unchanged no matter how many times they re-wrote his head. Unless she reeled herself back somewhat, Jalian would know very intimately the same eerie feeling of a writhing, searing pressure inside of him that had always been creeping deep down, finally trying to pour forth. Wisps of smoke from his chest and face, of the way it tore his very breath away as it ripped him apart.

How the first thing he did with his telepathic voice was scream in agony.

From there, the rest started taking on a more disjointed tone. Fighting, mostly, being a walking weapon and a soldier while the world tried to exterminate him and all his kind. There were things that didn't quite match up to one another, identical moments in time split three ways, with little in common at all except that he was there, and he was fire. Stronger again were the memories of destroying his body completely, of being shredded down to ash and flame and nothing more, of still being aware, if not strictly conscious. Piecing a body together out of the atoms twisting in the atmosphere around him. Fire that sustained life in spite of how impossible it was - an x-ray of an obliterated chest, a distorted view of a man with nothing but flame where a head was meant to be, a young man with a perfect face and a hole in his chest, turning and searing the flesh off a man with claws who swore that he knew him...

That was where Jonothon pulled up the wall again, one hand unconsciously reaching up to do the same with the bandages that belonged over his face.

It was so different, sharing with another person instead of ghess'Rith. This man - Jonothan's - experiences were more human at the same time they were utterly alien to her.

She let the knowledge of his strange timeline pass through her, accepting what she could and leaving the rest for later. She shared that searing, screaming pain when he experienced it. She felt the confusion of the variant timelines and the lack of knowledge of self and the anger at being used.

In return, she sent back her curiosity and awe, respect she had never expected to feel for a male.

She sent back knowledge of the Great Wheel and traveling timelines.

A mother and a culture who did not understand her. Alien visitors who challenged and taught her, ghess'Rith who grew closer to her than any person and then wanted to leave. The choice between abandoning her world and never seeing a person again, and staying where she was less understood than ever and could never mindspeak with another. The choice she'd grabbed for herself instead.

She gave him the mathematic principles of a negative-entropy timeline and images of skipping stones across water so they didn't sink. Determination to change her own timeline - stop Armageddon. And then her own pain and burning as she put her plan into action, ending when she found herself here - in a timeline years past Armageddon, when it had never happened.

And now it was Jonothon's turn to be curious, to take everything that was offered in, process it, wonder at it and empathize with it and learn from any shred that he was capable of comprehending. The rest, much like she had done, he was tabling for later as well, acknowledging that it was there and was reality as she had presented it to him. He nodded.

Risk, bravery, being alone. Having everything and nothing all at once. Yes, of course he was familiar with those things.

There was no small measure of respect and awe coming from him, either. People who put their all on the line for the sake of changing things for the better tended to earn both from him, after all.

//You know,// he murmured, //I've never experienced something like that going both ways, before.//

Even with other telepaths, exchanges were limited, generally, to words and emotions. From time to time, somebody would share something more, but never like this.

//But there are persons in your timeline who know mindspeech?// She thought she'd picked up that much.

//Several,// Jono confirmed. //And there were plenty on the island back when I was a student, besides. If any visit, I could introduce you. It would be a shame for me to be the only one you can talk to this way, if that doesn't have to be the case.//

//I would like that,// Jalian answered. //But they never shared with you?// It was so much faster and simpler than words!//

Jono shook his head a little.

//Not quite like that,// he replied. //I've... had people show me things, and I've shown them. There were the Paths...// He caught himself. No, he didn't want to go there just then. //I've only once had somebody share with me like that, and it was a one-way experience. Most often, it's been words. Words and emotion, tops.//

Jalian just shrugged. //Faster to share. More precise.// With that came a bit of wistfulness; she had really missed speaking like this with someone.

//More precise,// Jonothon agreed. //I might even do it that way more often, if most people didn't know what to make of it.//

This time, by way of explanation, he sent a sort of 'greatest hits of people freaking out over hearing him talk for the first time.' Mostly just wary looks. A few people just actively telling him not to speak again. A little girl bursting into tears and a little boy shying away in fear.

All with only words.

What he got in reply to that was mostly incredulous outrage on his part. Ken Selvren might not have understood how or why mindspeech worked, but they didn't fear her for it! Or even look askance. Well, not any more than they did at her refusing to eat meat or spending so much time in the Corvichi ship. Which was to say, she was odd, but she was still a blooded Huntress and worthy of respect.

//Your world is strange. I would be stabbing many people, I think.//

//Some days, I wonder why I don't bother,// Jono admitted. //I like to choose my battles more carefully, I suppose. And I get those reactions around here, as well. I can hardly presume to understand everyone's experiences when our beginnings are all so different, here.//

That got him a scowl. //Where I am from, the males do not read, or fight. Not many are persons. We have no mutants - except for ourselves,// she pointed out to be fair. //I still do not scream about talking, or the fire. That's stupid.// It was strange, what he was, but strange wasn't bad, and he hadn't tried to hurt her yet, so why be silly about it?

//It's stupid,// Jono agreed, //and cruel, coming from most. But then, some of my closest friends here over the years have started their first conversations with me that way. Alice, who lost her entire family in the fire that burned down her home, Jacob, whose family wouldn't respect his right to privacy inside his own head. Their reactions hurt, but I can't hold that against them.//

There were others who were still on the island who had reacted poorly to his mutations as well, though he saw little point in calling them out for it now. Seifer had been puppeted around by a sorceress in much the same way that Jono himself had been by Weapon X. Rinoa hadn't known a moment's rest or privacy to the Sorceress that had been insinuating herself in her mind. Dracula had lost his wife to fire.

//I'm less likely to sympathize with those who are cruel for cruelty's sake. Fear is a response that few people have learned to control.//

//I don't understand the privacy thing,// Jalian confessed. //But your fire isn't real fire!// she protested. She thought about it for a moment, then sent a grudging admission that maybe she could understand it looking like that would scare people, if only for a moment. //If they learn to be better.//

//The ones I befriended all learned,// Jono promised. //And the privacy thing...//

He furrowed his brows slightly while he tried to puzzle out how to explain.

//It's a reaction that comes from people abusing knowledge of a person's thoughts and weaknesses,// he settled on. //A need to hide that much... children aren't born with that. It's a defense mechanism. It's there because of that same sort of person who'll turn around and show those reactions to my voice out of disgust, not fear or surprise.//

There was a moment's pause, and then he sent her a vague sort of impression of the walls he had up inside of his own head, set out bare and tangible like pillars of concrete erected in his mind. There were gouges in those pillars, and parts that had been knocked away entirely, or rebuilt from scratch with new stone on a completely different foundation. The walls were old and they'd clearly been attacked, violently so, and many, many times over the years.

That got him a sense of respect mingled with anger at anyone who would do that. //Defense, secrecy,// she agreed.

//But privacy?// She sent him the sense of her conversation with the young male when she'd first arrived - the odd reaction to her nude skin; the bafflement at the concept of hiding things just so other people wouldn't know, when there was no real need.

Ah. Jono nodded a little, and then spread his hands slightly, very 'what are you going to do?'

//There are some aspects of society that are more broken than others,// he settled on. //I don't think most people would be able to explain why hiding certain things is so important, only that they were raised to believe so. You might very well have been the first female he's ever seen taking her clothing off.//

He mulled that a moment more, and then added, //Somebody, somewhere, came up with that definition of obscenity, and it was a pervasive mindset that people still carry today. I wonder how much of it has to do with control. Sexualizing things that don't have to be. Stigmatizing things that never should have been. Most people won't look twice at a man who takes off his shirt, but when a woman shows her breasts...?//

For what it was worth, he didn't tend to blink twice at nudity, either. But then, he had spent plenty of time around people who, say, routinely sloughed their skin in battle. He tended to be a bit more laid-back about a lot of things.

Jalian threw up her mental hands at him, sending back complete non-comprehension. //And minds?//

Hm. Explaining the intricacies of how people felt about nudity was beyond him. If she didn't get it, Jono was willing to let it drop.

//For some people, their mind is all they have that's really their own,// Jono offered, attempting to open the part of his mind that had built a basic understanding of telepathic ethics so that she could follow along with an admittedly meandering train of thought. //It's considered basic courtesy among the telepaths who trained me to not go poking around inside of other people's heads without at least getting permission first. Not... not everybody wants their thoughts set out for people to see, and most wouldn't know how to put up barriers the way I have.//

A pause, and then he added, //It's a common trend in a lot of fiction, a fear of being persecuted for thoughts, rather than actions. The two things might come from a common source. That one thing that nobody has ever been able to reach inside and violate, suddenly laid bare for anyone to see.//

He'd invited Karla into his head once, to survey the damage as he slipped into madness. She'd accidentally changed the writing on the wall. He'd nearly gutted her for it.

Jalian shrugged, sending him the feeling of bafflement again. She didn't understand how one person could change another's thoughts, and without that, the worst that happened was that somebody knew what she was thinking. Which, given she wasn't exactly shy about sharing that, was unlikely to be a problem.

She'd just mark it down to one of the things about this culture that she didn't understand. Like money.

There was a moment more while Jonothon registered that bafflement, and then stuffed his hands in his pockets and, after a moment of hesitation, he opened up just one more memory.

Talking on the phone to Logan. Telling him that he was going to infiltrate Neverland, was going to take the place down if he could, he couldn't wait, he couldn't just sit back and linger while people were being slaughtered by the dozens.

And then the shadow that fell on the floor in front of him, and the weird, disjointed twisting of his thoughts. Trying to fight to keep his own self intact, and maybe he could have, but against some people, he didn't stand a chance.

Standing up again, and in that moment, everything that came before was different. He'd been wiped clean. He was the weapon he'd set out to destroy, and he had a job to do.

He cut the memory off there, but there was no mistaking the strong bleed of regret that came with it, the shame and the great sense of sorrow and the blunt truth that he'd done something unforgivable, then, after his mind had been ripped away from him.

If that memory didn't explain what people were afraid of when they heard his voice in their heads, nothing would.

It didn't explain that, no; but it did give Jalian a shadow of an idea of what privacy could mean, in the face of that. She sent back approval and horror and something that wasn't quite - but came near to - protectiveness. //Wrong.// Whoever had done that would die on her knives if it were possible; such wrongness should not be permitted.

//Wrong,// he agreed, his voice a little more hollow than it had been a moment before. Stepping back to Neverland always prompted that, always killed him a little, made something inside of him run a little colder. He was finished dredging up experiences now, at least for a while. //And long past.//

That was the best he had. Those who were responsible never paid for this, were never brought to justice. But he'd broken free, or had been ripped free when the Scarlet Witch had decimated mutantkind. Whatever else had happened, this was over.

//Minds are... complicated,// he settled on, finally.

Jalian shrugged her agreement. //People.// Some she would never understand at all.

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Groovy Tunes, Saturday

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