Tessa and Scott, backdated to 9/23

[ax_cyclops]

Scott and Tessa get to know each other.

Though she preferred to prepare her own meals--the general distrust for the works of others she had cultivated over her lifetime not having had much time to subside--Tessa could acknowledge that dining in the cafeteria served a social function from which she could derive some use. The other students had far more faith in both the competence and the good intentions of the school's kitchen staff, and so tended to congregate there regularly when nourishment was required. And, though she had made certain strides in recent days with regard to expanding her social circle--and societal aptitude--the cyberpath was prepared to acknowledge she had a great deal more ground to cover before she could claim any sort of facility with such interaction.

As such, she had claimed a tray and was now in the act of deciding which of the offerings available seemed least likely to pose a gastrointestinal threat. But more than selecting a relatively harmless lunch, her dark eyes scanned the tables presently occupied for students whom she had yet to meet, and who might be amenable to the interaction. Expanding her understanding of others was a primary motivation for her presence, after all.

For once Scott didn't have a book with him at the lunch table. Not because he had any intention or plan to eat with the other students, but because he was between books and was not yet sure what to pick next. So he instead just focused on the plate of food in front of him: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and chicken. There had been green beans, too, but he already wasn't sure he would finish his food and didn't want to waste anything.

The student Tessa selected ... was not exactly amenable to interaction. But that meant he would present a challenge. And challenges were typically more rewarding, in the long run--particularly when one had a great deal of ground to make up. With her salad and what she presumed was an inexpertly-seasoned breast of chicken weighing down her tray, she made her way toward the tall, excessively lean adolescent in the bright red eyewear. Sparing him a closer examination as she neared, the psion cleared her throat, settled her tray across from his, and said, "May I?" Her tone implied that any answer to the largely rhetorical question would yield the same result.

Scott didn't know why anyone - including, but certainly not limited to, a pretty girl - would want to sit with him, but it was a free country. "Sure," he said, shrugging a little. He watched her mildly warily as she sat down, not sure if this was part of some kind of weird joke or trick, but really not sure why anyone would bother to play one. "You are...."

"Tessa," she reported succinctly. "I have been here for some time, but have not yet had occasion to make your acquaintance properly. You are Scott Summers. I believe you were one of the first located by the Professor? If nothing else, your arrival predates mine by a not-inconsiderable margin."

Tessa. Clearly well-prepared, well-studied (at least on who was around), and possibly even worse at first meetings than he was. Though, to her credit, Scott sincerely doubted the gap was all that substantial. He wasn't exactly sure what that said about either of them. "Right," because she was, "uh...nice to actually meet you."

Maybe not, he felt a little put on the spot by her frank run down of the facts, but he attempted to dust off his rusty and unused manners from nearly a decade before. "I've only been here a few months, for what it's worth."

"More than my few weeks, certainly," Tessa said, punctuating her appraisal with a mouthful of salad. "It is agreeable to make your acquaintance, as well. How are you acclimating to the sudden influx of new students? I would find such a rapid change jarring, personally, but my own standards are not necessarily the most reliable, when it comes to matters of personal interaction."

Scott shrugged slightly. "I went to public school before this, so....." It didn't actually answer the question. He'd been isolated through most of his schooling, alone even among multitudes, and had somehow been even more alone (although under constant scrutiny) outside of it. This was very jarring.

"So you find it jarring, huh?"

She studied him narrowly for a moment before shrugging and taking another bite of salad. He had not answered her inquiry, as such, and was attempting to deflect the focus of their conversation away from himself ... but that was acceptable. Tessa was imposing, after all. "I do," she said. "I have no experience whatsoever dealing with persons of our age group, and only a very specific familiarity with how older individuals are to be handled. Still, I am confident in my capacity to assimilate new knowledge readily. I will acclimate, in time."

Really confident, wasn't she? Naturally arrogant? A function of her mutation? A truly objective self-assessment? He had no way of knowing, really. "Why no experience?" He asked instead.

"My previous circumstances allowed for only extremely limited interactions with other people," she said, unruffled by the more than somewhat pointed questions sparking off the surface of his mind. "And virtually none with those of a comparable age. It stymied my development in some areas, while encouraging it in others. Areas of a somewhat lesser utility in the suburbs of New York City."

"Not from around here, huh? Me either." He wasn't usually one to volunteer information, but he knew well enough that adage that you had to give a little to get a little and Tessa....well, she had him curious. "So if teenaged socializing isn't your thing, what're you into?"

"Asymmetrical warfare," she said immediately. "Use and maintenance of standard NATO and Warsaw small arms. Survival under adverse conditions. Assimilation and utilization of information." Tessa took another placid bite from her tray. "You?"

Scott's eyebrows had climbed his head so far during her recitation that he might have just lost them to his hair, never to be seen again. Standard NATO and Warsaw small arms? Asymmetrical warfare? He had to take her at her word; those would be exceedingly strange things to make up, especially when volunteered so freely. Odd, maybe, but dangerous.

Useful, too. Not for the first time, Scott had a flicker of question at the back of mind regarding the Professor's ultimate intentions.

"Nothing so...utilitarian," he said thoughtfully. Unless one counted casing and robbing a bank, or jewelry store, or conning people in dive bars. "Reading. Math." Strategy games, but he wasn't sure he wanted to be that dork.

Tessa's eyes brightened. "Reading. That is a topic of considerable personal interest. Do you have any particular favored genres?" She gave very little indication she had registered his surprise, though that was probably more a function of her increasing recognition of the discomfort non-psis experienced at the revelation of those aspects of her gifts than anything else.

"Uh, non-fiction, mostly." He wasn't used to his peers showing interests in his actual interests. Occasionally they poked at his prickly exterior. Adults prodded into what he was up to. But rarely did people ask what he liked on a personal level. "Philosophy. Military history. Science stuff. What do you like to read?"

"My experience is not so robust as yet for me to express a specific preference," she admitted. "I suppose I am best-acquainted with technical manuals, but I believe those are seldom read for pleasure. Now that I have ready access to a library of some substance, I plan to correct that deficiency." Tessa cocked her head. "I will update you when I am able to make a positive determination."

"Fair enough." He'd often used libraries as a refuge - from his schools, from his foster homes, from his life - so he had spent an inordinate amount of time reading, albeit without direction or anyone to discuss the books with. "So where're you from, since you're not from near here?"

"My exact national origins are indeterminate," Tessa said, attaching no particular emotional relevance to the admission. "Before arriving at the school, I traveled across Europe and the Near East. Before that, I lived in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan."

And then it clicked. "So, asymmetrical warfare and NATO and Warsaw small arms," he put together. "Got it."

"It is not such a difficult deduction, I suppose, for a student of military history." She continued to calmly pick through her salad. "Fluency in such things was required, as a matter of day-to-day existence."

"Fluency in a lot of languages, too, I'd bet," given the close proximity of Hindu Kush to so many different countries, all of whom wanted a piece of the Kush region. "Hindi, Arabic, Pashto.....Dari?"

"I am most fluent with Pashto and Farsi, in terms of the prevalent regional languages--although I have made it a point to be at least passingly acquainted with others that had the potential to become matters of immediate practical concern. I assimilated several additional languages in my travels across Europe. It is a function of my gifts to easily absorb and utilize systems of information storage and transfer--and the transfer of information is, I think, at the core of all language."

"Sounds like a useful mutation." Far more useful than his, at any rate. Scott knew the speculation was that they, mutants, were some kind of leap forward in evolution, but he had trouble seeing how his unstoppable death eyes would ever be evolutionarily beneficial. He wasn't exactly 'survival of the fittest' material.

"It possesses a certain utility," she allowed. "And a lack of distinctiveness that I find mostly serviceable. I also have some limited telepathic abilities, though these mostly seem to have developed to serve my data gathering and processing functions." Tessa gave him a brief, sideways glance. "In any event, at our core, we are individuals possessed of particular extranormal gifts. Like anyone else, it is up to us to develop into our potential. And to choose how we define ourselves."

Limited telepathic abilities. Well. That was one good way to freeze Scott Summers in his tracks. Are you listening to my thoughts?

The silence stretched on for a moment, during which she gave Scott a sideways look. Finally, she shook her head. "I am sorry," she told him, "but if you are attempting to initiate telepathic contact, I will have to concentrate further to pick up your message in an explicit sense. At the moment, I can only tell that your thoughts are directed at me, and generally uneasy."

She could just be saying that; how the fuck would he know, after all? Or she could be on the level. It was frustrating, gambling when he had no idea the other person's skill. This was why you scoped out a mark before you conned him at pool. It was always better to know the score going in.

He stopped thinking at her. "Good. I don't exactly relish the thought of having other people in my mind."

"That puts you squarely on the side of the majority, at least insofar as my experience of the student population is concerned," she told him, a neutral recitation of fact moreso than a criticism. "I myself find the experience quite rewarding. But I have come to understand that those without telepathic abilities tend to be at least mildly unnerved by them. I will respect your privacy, to the best my skills allow."

"You find the experience of going into other people's heads rewarding, or of them coming into yours?" Scott asked. Because, to his mind, those were two very different things. Not that he was an expert. He was undoubtedly out of his depth here.

Tessa shook her head. "Those are indeed two different applications of psychic potential; I can penetrate the mind of another with some effort, assuming their psionic strength does not greatly exceed my own, and I can endure the presence of another in my own mind when it is necessary. But I speak of yet a third interaction: a sharing of thought, a blending of feeling. And immediate give-and-take of raw consciousness. To all intents and purposes, making one mind out of two. It is, I think, difficult to experience another's life as they do and judge that individual harshly. In fact, I would posit the opposite is so. It has seemed so, in my admittedly cursory firsthand knowledge of the phenomenon."

"So....a mind-meld. Basically," Scott translated. That sounded like an invasion of one's personal space, their bubble, but then....he guessed with consent, it wasn't an invasion. He just couldn't imagine ever giving his consent to that.

Frowning, she gave him a sideways look. "I am not sufficiently acquainted with its context to gauge the accuracy of your metaphor," Tessa told him.

"Two beings sharing one mind. But not...one mind, basically combining their minds into a single entity." Scott had never expected to have to explain what a mind-meld was, so hopefully that had gotten the point across. He wasn't going to bet his life on it or anything, though.

She appeared to consider that. "I suppose it is as close as a strictly-verbal description is capable of achieving. It does, however, lose much of the nuance. Understanding is based on experience, and the experience is so unique that it is difficult to communicate to those who have not explored such an intimate commingling."

Scott wondered if that wouldn't make her fear losing any bit of herself in that exchange, but it seemed like an overly personal question. That, and she seemed the sort to turn that kind of introspective question back on him, and he had absolutely no desire to answer it himself. Never ask for more than you're willing to give, he reminded himself. "I guess language hasn't exactly caught up to mutant powers."

"Not to all aspects of them, certainly," she conceded. "Inherent deficiencies aside, I would, I think, like to learn about your own gifts as you understand them. If it is not an overly personal question." Scott, she had noticed, had a highly developed sense of privacy, and Tessa did not wish to disturb it unduly.

"You don't exactly need to mind-meld for that. They're optic blasts. Pretty much what it says on the label." Well, he left off the uncontrollable death gaze part, but Scott was sure she could get the gist.

"If you will forgive me, 'optic blast' is still a fairly imprecise description," Tessa returned politely. "Are the blasts force? Or heat? Or some other physical phenomenon? Or perhaps they are not yet capable of being quantified or cataloged within the bounds of current science?"

Scott shoveled a mouth of mashed potatoes in, but did actually swallow before answering, "No heat, just force. Canons, not lasers."

"Interesting. And you are unable to voluntarily end the effect?"

"So you are listening in," Scott surmised, sounding less-than impressed to hear it.

"I inferred, based on your specialized eyewear. Since my arrival at the school, you have not removed it, and have expressed some agitation at the prospect of it being jarred or otherwise interfered with." Her expression remained neutral, if perhaps cooler than it had been. "I have no reason to lie to you But you may believe what you wish."

He held up his hands a little, as though surrendering - though he certainly was not. "Sorry. I did not realize you'd been paying so much attention to me. I should not have assumed you were reading my mind." Living with a bunch of - or any - telepaths could make a guy a little jumpy.

"I pay close attention to all the students," she told him. "My telepathy may be of no special note, but my powers of observation are considerable. Do not imagine that just because I cannot read your mind, I cannot guess what you are thinking."

"I stand corrected." Scott said. Tessa - observant, highly intelligent, telepathic - she was terrifying. But, also, really impressive and interesting, and almost against his own will, Scott thought he might like her, as a person. It wasn't just anyone who called him out on his shit that well.

At that, her features thawed again, to the polite neutrality with which she had begun their interaction. "I have no reason to lie," she repeated. "My behavior is ruled by logic, and though that means there may come a time that misleading you, or anyone, serves a greater purpose, that time is not now. The dictates of the presence suggest I am better served making as positive a first impression as is possible."

He mulled that over. She was honest when she could be, and had a reason when she couldn't. No different than him. He could respect that, the principles behind it. It wasn't like people ruled by emotion made better choices. "Fair enough."