Issue 1 Downtime

Not too far from the manor Teri was wandering the grounds. She seems to be looking around, finally deciding on a tree and climbing into it. As the sun slowly sets she swarms, letting the locust settle down all over the branches of the tree, chirping and chattering.

After a while they begin to sound less random, groups of them beginning to chirp at the same time, almost as if tuning an instrument and eventually their sounds begin to flow together.

Steve had been sitting on one of the Gardens' many benches, writing something in a notebook, when he heard the locusts begin their song. Then when the song became an actual song, he shot up with a start.

"The hell...?" he muttered as he warily searched for the source.

He wouldn't have to search for long. Even if it was pitch black it probably would have been hard for him to miss the tree almost lighting up to his mind's eye. Every one of the locust was glowing faintly in all kinda of colors, but never clashing with the ones right next to them. The glow almost seemed to have a mind of it's own, colors and hues shifting throughout the swarm along to the song.

All nervousness left him, and he nearly dropped his jaw wide open from the bizarre beauty of what he was seeing.

"...must've fallen asleep..."

As he steps closer Steve would be able to see the image of a young woman floating between the insects. She's holding her knees to her chest with her arms, eyes closed.

Not a ghost. Ghosts aren't real. Just a mutant.

He stepped closer, just a little mesmerized by wonder.

Not that this spectacle is technically real either. At least not outside of Teri's head. The song keeps going for a little longer when the locusts suddenly seem to notice Steve's presence. The ghostly girl in the middle opens her eyes and suddenly the song stops. The image of the girl disappears and thousands of bugs, both in the real world as in the mental one, take flight and form a dense cloud in which the girl disappears. At least for a moment, then it's like they switched places. The girl is real and the buzzing, swirling cloud of bugs is only visible to Steve's telepathy.

"Oh, we... we didn't know anybody was listening..."

"It's... okay... that was..." beautiful "Pretty cool," he smiled.

"Oh! You thought so? Really?" she smiles. Meanwhile the swarm seems to calm down a little though it's still pretty chaotic.

"Yeah. The light show was a nice touch too," he said, not realizing his powers had shown him that.

"Lightshow?" she tilts her head. "You mean the sunset?"

"No. Your bugs were all glowy and... stuff."

A look of realization crossed his face.

"Must've been my powers..."

"We... glowed? How odd. But as long as it looked pretty cool..." she smiles. "We're Teri."

"Steve," he answered.

"...we?"

"Yes. You saw us, didn't you? The swarm, when we were singing?"

"You... are the bugs?"

I really shouldn't be weirded out by anything here, should I?

"Yep! We're the bugs, the bugs are us, however you wanna turn it."

At least she's just big grasshoppers.

"That's... different... but I guess everyone here is huh?"

"Yeah. We're glad people are so nice about it! People usually don't like us because they think... well we're not sure what they think but they don't like bugs."

"I usually don't either," he admitted, "But... your song reminded me of the crickets back home."

He smiled nostalgically.

"Crickets just shout." she chuckles.

"I always found it soothing. Probably a good thing, because in Alabama they're everywhere," he chuckled.

"Good you don't understand them then." she laughs.

"Yeah, probably," he laughed.

"So you said we were glowing to you? What's your gift?"

"Telepathy, but mostly visual so far."

She nods in the way that shows she doesn't really get it.

"Well Professor McManus said our gift might have odd effects with others, especially telepaths."

"Usually I just see what people are visualizing," he said, "Or accidentally send a mental image out."

"Were you thinking of glowing?"

"Not really... We were, well, singing. It makes it easier to think sometimes."

"Huh... wonder why I saw that then."

"Maybe that's just how singing looks?"

"I don't think so..."

"Have you ever watched someone's thoughts while they were singing?"

"Well, no," he admitted, "But I still see it."

"Hrm? What do you mean?"

"Okay maybe not glowing, but your... swarm?... Is still there, but... not."

"Oh? Well we suppose they are. In our head anyway. They are our head, kind of."

"So... does your swa... do you connect to yourself telepathically or something?"

"We just... are all of us. You think that's telepathy?"