Issue 1 Downtime

Melissa had sent an e-mail to Jennifer, letting her know that she had a tutoring session in the Danger Room at this time. Melissa settled into the Danger Room simulation of a shopping district in Miami. She'd arrange the room to open the door right next to the table she was sitting at. She was dressed casually and pouring some coffee out of a thermos she'd brought with her.

"Whoa, hey, this is different..." Jennifer says when she walks through the door.

"I thought we could use a relaxing venue," she said, motioning to an empty seat at the table. "I'm Melissa. Unless you meandered into the room by accident, you must be Jennifer."

"Yeah." she says, eyeing Melissa as she takes a seat.

"Coffee?" Melissa offered, "It's the real thing. I brought it with me."

"Sure. Hey... don't I know you from somewhere?"

"You've probably seen me around school. I'm one of the university students. There's a mild chance you've seen me in news reports from Miami. I spent some time working as a superhero there under the name Bastion."

"Who watches news reports anymore? I've seen you on the internet."

"Technically some of those are still news reports, but that's splitting hairs." She poured a cup for Jennifer. "I'm going to be taking over your telepathy tutoring for the time being."

"I figured from the email. You care for the journal McManus made me keep?"

"I wouldn't mind taking a look at it. There is some merit to the method, but I thInk we'll be starting with something different."

"Good cause I dunno how much this would help." she says, tossing the small book on the coffee table. It flips open to a page full of 'All work and no play makes Jenn a dull girl.'

Melissa flips through the book, keeping her expression carefully schooled. She puts the book back on the table, "Before we get started, there's just a couple of things I want to mention. First, I do have to report back to the Headmistress on how you're doing, but anything we talk about here is just between you and me. Second, because it's one on one, there is some flexibility on what we work on, so if something interests you more we can definitely spend some extra time on that. Sound good?"

"I'm just here cause the court ordered me to. I feel like I'm doing alright."

"Well, you can always do better than alright," Melissa said. "So when you pick up on other people's thoughts, how does it feel to you?"

"Like they're in my head. It's like my own thoughts except not. And they sound differently, even though they don't really make any sound, if that makes sense."

"Makes perfect sense. Everyone's thoughts have a different feeling, that 'sound' you describe. We'll focus on blocking those out first. A good first step to that is figuring out how to distinguish one person's thoughts out of the noise." The streets suddenly filled up with people and their thoughts pressed in. They weren't as sophisticated as real thoughts, but there certainly were a lot of them. "See the woman window shopping right there?" She pointed at a woman lingering in front of a window nearby. "Which of those thoughts is hers?"

Jennifer frowns at the crowd but pretends it's from concentrating and not the assault of that many voices in her head. From the looks of it she's trying to isolate each voice one by one and sifting through them to basically take a guess at which thoughts seem to 'match' her assumptions about the woman. "She's thinking about her budget and whether she can afford to buy something." she says after a moment, falsely attributing somebody else's thoughts to her.

"Close," she said, pointing at a woman in line at a food truck not far away. "That's what she's thinking." She pointed at the window-shopping woman, "She's thinking about whether or not they have that outfit in her size."

"There's too many people." she complains.

"There's always too many people," Melissa said with some sympathy. The thoughts suddenly became muffled for Jennifer, still present but sounding as if they were in another room. "Better?"

"Just quieter. Makes it easier to hear my own thoughts, I guess."

"That's what it was like when I first learned how to screen out other thoughts. As I got more practiced, it became more like this." The thoughts quieted down to the sound of unintelligible whispers. "Then, once I finally caught hold of how to separate my thoughts from others, it was like this." The thoughts shut off entirely, the people still going about their business, but Jennifer not hearing any of them.

"More lessons in not using your power. Yay."

"I could give you a list of the telepaths who've gone insane because they never mastered this," Melissa said, "but you have to use your power in order to filter out other people, so it's not as if you won't be using your power."

"Still sounds an awful lot like learning how to not do something." she grumbles. Pretty much any time the topic of her telepathy comes up the response is at best some form of 'control yourself' and at worst anger and fear. That fact is very much coloring her responses and probably beginning to bleed through into any thoughts Melissa might pick up from her.

"Tell me honestly," Melissa said, "Do you really want to continue hearing the unfettered shit that goes through other people's heads? Because we can and will get to the 'fun stuff' like intentionally reading someone's thoughts, sorting through memories, telepathic combat, astral projection, we *will* get to it all. But I have to teach you to walk before I can teach you to run and I am more than willing to teach you to run."

"Kinda hard to go back to pretending that the unfettered shit isn't going through their heads anyway. I don't want to cover my ears, I want to shove their thoughts back." she says and as if for emphasis a faint shimmering sphere takes shape around her, pushing one of the bystanders a couple feet away (provoking a short "Hey!" from the simple program) and forcing people to go out of their way t keep their distance to Jennifer. Melissa and the table they're sitting at seems to have been unaffected by the forcefield forming around them.

"I know there's reality shows on TV. I can't unknow that. Doesn't mean I want to watch them though," Melissa said, studying the shield for a moment. She relaxed a little into her chair, leaning back. The constructs moved further away, leaving an even wider space around the force field. Jennifer might pick up on an undercurrent of aversion towards the vacant area, not directed towards anything specifically in it. "Enough space for you?"

She looks around and seems kind of surprised before dropping the shield. "I don't care how close they are." she says, which is mostly true. "Just don't want to turn off my powers to make them shut up."

"You're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying you should turn off your powers. What we need to work on first is identifying their thoughts and learning to screen them out so they don't get into your head in the first place. Once you get skilled enough out it, it becomes reflexive."

"I know which thoughts are my own. Usually."

"Usually is a bothersome word when it applies to knowing which thoughts are yours."

"Only when they suck." she says a bit evasively.

"Identity is an important thing. It makes us who we are and when you're a telepath, it provides defenses against other telepaths. Having the thoughts of others rattling around in your head, especially if you sometimes can't tell the difference, undermines that sense of who you are." And it can give an unfriendly telepath an opening that you don't want them to have.

"According to people on campus I'm the only unfriendly telepath around." she sends back.

"Because I use my power to read crap that's written in broad strokes on peoples' faces anyway. Because I do what everyone else is allowed and encouraged to do. And I get shit on for it."

"Ah, the thing that telepaths always get yelled at for. People thinking that we're rooting around in their heads."

"Fucking sick of it." she mumbles.