Issue 1 Downtime

After his last class of the day, Alex had decided to take a look around Mutant town to curb his boredom.

It takes maybe 5 minutes of being away from campus when, propably unnoticed by most people, every ant, bug and fly turn their heads and various sensory organs after the humanoid mushroom colony walking along. After a while of observing Alex a voice suddenly shouts out to him from an alley he's walking past.

"Now that's a sight you don't see leaving campus often."

Stepping away from the wall she was leaning against Teri takes a few steps towards the alley's exit. She's wrapped in a coat she propably snatched from a side-walk rack seeing how it still has a price-tag and is a size or two too large.

Alex stepped into the alley.

"Awfully close to campus aren't you?."

"Let's just say we won't be taken down that easily again even if they manage to pin-point us. Did you know that if you produce enough white noise the coherence of any actual signals starts breaking down?" she doesn't go into any more detail on it and changes the topic. "What about you? Shouldn't you be hammering down on your emergency button and report the position of a dangerous mutant?"

"Funny, I don't feel that I'm in danger," he smiled.

"You insult us, Alex." she laughs. "And we're almost disappointed by the lack of effort that has been put into finding us, but we shouldn't complain about that. How have things been? We're guessing you aren't under much scrutiny seeing how you seem to be okay with talking to us? Unlike a certain white-haired wanna-be supremacist."

"I seem to be well under the radar. I've always been, so I might as well use it to my advantage."

"Well, it's good to see you standing on your own side instead of anyone else's." she smirks. "Say, how are Rainbow and the halfblind prankster doing? Did they smack some sense into her for putting up our flag?"

"McDohl got sent to McManus for training. No doubt she invented some sob story saying you overpowered her and she wasn't responsible. Rainbow girl is still clinging to the lizard and that nauseating flowerchild."

"What kind of punishment is that? Idiots. Looks like we'll have to take care of that ourselves when the time comes."

"Punish her for doing what you wanted?" he chuckled.

"It was just a matter of convenience. The girl has guts, but is awfully impudent and lacks any kind of direction to her deeds. We figured we'd let someone else teach her a lesson about it, but some things are just annoyingly unreliable."

"Nice to see Rainbow recovering and fitting back in though." she adds, her voice dripping with something that's not quite sarcasm.

Alex took it as sarcasm.

"It's funny... they brand you a dangerous criminal without any actual proof and then welcome Magneto, who has actually been a dangerous criminal despite his noble ends, with open arms."

"Not all too surprising that Lumis would welcome him. He's simply more subtle about his aspirations. They are both ignoring the glaring flaw in their supremacist world-view. Mutants are just as headless and selfish as humans. Uniting one group under one banner has failed time and time again, why should it suddenly work with people who have even more options of screwing each other over?"

"Their delusions of grandeur have them thinking on too broad a scale. Can't see the trees for the forest as it were."

"It's not a matter of scale. Even if they exterminate every single human they will just start going to war with each other. Look at us, we know what we are talking about and so do you. A collective built on even the slightest distrust is doomed to fail."

"Then all we can really do is protect ourselves."

"Running away is an awful long-term plan. You of all people propably have the best insight into it even if your mind does work different than ours, but you'll have to come to the only possible conclusion yourself."

"I said nothing about running. And if you're getting at what I think you are... I'm afraid I'll have no part of it."

"No one wants to." she states matter of factly. "Else it would not be necessary in the first place. Megalomaniacs always compare people to ants. We wonder why that is. Do they understand it? Do they blind themselves? Or do they know their own insignificance and realize the truth?" A cloud of flies takes off from a nearby trash-can and takes to flying spirals over Teri's outstretched hand. "The queen doesn't hold any power at all. It's not even about the ants themselves. It's about the harmony between and beyond their tiny minds."

"It's about US!" closing her hand into a fist she crushes the flies circling above it.

"I could not care less about pure world harmony. Order without Chaos is devoid of meaning. I like you, but I would sooner kill you than ever be your drone. If you could even do it."

"Pure? Nothing's ever pure and there is no order like the one rising from chaos." She eyes Alex for a good while, thinking.

"We could, you know." It doesn't sound like a threat. More like a really crude attempt at opening up to someone.

"I doubt you're even strong enough to mentally dominate a person. Even if you are... my mind is quite a bit harder to pin down."

"And again you fail to understand it. There is no domination in concordance."

"If it is against the unaltered will of the subject, it is far from concordance."

"An objection that becomes irrelevant once they had the chance to experience it. It's impossible to respect everyone's sensibilities if they cannot make an informed consent."

"If any possibility of rational agreement has been removed, it is hardly consent."

"If the only way to achieve consent is retroactively then so be it." she shrugs.

"And you don't see the error in that logic?"

"We see it and we choose to ignore it because there is no sollution. If people fail to realize the obvious truth then they have to be shown the error of their ways. By force if necessary."

"Would you force me?"

"Only if you tried to stop us."

"As intriguing as the prospect of combat between us is, leave me be and I'll have no reason to."

"A shame, really. You would make a considerable asset and we thought if anyone that you would be the one able to see things like we do." It's an unusual thing to see in her face but she almost looks disappointed.

"While I am, like you, a collective organism, I have but one voice and not a thousand lesser voices churning within. I am an I while you are a we. And I'm afraid I value myself far too much to hand over the reigns of my free will to another."

"It is not the surrender of your free will, but we're afraid we are unable to truly explain the scope of it. For all the pretending people throw around about ~love~ and ~the power of friendship~..." she says in a mocking voice "...they are truly hypocrits when confronted with true bonds the extend of which they refuse to grasp."

"And it is because of our bond, perhaps of friendship or of something harder to grasp, that I won't be telling anyone I saw you."

"Almost... You are so close to seeing it yet you cling to such a lonely image of yourself." Frustration, pity, accusation, sadness, anger, it's hard to tell what exactly swings in her voice, much less shows on her face as she looks at Alex and shakes her head.

"See that the world would be better as a collective bearing a singular will... your will? And then what, hmm?"

"All you see is us on a throne holding sway over the world in that projection, is it? We suppose it stems from the same problem that you'd see us as someone with the goals of an individual. Could we fashion ourselves into a queen? Possibly, but it would belie our true purpose."